Poetry's total scandal:Poets and postmen in Antonio Skármeta’s El cartero de Neruda

The argument put forward here takes Antonio Skármeta's short novel El cartero de Neruda (Con ardiente paciencia) as a theorization of the relationship between poetry and politics, by way of the concept-metaphors (Mieke Bal) that are deployed in the novel. Skármeta stages the public role of poetry through the telling of a story about the poet Pablo Neruda and his postman Mario Jiménez. The relationship between poetry and politics is analysed with reference to Hazard Adams' concept of «the offense of poetry» and Roland Barthes' reflections on the total scandal of language in his essay «Écrivains et écrivants» (1964), here adapted as «the total scandal of poetry». In contradistinction to Barthes, who argues that the total scandal of language is impossible because of the absorption of scandalous language by the literary institution, Skármeta's short novel suggests that the total scandal of poetry is indeed possible when, as in the case of Pablo Neruda, Mario Jiménez and Salvador Allende, poetry becomes a constitutive part of a political project, within which it functions as a reminder of dignity and as the touchstone for political integrity

Invading Stages:Interview with Pete Bearder and Review of Stage Invasion: Poetry & The Spoken Word Renaissance

In October 2019 I have the opportunity to talk to Pete Bearder about his recent book Stage Invasion: Poetry & The Spoken Word Renaissance. To the backdrop of a railway station in the UK we delve into some of the issues that his book has raised for me. As we talk, we are surrounded by the rampant consumerism and profiteering promoted by the privatisation of what was once a public, not-for-profit space. The time and space of reflection we carve out and performatively create through conversation in a cafe that sells the simulacrum of benign bourgeois comfort, has more in common with the location of our previous meeting, which took place on a mountain during a festival where I saw Bearder—then in his role as the poet Pete the Temp—stage an interactive performance for children and teenagers, sharing the stage with protagonists of various ages. All of them together created a momentous example of poetic-political education and expression

A systemic framework for the computational analysis of complex economies: An evolutionary-institutional perspective on the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of complexity economics

This theses introduces the idea of a symbiotic relationship between evolutionary-institutional and complexity economics. It consists of two major contributions: The first contribution focuses on how the emerging research program of complexity economics can benefit from evolutionary-institutional theory. I show that complexity economics still lacks an adequate philosophical foundation. I explicate why such a foundation is needed if complexity economics is to promote further scientific progress and that such a foundation must consist of an adequate ontology, epistemology, and methodology. The following parts of the theses then draw upon institutionalist and social theory to develop these three aspects: I derive a definition of complex economic systems by identifying their essential properties. I then propose an epistemology that is based on the concepts of mechanism-based explanation, generative sufficiency, and an extended version of Uskali Mäki's concept of â Models as Isolations and Surrogate Systemsâ . I continue with some methodological considerations and argue that the method of 'Agent based computational economic modeling' must play a distinctive role for the analysis of complex economies. The second contribution of the theses shows how evolutionary-institutionalism can profit from a methodological transfer from complexity economics. In particular I argue that the method of 'Agent based computational modeling' can advance institutionalism both as a formalization device and by providing theoretical concepts that are useful for institutionalist theorizing itself. The theses closes by discussing a potential convergence of evolutionary-institutional and complexity economics and gives an outlook on avenues for further research

Public spaces and global listening spaces:poetic resonances from the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity in Mexico

The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity formed in Mexico in 2011, to create public spaces for people to share the grief and the pain about the escalation of violence attributed to the drug war and the war on drugs. Public poetry recitals or performances were crucial to these public meetings. This article takes theoretical approaches from the Global North to highlight the affinities and connections between the escalation of violence in Mexico, and the neoliberalizations of politics and thought on a global scale, and to learn from the Mexicans' strong resistance. The analysis focuses on three sets of poems: two that explore the connectivity between interiority and exteriority of emotional pain; the anonymous poem 'I'm not the son of a poet' which is analysed through Judith Butler's concept of precarious life, and through which I explore the critical limitations and potentials of frames and mirrors for a critical intervention; and María Rivera's 'The Dead', where motion and gesture, brought together with an analytical reflection on Hélène Cixous' writing on women speaking in public, build an alternative response to being transfixed in the face of horror and brutality. The article ends with a theorization of 'global listening spaces', building on Kate Lacey's use of the term in her book Listening Publics

Twarab ya Shingazidja: a first approach

Historically the culture of the Comoro Islands shows a strong relationship to the Swahili culture of the East African coast. Archeology, written and oral history have impressively documented these bonds dating back not less than a thousand years. The appearance of so called twarab in the first decades of the 20th Century once more demonstrated the closeness of this cultural imaginary that links the Comoros to the Swahili world, and beyond to include the predominantly Islamic cultures of the Western Indian Ocean. The paper is a first approach to the history of twarab on one island, Ngazidja, until the mid-1960s. It also addresses the question of language use, especially the relationship between East Coast and Comorian varieties of Swahili, and the influence of the Swahili poetic canon on the practice of Ngazidjan poets and singers. The orthography of names and place names follows Comorian conventions. A distinction is made between `twarab` and `taarab`, the former is the Comorian rendering and refers to the Comorian style, while the latter designates the East African Coast or Swahili variant

‘Four Paths Five Destinations': Constructing Imaginaries of Alter-globalization Through Literary Texts

This article contests the popular assumption that literature is ever less politically relevant. Quite the contrary is the case: literature and literary language becomes increasingly important for the alter-globalization movement and for the notion that ‘another world is possible.' The work of four authors - Manu Chao, Eduardo Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos, and José Saramago - are comparatively analysed in light of their contribution to an alternative globalism and to an alternative practice of politics. All four authors contribute from different perspectives to the literary articulation of a political project. Their work shares characteristics such as the permeability of genres, the emphasis on the poetical over the narrative, a meandering structure that expresses the search for and step-by-step construction of a cultural and political alternative, and an emphasis on translation and encounter as principles of interaction with difference

Chapter 4 Elements of an Evolutionary Approach to Comparative Economic Studies

This chapter delineates an evolutionary approach to the comparative analysis of economic systems and illustrates its usefulness via an exemplary application to recent developments in the European Union. The first part of the chapter describes the meta-theoretical foundations of the approach, i.e. its particular ontological and epistemological vantage points. This allows for an easier comparison (and, potentially, triangulation) with other approaches to comparative analyses, and already provides for some practical guidelines for applied work. The second part applies the approach and studies polarization patterns in the European Union. While this application is not meant as a fully self-contained analysis, it not only illustrates how the concepts of the approach can be operationalized and applied in practice, but also the application of several empirical methods that can be used fruitfully within such an evolutionary analysis. The chapter concludes with a non-exhaustive list of concepts and topics that are particularly insightful to consider when conducting an analysis in the spirit of an evolutionary approach to the comparative analysis of economic systems

On the influence of external stochastic excitation on linear oscillators with subcritical self-excitation applied to brake squeal

A characteristic of linear systems with self-excitation is the occurrence of non-normal modes. Because of this non-normality, there may be a significant growth in the vibration amplitude at the beginning of the transient process even in the case of solely negative real parts of the eigenvalues, i.e. asymptotic stability of the trivial solution. If such a system is excited additionally with white noise, this process is continually restarted and a stationary vibration with dominating frequencies and comparably large amplitudes can be observed. Similar observations can be made during brake squeal, a high-frequency noise resulting from self-excitation due to the frictional disk-pad contact. Although commonly brake squeal is considered as a stable limit cycle with the necessity of corresponding nonlinearities, comparable noise phenomena can in the described model even observed in a pure linear case when the trivial solution is asymptotically stable