The Dramatic Function of the Gravediggers\u27 Scene in Hamlet

It is unfortunate that one of the scenes most often cut from contemporary productions of Hamlet is the first scene of Act V, the gravediggers\u27 scene. The scene is, after all, static; it is merely a lyrical passage which seems, at first, to delay the movement of the drama, and, at all events, to add nothing to it. The producer wants swift, forward-moving action, and, certainly, he finds little enough of what he wants in the almost perverse, but always fundamental, deliberateness of this play. Consequently, one of the first scenes to be eliminated is almost invariably this one, despite its trenchant, laconic prose, its macabre humor, and its mordant, cynical philosophy of ultimate disillusion. The scene, in itself, as a separate entity, is probably one of the most famous in Shakespeare. Certainly it contains the most often misquoted line in English literature ( Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio. ), as well as one of the funniest ( \u27Twill not be seen in him there (England); there the men are as mad as he. ). Perhaps the contemporary producer is short-sighted in cutting out the gravediggers\u27 scene; perhaps it does contribute, very definitely, to the tragedy, apart from its intrinsic excellence

Device for handling printed circuit cards Patent

Handling tool for printed circuit card

Survey of policy for MRSA screening in English cataract surgical units and changes to practice after updated National guidelines

National guidelines on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) screening policy in England have changed on a number of occasions, but there is limited data on its influence at a local level. The aim of this study was to determine if changes in National policy influenced preoperative screening of cataract patients for MRSA

Transformative learning and the form that transforms: towards a psychosocial theory of recognition using auto/biographical narrative research

In this paper I interrogate the changing forms that may be fundamental to transformative learning and how these are best chronicled and understood. Drawing on auto/biographical narrative research, I challenge the continuing primacy of a kind of overly disembodied, decontextualized cognition as the basis of transformation. Notions of epistemic shifts, for instance, and their central importance, can lack sufficient or convincing grounding in the complexities of whole people and their stories. I develop, instead, a psychosocial theory of recognition, drawing, especially, on critical theory and psychoanalysis: in this perspective, the experiencing self, in relationship, constitutes, agentically, the form that transforms, while fundamental changes in mind-set are deeply intertwined with shifts in inner-outer psychosocial dynamics. I challenge, in the process, some conventional boundaries between cognition and emotion, self and other, the psychological and socio-cultural, as well as collective and individual learning

Class then and now: adult education, class and the psychosocial; auto/biographical perspectives

Class once mattered in adult education, and still does in a neo-liberal world. But it can be difficult to define in the fragmentation of the organised working-class and the casualisation/manualisation of many middle-class occupations. Historically, in industrial societies class could be seen as shaped by productive relations, while class consciousness was a cultural phenomenon, partly forged by workers themselves in educational and political struggles. But those older industrial societies have fragmented and a more individualised culture and diversity politics have taken centre stage. Class as a living phenomenon can be neglected as gender, race and sexuality are foregrounded. Notwithstanding, class continues to shape experiences between people, and perceptions of education, levels of physical, mental health and life expectancy. And the neglect of class dynamics and social inequality has been challenged in forms of working-class auto/biographical research. This is inspired by the women’s movement, the biographical/narrative turn and challenges to the neglect of the experiencing human subject in social and cultural studies. The research and writing especially encompass working-class women in diverse settings, and intergenerational dialogues. Class intersects here with other oppressions. The work illuminates how adult education requires holistic reconceptualisation as a relational, embodied, emotional, narrative, psychosocial, intellectual and even spiritual process, in which the dynamics of self/other recognition, love and the feminist notion of the gift are central

Pedagogie di amore e odio: auto-identificazione nei processi educativi di gruppi islamici e di lavoratori nel Regno Unito = Pedagogies of love and hate: self-recognition in Islamist groups and workers' education in the United Kingdom

This paper focuses on the emotional interplay of the inner world with the relationships and groups in which we are embedded. It draws on in-depth auto/ biographical narrative research in one distressed postindustrial city struggling with racism and pockets of Islamism, but also with a proud history of workers' education that has now fractured (West, 2016). I sought to understand the dynamics of racism, fundamentalism, and of hate, but also of love and recognition in the building of social solidarities. The paper illuminates where resources of hope for new, more inclusive social solidarities can lie, at a time of a rampant individualism and growing antagonism between ethnic groups at national as well as international levels. The paper employs an interdisciplinary psychosocial theoretical frame, drawing on psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, critical theorist Axel Honneth and educator John Dewey, to illuminate particular dynamics, including pedagogic, within Islamism, in contexts of growing Islamophobia. The interplay of these forces can draw alienated individuals into Islamism, which provides powerful forms of self recognition. These processes operate at a primitive emotional as well as narrative level. Recognition gives meaning and purpose to fractured lives but may also be impregnated with misrecognition of the other. There can be processes of collective psychic splitting in which unwanted parts of a self and culture are projected into the other, evoking alienation, ironically, from self as well as that other, in the name of purity. Hate takes over. These reductive dynamics are compared, in the paper, with what was called 'an experiment in democratic education' in the same city. The experiment was the product of an unusual alliance, at least in a European context, between progressive elements in universities and working class organisations at the beginning of the last century. It provided access to particular forms of university education, an education of citizens, at a local level. I draw on personal testimonies and recent research, to suggest that such workers' education offered forms of recognition and the means to strengthen social solidarities. Working class men and women became, in effect, university students, at a local level, in industrial towns and cities, in what were called 'tutorial classes'. They were classes not lectures, and 'all were teachers and learners' as they negotiated their own syllabus and worked dialogically. They became or were already leaders and activists in their communities. Over time many worker-students also became more open to symbolic diversity and, in some cases, to their own bigotry. Processes of self-recognition operated here too, but alongside relatively open engagement with symbolic diversity, with others, and thus with the potential diversity of self. This provided the basis for more fulsome recognition of the other. We need to rescue such neglected and sometimes disparaged histories, at a time of social fragmentation and growing xenophobia

Resisting the enormous condescension of posterity: Richard Henry Tawney, Raymond Williams and the long struggle for a democratic education

Peter Jarvis emphasised relationships in education: people in the West assumed we were born as individuals but we are relationally embedded from the outset and learn to become social beings. This paper is concerned with how we learn democratic sensibilities with a prime focus on ‘liberal’ workers’ education in the United Kingdom and the building of social democracy. It helps us to think about present crises of representative democracy and troubled relations between different ethnic groups. Strengthening our humanity by cultivating I/thou experience, across difference, was the contribution of forms of workers’ education in the United Kingdom. This involved an unusual alliance, in European terms, between progressives in universities and workers’ organisations. Tawney, a Christian Socialist, and Williams, a humanistic Marxist, have more in common when rescued from the condescension of certain historical analysis, and when their contribution is interrogated through life writing, auto/biographical research and the psychosocial concept of recognition