This paper explores two questions central to understanding the nature of formulaic sequences: (1) What are they for? and (2) What determines how many there are? The “Communicative Impact” model draws into a single account how language is shaped by cognitive processing on the one hand and socio-interactional function on the other: Formulaic sequences play a range of coordinated roles in neutralizing unanticipated perturbations in the cognitive management of language, so the speaker's socio-interactional goals can still be achieved. One role (...) involves compensatory actions to sustain fluency. However, these actions are themselves context-sensitive, so the balance of types of formulaic sequence will vary according to situation. The model applies equally to temporary cognitive pressure and chronic problems such as dementia and limited linguistic competency in a foreign language. (shrink)

Fabio Vighi’s paper examines Pasolini’s extensive use of toponyms taking into consideration not only the author’s early poetry in dialects but also his letters and articles. Vighi traces the theoretical link between the poetry written in the region of Friuli and Pasolini’s literary production in Rome. The paper’s argument is that the different topoi in Pasolini’s texts acquire a strong ideological significance on the one hand as conventional signs with specific and clear topographical connotations and on the other as adorati (...) toponimi (adored toponyms) aspiring to become the very object they name. In this light, Vighi argues, Pasolini’s toponyms embody the search for a privileged utopian space where the reconciliation between nature and culture is possible. The paper shows how Casarsa, the village of Pasolini’s mother, is accorded by the writer a mythological aura, whilst the whole of Friuli provides him with a romantic, dream-like subject matter evoked by the use of toponyms. Vighi asserts that Pasolini’s interest in toponymy gives him the possibility of recognising an almost mythical link existing between the physiognomy of the inhabitants of Friulan villages and the villages themselves. Thus, these villages are raised in Pasolini’s early poetry to the status of animated beings, capable of giving life. But Vighi argues that the author’s love for villages and rural communities underpins a critique of modern society which can be seen in Pasolini’s dislike of cities, or at least, in his unease with Friulan urban spaces. Vighi argues against the traditionally held view that Pasolini’s move to Rome caused a break with Communist ideology. The paper asserts instead that Rome enabled him to develop the theoretical potential of his Friulan poetics, since it was here that his critique of modern society took on a more socially oriented stance. In Rome it is the borgate, the slums in the Northern part of the capital, that provide a link between the country and the city, and elicit the use of toponyms, and here too the toponyms go beyond their topographical value to achieve an exclusively utopian quality. The paper concludes by emphasising how it was at this point that Pasolini, moving away from orthodox Marxism and Gramscian philosophy, called for a revision of left-wing thought which would include a category of irrationality, a concept that Vighi makes very clear Pasolini could never positively define in his work and that proved to be especially problematic at a time when the Italian Communist Party had a very inflexible approach to socio-political and aesthetic problems. (shrink)

This article makes use of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to compare Roberto Rossellini's classic neorealist film Open City (1945) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's last cinematic work, Salò, or the 120days of Sodom (1975). More specifically, it suggests that, despite the two films’ obvious ideological and stylistic differences, what emerges through a psychoanalytic reading is the evidence that these films share a common ethical position. By utilizing a number of key notions of Lacanian theory (such as jouissance, desire, and fantasy) to explore (...) the questions of evil, torture, and passionate attachment within the two film narratives, I try to demonstrate that Rossellini's and Pasolini's representations of the ethical act reveal a surprisingly similar politicization of the death-drive as the purely negative agency that suspends the subject's symbolic network, thus allowing for its radical reconfiguration. Both Open City and Salò, therefore, should be seen as works which attempt to redefine the founding moment of ethics. (shrink)

The article maps Slavoj Žižek's notion of agency against Foucault's theory of power as it emerged from Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality (Volume I). After taking a brief look at Foucault's concept of power as a productive and immanent phenomenon, we turn to Žižek's critique of Foucault in order to establish how exactly he understands the relationship between power and agency, concluding with some observations on how Žižek and Foucault have or might have an impact on the (...) way social reality is experienced today. The main argument can be summed up as follows: according to Žižek's critique, in order to effect social change it is not enough to be aware of the existing state of subjection, since the latter is itself part of a power mechanism that is inescapably eroticized, and ultimately sustained by the disavowed pleasure we derive from being caught in it; what is required as a gesture of liberation, rather, is the (implicitly traumatic and problematic) assumption of this disavowed pleasure. (shrink)

This chapter examines the ‘adomical’ motif of the ‘Phoenix’. This motif is secretly associated with the theme of Sin in the beginning of the Portrait of the Artist. The chapter first studies Finnegans Wake, which contains a combination of different levels of meaning and usually paradoxical interferences. It then looks at the role of the phoenix and Phoenix Park in the life of Joyce's Earwicker family. Finally, the chapter considers the Augustinian theme of felix culpa and the Wakean signifier.

Critical Theory and Film brings together critical theory and film to enhance the critical potential of both. The book focuses on the Frankfurt School, most notably the works of Adorno and Horkheimer, as well as associated thinkers. It seeks to demonstrate that cinema can help critical theory repoliticize culture and society and affirm the theoretical and political impact of cinematic knowledge. After discussing how the Frankfurt School saw cinema as an instrument of capitalism use to promote the cultural and political (...) regimentation of the masses, Vighi then proceeds to demonstrate that critical theory can in fact suggest a different verdict on the progressive potential of cinema. Each chapter focuses on a key critical theory concept that is explained and redefined through film analysis to unravel the hidden presuppositions and most radical consequences of critical theory. A unique contribution to the literature, this volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series offer an innovative reading of film as a critical tool, drawing on the latest developments in Lacanian theory. (shrink)

This book brings together three main topics - deconstruction, philosophy of language, and literary theory - that have figured centrally in Christopher Norris's work over the past two decades. It offers a refreshingly clear and vigorous statement of his views as to how ‘theory' might profit from a greater awareness of current philosophical debates while philosophy might likewise gain by adopting a more open-minded attitude toward developments in literary theory. Most significant here is Norris's continuing exploration of the various points (...) of contact between Jacques Derrida's thought and the kinds of concern - especially with issues in philosophical semantics and speech-act theory - that have preoccupied thinkers in the ‘other', mainstream-analytic line of descent. However his focus is consistently on matters that should be of interest to philosophers and literary theorists alike. Thus Norris devotes some penetrating commentary to topics such as modal or ‘possible-worlds' logic as it bears upon issues in narrative theory; the ‘two cultures' controversy; the different ways in which literary theory has alternately embraced and rejected the appeal to ‘scientific' modes of analysis; and some possible reasons for Wittgenstein's well-known aversion to Shakespeare. He also suggests a novel approach to the free-will/determinism issue by way of debates about the nature of language and the scope it affords for expressive creativity despite - or owing to - the limits imposed by various structural constraints. Altogether this important new book provides a welcome overview of the author's current thinking and an equally welcome enlargement of horizons in contrast to the narrowly specialised character of much present-day academic discourse. (shrink)

Aidan Tynan addresses Deleuze's assertion that 'literature is an enterprise of health' and shows how a concern of health and illness was a characteristic of his philosophy as a whole, from his earliest works to his groundbreaking collaborations with Guattari, to his final, enigmatic statements on 'life'. He explains why alcoholism, anorexia, manic depression and schizophrenia are key concepts in Deleuze's literary theory, and shows how, with the turn to schizoanalysis, literature takes on a crucial political and ethical role in (...) helping us to diagnose our present pathologies and articulate the possibilities of a health to come. (shrink)