Poststructuralism Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
The article is an introductory paper to a Special Issue in Moderna Språk that collects eight contributions focusing on demythologizations of cultural politics. Using Deleuzian concepts of minorization and delirium, the paper attempts to... more
The article is an introductory paper to a Special Issue in Moderna Språk that collects eight contributions focusing on demythologizations of cultural politics. Using Deleuzian concepts of minorization and delirium, the paper attempts to frame cultural difference in a new open terrain where all forms of localisms and regimes of identifications are seen as frames of capture that subjugate rather than emancipate difference. The measure of a culture’s health, I argue, does not reside in atrophy of its self-identity but in its dispersion of atoms everywhere, its schizoid states of intensities and deterritorializations where thresholds of self-consistency are surpassed and zones of indiscernibility entered. In this context, cultural difference could be seen as a permanent disjunction of territoriality, body or code, that which escapes capture to disrupt the self-valorizing forces of its enunciation, a kind of counter-pressure of synchrony in diachrony, a black body within the white imaginary that produces lesions and lines of escape in airtight regimes of definition and multiplies narrative ruptures in every narrative of constitution. With this mind, the paper then proceeds to introduce and analyze eight contributions to the volume that articulate cultural difference in a variety of contexts including translation, cuisine, media, water writing, punk literature, history, urban studies and protest art as well as more theoretically focused deconstructions of territorial fictions that cultural imaginaries rely on.
In contemporary classrooms, it is crucial for teachers to have a thorough understanding of sociological issues in education. Understanding Sociological Theory for Pedagogical Practices addresses sociological theory, highlighting its... more
In contemporary classrooms, it is crucial for teachers to have a thorough understanding of sociological issues in education. Understanding Sociological Theory for Pedagogical Practices addresses sociological theory, highlighting its relevance to policy, curriculum and practice for the pre-service teacher education student. The book explores a range of sociological issues related to diversity, disadvantage, discrimination and marginalisation, contributing to the preparation of future teachers for work in a range of educational contexts. It seeks to dispel the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ notion of education, encouraging future teachers to think critically and reflexively in terms of creating a welcoming and equitable student environment through knowledge, inclusion and understanding. Understanding Sociological Theory for Pedagogical Practices is an invaluable resource for primary, secondary and early childhood pre-service teacher education students as they prepare to navigate the ...
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post-war French philosophy. Philosophers, cultural theorists, and others have devoted considerable effort to the critical examination of the work of each of... more
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post-war French philosophy. Philosophers, cultural theorists, and others have devoted considerable effort to the critical examination of the work of each of these thinkers, but despite the strong biographical and philosophical connection between Foucault and Deleuze, very little has been done to explore the relationship between them. This special issue of Foucault Studies is the first collection of essays to address this critical deficit with a rigorous comparative discussion of the work of these two philosophers.
- by Nicolae Morar and +2
- •
- Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, History, Cultural History
The article reads the invention of the Exodus-Narrative in its historical context of the religious and political system of the Ancient Near East. It reconstructs the revolutionary different approach to political power and theological... more
The article reads the invention of the Exodus-Narrative in its historical context of the religious and political system of the Ancient Near East. It reconstructs the revolutionary different approach to political power and theological foundation in the development of the Mose- and Exodus-Narrative and its innerbiblical Fortschreibung. For this development it is most decisive that the Exodus-Narrative is not based on a historical migration-movement "from point A to point B", but on a historical confrontation with the political powers at that time. The foundation of a strict monotheistic understanding of theology and the invention of “textual authority” that diverged from the status of scripture in the Ancient Near East and which can be reconstructed through the structure of the Exodus-Narrative and its canonical form as the Tora of Mose, has laid the foundation for the identity of Israel and the basis for the three Monotheistic Religions. The article's argument is strictly developed in correspondence with contemporary exegetical and historical research (esp. E. Otto and Chr. Dohmen) and is brought together with contemporary accounts to political thought from poststructuralist and deconstructive philosophers like Derrida, Levinas, Badiou and Agamben. The outcome of this study is articulated as a contribution to an affirmative reading of the so-called »crisis of representation«.
This article argues against all forms of scientism and the widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to study martial arts or 'do' martial arts studies. It argues instead for the necessity of theory before definition,... more
This article argues against all forms of scientism and the widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to study martial arts or 'do' martial arts studies. It argues instead for the necessity of theory before definition, including theorisation of the orientation of the field of martial arts studies itself. Accordingly, the chapter criticises certain previous (and current) academic approaches to martial arts, particularly the failed project of hoplology. It then examines the much more promising approaches of current scholarship, such as that of Sixt Wetzler, before critiquing certain aspects of its orientation. Instead of accepting Wetzler's 'polysystem theory' approach uncritically, the article argues instead for the value of a poststructuralist 'discourse' approach in martial arts studies.
The book endeavours to show how research based on poststructuralist discourse analysis can yield analytically beneficial and methodologically sound insights. It largely delivers on these promises. Part I provides a lucid explanation of... more
The book endeavours to show how research based on poststructuralist discourse analysis can yield analytically beneficial and methodologically sound insights. It largely delivers on these promises. Part I provides a lucid explanation of poststructuralist tenets, showing how Otherness drives policymaking as the backdrop against which identities constitute themselves. During the early 1990s, Western identity was so constituted as ‘civilized’ and ‘controlled’ in opposition to the ‘barbarian’ and ‘violent’ Balkans. The elegant presentation of poststructuralist tenets is welcome, given that such writings are often difficult to access for uninitiated readers.
In Paideia 2/2014, S. 105-115.
Feministische Interventionen gegen geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt führten in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu politisch-institutionellen Maßnahmen. Dieser Entwicklung steht eine wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung gegenüber, die ihren Blick... more
Feministische Interventionen gegen geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt führten in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu politisch-institutionellen Maßnahmen. Dieser Entwicklung steht eine wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung gegenüber, die ihren Blick zunehmend auf Handlungsmacht von *Frauen richtet und die Debatte um queere sowie postkoloniale Sichtweisen erweitert. Die Autor_innen stellen sich der Frage, wie feministische Ansätze die vielgestaltigen Gewaltformen adäquat erfassen können.
- by Josef Barla and +3
- •
- History, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Philosophy of Agency
Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and... more
Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.
“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976... more
“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.
We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation... more
We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation around the world like dandelion seeds adrift on turbulent winds. We find ourselves, in the early twenty-first century, in a world where every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion. 1 We have entered a new historical era defined in large part by movement and mobility and are now in need of a new historical on-tology appropriate to our time. The observation that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was marked by an increasingly " liquid " and " mobile modernity " is now something widely recognized in the scholarly literature at the turn of the century. 2 Today, however, our orientation to this event is quite different. Almost twenty years into the twenty-first century we now find ourselves situated on the other side of this heralded transition. The question that confronts us today is thus a new one: how to fold all that has melted back up into new solids. 3
Umberto Eco’s The Open Work deals with the making of art. Open work has two constituents: a) multiplicity of meanings and the participation of audience. Artists generate the work of art allowing the audience to fabricate numerous... more
Umberto Eco’s The Open Work deals with the making of art. Open work has two constituents: a) multiplicity of meanings and the participation of audience. Artists generate the work of art allowing the audience to fabricate numerous meanings. Work of art as an open work is contingent and the openness toward meaning determines its contingency. A work of art may be open from the audience point of view because interpretation is encompassing and occurs at various levels of human perception. Thus we perceive meanings in a work of art with various perspectives. Eco explains open work as an artwork in process or dynamic progress without any fixed conclusion/ending or meaning. He underlines the necessity in differentiating the association between the work of art and its creator. This paper is an attempt to interpretively read Umberto Eco’s concept of open work, meaning and information.
As a keystone species the concept 'nature' plays a vital role in shaping our world.
Thinking posthumanly – from a post-Enlightenment, critical, new materialist perspective – things, including concepts, become more permeable and topological – they leak and stretch. Freed from limiting notions of agency, things behave.... more
Thinking posthumanly – from a post-Enlightenment, critical, new materialist perspective – things, including concepts, become more permeable and topological – they leak and stretch. Freed from limiting notions of agency, things behave. Rivers have established the same legal rights as humans in New Zealand and India, stones have been reported slithering across the desert floor in California, an electrical power grid in the USA has revealed a unique agential dexterity and walls have been spotted walking over mountains in the UK’s Lake District. Thinking with a posthuman partiality, we begin to witness a democracy of objects rather than an anthropocentric dictatorship over inorganic materials. If agency is reworked into an ‘enactment’ as opposed to something that is ‘held’, conceivably humans and other biological organisms are not necessary for agency (or life) to emerge as inorganic material agency erupts from unchoreographed assemblages of spacetimematter(ing). And if cognitive and dermatological boundaries are no longer organ-ised by an Enlightenment prescription, how might pedagogies perform differently and more equitably?
This article draws on the empirical materials from two psychogeographic walks that agitate lithic spaces with a posthuman affection. Part One examples a radical mobile classroom that I undertake regularly with university students where the use of it-narratives exposes the distributed agency of buildings. I explore what a posthuman gaze might do to/for performative pedagogies as my students attempt to interview a building. Part Two offers an example from my previous post-qualitative PhD inquiry which – by manipulating the practices of psychogeography and schizocartography – highlights how a shopping centre assemblage called Liverpool ONE diagnosed itself with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), thus reinforcing the notion of inorganic agential distribution. The pedagogic implications of this posthuman diagnosis are discussed.
Yep, fuck it. Neoliberalism sucks. We don't need it.
Es una colección de diez ensayos que pretenden definir, explicar e interpretar el período conocido como Frühromantik a través de su epistemología, metafísica y política, como también reconstruir la relevancia que tuvo la estética... more
Es una colección de diez ensayos que pretenden definir, explicar e interpretar el período conocido como Frühromantik a través de su epistemología, metafísica y política, como también reconstruir la relevancia que tuvo la estética romántica para la literatura, la crítica y la propia estética filosófica. La intención de los ensayos es doble. Por un lado, intenta impugnar las interpretaciones posmodernistas que van de Paul de Man a Jean Luc Nancy dada su unilateralidad y reducción como un posmodernismo avant la lettre. En esa dirección Beiser muestra la imposibilidad de entender a la Frühromantik ya sea como una reacción a la Aufklärung o ya sea como una forma de irracionalismo (versión ofrecida por Isais Berlin). Por otro lado, el autor considera que los aportes de la estética del primer romanticismo no podrían ser entendidos sino es a la luz de su epistemología, metafísica y política. En este sentido, Beiser se enfrenta a la “escolástica” del enfoque literario. Se inscribe en las lecturas filosóficas del romanticismo de Rudolph Haym y Oskar Walzel, entre otros, en orden a distanciarse de la estrechez de la interpretación del enfoque meramente literario. Frente a estas dos posturas, el autor intenta desentrañar el papel que juegan los supuestos políticos y epistemológicos en la estética romántica. En oposición al prejuicio schmittiano del romanticismo como una corriente apolítica, sostiene que la estética cifra ideales sociales y políticos como la realización humana que no pueden ser descuidados. Siguiendo una reconstrucción hermenéutica, el autor examina el movimiento romántico desde su propia individualidad histórica sin descuidar la importancia contemporánea que tiene la estética del romanticismo. De ese modo, el romanticismo será entendido como una búsqueda a través de la experiencia estética pero ya no como una tendencia a trasgredir los límites del racionalismo ilustrado, sino como un intento por ampliar las condiciones de acción. La atención que el autor presta al concepto de “Naturphilosophie” proyecta un estudio que se separa de las referencias tradicionales al romanticismo cuando se lo lee como una mera respuesta a problemas planteados por Kant o Fichte. Esto último hace que se modifique la visión sobre la estética romántica como un simple movimiento de transición en el período postkantiano. La atención al naturalismo permite explicar la subjetividad como parte de la vida natural evitando incurrir en la imagen idealista de un sujeto aislado del mundo.
Amideo, E., 2014, Review Essay of 'Archivi affettivi: Un catalogo/Affective Archives: A Catalogue', by Marco Pustianaz, Giulia Palladini and Annalisa Sacchi (eds.), Anglistica AION: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 18:1, pp. 107-109, ISSN:... more
Amideo, E., 2014, Review Essay of 'Archivi affettivi: Un catalogo/Affective Archives: A Catalogue', by Marco Pustianaz, Giulia Palladini and Annalisa Sacchi (eds.), Anglistica AION: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 18:1, pp. 107-109, ISSN: 2035-8504.
A few years before the beginning of the Second World War, the rapprochement between socialism and western esotericism would be outlined in France. This effort, produced around the Collège de Sociologie as a reaction to Fascism,... more
A few years before the beginning of the Second World War, the rapprochement between socialism and western esotericism would be outlined in France. This effort, produced around the Collège de Sociologie as a reaction to Fascism, aimed to reactivate ideas and efforts that can be traced back to the French Revolution. The resulting meta-narrative, constructed by various intellectuals around Georges Bataille, including Walter Benjamin and Pierre Klossowski, sought to establish its origins in Valentianism and, later, in Roman theology. The aim was to create an intellectual alternative to Marxism through the ideas of Fourier, Blanqui, Sade, and Nietzsche inventing a construct that would decisively influence Post-structuralism in the 1960s.KEYWORDSPALAVRAS-CHAVEMarxismo; História da historiografia; Walter BenjaminMarxism; History of Historiography; Walter BenjaminRenato Amado Peixotohttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-2342-4215
A coleção de ensaios que Guilherme Moreira Pires e Patrícia Cordeiro reúnem nesta obra transborda sensibilidade. Sensibilidade insurgente, anarquizante e liberadora de diferenças. Os autores fogem, não amedrontados, mas corajosamente, das... more
A coleção de ensaios que Guilherme Moreira Pires e Patrícia Cordeiro reúnem nesta obra transborda sensibilidade. Sensibilidade insurgente, anarquizante e liberadora de diferenças. Os autores fogem, não amedrontados, mas corajosamente, das mesmices reprodutoras da moral cristã estadocêntrica. Fogem não como quem foge da vida, mas como quem foge para vidas criadoras abertas e entrecortadas por linhas de fuga (cf. Deleuze e . Fogem dos territórios comuns das criminalizações e dos saberes instituídos por ciências cartesianas, positivistas e impositivas. O texto flui não em diagramas pré-determinados por linguagens e narrativas formais das disciplinas acadêmicas. O fluxo é livre, transverte e subverte saberes sujeitados e reprodutores da máquina de dominação estatal.
In their book “Civilizing Security” Loader and Walker argue that security can have an instrumental role in promoting a more democratic and broadly civilised relationship between individuals and between them and the state. This is thanks... more
In their book “Civilizing Security” Loader and Walker argue that security can have an instrumental role in promoting a more democratic and broadly civilised relationship between individuals and between them and the state. This is thanks to the constitutive nature of security which makes it a producer and a product of social relations. Moreover they claim it is the necessary priority of the state to be the main entity in ensuring collective security. Thus, at the domestic level as well as the translational one, the state is still presented as the predominant matrix of security, albeit not the monopolist one. The end goal of the project of civilising security is to attain security in its axiomatic form, through the last stage of theory, anchored pluralism, which should allow a cooperation between states and other entities in guaranteeing security.
Can language and literature cure psychological trauma? If so, what forms do they (have to) take in doing so? When does language hit the wall where the unspeakable mandates silence? And where might literature come in as the rescuing hand... more
Can language and literature cure psychological trauma? If so, what forms do they (have to) take
in doing so? When does language hit the wall where the unspeakable mandates silence? And
where might literature come in as the rescuing hand by offering forms of expression which are
rooted in speech but transcend the merely spoken? This study confronts these issues through
the double lenses of Sebastian Barry’s oeuvre and the complex of dissociative disorders that
are at work both in his creative output and the ways in which he fictionalizes dark and traumatic
biographical data.
Re-negotiated in the process are the deconstructivist trauma paradigm that has come to
dominate trauma discourse in the humanities as well as the duality of Barry’s critical reception.
Barry is either being hailed as a rescuer of marginalized, ‘subaltern’ histories or admonished as
too radical a proponent of historical revisionism. A dissociative reading of literature’s
capabilities and limitations in addressing trauma and Barry’s literary mission to work-through
family trauma in his work moves the discourse beyond radical dualities towards a more
integrated understanding of posttraumatic literature.
A number of studies suggest that the lack of “gender sensitive” drug treatment services for women represents a pressing social problem, second only to the problem of “women's substance abuse” itself. This article interrogates these... more
A number of studies suggest that the lack of “gender sensitive” drug treatment services for women represents a pressing social problem, second only to the problem of “women's substance abuse” itself. This article interrogates these “problem representations” by asking on what basis they are considered uniquely problematic. Through a critical analysis of research on women published between 1990–2012 in relevant high impact journals, the article identifies a dominant view of women in the drug field as a “special population” with “unique treatment needs.” The article suggests that this view not only reinforces a limited understanding of the harms associated with women's substance abuse, but might also paradoxically enable programs and services for women to remain as “add-ons” and/or narrow the range of “gender sensitive” approaches adopted.
The article attempts a comprehensive review of the human security concept in order to question its utility for both research and policy-making. It notes the term’s interdisciplinary and extensively normative content that have facilitated... more
The article attempts a comprehensive review of the human security concept in order to question its utility for both research and policy-making. It notes the term’s interdisciplinary and extensively normative content that have facilitated its evolution into a successful security discourse. On the other hand, human security’s wide appeal has as a side-effect an extended conceptual polysemy inhibiting the cumulation of knowledge and the development of a relevant theory. Absence of conceptual clarity has also complicated its policy implementation. The article attempts to break the deadlock and move the debate forward by using the work of John Gerring and Paul A. Barresi on concept formation as an organizing device.
This essay is a close examination of Bryn Mawr College Dormitory (1960–1965) by Louis I. Kahn. In relation to Manuel DeLanda’s ‘‘Emergence, Causality and Realism’’, the essay considers preliminary plan studies by Kahn, the building as... more
This essay is a close examination of Bryn Mawr College Dormitory (1960–1965) by Louis I. Kahn. In relation to Manuel DeLanda’s ‘‘Emergence, Causality and Realism’’, the essay considers preliminary plan studies by Kahn, the building as realised, and the idea of active matter in DeLanda’s essay. It is organised in five sections. The first sets out the questions and approach. The second, third and fourth sections treat respectively the plan, entry hall, and external building fabric of Bryn Mawr. The notion of active matter as set out in DeLanda’s essay and touched on in section one, is treated in the final section. Topics for subsequent investigation are offered as a conclusion.
Denne artikel udforsker mulighederne for at udtænke et begreb om fællesskab inden for et poststrukturalistisk paradigme. Der er skrevet meget om relationer, grupper og inklusion, men fælleskab er i mindre grad et teoretiseret og... more
Denne artikel udforsker mulighederne for at udtænke et begreb om fællesskab inden for et poststrukturalistisk paradigme. Der er skrevet meget om relationer, grupper og inklusion, men fælleskab er i mindre grad et teoretiseret og analyseret begreb. Ambitionen er teoretisk at arbejde mig frem til en poststrukturalistisk informeret konceptualisering af fællesskab på basis af en empirisk interesse i at undersøge unge muslimers deltagelse i religiøse fællesskaber i København. Fem dimensioner identificeres som særlig vigtige i denne forbindelse: 1. Fællesskab som proces, 2. Fællesskab som noget, man kan tale om, og som noget, der konstant forhandles, 3. Fællesskab som situeret og forbundet med subjektivering, 4. Fællesskab, som hverken overindividuel eller subjektiv bevægelse og 5. Fællesskab som forbundet med belonging. Artiklen bevæger sig imellem teoretisk og empirisk analyse og inddrager et fokus på belonging som en central dimension i forståelsen af konstruktionen af fællesskaber.
This paper contributes to an empirical theory of identity in a context of superdiversity by offering a heuristic for engaging with the complex and dynamic identity processes in superdiverse societies today, both online and offline. We... more
This paper contributes to an empirical theory of identity in a context of superdiversity by offering a heuristic for engaging with the complex and dynamic identity processes in superdiverse societies today, both online and offline. We define identity practices as discursive orientations towards sets of features that are (or can be) seen as emblematic of particular identities. Such practices revolve around a complex and unpredictable notion of authenticity, which in turn rests on judgements of 'enoughness' . We will show how authenticity is manufactured by blending a variety of semiotic resources, some of which are sufficient ('enough') to produce a particular targeted authentic identity, and consequently enable others to identify us as 'real' , 'authentic' members of social groups in different niches of our social and cultural lives -within different 'micro-hegemonies' . The framework sketched here, based on ethnographic inquiries, intends to offer a realistic, anti-essentialist approach to studying the complexities of contemporary identity practices.
The present article analyzes how young self-injuring women and men construct themselves as 'cutters.' The study draws on observations of a Swedish Internet community connected to self-injurious behavior and departs from a... more
The present article analyzes how young self-injuring women and men construct themselves as 'cutters.' The study draws on observations of a Swedish Internet community connected to self-injurious behavior and departs from a poststructuralist framework in order to analyze how members position themselves and others in relation to cultural discourses on self-injury. Two main discourses are identified in the Web community: the 'normalizing' and the 'pathologizing' discourses, which give contrasting versions of self-injury, self-cutters, and their scarred bodies. Within the normalizing discourse, self-injurious behavior is regarded as a legitimate practice for dealing with mental health problems, 'cutters' are resilient, and their blood and scars are beautiful. In contrast, within the pathologizing discourse self-injurious behavior is understood as morally reprehensible, self-cutters are pathological, and their bodies are repulsive. In the Web community, members invoke both discourses, which leads to ambivalent subject positions. This study shows that the seemingly contradictory subject positions of the two discourses in fact are interdependent on each other as members draw on both the normalizing and the pathologizing discourses in order to become 'authentic cutters.
This paper traces the symbolic importance of gender to the assertion of national and religious identities drawing on case study data with youth from Senegal, Pakistan, Nigeria and Lebanon. We start with a brief overview of the theoretical... more
This paper traces the symbolic importance of gender to the assertion of national and religious identities drawing on case study data with youth from Senegal, Pakistan, Nigeria and Lebanon. We start with a brief overview of the theoretical and methodological approach to the research. We then illustrate the gender assumptions within youth identity narratives and the ways these produce masculinist and patriarchal national imaginaries that instantiate a heteronormative hierarchy and gender polarity. Intersecting with this, we explore the ways that particular claims to Islam also legitimise and depend on the surveillance and regulation of women. We further show how gender remains a significant dimension of national othering and a site of explicit postcolonial resistance that strengthens and stabilises heteronormative gender hierarchies and associated inequalities. Nevertheless, youth’s imaginaries are of a modernising religious nation, which are articulated in contra-distinction to the secular imaginaries of former colonising nations of the West. Provoked by this opposition, we show how religion is central in the production of nation states, colonial and post-colonial, and the ways that gender is inscribed in both. We point to the gender continuities of the post-colonial and former colonising states. Both sustain the continued surveillance and regulation of women and their bodies are used to inscribe power regimes and define difference. Finally we question the adequacy of liberal understandings of gender equality for disrupting the powerful gender symbolism embedded in youth’s national and religious imaginaries as well as the material conditions that emanate from these.
This is my own translation of Bataille's "epic poem," "L'Archangélique" (1942, republished in 1967). This version corrects the erroneous or awkward renderings in the published English translation by Mark Spitzer, which was consulted in... more
This is my own translation of Bataille's "epic poem," "L'Archangélique" (1942, republished in 1967). This version corrects the erroneous or awkward renderings in the published English translation by Mark Spitzer, which was consulted in the course of this translation.
Extended review and discussion of Emily Apter's "Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability" (New York: Verso, 2013). The book's most powerful argument, in my view, is that the "untranslatable" profitless excreta of... more
Extended review and discussion of Emily Apter's "Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability" (New York: Verso, 2013). The book's most powerful argument, in my view, is that the "untranslatable" profitless excreta of the world's literatures are both the matter with which to rethink comparison and the limits of the inflationary World Literature industry.