Grieving Time: The Recollection and Reproduction of Loss in Madeleine Thien’s Certainty

Madeleine Thien’s Certainty proposes a restructuring of how individuals and societies conceptualize trauma and loss in time. While post-Freudian attempts to depathologize melancholia have traditionally relegated melancholic losses to the past – a move that ultimately limits the agency of the subjects of grief – loss continuously occupies the present of Thien’s text, even when the event(s) in question occurred in the past. As the traumatic images and events of the past perpetually repeat in the present of this novel, characters experience loss not simply as a spectre of the past but as an imminence that is always about to arrive. This configuration of loss as imminent produces the potential for transformation, or for an active and agential engagement with loss; it gives characters the opportunity to engage productively with loss in both the present and in the future. Through this disruption of the teleology of loss, Thien clears a temporal space where the melancholic subject or community can move from “grief” to “grievance.

Petrochemistry, petrogenesis and classification of Um Huqab, Garf and El-Mueilha granitic masses, Southeastern Desert, Egypt

The granitic masses of Um Huqab, Garf and El-Mueilha Southeastern Desert, Egypt, and belonging to synorogenic, late- and post-orogenic cycles are examined. Petrochemical characters based on major elements data of 13 newly analysed samples are clarified. Behaviour of major elements is discussed and chemical and modal classifications are presented based on normative feldspars and modal composition. Petrographical and petrochepiical data suggest a magmatic origin for the examined granitic rocks. El-Mueilha granitic mass suffered along the peripheral parts, as well as along faults leading to albitization