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‘Heritage Wounds’ and Ideologies behind Spoliation: The Importance of Provenance Research for Nazi-looted Art
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‘Such the conditions of our love’: The Surreal and Ethical Lack of a Centre in Jacob’s Room and Tender Buttons
Full text linkThis essay explores Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room and Gertrude Stein’s poetry collection Tender Buttons, comparing them through the notion of a lack of a centre. Jacob’s Room is concerned with this lack through its ambivalent and evasive descriptions of its protagonist and Tender Buttons through its displacement of conventional descriptive logic. I first draw on André Breton’s The First Manifesto of Surrealism and its notion of ‘elsewhere’ to link the lack of a centre to a constant movement away from a settled sense of itself. Both texts exhibit this kind of surrealist movement ‘elsewhere’, Jacob’s Room through its interest in shifting perspectives and Tender Buttons through its interest in the metaphorical nature of poetic expression. Emmanuel Levinas’ theories of radical respect towards complete otherness subsequently bring an ethical light to the question of a lack of a centre and its movement ‘elsewhere’. In Jacob’s Room the ethics of a lack of a centre are largely tied up with its conceptualisation of love and care, whereas in Tender Buttons they show the ethical importance of linguistic play and joy. The two texts therefore look at the surrealist and ethical aspects of the lack of centrality with equal importance but with different emphases on interpersonal love and linguistic joy respectively
Moving towards a world without frontiers: How Rojava and the ideas of Murray Bookchin propose a democratic and sustainable alternative to the Nation-State
Full text linkRojava is a region in Northern Syria, which, after its abandonment by the Syrian government in 2011 following the outbreak of the Civil War, has undergone a profound social and political transformation carried out by its Kurdish population, who are a majority in the region. The aim of this article is to analyse to what extent these transformations constitute a true social revolution which have shifted the focus towards gender equality, direct democracy, diversity and sustainability. This is done not only by looking at the scholarly work surrounding Rojava, which allows us to understand the project more thoroughly and critically than through media coverage and self-representation; but also, by analysing the works of the two most influential thinkers of the movement: Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan. Simultaneously. The article also analyses some of the limits of the project in Rojava and some of the negative comments it has received from recent scholarly work
Women in the Zulu state: Reviewing Eurocentric interpretations of polygamy and its supposed hypermasculinity
Full text linkThe cult of personality of Shaka Zulu and the conception of masculinity that characterises it, has today become a symbol of the patriarchal nature of pre-colonial states in Southern Africa. These states were supposedly constructed in a way that enslaved women through the system of polygamous marriage, with a form of reverse-dowry known as Lobola, acting as payment for the bride-to-be. However, this narrative relies on two questionable premises. Firstly, that the concept of marriage as defined by the European Christian church is the comparative through which polygamy should be linguistically and culturally translated. And secondly, that the institution of polygamy only placed men in a position of authority and power. This essay aims to explore these premises through questioning the way in which the narrative of Zulu masculinity has allowed for the construction of a historiography that has ignored the political and economic structures of polygamy. Furthermore, I will explore the idea of all-female polygamous unions, and what their role within the centralised state structure of the Zulu state might tell us about the role of women - even prior to Shaka Zulu’s consolidation of power. My aim is to allow for an informed reflection on cause and affect of gender-based inequality and the role of masculinity within post-colonial societies through investigating the pre-colonial past
Turning Point or Media Fantasy? An Analysis of the 2017 French Presidential Election
Full text linkThis article explores France\u27s political demographics around the time of the 2017 Presidential election. Through an analysis of political approval ratings and polling this article makes the argument that the supposed realignment in French politics is greatly exaggerated and that traditional political allegiances remain strong
Velvet or Roses – Towards a Democratic Armenia? A comparative analysis of post-Soviet Armenia in the context of its 2018 revolution
Full text linkThis essay takes a first look at Armenia’s 2018 ‘velvet revolution’ by analysing its political system since independence and comparing it to the circumstances of the 2003 Georgian Rose Revolution. By considering parameters such as protection of civil liberties and freedom of elections, it characterises the regimes in Armenia since 1991 as competitive authoritarian according to Levitsky and Way’s definition. Low levels of influence from the West and prevailing informal structures made caused this state of affairs to persist. A first look at the events of 2018 reveals that Nikol Pashinyan, the new prime minister, acts more democratically than his predecessors. However, having established that the Rose Revolution happened under similar circumstances with similar goals, its failure to directly advance democratisation shows that systemic reasons for authoritarian structures are prone to persist even if the political leadership has democratising ambitions
Meaning and the Scepticist Worry: Locke’s Theory of Perception
Full text linkThis essay gives a response to the scepticist worry that the resemblance between the outside world and our experience of it cannot be proven. Jonathan F. Bennett shows that this worry arises from an interpretation of John Locke as an indirect realist. This interpretation focusses on Locke’s distinction between our ideas of objects and these objects’ qualities themselves. Bennett shows that if we only ever have indirect access to real objects, there can be no recourse to empirical proof for the claim of the resemblance between the outside world and our experience of it. J.L. Mackie claims that Bennett conflates two problems: that of acquiring a meaning for the term “outside world” and that of the justification for believing in the existence of this outside world beyond our experience. Mackie shows that these problems can be separated and answered. This essay approaches the meaning problem, not by disproving Bennett’s scepticist worry, but by showing its triviality. It claims that the search for meaning beyond what our mind creates as meaning is in itself meaningless
“You’re never coming back you goddamn bastard!”: Sound, Safety, and Bereavement in Phantasm
Full text linkDon Coscarelli’s 1979 sci-fi horror film Phantasm essentially depicts Mikey and his older brother Jody’s battle against, and eventual defeat of, an extraterrestrial undertaker: the Tall Man. Ultimately, it is revealed that Jody is in fact recently deceased and the entire plot was Mikey’s fantastical nightmare, the product of his grieving imagination. One scene’s use of sound is analysed here for its effectiveness in concisely tying together the disparate strands of Mikey’s subjective experience. Through the use of hushed dialogue, relational silences—particularly in relation to music—and the strategic repetition of doors being slammed, the soundtrack of this extract functions to elaborate upon the subthemes of sibling affection, abandonment, and ultimately profound terror. The audience is thus led through numerous stages of Mikey’s emotionally unstable psyche: from comforting relief, to deep distress, and finally fear
Sensual engagement as synthesis with the natural world in Arundhati Roy and Ali Smith
Full text linkArundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Ali Smith’s Autumn are ecologically engaged works of fiction which can be said to endorse a synthesised mode of existence with the natural world. By drawing contrasts between engaged sensory perception and hidebound human conceptualisations of the world, Roy and Smith highlight how the latter are often informed by fear of the unknown. In the Spell of The Sensuous, David Abram awakens us to the ecological importance of synthesis with the natural world through sensory experience, which has largely been abandoned as a mode of perception in favour of modern, human-centric modes of living. Roy and Smith create moral distinctions among characters according to their relationship with the natural world, and drawing on Abram’s illuminating acknowledgement of sensory perception, this article explores how such distinctions establish an aspiration towards a new ecological and political ethic which is grounded in empathy and respect for all matter that humans encounter
Literary discourse: Do writers put the ‘author’ in authority? Disruption in literature regarding authorship and authority
Full text linkThe exploration of disruption regarding the authorship and authority relationship—if there is one at all —is a beyond challenging concept; and because of this raises ontological questions. The texts The Pillowman and The Good Soldier provide an interesting scope for this investigation, as the characters are aware of themselves as authors and of the readers within the narrative. Can we ever separate authorship and authority? I will explore the disturbing effect that authority has on the relationship between text, reader and author. Clearly, the lines are blurred when regarding Cora Kaplan’s statement—“For me the greatest danger when reading a literary text is to assume that authorship and authority mean the same thing.” The factors I will discuss are: subjectivity, power relations, unreliable narration, self-conscious narrative, the meaning of art and egalitarianism and the value of names and texts. These factors appear to blur the lines between authorship and authority. The factors I chose to discuss acquired analysis and further inspection, when looking at the authorship-authority relationship