The book is an attempt to explore the affinities between contemporary critical theories and modernist and postmodernist American poetry. The analysis focuses on poststructuralist theories, notorious for their tendency to destabilize generic boundaries between literary, philosophical and critical discourses. The main argument and the structure of the book derive from Jacques Derrida’s essay “Che cos’è la poesia” [What is poetry?] in which the philosopher postulates the impossibility of defining poetry by comparing a poem to a hedgehog – prickly, solitary, untamed, (...) fragile and protective, rolling itself up into a ball at the first sign of danger or when in the hands of the reader-intruder. The metaphor captures thus the fragility of the relationship between poetry and the world. The book examines this relationship as exemplified by the erinaceous poetics of high modernists and their postmodernist followers In the study I employ also other oststructuralist theories, such as the notion of the text and the pleasure of the text formulated by Roland Barthes, the heories of metaphor as seen by Paul Ricoeur or Paul de Man, and gender-sensitive theories of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

Feminism could be described as a discourse that negotiates corporeality, what a body is and what a body can do. Nevertheless, the specter of essentialism means that the biological or anatomical body, the body that is commonly understood to be the "real" body, is often excluded from this investigation. The increasingly sterile debate between essentialism and antiessentialism has inadvertently encouraged this somatophobia. I argue that these opposing positions are actually inseparable, sharing a complicitous relationship that produces material effects.

The relationship between friendship and theory is neither accidental nor essential. In many ways we might define theory as an attempt to break with the seduction of friendship and, in so doing, est...

By reading the analyses of mysticism found in Beauvoir and Irigaray with and against some medieval women's mystical texts, the paper articulates a possible space for the divine within feminist thought.

Political thrillers often encourage the feeling that a mere individual has the power to make a difference on a large scale. Caught up in a chain of events they wished they had never uncovered, a protagonist can occupy a position in which their actions have far-reaching consequences, with the rookie CIA analyst accidentally bringing down a whole corrupt political system being only one example. Much of the critical attention these films have garnered falls under the rubric of detective work in (...) that the protagonist is seen as exposing a web of corruption which would otherwise have gone on unnoticed. However, this paper is focused on how the scale of the individual comes into contact with other, larger scales of events. Points of contact between scales are important because they are where change can take place, thus allowing an individual to influence the supra-individual. (shrink)

Among the many themes in which the Irish modernist novelist, James Joyce, was intellectually and emotionally engaged, the issue of British imperialism and Irish nationalism was paramount. While Joyce despised the English colonial occupation of his country, he was equally dismissive of a mythical Irish nationalism, particularly in the way it was endorsed by the Gaelic Athletic Association. While Joyce is not renowned as a writer of sport; nevertheless, sporting pursuits can be found throughout his novels. Joyce’s nuanced understanding of (...) how English culture has permanently altered Irish social subjectivities (and vice versa) can be found in sharp relief in his novels, particularly Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This article takes sport as a theme in Joyce’s work through which to explore fractured national identities through a framework inspired by the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their post-Marxist work enables an examination of sport and nationality that goes beyond the existing orthodox Gramscian theory that has proven so productive in the understanding of sport in Cultural Studies. The article will commence with a brief review of existing studies of Joyce with respect to sport and national debates. After summarising the broad Gramscian approaches to understanding sport and nationalism, some of the key concepts in Laclau and Mouffe’s political philosophy are then outlined. The article will apply those concepts to the way Joyce depicts sport, especially cricket and hockey, to deconstruct the binaries in the debate between British colonialism and Irish nationalism. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between critical distance and the idea of proximity. In times that are often described as ‘global’, ‘24/7’, ‘connected’, ‘networked’ and ‘immersive’, distance seems ever reduced and proximity omnipresent. The contemporary impression of ubiquitous proximity might constitute a threat to the survival of critical distance understood either as a cornerstone of enlightened and humanist critical practice or as a key metaphysical ‘technology’. The resulting ‘crisis of critical distance’ produces the question of how to position oneself with (...) regard to the ‘other’ in a time that lacks distance and privileges proximity? In tracking the ambiguity that surrounds proximity – the desire to be near and the need to maintain a distance – this article rereads some key Heideggerian and Derridean texts in order to attempt a deconstruction of the opposition of distance and proximity at work in the ‘metaphysics of presence’. (shrink)

Peter Draper has offered a critique of concept analysis in nursing, suggesting that many concept analysis studies can be regarded as low‐grade literature reviews. Although I will argue en passant that he was right, defending Draper is not my main concern in this paper. Instead, I undertake a close reading of a single study, and identify a series of puzzles about what it says. The puzzles pertain to the distinction between concept and phenomenon; the function of definition; discriminating between the (...) concept of interest and other concepts; how defining attributes are derived; in what sense concept analysis clarifies the concept; whether concept analysis can adjudicate current debates; the role of model cases. The point is to show how a precise and detailed interrogation of this kind sets an agenda of questions which can be asked about other examples of the same genre. The approach gives rise to concerns about the politics of reading in the current academic environment, and I refer to these concerns briefly at the end. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, critique has played an overarching role in how Western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the (...) critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper, Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the ongoing experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature. In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment critique has played an overarching role in how western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the (...) critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the on-going experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature. In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself. (shrink)