This article focuses on objects, bodies and space to explore how the mundane materialities of classrooms do crucial but often unnoticed performative work in enacting gendered power Drawing on ethnographic data from a UK sixth form college study, the article analyses a series of ‘material moments’ to elaborate a material feminist analysis of embodied practices of mattering I argue that ‘practices, doings and actions’ (Barad, K 2007 Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning London: Duke University Press), while often hidden or taken for granted, are a constitutive material force in producing what and who matters within classrooms By highlighting objects, bodies and space as entangled material agencies, the article raises new questions about gendered pedagogic practices It proposes the necessity to rethink classroom space as an emergent intersection of multiple, mobile materialities, and argues that doing so is a crucial task for a material feminist praxis

Objects, Bodies and Space: Gender and Embodied Practices of Mattering in the Classroom.

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Pathos and Pathology: The Cinema of Todd Haynes

Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority

In Man, Play and Games, Roger Caillois warns against the “rationalization” of play by working life and argues that the professionalization of competitive games (agon) will have a negative impact on people and society. In this article, I elaborate on Caillois’ argument by suggesting that the professional context of electronic sports (e-Sports) rationalizes play by turning player psychology toward the pursuit of extrinsic rewards. This is evidenced in the instrumental decision-making that accompanies competitive gameplay as well as the “survival” strategies that e-Sports players deploy to endure its precarious working environment(s). In both cases, play is treated as work and has problematic psychological and sociological implications as a result.

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Roger Caillois and E-Sports: On the Problems of Treating Play as Work:

In American history and throughout the Western world, the subjugation perpetuated by slavery has created a unique 'culture of slavery' That culture exists as a metaphorical, artistic and literary tradition attached to the enslaved - human beings whose lives are 'owed' to another, who are used as instruments by another and who must endure suffering in silence Tim Armstrong explores the metaphorical legacy of slavery in American culture by investigating debt, technology and pain in African-American literature and a range of other writings and artworks Armstrong's careful analysis reveals how notions of the slave as a debtor lie hidden in our accounts of the commodified self and how writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rebecca Harding Davis, Booker T Washington, W E B Du Bois, Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison grapple with the pervasive view that slaves are akin to machines

The Logic of Slavery: Debt, Technology, and Pain in American Literature

"The Edge of Surrealism" is an essential introduction to the writing of French social theorist Roger Caillois (1913-1978). Though his subjects were diverse, Caillois focused on issues crucial to modern intellectual life, and his essays offer a unique perspective on many of twentieth-century France's most significant intellectual movements and figures. Including a masterful introductory essay by Claudine Frank situating his work in relation to his life and intellectual milieu, this anthology is the first comprehensive introduction to Caillois' work to appear in any language. A part of the Surrealist avant garde, in the 1930s Caillois founded the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris. Caillois spent the remainder of his life exploring issues raised by this famous group. During World War II he lived in Buenos Aires and edited the journal Les Lettres Francaises. In the postwar period, he resisted dominant intellectual trends including existentialism and Marxism, and pursued his own interests, writing on a variety of topics, including politics, poetics, sociology, games, the 'fantastic', and, ultimately, designs in nature and on stones. He sought to compete with Bataille's journal Critique through the 'renewed humanism' of his own journal, Diogene, and to challenge structuralist theory through his concept of 'diagonal science'. In 1972, Caillois was inducted into the Academie Francaise. Arranged chronologically, these thirty-two essays with commentaries strike a balance between Caillois' political and theoretical writings and between his better known works, such as the popular essays on the praying mantis, myth, and mimicry and his lesser known pieces. Presenting several new documents and drawing on interviews and unpublished correspondence, this book reveals Caillois' consistent effort to reconcile intellectual rigor and imaginative adventure. Perhaps most importantly, "The Edge of Surrealism" provides an overdue look at how Caillois' intellectual project intersected with the work of Georges Bataille and others including Breton, Bachelard, Benjamin, Lacan, and Levi-Strauss.

Claudine Frank

Papers

The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader