Más o Menos Muerto: Bare Life in Roberto Bolaño's 2666

This article explores Chilean Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 (2004) with a focus on the significance of what Giorgio Agamben describes as ‘bare life.’ In the novel, Bolaño employs Pedro Páramo as a metaphor to talk about feminicide and violence against women in Santa Teresa, the fictional Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The victims of violence in Santa Teresa in 2666 are described as ‘más o menos muerto,’ a condition that points to the way in which disappeared and misidentified bodies are forced into eternal anonymity and denied even the right of death. Whereas the dead in Pedro Páramo are denied the rights of citizenship in life, those in 2666 face a denial of rights that extends from life into death, leaving them with nothing, not even their names. In 2666, the physical violence is preceded by what Juárez photojournalist Julián Cardona describes as ‘economic violence.’     

Memory Mapping: Affect,Place, and Testimony in El Lugar Más Pequeño (2011)

This article examines the Salvadoran documentary El Lugar Más Pequeño (The Tiniest Place, 2011) and argues that the film gives new insight into the complicated spaces and practices of memory post-transition and post-conflict through a process I call ‘memory mapping,’ which I define as the aesthetic process of representing the affective, polyvocal, layered relationship between past, present, and place as experienced by individuals and the communities in which they live. Engaging primarily with affect and memory theory, I contend that the film maps post-conflict memory in two specific ways: first, through testimony, and second, through an exploration of the relationship between memory and place. Ultimately, I argue that memory mapping sheds new light on how the aftermath of conflict – the physical, but also the emotional ruination caused by violence – is negotiated in the everyday of human life.     

La Crise des intellectuels français: aspects historiques et retombées historiographiques

Les intellectuels français ont-ils connu, à la fin du siècle dernier, une crise ? Ce diagnostic vint du milieu intellectuel lui-même, qui, affaibli par la perte de crédibilité des systèmes de pensée associés aux confrontations idéologiques de la guerre froide, voyait dans la montée en puissance d'une culture médiatique de nouveaux leaders d'opinion brouillant les contours de la mouvance culturelle jusque-là essentiellement constituée d'hommes et de femmes venus de la sphère de l'imprimé. D'une certaine façon, le pathos l'a en effet emporté sur le logos, discours construit et analyse argumentée des problèmes posés à une société. A cet égard, la crise des intellectuels est à la fois un reflet et un accélérateur de la crise des démocraties représentatives, dont le fondement était l'examen raisonné et la concurrence raisonnable des possibles et dont le fonctionnement risque d'être parasité par les palpitations successives d'opinions publiques en proie à des émotions liées aux bruits et aux fureurs de la culture médiatique, devenue elle-même, de plus en plus, une culture-monde.     

Freedom of speech and racial vilification in Australia: ‘The Bolt case’ in public discourse

This article examines the public discourse that emerged in the aftermath of the 2011 decision of the Federal Court of Australia in Eatock v Bolt. We characterise the narrative of ‘the Bolt case’ as a ‘mobilising discourse’ that countered rather than echoed the decision itself. This discourse had three main messages: encouraging scepticism about the authenticity of fair-skinned Aboriginal persons and judgment by non-Aboriginal persons about the legitimacy of Aboriginal identity according to skin colour; questioning the legitimacy of racial vilification laws and strengthening a libertarian conception of freedom of speech. We explain how such a contrary discourse became dominant in the wake of a successful racial vilification action and consider the implications of these events.

本文研究了2011年澳大利亚联邦法庭就伊脱克诉博尔特案做出判决后的公众议论。博尔特案的叙事属于“动员话语”,是对判决的反弹而非反响。该话语主要包括三个信息：鼓励对浅肤色原住人士的真实性的质疑,鼓励由非原住人士根据肤色判定原住民身份的合法性;质疑种族诽谤法的合理性;支持言论自由的观念。笔者解释了何以这种矛盾的话语盛行于一次成功的种族诽谤行动之后,并讨论了这些事件的影响。     

Maritime Durées: Long-Term Structures in a Coastal Landscape

The interaction between humans and the maritime coastal landscape must be one of the central theoretical questions for maritime archaeology. How should an academic discipline, which is defined by its studies in a certain physical milieu, avoid the trap of environmental determinism and still be able to argue for the special influence of the maritime factor? And how should this long-term relation to the sea be interpreted and described? In this article, based mainly on material from the central Swedish Baltic Sea coast, three examples of long-term structures regarding the relationship between people and the sea are discussed. The structures, here called “maritime durees”, which almost all coastal habitants in the analyzed area seem to have had in common are linked to: exploitation of marine resources, communication over water and the mental presence of the sea. In conclusion the actual meaning of these long-term structures for everyday life and for cultural and social change are discussed in comparison to more short term structures: the changing historical circumstances and possibilities for people to choose different strategies.