Background There is broad international agreement from clinicians and academics that healthcare rationing should be undertaken as explicitly as possible, and the BMA have publicly supported the call for more accountable priority setting for some time. However, studies in the UK and elsewhere suggest that clinicians experience a number of barriers to rationing openly, and the information needs of patients at the point of provision are largely unknown. Methodology In-depth interviews were undertaken with NHS professionals working at the community level (...) of provision, and with patients and professionals receiving or providing treatment for morbid obesity and breast cancer (n=52). Results Nearly all patients wanted to know about healthcare rationing and had high expectations of their clinical professionals to provide all relevant information about treatment options. However, professionals did not always understand these information requirements, and cases of implicit rationing were common. The existence of relevant national guidance was not always known about, meaning that patients were often reliant on other sources of information about treatment options, which included the popular media, the internet, patient advocacy groups and informal networks of support. Discussion Clinical professionals need to understand patients' need for detailed information when it comes to rationing, and to understand that they are the main gateway for this to be provided. However, disclosure could be distressing for both patients and professionals, and thus the most sensitive and acceptable ways to make this information available requires further investigation. (shrink)

Most documented extinctions of vertebrates in the last 400 years have been island endemics. In this paper, we focus on the need to develop a historical framework to establish conservation priorities for insular faunas and, in particular, to test the validity of nominal endemics. We use the example of the islands of the North Pacific Coast of North America, a region that includes approximately one-half of all mammals endemic to North American islands north of Mexico. Few of these endemics (...) have been re-evaluated since their original descriptions, although many of these islands have been heavily impacted by habitat conversion, species introductions, over-exploitation, and secondary ripple effects. Evidence from molecular genetics and paleontology suggests that many taxa arrived in the region since the last glacial advance. Some of these nominal endemics show minimal differentiation, while others comprise multiple evolutionary lineages. The NPC may also have played an important role in the in situ diversification of some taxa during the Pleistocene. Evidence, such as new fossil discoveries and numerous described endemics, lends support for refugia hypotheses. However, these ideas cannot be tested until a better understanding of geographic variation and the evolutionary relationships of the fauna and flora of the North Pacific Coast is developed. This framework would provide significant insight into the dynamic biogeographic history of the region and help prioritize conservation efforts. (shrink)

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and thirty-eightmeter high tsunami destroyed Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima nuclear power complex. The disaster was not a high-damage, low-probability event. It was a high-damage, high-probability event. Massive earthquakes and tsunamis assault the coast every century. Tokyo Electric built its reactors as it did because it would not pay the full cost of a meltdown anyway. Given the limited liability at the heart of corporate law, it could externalize the cost of running reactors. (...) In most industries, firms rarely risk tort damages so enormous they cannot pay them. In nuclear power, “unpayable” potential liability is routine. Privately owned companies bear the costs of an accident only up to the fire-sale value of their net assets. Beyond that, they pay nothing — and the damages from a nuclear disaster easily soar past that point. Government ownership could eliminate this moral hazard — but it would replace it with problems of its own. Unfortunately, the electoral dynamics in wealthy modern democracies combine to replicate nearly perfectly the moral hazard inherent in private ownership. Private firms will build reactors on fault lines — but so will governments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 12.2 (2007) 128-130MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Future of Environmental PhilosophyIrene J. KlaverEnvironmental philosophy is invitational: it in-vites thinking into life as well as life into thinking. Life is vita in Latin—the same vita as in vital and in vitamins. An in-vita-tion leads to new connections, or a renewal of existing relations. This affects how we understand things. As Wittgenstein says, "understanding [...] consists in (...) the very fact that we 'see connections.'"1 This is the case for philosophy in general, it makes connections, reveals relations between entities, thoughts, and events, which elucidates our understanding. Environmental philosophy has (re-)opened certain realms of relevance to philosophical inquiry by foregrounding our connections to the non-human world. It accommodates the broadest invitation: of life itself, including our relation to the conditions of life.The future of environmental philosophy lies precisely in this broad invitation. That means that it needs to occupy a profoundly interdisciplinary place, at the node of multiple institutions and practices. It deals with global issues on a local level and with the effects of local issues on a global scale. This involves science, policy, economy, law, ethics, aesthetics, religion, history, etc. An environmental philosopher is a specific generalist, someone who can connect various relations, sees the multiple angles in a particular perspective, the world in a grain of sand.The evolved environmental philosopher is a translator, translating various concerns along multiple perspectives. Translation is crucial to an understanding of the viewpoints, positions, and situations of others. Environmental philosophy enlarges the category of the "other" with many more entities. This is not a politically correct move to bring so-called repressed voices to the fore, it is to evoke different modes of knowledge and experience, to enhance cultural imagination2, a crucial component to raising awareness about environmental concerns.In her 1962 book Silent Spring3, Rachel Carson connected pesticide DDT to the decline in some predatory bird populations and sparked the rise of the environmental movement. She triggered a powerful cultural imagination by invoking a future silent spring without the singing of birds. Hegel saw the owl of Minerva as the symbol of wisdom, spreading "its wings only with the falling of the dusk."4 That is, for Hegel understanding arises after the events, philosophy can never be prescriptive. [End Page 128] Environmental philosophy, on the contrary, is engaged thinking, its understanding arises out of the practices of the everyday. The albatross around our neck is of our own shooting. Environmental ethics and environmental justice might stake out basic prescriptive rules, but these are always born from knowledge of—if not a participation in—certain practices. Environmental philosophy's bird is the spotted owl of social-political engagement, the canary in the mineshaft, but also the sparrow in the backyard. Birds that fly from dawn to dusk, seeing and reporting in the light the practical connections that reveal understanding, possible action, communication needs, and suggest a lexicon for translation. In and through practical connections rises therefore translation and understanding.Understanding is a transformative process—it changes our interpretative frameworks. When we see connections we begin to understand how the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is related to agriculture in the midwestern United States thousands of miles away, with watersheds within the Mississippi River Basin draining nitrogen fertilizers into the Mississippi, causing hypoxia in the Gulf.5 Environmental philosophy shows how wetlands are not just wastelands but take nitrogen and phosphorus out of the water, buffer "our" coasts, and feed the migrating birds along their long routes. By not seeing these connections, our wetlands are pumped dry; and by abusing our water, springs disappear, major rivers strand in sand, and dead zones emerge in oceans and seas. "These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things," Rachel Carson states, writing about streams.6 In the twenty first century it is no longer a "fable of tomorrow:" silent springs, silent rivers, silent seas.Environmental philosophy is empirical philosophy dealing with big issues such as global warming, biodiversity, and sustainability, but... (shrink)

This chapter reviews the historical evidence concerning the development of slavery in eastern Africa, the various forms found in societies on the coast and in the interior, the social and cultural consequences of enslavement, and its ultimate abolition. It then looks at the known and potential archaeological traces of the trajectories of these different systems of slavery, with particular reference to the area along the middle and lower Pangani River, Tanzania. The chapter concludes with a consideration of whether or (...) not it would be possible to discern slavery from the surviving archaeological remains alone, and the implications of this answer for future archaeological investigations of slavery elsewhere in the region. (shrink)

Abstract:As a flagship program of the New Deal, the CCC was one of several federal agencies which turned to the natural and built environment to promote socio-cultural homogenization between the First and Second World War. This article investigates the CCC's role as an agent of national transformation and considers the links between the New Deal's treatment of the American landscape and its promotion of a new, more pluralistic national identity. While historians of the interwar United States are quick to note (...) the social and environmental significance of the CCC, the cultural role of this program remains largely overlooked. Specifically, relevant scholarship has neglected to address the architectural output of this program and the way it related to the New Deal's broader socio-cultural initiatives. With camps in each of the forty-eight states and overseas territories, the CCC reconfigured much of the American landscape and deployed a regionally diverse blend of vernacular architecture, all while fostering a mythologized sense of cultural heritage from coast to coast. In order to better understand both the role and rationale behind this process, this article considers several examples of CCC-produced architecture and landscape design across the greater United States. It argues that these designs were key vehicles of the unifying message that drove the New Deal and its many so-called ‘alphabet agencies’ from the depths of economic depression to a state of preparedness as the country approached the precipice of global war. This article also considers the Corps' role in the New Deal's construction of popular historical consciousness and draws attention to the frequent transregional interactions between enrollees and local populations. (shrink)

The problems and the history of contacts between distant continents in bygone ages and long before the age of fast and easy travel, have always fascinated both professional scholars and the interested public. Was ancient history really nothing but the history of co-existing and isolated geographic, cultural and political “islands?” Already at school we learned too much about migrations of peoples, economic contacts, influences on art styles, conquests, and the rise, expansion and fall of empires to believe that. The (highly (...) improbable) theory that certain archaeological finds in America suggest, or even prove, Mediterranean influence (e.g., the arrival of Phoenician ships), or the alleged Viking discovery of America centuries before Columbus, or Thor Heyerdahl's adventurous journey to prove South American influence on remote Pacific islands did not fail to cause widespread interest and even excitement (although many scholars still feel that Heyerdahl's epic adventure, thrilling as it is, failed to prove what it set out to prove). The island of Madagascar is pretty close to the African continent, but its language exhibits more points of contact with Polynesian than with African tongues. And the blow-bellows used by Malagache smiths are similar to those used in Malaysia and unlike those known to African metalworkers. Clearly the Polynesians, those great ancient mariners, sailed further than originally seemed likely. Musicologists studying the cantillation of the Hebrew Bible in the liturgy of the ancient Jewish communities on the Malabar coast in India discovered to their surprise that it was similar to the cantillation not of the Babylonian but of the Yemenite Jews! This surprise was, of course, no surprise to those who knew anything about trade-winds and shipping routes between South Arabia and the Indian coast. Historians of religion, even more than general historians, studying the spread and expansion of religious ideas and movements have realised long ago that the beginning of all wisdom is a basic knowledge of economic geography. (shrink)

Tick and tick-borne diseases, especially East Coast fever, caused byTheileria parva, are amongst the most important factors limiting cattle production in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. In the past, they have been controlled mainly by the use of acaricides to kill ticks. Immunization has been shown to be an effective alternative method of control of tick-borne diseases in limited field trials. A development program has been initiated to produce vaccines and implement immunization on a wide scale in the region (...) in a sustainable manner as part of an integrated tick and tickborne disease control program. The consequent reduction in cattle mortality is expected to have far-reaching benefits for the region. (shrink)

This study examines the family environments and hormone profiles of 316 individuals aged 2 months-58 years residing in a rural village on the east coast of Dominica, a former British colony in the West Indies. Fieldwork was conducted over an eight-year period (1988–1995). Research methods and techniques include radioimmunoassay of cortisol and testosterone from saliva samples (N=22,340), residence histories, behavioral observations of family interactions, extensive ethnographic interview and participant observation, psychological questionnaires, and medical examinations.Analyses of data indicate complex, sex-specific (...) effects of family environment on endocrine function. Male endocrine profiles exhibit greater sensitivity to presence of father than do female endocrine profiles. Father-absent males tend to have (a) low cortisol levels during infancy, (b) high or abnormal cortisol profiles during childhood and adolescence, and (c) high cortisol and low testosterone levels during adulthood compared with those of males raised with a resident father. These results indicate that early family environment has significant effects on endocrine response throughout male life histories. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI)-3 test to evaluate eating disorders in young Chilean population. Methods: The sample consisted of 1,091 Chilean adolescents and young people (i.e., 476 men and 615 women) between 15 and 28 years old, from the metropolitan region, and four regions from the coast and south-central zone of the country. The reliability and factorial structure of the instrument were analyzed, replicating the confirmatory factor analyses (...) ofBrookings et al. (2020), evaluating four additional models that included bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), bifactor, and two-bifactor. Results: A majority of the subscales presented alphas and omegas equal to or greater than 0.70, with the exception of asceticism (α = 0.543, ω = 0.552) and interpersonal alienation (α = 0.684, ω = 0.695) scales, which are consistent with the values of the Spanish and Mexican non-clinical samples. The best fit indices were obtained by the ESEM two-bifactor model, with twelve specific factors corresponding to the EDI-3 subscales and two general orthogonal factors (i.e., risk subscales and psychological subscales), consistently with the theoretical basis. (shrink)

Obtaining informed consent, an ethical obligation of nurses and other health care providers, occurs routinely when patients make health care decisions. The values underlying informed consent (promotion of patients’ well-being and respect for their self-determination) are embedded in the dominant American culture. Nurses who apply the USA’s cultural values of informed consent when caring for patients who come from other cultures encounter some ethical dilemmas. This descriptive study, conducted with Latino, Chinese and Anglo-American cancer patients in a large, public, west- (...) class='Hi'>coast clinic, describes constraints on the informed consent process in a multicultural setting, including language barriers, the clinical environment, control in decision making, and conflicting desired health outcomes for health care providers and patients, and suggests some implications for nursing practice. (shrink)

Wal-Mart received widespread praise for its response to Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Louisiana coast in August 2005 and low prices at the world’s largest retailer are estimated to save consumers billions of dollars a year. Nonetheless, it was coming under increasing criticism for corebusiness practices, ranging from detrimental effects on communities when Wal-Mart stores are established, to abusive labour practices, to alleged sourcing from sweatshops. This case looks at the benefits and the potentially harmful consequences of the (...) Wal-Mart business model. The focus is on supply chain issues and, more specifically, a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) charging that Wal-Mart failed to meet contractual obligations specified in its Standards for Suppliers Agreement. However, the retailer must respond to a range of criticisms that chief executive Lee Scott recognizes are harming its reputation. Scott asks, in reference to Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina, “what would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?” More fundamentally, the case asks, how sustainable is Wal-Mart’s business model? (shrink)

Wal-Mart received widespread praise for its response to Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Louisiana coast in August 2005 and low prices at the world’s largest retailer are estimated to save consumers billions of dollars a year. Nonetheless, it was coming under increasing criticism for corebusiness practices, ranging from detrimental effects on communities when Wal-Mart stores are established, to abusive labour practices, to alleged sourcing from sweatshops. This case looks at the benefits and the potentially harmful consequences of the (...) Wal-Mart business model. The focus is on supply chain issues and, more specifically, a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) charging that Wal-Mart failed to meet contractual obligations specified in its Standards for Suppliers Agreement. However, the retailer must respond to a range of criticisms that chief executive Lee Scott recognizes are harming its reputation. Scott asks, in reference to Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina, “what would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?” More fundamentally, the case asks, how sustainable is Wal-Mart’s business model? (shrink)

J. N. (Jitendra Nath) Mohanty (1928–2023). -/- Professor J. N. Mohanty has characterized his life and philosophy as being both “inside” and “outside” East and West, i.e., inside and outside traditions of India and those of the West, living in both India and United States: geographically, culturally, and philosophically; while also traveling the world: Melbourne to Moscow. Most of his academic time was spent teaching at the University of Oklahoma, The New School Graduate Faculty, and finally Temple University. Yet his (...) preeminent work in Husserlian phenomenology developed alongside his eminent work in Indian philosophy: describing his interests as “a fusion of disparate horizons.” -/- J. N. Mohanty was born September 26, 1928, in Cuttack (Odisha, East India). After graduating from high school, he went on to study both Indian and Western philosophy in Calcutta, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. There he read Whitehead and Kant’s First Critique; although he wanted to include mathematics in his curriculum, he was led instead to include Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. On the shelves of his teacher, Ras Vihar Das, he came upon a copy of the English translation (Ideas I, 1931) of Edmund Husserl’s classic Ideen I (1913), which presented Husserl’s ground-breaking conception of phenomenology. In 1952–1954 he left India for the first time, reaching Göttingen to study mathematics and philosophy, which earned him a doctorate in mathematics and “philosophy of mathematical sciences” (in his own words). In Göttingen, Mohanty found the powerful mathematical world that Husserl himself had earlier interacted with, where several Husserl students had formed the Göttingen school of phenomenology. During these years Mohanty studied primarily mathematics, alongside Kant and also Vedic Sanskrit. From his friend Günter Patzig, interpreter of Aristotle and Frege, Mohanty was drawn to Frege in relation to mathematical logic. He attended lectures of Heidegger, intrigued by his ontological thinking. Yet, despite the Husserlian legacy, Mohanty was completely self-taught in his studies of Husserl (as he has reported). With a doctorate in mathematics, and ideas from Kant and Frege in his philosophical background, Mohanty set about crafting his own conception of philosophy grounded in phenomenology, drawing on Husserl’s extensive work, critically sifting through Husserl’s texts and their emerging concepts of intentionality, meaning, subject, intersubjectivity, and world. In between he wrote his first book-length study: on phenomenological insights in Nicolai Hartmann and A. N. Whitehead (1958). -/- Over many decades Mohanty formulated and argued, in analytical detail, for a conception of phenomenology and its place in philosophy, later presented in a clear and concise book titled Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account (1989). Over these very decades the same scholar explored classical and recent Indian philosophy, thinking through kindred ideas of consciousness, self, and knowledge drawn from the Indian philosophical contexts. While writing on Nyāya theory of truth, he also pondered whether the world and finite individual are illusory or real, and whether Marx, Arendt, Gandhi (whom he heard speak in Calcutta), or Vinoba Bhave (with whom he marched across India for the land-grant movement) could best navigate post-Independent India’s social and svarāj or self-rule reforms. The two Mohantys, thinking through a vision of self and world, turned out to be “non-different” or “non-dual” as they each practiced critical phenomenology from both inside and outside the respective philosophical and cultural traditions. Numerous students, fellows, and colleagues or collaborators have benefited immensely from this infusion and unified approach to diversity in philosophical thought. In the 2000s, moving into retirement, Mohanty wrote two long books devoted to his understanding of Husserl and phenomenology and the calling of philosophy itself. This two-volume study shows Mohanty himself thinking through Husserl, critically, in The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Introduction (2008), and Edmund Husserl’s Freiburg Years: 1916–1938. As Mohanty worked on Husserl, he carefully indicated where he agreed and where he rejected or changed ideas, all part of his practice in phenomenology of “description and interpretation.” It was the same pattern he used in addressing the thought of Husserl vis-à-vis Kant or Frege or even Quine. -/- As Mohanty developed his understanding of phenomenology over the years, he wrote books on theory of meaning and the concept of intentionality, developing a model of ideal meaning and its foundation in intentionality, drawing on Husserl’s results. He followed these with the book Husserl and Frege (1982), linking the thought of those foundational figures for the “continental” and “analytic” traditions, respectively, in twentieth-century Western philosophy. Over his long career Mohanty addressed both traditions in his clear and accessible writing style. While developing his views on phenomenology, Mohanty regularly looked to “Husserl and his others,” evaluating views in Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and then Derrida and others in the wake of Husserl. With his background in Kant, Mohanty also looked toward Heidegger and Hegel in relation to Husserl’s later work in the Crisis (1935–38). Similarly, he looked to contemporary analytic philosophers, adjudicating his own, oft-wise Husserlian views in relation to Frege, Nagel, and others. Amid his active scholarly career, Mohanty co-founded the journal Husserl Studies, and was editorial advisor to Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Philosophy East & West, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Sophia, among others. -/- Yet all this while Mohanty was also thinking and writing about Indian philosophy and its relation to phenomenology. In his own retrospective, Indian philosophy is “the permanent background” of his Husserlian thinking, while Kant is the recurrent Western background of his Husserlian phenomenology. Mohanty’s form of “transcendental phenomenology” evolved, in his own perspective, against the background of his studies of Navya-Nyāya on logic and Vedānta on consciousness, in Indian philosophy, and against the background of Kant’s First Critique on the transcendental, in Western philosophy. Accordingly, Mohanty’s study of logical form and of the intentionality of consciousness seeks a fusion of East and West in the conception of transcendental phenomenology. (Cf. Mohanty’s apt response to critics in The Empirical and the Transcendental (2000).) Even in the context of North American Husserl scholarship, Mohanty has exercised an earnest fusion of East and West. For the so-called East Coast and West Coast interpretations of Husserl’s crucial notion of noema both find a sympathetic spirit in J. N. Mohanty’s careful and nuanced interpretation of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. With Mohanty the two faces of the noema are the logical (Fregean) and the phenomenal (Kantian), and these views of intentional structure join in consciousness—in a way resonant with Indian thought. -/- - David Woodruff Smith (UC Irvine) and Purushottama Bilimoria (SFSU, San Francisco; University of Melbourne) -/- For photo of Prof Mohanty visit APA online memorial_minutes2023 Courtesy of APA Memorial Minutes (& Proceedings) 2023 . (shrink)

Clinical and Care Bioethics Committees at Public and Private Healthcare Institutions of Medium and High Complexity Levels in Cities of the Atlantic Coast of Colombia Comitês de Bioética clínico-assistencial nas instituições de saúde públicas e privadas dos níveis de média e alta complexidade das cidades da Costa Atlântica da Colômbia Care bioethics committees are interdisciplinary groups engaged in providing education to members of said committees, all the staff in the hospital —including professors and students in their internship—, and members (...) of the community. The objective of this study is to determine the situation of clinical and care bioethics committees at healthcare institutions in the Atlantic Coast of Colombia between 2010-2016. The study is cross-sectional, descriptive, and retro-prospective. Twenty-six health institutions that met the inclusion criteria were selected and administered a semi-structured survey. The statistical software SPSS version 22 was used to analyze the information. This study adhered to ethical research guidelines. The name most commonly given to committees is Hospital Ethics Committee. Only half have staff trained in ethics or bioethics and the most outstanding function is education in ethics; however, in the same percentage there are committees whose opinion is divided as their operation is unclear. Committees should follow existing ethical and bioethical models, and bills should be brought forward to help committees at healthcare institutions become more effective as regards their structure and operation. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Carrillo González S, Lorduy-Gómez J, Muñoz-Baldiris R. Comités de Bioética Clínico-Asistencial en las instituciones de salud públicas y privadas de los niveles de mediana y alta complejidad de las ciudades de la Costa Atlántica de Colombia. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 122-136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.8 Recibido: 23/08/2018 Aceptado: 25/02/2019. (shrink)

Evidence is summarized which indicates that the DNA loop anchoring proteins in chromosomes are effectively heterodimers that stack and are fastened into a bilaterally symmetrical array along the chromonemal axis. The evidence consists primarily of the observations made twenty five to thirty years ago on the pattern of sister chromatid exchanges and the way the DNA chains are sorted in the formation of diplochromosomes in cells that have undergone endoreduplication. The evidence indicates that each chain of DNA in the single (...) duplex, which is assumed to run the length of a chromosome, is anchored to a bilaterally symmetrical axis of heterodimers that sort the two original chains among the four derived chromatids of each diplochromosome in a very precise way. These observations are considered in the context of investigations on the nature of scaffold proteins and the loop anchorage sequences, as well as the advances being made on the nature of DNA binding proteins and the roles of topoisomerase II. (shrink)

Fertility preservationFertility preservation is increasingly available to pediatric and adolescentAdolescents populations whose future fertility is threatened. These reproductive technologies raise questions about the interestsInterest of younger children in future fertility, parental interestsInterest and influences on adolescentsAdolescents, and the interestsInterest of persons no longer living. Ethical and legal analyses of specific case examples highlight key issues of parental permissionParental permission and minorMinorassentAssent, emerging adolescentAdolescentsautonomyAutonomy, and postmortemRetrieval, gametegamete retrievalGamete retrieval.

This collection of essays represents a sample of the work carried out on the various urgent issues arising from the contemporary "war in terror" by researchers in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Swansea University UK and/or who attended the 2005 conference on politics and ethics at the University of Southern Mississippi (Gulf Coast). Certain specific topics are obviously prompted by this general theme; others dealt with in this book are perhaps not as obviously connected to it - (...) though they are no less important for that. This book is therefore intended to cover some ground in both types of topic and it is to be hoped that its contents will stimulate further reflection and writing on the deep controversies that recent events in world politics have stoked. However misguided much of the debate has been, many have contended that the present era is witnessing a "clash of civilisations", in which fundamentally different value-systems confront each other with their mutually opposed and antagonistic views of the world. This position often undergirds a moral relativism, which denies that there are any universal values: all we have, according to this outlook, are the different values of different cultures seeking (insofar as they "clash") to impose themselves on others. In the first essay, James Beard counters this argument with a case for what he calls a "thin universalism", a relatively sparse but powerful set of fundamental values which can credibly be demonstrated to have universal application.Many who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq now oppose it, not on the grounds that they were wrong at the outset but that hindsight and subsequent events have given them new reasons to revise their judgements. This has led some to think that arguments about whether a war is just, and justified, can very often only be satisfactorily made "down the line", thus excusing initial support for a conflict which thereafter goes badly wrong. In her article, Christine Stender reminds us of many of the considerations that were available in 2003 itself which readily led to just-war arguments against launching the invasion at the time. It may be easy for the passage of time to cause us to forget those factors. But, given that we can only become more adept at making just-war judgements by reflecting on past experience, it is crucial not to let them disappear in the morass of subsequent experience. Arguably, the Abu Ghraib scandal did more than any other single event to undermine what moral credibility the American occupation of Iraq ever had. It certainly raised acute questions about the conception of "virtue" that the role of combatant in war ought to necessitate and, in his essay, J. Joseph Miller subjects this issue to close philosophical scrutiny, with particular focus on the ethics of torture. Traditional just war theory has been composed of two elements: jus ad bellum, which sets out moral criteria which may sanction the resort to war, and jus in bello, which provides moral rules for its actual conduct. Recent events, and in particular the tragically chaotic situation of post-invasion Iraq, have helped to make the case for a third element: jus post bellum, which deals with the rights and responsibilities of just combatants with respect to the pursuit of a just peace once conflict has ended. This remains an under-researched area and, in their article, Mark Evans and Christine Stender introduce a wide-ranging set of considerations towards the construction of an adequate account of jus post bellum. A concept that has surged to the fore in recent times has been that of a "failed state", which has been invoked as part of arguments for "humanitarian intervention." (Afghanistan is perhaps the most obvious and pertinent example.) It is, however, a highly contentious concept and many think it has nothing other than ideological, polemical value. Whilst admitting that it is prone to such (mis)use, Mark Evans argues, in his essay, that it can be given a determinate and useful normative content, even if it does not necessarily sanction the kind of foreign policies which certain Western leaders have thought it does. Most liberal democracies have responded to the "terror threat" by introducing emergency legislation, or by otherwise suspending in some way what they would "ordinarily" have regarded as inviolable basic liberties and legal safeguards. Nazeer Patel argues that this dangerously undercuts the moral authority that these states claim for themselves and urges that we rethink how liberal democracy should appropriately respond to terrorism; it may take courage not to "overreact" against it, but he plausibly suggests a more measured and morally preferable attitude for it to take. Finally, in her essay, Claire Delisle focuses on one of the more bitter conflicts within a liberal democracy of recent times which has, it seems, been resolved in favour of peaceful accommodation: that between the Nationalist and Unionist communities in the north of Ireland/Ulster. The full story of how this peace became possible has yet to be fully told, and she adds a vital element to the tale, of how incarcerated combatants developed attitudes, strategies and a culture which built the foundations for a process that eventually brought "The Troubles" to what, it is to be hoped, is a permanent end. With the exception of the editor's contributions, the research which is published here is the product of the intellectual labours of scholars who are in the early stages of their careers. This volume is, therefore, a compendium of work in progress and the authors hope that this publication will help to further their reflections; certainly, the issues with which they engage are a long way indeed from being exhausted in terms of the scholarly attention they demand. Obviously, their appearance together in the same volume should not be taken to imply that any of the contributors endorse anything of what any of the others argue. (shrink)

This study examines how occupational sex segregation affects women’s and men’s perceptions of the availability of workplace support. Drawing on theories of gender and empirical studies of workplace tokenism, the author develops the concept of an occupational minority. Although the notion of tokenism was developed to describe processes at the level of the workplace, the author explores how being a minority at the occupational level affects workers. Using nationally representative data, she finds that in mixed-sex occupations, women report higher levels (...) of workplace support than men; in male-dominated occupations, they perceive relatively low levels of support. Men, by contrast, perceive relatively high levels of workplace support in female-dominated occupations. That is, being a member of a numerical minority in one’s occupation is an advantage for men and a disadvantage for women. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Normalizing” Intersex Didn’t Feel Normal or Honest to Me.Karen A. WalshI am an intersex woman with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). My 57–year history with this has its own trajectory—mostly driven by medical events, and how I and my parents reacted. Most of my treatment by physicians has not been positive. It didn’t make me “normal” at all. I was born normal and didn’t require medical interventions. And by (...) the way, I’ve never been confused about who or what I am.Truthful disclosure didn’t come to me about my biology and what was done to me as an infant until I was 33, when I forced the issue by removing my medical records from my endocrinologist’s office. I learned that there was never full disclosure to my [End Page 119] parents either, and therefore there was no informed consent for the “corrective” surgeries performed on me as an infant. My parents were only told that their little girl would get cancer and would not have a normal development as a girl unless her “deformed ovaries” were removed, and that they should never discuss these problems with me. Thus, after having presented with an inguinal hernia and having exploratory surgery at age 16 months, my intra–abdominal testes were removed in a second surgery two months later. I was pronounced a “male pseudohermaphrodite,” a diagnosis that was shared neither with my parents nor with me.Years later, I discovered an article my surgeon published in 1960 in the Delaware Medical Journal about me and another intersex person he operated on (whom he labeled a “true hermaphrodite”). The article gives a very detailed pathology report of my gonads, but only two sentences regarding my welfare and the rationale for performing those surgeries. Dr. J. F. Kustrup wrote in this article, “These [two cases] emphasize the need for early diagnosis and treatment in order to avoid the possibility of malignant change and to permit these individuals to follow a normal psychosexual pattern.” And: “Hermaphroditism and pseudohermaphroditism are conditions in which early diagnosis and treatment are essential to avoid malignant degeneration and to allow the child some chance toward normal pyschic [sic] development.” I was grateful to find this article because it revealed the unfounded assumptions underpinning the recommendations for treatment, much of which continues today. Worse even than the sort of social prejudice that shapes treatment is the absence of evidence for what doctors treat as “necessary” interventions. For my syndrome, CAIS, there never was—and still is not—data to support the cancer scare, or the opinion that I’d be confused and not have a normal life.From about the age of four, I can remember being different and being stonewalled by my doctor and prevented by my parents from talking about it. The feelings and fears I tried to express were shushed away, and I could tell that my questions were upsetting everyone. Even if I had wanted to be complicit with their lame diversions and nonsensical explanations, the massive abdominal scars were there as a daily reminder and hinted at a very different story.The Road to Hell is Paved with Good IntentionsGrowing up, I was treated like a fascinoma and a lab rat at a major teaching hospital on the East Coast. All I learned from those doctors as a young kid was what it feels like to be ogled, photographed and probed by a roomful of white–coated male doctors. Dissociation made itself my friend, and helped me to cope through the annual genital and anal exams and probing. I thought I was a freak and I felt completely powerless to protect myself from them and their “care”.At my annual appointment at age 12, with my mom present, three doctors told me I was infertile. Learning that I couldn’t have kids really saddened and shocked me, but there was no opportunity to talk about my feelings—either that day, or any time afterward. I was told to stop crying. I remember them telling me that there was no one else like me and that this was a random genetic anomaly, thereby reinforcing the freakishness... (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

A Byzantinist specializing in the history of the Empire of Trebizond, the author presents four books of different genres written in English and devoted to the medieval state on the south coast of the Black Sea. The most spectacular of them is a novel by Rose Macaulay, Towers of Trebizond. Dąbrowska wonders whether it is adequate to the Trebizondian past or whether it is a projection of the writer. She compares Macaulay’s novel with William Butler Yeats’s poems on Byzantium (...) which excited the imagination of readers but were not meant to draw their attention to the Byzantine past. This is, obviously, the privilege of literature. As a historian, Dąbrowska juxtaposes Macaulay’s narration with the historical novel by Nicolas J. Holmes, the travelogue written by Michael Pereira and the reports of the last British Consul in Trabzon, Vorley Harris. The author of the article draws the reader’s attention to the history of a rather unknown and exotic region. The Empire of Trebizond ceased to exist in 1461, conquered by Mehmed II. At the same time the Sultan’s army attacked Wallachia and got a bitter lesson from its ruler Vlad Dracula. But this Romanian hero is remembered not because of his prowess on the battlefield but due to his cruelty which dominated literary fiction and separated historical facts from narrative reality. The contemporary reader is impressed by the image of a dreadful vampire, Dracula. The same goes for Byzantium perceived through the magic stanzas by Yeats, who never visited Istanbul. Rose Macaulay went to Trabzon but her vision of Trebizond is very close to Yeats’s images of Byzantium. In her story imagination is stronger than historical reality and it is imagination that seduces the reader. (shrink)