When the Far Enemy becomes Near

Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo killings

The heinous killing of 12 journalists and staff from Charlie Hebdo needs to be interpreted with at least two different focal lenses. There is a French (or French-European) dimension, but there is also an international dimension of these killings, one that connects the spread of ISIS with the strategy of the two ...

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When the Far Enemy becomes Near

All Power to the {Historical} Imagination!

Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History (Duke University Press, 2014) is an astonishing work of synthetic historical theory. Karatani views world history as a history of modes of exchange. He rejects the classical Marxist view of history though as modes of production, to which political, religious and cultural levels ...
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All Power to the {Historical} Imagination!

Compose Yourself!

After yet another review in the New York Times Book Review about some book about Scott Fitzgerald, I felt it was time to write something about Kate Zambreno’s book Heroines. I taught some of it this semester past and made at least a couple of Zambreno converts. Zambreno’s Heroines (Semiotexte 2012) ...
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Compose Yourself!

Season’s Greetings and the War on Christmas

Consider season’s greetings. For many, these are unselfconscious gestures. But for others, they are loaded with significance. While we can together celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah after Thanksgiving, along with the new New Year, showing respect for each other, some prefer to exclude. There are the combatants against <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/bill-oreilly-war-on-christmas-2014-fox-news_n_6264254.html" ...

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Season’s Greetings and the War on Christmas

The Discarded and the Dignified – Part 6

From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”

Embodying the third

Returning to the beginning of this essay, I have tried to suggest how we might view the embodied rather than dissociated self state as part of the reconstruction of the third in the wake of trauma. In her discussion of the Gugaleto Seven case Gobodo-Madikizela (2013) described the ...

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The Discarded and the Dignified – Part 6

The Discarded and the Dignified – Part 3

From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”

Failed witnessing: The Drowned and the Saved

The pivotal function of the moral third in relation to collective trauma is constituted by the acknowledgment of violation by the others who serve as witness. At a social level this role is played by the eyes and voice of the world that watches ...

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The Discarded and the Dignified – Part 3

The Discarded and the Dignified – Parts 1 and 2

From the Failed Witness to “You are the Eyes of the World”

In this paper I make an effort to blend with my theoretical perspective some of my experience traveling in many parts of the world to places where my colleagues are struggling with the effects of violence and collective trauma either in the present or its aftermath. In addition to psychoanalytic ...

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The Discarded and the Dignified – Parts 1 and 2

Psychology and Torture

The recent release of the long awaited Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, has been receiving extensive coverage in the media. Among the many troubling details revealed is that the CIA paid two military psychologists $81 million to devise and carry out ...
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