The Obliteration of Truth by Management: Badiou, St. Paul and the Question of Economic Managerialism in Education

This paper considers the questions that Badiou’s theory of the subject poses to cultures of economic managerialism within education. His argument that radical change is possible, for people and the situations they inhabit, provides a stark challenge to the stifling nature of much current educational climate. In 'Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism', Badiou describes the current universalism of capitalism, monetary homogeneity and the rule of the count. Badiou argues that the politics of identity are all too easily subsumed by the prerogatives of the marketplace and unable to present, therefore, a critique of the status quo. These processes are, he argues, without the potential for truth. What are the implications of Badiou’s claim that education is the arranging of ‘the forms of knowledge in such a way that truth may come to pierce a hole in them’ (Badiou, 2005, p. 9)? In this paper, I argue that Badiou’s theory opens up space for a kind of thinking about education that resists its colonisation by cultures of management and marketisation and leads educationalists to consider the emancipatory potential of education in a new light

Theatrical dialogue in teaching the classics

This article addresses some fundamental affinities between theatre and teaching and is based on emerging work in a long-term experiment which we began in the conference ‘Weber/Simmel Antagonisms: Staged Dialogues’, held at the University of Edinburgh on December 2015. Aimed at exploring the possibilities of the theatrical and dialogical forms for teaching the classics of social and cultural theory, it is a risky experiment whose initial results are presented in this special issue. In order to introduce the dialogues and situate them in the context of the broader project, the article does three things: first, it expounds the process of subjectivation at work in both theatre and teaching and explores some of the modalities of the subjective shift sought for in spectators and students. Second, it explains the specificity of this experiment by contrasting it with other uses of theatrical dialogue in teaching. Finally, before briefly introducing each of the dialogues, the article clarifies the fundamental difference between the dialogical form and debate, as radically separating them is at the heart of any experiment in subjectivation, away from the stirring of opinions

On waiting for something to happen

This paper seeks to examine two particular and peculiar practices in which the mediation of apparently direct encounters is made explicit and is systematically theorized: that of the psychoanalytic dialogue with its inward focus and private secluded setting, and that of theatre and live performance, with its public focus. Both these practices are concerned with ways in which “live encounters” impact on their participants, and hence with the conditions under which, and the processes whereby, the coming-together of human subjects results in recognizable personal or social change. Through the rudimentary analysis of two anecdotes, we aim to think these encounters together in a way that explores what each borrows from the other, the psychoanalytic in the theatrical, the theatrical in the psychoanalytic, figuring each practice as differently committed to what we call the “publication of liveness”. We argue that these “redundant” forms of human contact continue to provide respite from group acceptance of narcissistic failure in the post-democratic era through their offer of a practice of waiting

The “design event” : The anti-design- historian and a poetics of the object

What happens when a sudden encounter with a design-object calls into question traditional approaches to the history of design? Or, alternatively, when such moments make manifest how the symbolic roles we occupy as design historians can serve to obstruct our singular relationship to the object? Beginning with what is cautiously termed the “design event,” this article seeks to explore how an examination of how our own unconscious fascinations and obsessions that encircle the material object, can offer the potential for a self-reflective approach to design history, one that locates the reasons for our passionate preoccupations at the very heart of our analysis. Furthermore, it is argued that a focus on what is singular to the self, on the intersubjective relationships that have shaped our attachments to certain objects, can serve to form part of a broader challenge to the carefully constructed symbolic identities we are interpellated by in our professional roles as historians.Peer reviewe

Idylls of socialism : the Sarajevo Documentary School and the problem of the Bosnian sub-proletariat

This historical overview of the Sarajevo Documentary School considers the films, in the light of their recent re-emergence, as indicative of both the legacy of socialist realism (even in the context of Yugoslav media) and attempted social engineering in the Bosnia of the 1960s and 1970s. The argument is made that the documentaries, despite their questionable aesthetic status (in respect of cinma-vrit and ethnography) and problematic ideological strategies and attempted interventions, document a history and offer insights that counter the prevailing revisionist trends in the presentation of Eastern and Central European history

Cities in fiction: Perambulations with John Berger

This paper explores selected novels by John Berger in which cities play a central role. These cities are places, partially real and partially imagined, where memory, hope, and despair intersect. My reading of the novels enables me to trace important themes in recent discourses on the nature of contemporary capitalism, including notions of resistance and universality. I also show how Berger?s work points to a writing that can break free from the curious capacity of capitalism to absorb and feed of its critique

Impossible protest: noborders in Calais

Since the closure of the Red Cross refugee reception centre in Sangatte, undocumented migrants in Calais hoping to cross the border to Britain have been forced to take refuge in a number of squatted migrant camps, locally known by all as ‘the jungles.’ Unauthorised shanty-like residences built by the migrants themselves, living conditions in the camps are very poor. In June 2009, European ‘noborder’ activists set up a week-long protest camp in the area with the intention of confronting the authorities over their treatment of undocumented migrants. In this article, we analyse the June 2009 noborder camp as an instance of ‘immigrant protest.’ Drawing on ethnographic materials and Jacques Rancière's work on politics and aesthetics, we construct a typology of forms of border control through which to analyse the different ways in which the politics of the noborder camp were staged, performed and policed. Developing a critique of policing practices which threatened to make immigrant protest ‘impossible’, we highlight moments of protest which, through the affirmation of an ‘axiomatic’ equality, disrupted and disarticulated the borders between citizens and non-citizens, the political and non-political

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, literary genius or national pariah? Defining moral parameters for influential cultural figures, post- Charlie Hebdo

In January 2011 the French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, withdrew Louis-Ferdinand Céline from a list of famous French authors specifically selected for a national celebration of culture. This bold decision polarized opinion: while many welcomed Mitterrand’s intervention, a number of prominent writers, some of them Jewish, opposed it on the grounds that Céline’s abhorrent political beliefs – expressed in three anti-Semitic pamphlets and his flirtation with Nazism- should in no way detract from his literary genius. In the light of this controversy, and of the rise in anti-Semitism following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015, this paper proposes Céline as a vital case study of the moral parameters a democratic nation should apply to a culturally important figure whose political views are deemed unacceptably reactionary

Staphylococcal entertotoxins of the enterotoxin gene cluster (egcSEs) induce nitrous oxide- and cytokine dependent tumor cell apoptosis in a broad panel of human tumor cells

International audienceThe egcSEs comprise five genetically linked staphylococcal enterotoxins, SEG, SEI, SElM, SElN, and SElO and two pseudotoxins which constitute an operon present in up to 80% of Staphylococcus aureus isolates. A preparation containing these proteins was recently used to treat advanced lung cancer with pleural effusion. We investigated the hypothesis that egcSEs induce nitrous oxide (NO) and associated cytokine production and that these agents may be involved in tumoricidal effects against a broad panel of clinically relevant human tumor cells. Preliminary studies showed that egcSEs and SEA activated T cells (range: 11-25%) in a concentration dependent manner. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) stimulated with equimolar quantities of egcSEs expressed NO synthase and generated robust levels of nitrite (range: 200-250 μM), a breakdown product of NO; this reaction was inhibited by NG-monomethyl-L-arginine (L-NMMA) (0.3 mM), an NO synthase antagonist. Cell free supernatants (CSFs) of all egcSE-stimulated PBMCs were also equally effective in inducing concentration dependent tumor cell apoptosis in a broad panel of human tumor cells. The latter effect was due in part to the generation of NO and TNF-α since it was significantly abolished by L-NMMA, anti-TNF-α antibodies, respectively, and a combination thereof. A hierarchy of tumor cell sensitivity to these CFSs was as follows: lung carcinoma > osteogenic sarcoma > melanoma > breast carcinoma >neuroblastoma. Notably, SEG induced robust activation of NO/TNFα-dependent tumor cell apoptosis comparable to the other egcSEs and SEA despite TNF-α and IFN-γ levels that were 2 and 8 fold lower, respectively, than the other egcSEs and SEA. Thus, egcSEs produced by S. aureus induce NO synthase and the increased NO formation together with TNF-α appear to contribute to egcSE-mediated apoptosis against a broad panel of human tumor cells