Showing papers on "The Imaginary published in 2006"

Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

Abstract: Alexei Yurchak. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. In-formation Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. x, 331 pp. Halftones. Illustrations. Tables. $59.50, cloth. $24.95, paper.Reacting against the system/anti-system binarism that characterizes so many analyses of the late Soviet period, Alexei Yurchak casts the last Soviet generation in quite a different light. He confronts a paradox-that although young people were caught off-guard by the collapse of the USSR, as soon as it occurred realized that they had been prepared for that unexpected change-by arguing that the processes of everyday life that reproduced the Soviet system and those that resulted in its continuous internal displacement were mutually constitutive. No mask/reality; public/private; falsehood/truth dichotomy here. Instead, each of the book's chapters explores different, seemingly contradictory or nonconformist lifestyles and shows that these were enabled by the very laws and structures that they seemed to defy, but did not. Komsomol organizers performed their jobs wholeheartedly while distinguishing between tasks that were "pure formality" and "work with meaning." At the same time they blended love of Western heavy metal with their deep belief" in socialist values and often organized amateur rock bands to play at Komsomol events (Chapters 3 and 6). Based on letters, diaries, documents and retrospective interviews, Yurchak makes a convincing case that those involved in the youth wing of the Communist Party developed future-oriented notions of a good, interesting and "normal" life that included cacophonous electric music, jeans, and other products of the real or imaginary West (Chapter 5), along with socialist state welfare practices and a broader Marxist-Leninist vision.At the same time, other less conforming or less ambitious young people simply found the Komsomol and politics in general "uninteresting." Yurchak devotes Chapter 4 to how they formed deterritorialized communities and lived vnye-simultaneously inside and outside of the system-holding down jobs or pursuing studies that gave them both a wage, or stipend, and an opportunity to follow their decidedly apolitical interests. Living vny,; the amateur rock scene, those boiler-room attendants, guards and doormen who abjured careerism to focus almost exclusively on obshchenie (an intense form of socializing), and various kinds of pranksters, were, as Chapters 4, 6 and 7 show, agentive and creative choices but not resistance against the Communist Party or the state. In fact, Yurchak argues that this wide array of ironic, unconventional lifestyles was enabled by an entrenched paradox: "In the late Soviet context, when authoritative discourse became hypernormalized, its performative dimension grew in importance and its constative dimension became unanchored from concrete core meanings and increasingly open to new interpretations" (p. …

The global politics of contemporary travel writing

Abstract: 1. Introduction: the global imaginary of contemporary travel writing 2. Between fact and fiction: the generic limits of travel writing 3. The cosmopolitan gaze: re-articulations of modern subjectivity 4. Civilizing territory: geographies of safety and danger 5. Looking back: utopia, nostalgia and the myth of historical progress 6. Conclusion: engaging the political: contemporary travel writing and the ethics of difference.

Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed

Abstract: Abbreviations Introduction Chapter One: Cinema, Thought and Time 1.1 Deleuze's Cinema Books 1.1.2 Technology 1.1.3 Essences. 1.1.3 Space and time 1.1.4 Bergson, Time and Life Chapter 2: The Movement-Image 2.1 The History of Time and Space and the History of Cinema 2.2 The Movement-Image and Semiotics 2.3 Styles of Sign 2.4 The Whole of Movement 2.5 Image and Life 2.6 Becoming-Inhuman, Becoming Imperceptible 2.7 The Deduction of the Movement-Image 2.7.1 Firstness 2.7.2 Affect 2.7.3 From Movement-Image to Time-Image Chapter Three: Art and Time 3.1 Destruction of the sensory motor apparatus and the spiritual automaton 3.2 Time and Money Chapter Four: Art and History 4.1 Monument 4.2 Framing, Territorialisation and the Plane of Composition Chapter Five: Politics and the Origin of Meaning 5.1 Transcending Life and the Genesis of Sense 5.2 Beyond Symbolic and Imaginary 5.3 Shit and Money 5.4 Exchange, Gift and Theft 5.5 The Fiction of Mind 5.6 Collective Investment and Group Fantasy 5.7 The Time of Man 5.8 The Intense Germinal Influx Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Loss, Memory, Desire: 1. The unquiet grave: imaginary journeys 2. Hearts of stone: creating the cemeteries of the Great War Part II. Family Journeys: 3. In foreign fields: the first family pilgrimages 4. 'Sacred Places': family pilgrimage today Part III. Soldiers' Tales: 5. To see old mates again: diggers return 6. 'A grave that could have been my own': Services' pilgrimage Part IV. Testament of Youth: 7. Walking with history: learning about war 8. 'It's like a Mecca, like a pilgrimage': backpacker travels Conclusion Epilogue.

Jacques Lacan and the other side of psychoanalysis : reflections on Seminar XVII

Abstract: This collection is the first extended interrogation in any language of Jacques Lacan's Seminar XVII . Originally delivered just after the Paris uprisings of May 1968, Seminar XVII marked a turning point in Lacan’s thought; it was both a step forward in the psychoanalytic debates and an important contribution to social and political issues. Collecting important analyses by many of the major Lacanian theorists and practitioners, this anthology is at once an introduction, critique, and extension of Lacan’s influential ideas. The contributors examine Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, his critique of the Oedipus complex and the superego, the role of primal affects in political life, and his prophetic grasp of twenty-first-century developments. They take up these issues in detail, illuminating the Lacanian concepts with in-depth discussions of shame and guilt, literature and intimacy, femininity, perversion, authority and revolt, and the discourse of marketing and political rhetoric. Topics of more specific psychoanalytic interest include the role of objet a , philosophy and psychoanalysis, the status of knowledge, and the relation between psychoanalytic practices and the modern university. Contributors . Geoff Boucher, Marie-Helene Brousse, Justin Clemens, Mladen Dolar, Oliver Feltham, Russell Grigg, Pierre-Gilles Gueguen, Dominique Hecq, Dominiek Hoens, Eric Laurent, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Jacques-Alain Miller, Ellie Ragland, Matthew Sharpe, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic

Imaginaries of Europe Technologies of Gender, Economies of Power

Abstract: This article explores some of the ways in which ideas about and attempts to construct a European identity and sense of belonging inscribe an imaginary of Europe that is exclusionary and elitist. It suggests that the symbolic figure of ‘the immigrant woman’ is a container category that simultaneously signifies the non-European and tests and destabilizes claims to Europe's essential characteristics. It also argues that traces of this imaginary of Europe can be found in feminist scholarship on global care chains and that the spatial category of ‘the domestic’ is the invisible seam that ties this scholarship to the hegemonic imaginary of Europe.

The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation

Abstract: As a woman wielding public authority, Elizabeth I embodied a paradox at the very center of sixteenth-century patriarchal English society. Louis Montrose's long-awaited book, "The Subject of Elizabeth", illuminates the ways in which the Queen and her subjects variously exploited or obfuscated this contradiction. Montrose offers a masterful account of the texts, pictures, and performances in which the Queen was represented to her people, to her court, to foreign powers, and to Elizabeth herself. Retrieving this "Elizabethan imaginary" in all its richness and fascination, Montrose presents a sweeping new account of Elizabethan political culture. Along the way, he explores the representation of Elizabeth within the traditions of Tudor dynastic portraiture; explains the symbolic manipulation of Elizabeth's body by both supporters and enemies of her regime; and considers how Elizabeth's advancing age provided new occasions for misogynistic subversions of her royal charisma. This book, the remarkable product of two decades of study by one of our most respected Renaissance scholars, will be welcomed by all historians, literary scholars, and art historians of the period.

The Theory of Imaginary Money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution

Abstract: If one reads the books on monetary subjects that were written in the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, one frequently encounters the concept of ‘imaginary money’. Other terms used are ‘ideal money’, ‘political money’, moneta numeraria, ‘money of account’. What these terms meant was not very clear even to contemporaries. The most authoritative writer among the historians of French monetary vicissitudes, Francois Le Blanc, resigned himself to defining as imaginary any kind of money which, ‘properly speaking, is but a collective term comprising a certain number of real moneys’. The imaginary money which almost everywhere was called ‘pound’ or an equivalent term such as ‘livre’, ‘lira’, ‘pond’, was, in Le Blanc’s words, ‘never changing in value; in fact, we have used it since the time of Charlemagne, and it has always been worth 20 sous (shillings), and each sou, 12 deniers (pence)’.1 It is called ‘imaginary’ because of the fact that it has never been coined; ‘because we have never had a real specie which has consistently been worth 20 sous or one worth 12 deniers’. Although from time immemorial men have neither seen nor touched any imaginary money, nevertheless, in the remote past it was something real, ‘since if we go back to the time when in France people began to count in pounds, shillings, and pence, we shall find that these imaginary moneys owe their origin to a real thing’.

Lacan : the silent partners

Abstract: Jacques Lacan is the foremost psychoanalytic theorist after Freud. Revolutionizing the study of social relations, his work has been a major influence on political theory, philosophy, literature and the arts, but his thought has so far been studied without a serious investigation of its foundations. Just what are the influences on his thinking, so crucial to its proper understanding? In Lacan: The Silent Partners Slavoj i ek, the maverick theorist and pre-eminent Lacan scholar, has marshalled some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of Lacan's work. Focusing on Lacan's 'silent partners', those who are the hidden inspiration to Lacan theory, they discuss his work in relation to the pre-socratics, Diderot, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schelling, Holderlin, Wagner, Turgenev, Kafka, Henry James and Artaud. This Major collection, including three essays by i ek, marks a new era in the study of this unsettling thinker, breathing new life into this classic work. Contributors: Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Miran Bozovic, Lorenzo Chiesa, Joan Copjec, Mladen Dolar, Timothy Huson, Frederic Jameson, Adrian Johnston, Sigi Jottkandt, Silvia Ons, Robert Pfaller, Alenka Zupan?i? and Slavoj i ek.

Imagination and the imaginary.

Abstract: This paper argues that real imagination depends on the capacity to acknowledge the absence of what is imagined from the world of material actuality. This leads on to a view of symbol formation as the operation of the transcendent function between the opposites of presence and absence. 'The imaginary' is contrasted with this as a defensive misuse of imagination that attempts to deny 'negation' where negation is defined as all those aspects of the world that constitute a check to the omnipotence of fantasy--e.g., absence, loss, difference, otherness etc. Parallels are drawn with theoretical antecedents in analytical psychology and psychoanalysis, with particular attention to papers published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology (JAP) in the 1960s on the relation between active imagination, transference and ego development. A clinical example is given to show the use of the imaginary as a means of warding off the unbearable pain of Oedipal disappointment.

"Imaginary Geography" in Caesar's Bellum Gallicum

Abstract: Caesar"s "imaginary geography" of Germania as an infinite extension without any patterns but simply endless forests contrasts with his presentation of Gallia as an overviewed space. Within these geographies different concepts of space prevail, all of which serve to explain why his celeritas ceases in Germania. Having crossed the Rhine and thereby entered terra incognita like Alexander and Pompey, he refrains from campaigning because of the geographical conditions. By alluding to Scythia"s similar space and Darius" failure, he shows himself to act prudently. It is also a characteristic of the imperator optimus to know when a venture is too risky.

Lacan's misuse of psychology : Evidence, rhetoric and the mirror stage

Abstract: This article critically examines the relations between Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory and more conventional psychological ideas. It does so by concentrating on Lacan’s notion of the ‘mirror stage’. ...

Memory, History, Nation : Contested Pasts

Abstract: In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority, and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective, and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the politics of memory are increasingly prominent. This interdisciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning that lie at the heart of what we call memory. The chapters in this volume offer a complex awareness of the workings of memory, and the ways in which different or changing histories may be explained. They explore the relation between individual and social memory, between real and imaginary, event and fantasy, history and myth. Contradictory accounts, or memories in direct contradiction to the historical record, are not always the sign of a repressive authority attempting to cover something up. The tension between memory as a safeguard against attempts to silence dissenting voices, and memory's own implication in that silencing, runs throughout the book. Topics covered range from the Basque country to Cambodia, from Hungary to South Africa, from the Finnish Civil War to the cult Jim Jarmusch movie Dead Man, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Australia. Part I, "Transforming Memory," is concerned primarily with the social and personal transmission of memory across time and generations. Part II, "Remembering Suffering: Trauma and History," brings the after-effects of catastrophe to the fore. In Part III, "Patterning the National Past," the relation between nation and memory is the central issue. Part IV, "And Then Silence...," reflects on the complex and multiple meanings of silence and oblivion, wherein amnesia is often used as a figure for the denial of shameful pasts.

Zapatistas: The Chiapas Revolt and What It Means For Radical Politics

Abstract: Preface 1. Zapatista Chronicle 1.1 The Early Years: Prehistory of the EZLN 1.2 Zapatista Chronicle 1994-2001 1.3 'Check'!... but not 'Mate' 2. Theories and Perspectives on the Zapatista Insurrection 2.1 Gramscian Approach 2.2 Laclau and Mouffe's Theory of Discourse 2.3 Academic Autonomist Marxist Approach 2.4 Non-Academic Radical Left Perspectives 2.5 Problems and Limitations of the Readings of the Zapatistas 3. The Project of Autonomy, Constituent Power and Empire 3.1 Ontological Theses 3.2 The Imaginary of Autonomy 3.3 From Radical Imaginary to Constituent Power 3.4 Genealogical Moments: The Re-mergence of Autonomy 3.5 Empire: The World Order 4. On Revolutionary Subjectivities 4.1 Fidelity to an Event 4.2 The Event and Constituent Power 4.3 Not Just Any Event 4.4 Constructed Situations 4.5 Zapatistas: An Evental Situation 4.6 The Three Subjects of Fidelity 4.7 Towards a Future Event 5. Reading the Zapatistas Critically 5.1 Revolutionaries or Reformists 5.2 Zapatista Nationalism 5.3 Zapatistas and the State 5.4 Zapatistas and the Global Struggle 5.5 Autonomy's Black Holes 6. Indigenous Imaginary and Zapatista Masks 6.1 Indigenous Metaphysics 6.2 Language and Reality 6.3 Maya Epistemology 6.4 Zapatista Masks 7. Conclusion 7.1 Implications for the future 7.2 Towards a Theory of Militant Subjectivity References Index

Cinema e imaginário científico

Abstract: The article examines some of the ties between science and cinema, for example, how movies can serve as a tool of observation, as teaching material in the field of science, and especially as a means of expressing and shaping the social imaginary of science. To this end, it takes up a conceptual discussion of the notions of 'imaginary' and 'social representation'. It also endeavors to sketch a differentiation between types of movies and to summarize some analyses of images of scientific practice and stereotypes of scientists. Although there are challenges in evaluating how movies have influenced the scientific imaginary, the study of this topic is important to the history of science.

Researching the urban imaginary: resisting the erasure of places

Abstract: Place, locality and urban resistance have been neglected in studies of globalisation. Urban imaginaries are the symbolic sphere in which space and places are contested. They project unconscious social desires and construct imaginary social alternatives which form part of a long utopian tradition. Even though the visual and virtual predominates in modern media, the assertion of bodily practices in contemporary art underlies the continuing importance of face-to-face experience in the public sphere. Memory plays an important role in framing urban imaginaries, because it is constructed in the present. Consequently, struggles around memorials, museums and the built environment embody different visions of the meaning, history and identity of a place. Cities should draw on the diversity of social perspectives through research on citizens’ narratives to forge a more democratic, pluralist and inclusive urban imaginary.

Four keys to Chilean culture: authoritarianism, legalism, fatalism and compadrazgo

Abstract: Chilean culture is said to be part of a wider Hispanic American culture that shares many traits (see Godoy et al. 1986; Subercaseaux 1999; Valdivieso and which could be identified as an identity with a Latin American sense (see Rodriguez et al. 2001). In this sense, though it may seem as if any attempt to describe or analyse particular operating elements, processes, systems and structures were a useless task, the nature of identity makes it a multiple and symbolically contradictory phenomenon, with relevant contextual 'consequences' and particularities that help identify a collective imaginary that can be associated with what means to be Chilean. As such, the importance of meaning lies not on its production but rather on its reception; therefore, we aim to address some elements of the reception that we have identified as 'critical' or 'diagnostic'. By 'critical', we mean those elements, which absence would substantively modify what is collectively associated with Chilean culture and by 'diagnostic', we suggest the possibility they offer of exploring meaningful contextual traits. In order to contextualise our analysis, we will focus on three discursive levels, namely organisational/structural, cultural/ideological and identity. At the organisational/structural level, we will make reference to structure and aesthetics in the broader sense of social context as well as in public and private organisations; at cultural/ideological level, we will make reference to practices, rituals, values and behaviours; and at the identity level we will make reference to strategies individuals use to manage their social identities.

Velho, idoso e terceira idade na sociedade contemporânea

Abstract: Examines the political, cultural and social aspects related to values, prejudice and symbolic systems that permeate the relationship between the aged and the non-aged people in our society nowadays. Seeks to know through history the symbolic schematta from the imaginary and the social representations that lead to a myth building process as well as exalting beliefs concerning the elderly. Such schematta,, if used in order to maintain privileges and power, lead a group to create a positive representation of themselves, establishing each one’s social roles, expressing and imposing usual beliefs and pointing who others are. The categories: Old, elderly and third ages are social constructions used to locate the individual in the society and benefil the social order and power.

The colour of destruction On racialization, geno-globality and the social imaginary in Bissau

Abstract: Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau, this article sheds light on the social imaginary of urban youth in Bissau City. Set in a context of pervasive decline and destruction, the article shows how the social imaginary in Bissau has come to evolve around issues of race and conflict, and how this has led to an interpretative conflation of blackness and destruction. Through illuminating some of the modes of social differentiation that have emerged in relation to the impact of globalization, I argue that the difference between Self and Other, much commented upon in the discourse of politicized and territorialized culture, may very well be followed by a geno-global construction of identity that simultaneously (re)locates social difference within geo-political boundaries, race and genetics. Finally, the article dwells on the consequences of this process of racialization and argues for an analytical shift from narrative to the social imaginary if we wish to improve our understanding of the relationship...

The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession

Abstract: The Spanish Gypsy: The history of a European obsession. Lou CharnonDeutsch. University Park: Penn State Press. 2004. 286 pp. ISBN 0271023597. Reviewed by Juan F. Gamella This is a nicely illustrated book written by the well-known Hispanicist Lou Charnon-Deutsch, author of Narratives of Desire: Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction by Women (1996). It traces the evolution of a 'cultural icon of surprising power and attraction, that of the Spanish Gypsy, the romantic fantasy of an imagined people that became an obsession for European literature, music and visual arts. Based on an encyclopedic knowledge of literary and graphic works in English, French and Spanish, the author analyzes-in an accumulative style that sometimes tires the reader-hundreds of items showing how this foreign import came to occupy a crucial 'symbolic space in the Western imaginary'. Although some glaring absences are inevitable, this is a splendid source of references concerning the artistic representation of Spanish Gypsies. But do not expect to learn much about real, historical Gitanos and Gitanas. The book has five substantive chapters. In the first one Charnon-Deutsch shows conclusively that the fascination of European literature with Cale did not begin with the French Romantics, but with Golden Age Spanish (and Portuguese) novels and plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth century such as La Celestina (1499), Farca das Ciganas (A farce of Gypsy women, 1521), and especially with Cervantes's La gitanilla, one of his most famous short novels (Novelas ejemplares), written in 1610, just one year after the Moriscos or Spanish Muslims were expelled from exhausted, imperial Spain. In a time of intense vilification and repression of Gypsies, Cervantes's portrayal may seem sympathetic. In fact, La gitanilla somehow transcends racial categories (the daughter of aristocrats is protrayed as a Gypsy), and thus maybe read as promoting humanistic ideals. Charnon-Deutsch argues, however, that this popular novel also contributed much to the perpetuation of the negative Gypsy stereotype. According to the author this is a recurrent trait of European societies that both despised and were fascinated by their minority populations. Cervantes expanded earlier Gitano motifs (magic, fortune-telling, baby snatching, ability to sing and dance, horse trading and theft) in two major areas. One, the idealization of a roaming life that allowed Gitanos to escape from the encroachments of feudal or bourgeois orders, and two, the glamorization of the irresistible Gypsy woman materialized in the figure of Preciosa, an exceptional young woman 'unwittingly masquerading as a Gypsy', who falls in love with a Gacho, a non-Gypsy aristocrat. But this novella had a destiny well beyond that of a mere jeu literaire. Its plot of interethnic desire, temptation and love with its associated changes and exchanges of identity and morality offered immense possibilities of adaptation and transmutation. The model was translated and transformed into hundreds of sequels conforming to the qualms and conventions of varying periods and nations. In the rest of the book Charnon-Deutsh traced the indelible mark left by this 'precious jewel of love', this gendered 'exemplar' of the irresistible Other in the world of printed, graphic and performative arts. Thus the second chapter presents the discovery of the Spanish Gypsy by French Romantics. Surprisingly, the Gypsy presence, even in places such as Seville, Granada or Cadiz, had been ignored by most travellers of the eighteenth century. Between 1830 and 1860 interest in Spanish Gypsies was revived as a powerful symbol of nonconformity, spontaneity and freedom and 'an object of intense international curiosity' (p. 58). In this period Spain passed from being a colonial power to a colony of British and French capital. Congruently, the country was described as a land of bullfights, religious superstition, ignorance, poverty, cruel and arbitrary justice, and economic chaos. …

Parades postcoloniales : la fabrication des identités dans le roman congolais

Abstract: Numerous studies have explored the validity and pertinence of the national approach to African literatures, and this is not the place to re-rehearse the central tenets of these contributions. Parades postcoloniales: la fabrication des identit?s dans le roman congolais examines five novels published by Congolese writers between 1979 and 1998 (Sylvain Bemba, R?ves portatifs, 1979; Sony Labou Tansi, La vie et demie, 1979; Henri Lopes, Sur l'autre rive, 1992; Daniel Biyaoula, L'impasse, 1996; and Alain Mabanckou, Bleu blanc rouge, 1998). Lydie Moudileno's insightful site-specific analysis challenges us to think about the various ways in which our contextualiza tion of colonial, national, transnational, and transcolonial cultural, political, and social phenomena can be enhanced through the juxtaposition of texts produced in postcolonial, migrant, and postmigrant circumstances. Naturally, the findings and conclusions have important implications for the wider francophone African context. Moudileno foregrounds the ways in which these novels exhibit a "jeux de la repr?sentation" (9), a relationship between playfulness and experimentation. Indeed, the study draws on influential theoretical works by Mikhail Bakhtin, Jean Godefroy Bidima, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Louis Marin, and Achille Mbe mbe to signal ways such an interdisciplinary framework can assist us in unpack ing the works under investigation, particularly in terms of the key etymological terms announced in the title, namely, the role of "parades" and "fabrication," and accordingly how they may "highlight the capacity of fiction to both illustrate and underscore the process of [. . .] fabricating postcolonial identity in the African novel" (13-16), pointing to such practices as the "public display of power" (16), its orchestration and theatricality, and hence operate as a "defense strategy" (17) aimed at the "reversal of a dynamic of domination" (17). The "performance" or "performative" dimension is employed here to emphasize the implicit influence of socially constructed categories of reference and description as the influential work of Butler has convincingly demonstrated. Bemba is an important writer who has not received the critical attention he deserves. Here, Moudileno shows how Bemba sought to highlight "the determin ing role played by the cinematographic image or imaginary in the construction of national identity" (24). Bemba reminds the reader of its colonial antecedent, and how in turn the visual has been reformulated to service the imperatives of nation-state formation and propagandist directives. "Through repetition," Moudi leno argues, "the audience ends up internalizing both the ethics and worldview imposed by a film's imaginary" (37). In many ways, Bemba's insights on the potentialities and dangers associated with technological progress anticipate many contemporary concerns. Yet, his skepticism of film, what Moudileno describes as "the seduction of the visual by the visual" (56), is unusual, at odds even with devel opments in francophone sub-Saharan cultural history at a time when writers such

Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Shanghai Sports

Abstract: As the symbolic centerpiece of the “New China” and the dramatic transformation of a socialist economy to a market-driven one, Shanghai holds a special place in the Chinese social imaginary of modernity and the good life. This Shanghai modernity, however, is marked by a tension between competing claims of cosmopolitanism and nationalism that are present in everyday cultural practices. Looking at Shanghai fans' consumption of sports reveals how competing claims of cosmopolitanism and nationalism play out in this global city, showing how these seemingly paradoxical ideas are resolved in popular culture through the process of localization. [Shanghai, China, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, sports, popular culture]

Greening : the revolution revisited : farmers, NGOs and the Cuban state

Abstract: In this thesis I revisit the acclaimed transformation towards organic agriculture in Cuba Using Lefebvre's trialectics of space, I explore how dominant representations of Organic' agricultural space in Cuba, the so-called 'Greening of the Revolution’, was created through government institutions and public policy I further investigate the locally lived gendered realities of farmers in a selected cooperative I argue that the prevailing imaginary of a state-led nationwide transformation needs to be deconstructed and the role of NGOs, in particular Northern NGOs, to be fully acknowledged in the creation of 'organic' agriculture in Cuba Northern NGOs were attracted by the romanticist environmental imagery of Cuba’s green agriculture เท securing funding from donors, they have framed agr๐-ecology in Cuba according to their own understandings as well as needs of 'logframes', budget codes and project cycles Northern NGOs are acting as transmission belts for Western understandings of NGO characteristics and agency This has resulted in a re-shaping and positioning of Cuban NGO identity, creating new dependencies and tensions in the process and introducing fashionable themes, such as gender 'Gender mainstreaming' is an outsider-driven process, as donors and Northern NGOs have requested the integration of gender into projects Their practices neither go beyond the 'incorporation of women in the workforce', nor engage sufficiently with the gendered realities of the everyday, as I show in my case-study in a cooperative Farmers are performing, negotiating or at times resisting the dominant 'representations of space' - ie the state, regulations and policies, but also - increasingly - NGO discourses and agendas/frameworks This thesis employs empirical data collected during 10-months of research in Cuba

Lacan and Queer Theory

Abstract: This essay uncovers a basic compatibility between queer theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis by elaborating their shared commitment to antipsychologism. Observing that queer theory has its political origins in the aids crisis and traces its intellectual genealogy to Michel Foucault and Georges Canguilhem, the essay contends that queer theory actually begins with Freud, specifically, with his theories of polymorphous perversity, unconscious desire, and partial drives. Foucault’s understanding of the disciplinary function of psychological and sexual identities is shown to be cognate with the psychoanalytic critique of imaginary identity; likewise, queer theory’s critique of normalization can be connected with Lacan’s critique of subjective adaptation to social norms. The axiomatic status in Lacanian doctrine of the impossibility of the sexual relation aligns psychoanalysis with queer theory’s critique of heteronormativity. The essay concludes by explaining how queer theory and psychoanalysis part company on the question of pleasure. Whereas Foucault emphasizes pleasure’s extensibility, Lacan shows how pleasure is complicated by jouissance and therefore by the death drive.

As novas configurações da família e o estatuto simbólico das funções parentais

Abstract: When it takes into consideration the historical and social changes that relapses on the family, this article has the objective to reflect about the symbolic statute of the parents functions nowadays. Therefore it discusses the changes of the speech about the family starting from the modernity, mainly when it refers to a new place given to the child and the construction of a new imaginary related to the parents functions. To differentiate standard and structure, it searches for subsidies to reflect about the family symbolic and structurant functions which differs radically of a phenomenology relating to its personages.

Architecture and Psychoanalysis: Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan

Abstract: Architecture and Psychoanalysis is an analysis of the relation between psychoanalytic theory and compositional strategies in architecture In psychoanalysis it focuses on the writing of Jacques Lacan as well as theories of the structure of the psyche, linguistics, and perception In architecture it focuses on the writings and projects of Peter Eisenman There are extended discussions on the thought of figures such as Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Jacques Derrida, and of the architecture of figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco Borromini, Giuseppe Terragni, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Keywords: architecture, psychoanalysis, Peter Eisenman (Barenholtz Pavilion, Frank House, Falk House, Wexner Center, Columbus Convention Center, Aronoff Center), Jacques Lacan (Ecrits, A Selection; The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis), psyche, linguistics, perception, Plato (Timaeus, Republic, Parmenides, Phaedrus), Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements), Plotinus (Enneads), Nicolas Cusanus (De circuli quadratura, De coniecturis), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit, Reason in History, Philosophy of Mind), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (The Philosophy of Art, System of Transcendental Idealism), Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, On Dreams, Civilization and Its Discontents, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, The Ego and the Id), Ferdinand de Saussure (Course in General Linguistics), Structural Linguistics, Noam Chomsky (Language and Mind, Cartesian Linguistics), Jacques Derrida (Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, Margins of Philosophy), Deconstruction, Claude Levi-Strauss, Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity), Leon Battista Alberti (Sant’Andrea in Mantua, De pictura), Giulio Romano (Palazzo del Te), Andrea Palladio, Francesco Borrmomini (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane), Le Corbusier (Villa Shodhan), Giuseppe Terragni (Casa Giuliani Frigerio, Casa del Fascio), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson (Glass House), Colin Rowe, Bernard Tschumi (Parc de la Villette), mirror stage, the Other, Imaginary Ego, Symbolic Ego, dreams, subconscious, manifest content, latent content, Vorstellung