Ted Joans' surrealist history lesson

This article argues for the importance of Ted Joans within histories of surrealism, which seldom acknowledge the existence of the movement post-World War II or its participants outside of interwar Paris. Since the early 1960s, Joans contributed to both the Paris and Chicago groups of surrealists, who continued to proclaim the relevance of mad love, the marvellous, and dreams to a radical politics long after the movement was alleged to have deceased. The majority of the article, however, addresses Joans' work composed prior to his formal involvement with surrealism, exploring how his invocation of surrealist influence was framed by a narrative of surrealism's legacy of radical anti-colonialism and anti-racism to diasporic writers, artists and intellectuals such as Etienne Lro and Aim Csaire. Joans' work self-consciously embeds his engagement with surrealism within a matrix of transatlantic cultural dialogues which dislodge it from its supposed headquarters in Paris in the interwar years, undermines its profile as white, Francophone and bourgeois, and problematizes unilateral models of influence. Drawing on Surrealist aesthetics, his early work deploys modernist formal innovation as a means to reflect on the historiography of modernism, and performatively protests the unequal access to the political and cultural ideals of modernity

From littérature engagée to engaged translation : staging Jean-Paul Sartre’s theatre as a challenge to Franco’s rule in Spain

The practice of creating translations that ‘rouse, inspire, witness, mobilize, and incite to rebellion’ is described by Maria Tymoczko, following Jean-Paul Sartre's littérature engagée, as ‘engaged translation’. In Spain, under the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), the theatre became a site of opposition to his rule and the creation of ‘engaged’ translations of foreign plays was one of the ways in which alternative social and political realities were transmitted to local audiences. This was particularly evident during the so-called apertura period (1962–1969), when Spain's political leaders embraced more liberal and outward-facing cultural policies as part of their efforts to ensure the regime's continuity. Drawing on archival evidence from the state censorship files held at Archivo General de la Administración (AGA) in Alcalá de Henares, this article considers how ‘engaged’ translations of Sartre's theatre were employed as instruments of cultural opposition to the Spanish dictatorship. It also argues that an analysis of the files both helps us to understand the role of censorship in shaping an official version of the past, and shines a light on the memory of a little-studied aspect of cultural activism in the Spanish theatre.PostprintPeer reviewe

‘Dead people don’t claim’: A psychopolitical autopsy of UK austerity suicides

One of the symptoms of post financial crisis austerity in the UK has been an increase in the numbers of suicides, especially by people who have experienced welfare reform. This article develops and utilises an analytic framework of psychopolitical autopsy to explore media coverage of ‘austerity suicide’ and to take seriously the psychic life of austerity (internalisation, shame, anxiety), embedding it in a context of social dis-ease. Drawing on three distinct yet interrelated areas of literature (the politics of affect and psychosocial dynamics of welfare, post and anti-colonial psychopolitics, and critical suicidology), the article aims to better understand how austerity ‘kills’. Key findings include understanding austerity suicides as embedded within an affective economy of the anxiety caused by punitive welfare retrenchment, the stigmatisation of being a recipient of benefits, and the internalisation of market logic that assigns value through ‘productivity’ and conceptualises welfare entitlement as economic ‘burden’. The significance of this approach lies in its ability to widen analytic framing of suicide from an individual and psychocentric focus, to illuminate culpability of government reforms while still retaining the complexity of suicide, and thus to provide relevant policy insights about welfare reform

Between platonic love and internet pornography

The article sets out to show how an holistic approach in matters of sexuality is always more helpful than one-sided approaches. On the issue of internet pornography, the authors suggest that the recent anti-masturbation online movement ‘no fapping’ is based on wrong conclusions from insufficient evidence. We suggest that a holistic approach is called for, with emphasis on the embodied human. Abstinence or what is understood by ‘Platonic love’ is not a solution, according to Plato himself. From a phenomenological perspective, we suggest owning up to our strange bodies and habitualising sexual activity

Determinants of impact : towards a better understanding of encounters with the arts

The article argues that current methods for assessing the impact of the arts are largely based on a fragmented and incomplete understanding of the cognitive, psychological and socio-cultural dynamics that govern the aesthetic experience. It postulates that a better grasp of the interaction between the individual and the work of art is the necessary foundation for a genuine understanding of how the arts can affect people. Through a critique of philosophical and empirical attempts to capture the main features of the aesthetic encounter, the article draws attention to the gaps in our current understanding of the responses to art. It proposes a classification and exploration of the factors—social, cultural and psychological—that contribute to shaping the aesthetic experience, thus determining the possibility of impact. The ‘determinants of impact’ identified are distinguished into three groups: those that are inherent to the individual who interacts with the artwork; those that are inherent to the artwork; and ‘environmental factors’, which are extrinsic to both the individual and the artwork. The article concludes that any meaningful attempt to assess the impact of the arts would need to take these ‘determinants of impact’ into account, in order to capture the multidimensional and subjective nature of the aesthetic experience

In search of the beloved community: dancing to a different tune of youth participation

One element of the PARTISPACE study into spaces and styles of Youth Participation in eight European cities is presented in this article. Drawing on ethnographically informed studies of four sites in three cities, the paper analyses the ways in which young people construct and sustain alternatives to the policy-driven forms of participation, based on their yearning and aspiration for different relations than those found in ordinary life. We suggest four themes as characterising their search for community: Places where communities are born; Breaking out of the Ordinary; Differentiated Openness and Protected Zones of Experimentation. In conversation with the work of bell hooks on ‘homeplaces’ and Victor Turner on anti-hegemonic anti-structures, the analysis suggests that young people’s self-created spaces give insights into what ‘youth participation’ might be and that forms of protection of such alternative spaces are an inbuilt necessity and not necessarily to be seen as exclusionary or anti-democratic

Nietzsche or Aristotle: The implications for social psychology

YesIn this article, I argue that there is a divide in social psychology between a mainstream paradigm for investigating the flow of power in a largely competitive social life (such as social cognition, social identity theory, and discourse analysis) and a fringe paradigm for investigating the experience of flourishing in conditions of social learning (such as ‘the community of practice metaphor’, ‘dialogical theory’, ‘phenomenological analysis’). Assumptions of power and flourishing demand different conceptions of the self and the social world (e.g. a strategic subject or motivated tactician in a social group versus a reflective learner/artist in a community of practice). The first goal of this article is to reveal the assumptions that lead to this new classification. The second goal is to draw dotted lines to the blind-spots within these paradigms that each reveals. These blind spots are: 1) internal goods could be useful to consider for the power paradigm and external goods for the flourishing paradigm; 2) communicative rationality is underplayed within the power paradigm; while instrumental rationality is underplayed for the flourishing paradigm; 3) judgements and skill are underplayed in the power paradigm; self-interested motivations are underplayed in the flourishing paradigm

Nietzsche or Aristotle: The implications for social psychology

YesIn this article, I argue that there is a divide in social psychology between a mainstream paradigm for investigating the flow of power in a largely competitive social life (such as social cognition, social identity theory, and discourse analysis) and a fringe paradigm for investigating the experience of flourishing in conditions of social learning (such as ‘the community of practice metaphor’, ‘dialogical theory’, ‘phenomenological analysis’). Assumptions of power and flourishing demand different conceptions of the self and the social world (e.g. a strategic subject or motivated tactician in a social group versus a reflective learner/artist in a community of practice). The first goal of this article is to reveal the assumptions that lead to this new classification. The second goal is to draw dotted lines to the blind-spots within these paradigms that each reveals. These blind spots are: 1) internal goods could be useful to consider for the power paradigm and external goods for the flourishing paradigm; 2) communicative rationality is underplayed within the power paradigm; while instrumental rationality is underplayed for the flourishing paradigm; 3) judgements and skill are underplayed in the power paradigm; self-interested motivations are underplayed in the flourishing paradigm

Paul Nizan: conspiracy and the contemplation of crime

Paul Nizan (1905-1940) is also known in France as the ‘impossible communist’, for his long-term allegiance to the Party and the abrupt cancellation of his membership, in the late 1930s, following the Nazi-Soviet pact. This paper discusses a number of his writings, focusing particularly on his best known novel, The Conspiracy, where a revolutionary cell plans illegal political action. Conflict, nihilism, suicide and betrayal are among the topics stemming from the novel, which will be examined from a criminological perspective. The analysis will primarily address ‘cultural’ aspects of crime and refer to notions such as ‘thrill’ and ‘seductions of crime’ among others. These notions, it will be argued, require some revision in the face of the imagined or actual criminality described in the novel

Fiction and Organization Studies

The topic of fiction is in itself not new to the domain of organization studies. However, prior research has often separated fiction from the reality of organizations and used fiction metaphorically or as a figurative source to describe and interpret organizations. In this article, we go beyond the classic use of fiction, and suggest that fiction should be a central concern in organization studies. We draw on the philosophy of fiction to offer an alternative account of the nature of fiction and its basic operation. We specifically import Searle’s work on speech acts, Walton’s pretense theory, Iser’s fictionalizing acts, and Ricoeur’s work on narrative fiction to theorize about organizations as fictions. In doing so, we hope that we not only offer an account of the “ontological status” of organizations but also provide a set of theoretical coordinates and lenses through which, separately or together, the notion of organizations as fictions can be approached and understood