Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudramas

In the late 1980s and 1990s, American popular culture has been increasingly rife with conspiracy narratives of recent historical events. Among cultural producers, filmmaker Oliver Stone has had a significant impact on popular understanding of American culture in the late twentieth century through a series of docudramas which reread American history through the lens of conspiracy theory and paranoia. This paper examines the films of Oliver Stone—in particular Platoon , Born on the Fourth of July , JFK , and Nixon —asking why they have achieved popularity and brought about catharsis, why they are the subject of attack, and why it is useful to look beyond the debate about truth and falsehood that has surrounded them. It analyzes the ways in which Stone's status as a Vietnam veteran allowed Platoon to be accorded the authenticity of survivor discourse, whereas JFK and Nixon were subject to almost hysterical attack, not only because of Stone's assertions of conspiracy, but also because of his cinematic style of tampering with famous images. Taking these films as its point of departure, this paper examines the role of images in the construction of history, the form of the docudrama, the reenactment of historical images, fantasies of history, and ways in which paranoia part of the practice of citizenship.     

More than Paradoxes to Offer: Feminist History as Critical Practice

Book reviewed in this article:
Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man By Joan Wallach Scott     

《秘密花园》的女性主义解读

弗朗西斯·霍奇森·伯内特(Frances Hodgson Bumett)的儿童小说<秘密花园>(The secret Garden,1911)是其最著名、最成功的作品.人物塑造是这部作品的成功基础.除此之外,由于它体现了作者的女性主义思想.这一努力,同样是作品艺术魅力的重要所在.本文试图从人物、小说类型及花园的隐喻意义三个方面,从女性主义角度解读这部小说,探讨的笔触主要在于:第一,对人物的分析集中在两个少年人物——玛丽和迪肯,说明作者对"双性同体"思想的肯定.第二,该小说的类型使其成为形式独特的儿童小说.作者打破了传统中男孩子的书和女孩子的书的界限,将历险小说和家庭小说结合在一起.第三,伯内特给秘密花园赋予了隐喻意义.荒芜了十年的花园在玛丽的手中复活,因此它象征着女性发挥创造力的园地,是其"自己的屋子".     

Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State

Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations.     

The Intrusion of Animals into the Human Body: Fantasy and Reality

In 1966 Frank Mitchell, a.k.a. “The Mad Axe-Man” escaped from Dartmoor Prison and, as panic swept the locality, one of the most concerted, and ultimately fruitless, manhunts of the time was instigated. The event also seems to have fuelled an increase in legend-telling so that the real-life case became intrinsically linked with the contemporary legend known as “The Boyfriend's Death.” Even today the story is central to the teenage storytelling repertoire in the British Isles, where it is often known as “The Mad Axeman.” This paper uses the Mitchell affair to examine the interface between lore and life and, in particular, the rôle of the press in that process.     

Feminine and Feminist

Book reviewed in this article: The Waiting List: An Iraqi Woman's Tales of Alienation, Daisy Al-Amir Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond, Joseph T. Zeidan Populism and Feminism in Iran, Haideh Moghissi     

Feminist digital geographies

At a moment when disciplinary attentions are turning to the digital as a subject and object of geographic inquiry, we consider enduring contours and new directions in feminist digital geographies scholarship. We revisit the centrality of feminist critiques of Science to critical digital geographies and their predecessors, identifying axes of scholarly engagement that have emerged from feminist theory and praxis. Simultaneously, we acknowledge the resounding whiteness and heteronormativity of these theoretical origins. In the second half of the article, we trace new horizons of contemporary digital geographies scholarship that engage queer and critical race theory, postcolonial feminism, and black and queer code studies. These theoretical moves give voice to longstanding silences and are indispensable to a political and ethical digital geographic scholarship and praxis, as well as to re-making our technologies and ourselves as digital subjects.     

Women In The City: Feminist Analyses of Urban Geography

Four different sites of gendered social practice are identified as major concerns of socialist feminist urban geography: the home or domestic sphere; the paid workplace; the city's built environment; and localities. Literature about each is described and reviewed Theoretical implications of the feminist reading of urban geography are then considered in particular the feminist criticisms of traditional models of urban spatial structure, and challenges to existing forms of feminist geography from debates in social theory.     

Announcing: The Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography

In this brief announcement we have the pleasure of introducing the inaugural Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography. The lecture will appear annually in the pages of Gender, Place and Culture. The first lecture, printed here, is by Ruth Fincher of the University of Melbourne. Her article is preceded by four papers that pay tribute to Jan Monk's academic achievements and her dedication to encouraging and guiding the careers of emerging scholars around the world.