Politics of Forgetting: New Zealand, Greece and Britain at War

The conventional account of wartime relations between Greece, New Zealand and Britain is one of unwavering solidarity in the face of appalling odds, and few would question its truth as a general narrative

The Insistence of the Object - and its Sublimations

Theories of sublimation and symbolization, concepts which lie at the meeting point of psychoanalysis and culture, have traditionally followed Freud then Lacan in focusing on language as the vehicle of representa­tion. This essay examines what could be called the Kleinian foundation of Lacan's theory of sublimation, arguing that both before language and throughout life, material objects may function in more primitive ways as mediators of loss. In its emphasis on the "vitality" of objects (psychic and material), much post-Kleinian theory has demonstrated the way ma­terial objects may offer a third space, between subject and object, allowing us to negotiate the dialectic between reality and hallucination, the con­frontation with the Lacanian Real. Texts examined include Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Angela Carter's Wise Children, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Melanie Klein's essay on the creative impulse, and Lacan's seventh seminar

Helping Yourself to Heidegger

Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Trans. Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 (pp 108). ISBN 0816622353.Esposito, Roberto. Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Trans. Timothy Campbell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010 (pp 175). ISBN 0804746478.Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000 (pp 207). ISBN 0804739757

Politics of Forgetting: New Zealand, Greece and Britain at War

The conventional account of wartime relations between Greece, New Zealand and Britain is one of unwavering solidarity in the face of appalling odds, and few would question its truth as a general narrative

The Poem as Evental Site

This essay explores the work of contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou in relation to its politico-aesthetic program. Challenging the metaphysical tradition, Badiou holds that philosophy begins “uniquely in what takes place”. Following Jacques Lacan, with his own spatial twist, Badiou refutes an ontology of pure identity and argues that the subject is never only itself, “but also its place,” that being comes forth by way of historical localization, and that every radical historical transformation originates in an “evental site.” In this process, poetry has a crucial role to play. An event comes about as a result of its naming or nomination: “poetic inventions” such as “May 68” or (in Greece) “To Polytechnio” have served, retrospectively, to “fix” an event, to anchor it in language and thus summon into being something affirmative for future generations. The essay concludes with some suggestions as to the ways in which Badiou’s poetics can be said to constitute a radical critical practice for cultural theory today

The Other Side of the Looking Glass: Women's Fantasy Writing and Woolf’s Orlando

Ιn “The Looking Glass, from the Other Side” (This Sex Which is Not One), Luce Irigaray’s Alice inhabits a psychic space beyond the screen of patriarchal representations. Where Lewis Carroll’s Alice finds things precisely inverted in her specular kingdom, Irigaray’s Alice finds them in a perpetual process of displacement. Women’s fantasy fictions of this century can be read as paradigmatic of the experience of otherness, of writing from within structures of representation ίn which, as Irigaray’s Alice puts it, women are “more than half absent… on the other side”. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando exploits fantasy elements for this very purpose, to disrupt androcentric narratives, particularly those of history and biography. It demonstrates the strategy of masquerade or mimicry and the way in which this can, as Irigaray suggests, both expose and explode the reality of women’s subordination within patriarchal discourse.Στη μελέτη της Luce Irigaray "The Looking Glass, from the Other Side" (This Sex Which is Not One), η Αλίκη καταλαμβάνει ένα ψυχικό χώρο πέρα από το σκηνικό των πατριαρχικών αναπαραστάσεων. Ενώ η Αλίκη του Lewis Carroll βρίσκει τα πράγματα αντεστραμμένα στο κατοπτριζόμενο βασίλειο, η Αλίκη της Irigaray τα βρίσκει σε μια συνεχή διαδικασία μετατόπισης. Ο κόσμος της γυναικείας μυθιστοριογραφίας του φανταστικού στον αιώνα μας μπορεί να διαβαστεί ως παράδειγμα της εμπειρίας του "άλλου", της γραφής από μέσα από τις ίδιες τις δομές της αναπαράστασης, στην οποία, όπως θέτει το θέμα η Αλίκη της Irigaray, οι γυναίκες είναι "περισσότερο από το ήμισυ απούσες . . . στην άλλη όψη". Ο Orlando της Viginia Woolf εκμεταλλεύεται τα στοιχεία του φανταστικού γι' αυτό το συγκεκριμένο λόγο, για να παρεμποδίσει τους ανδροκεντρικούς αφηγηματικούς τρόπους, συγκεκριμένα αυτούς της Ιστορίας και της βιογραφίας. Επιδεικνύει έτσι μια τεχνική μασκαρέματος ή μίμησης και τον τρόπο με τον οποίο αυτό μπορεί, όπως εισηγείται η Irigaray, να αποκαλύψει και να ανατινάξει την πραγματικότητα της υπόταξης της γυναίκας από μέσα από τον Πατριαρχικό Λόγο