Ideology and the by‐passing of the planning system: Case studies of Canary Wharf,London, and the Globe,Stockholm

This article explores the relationship between political ideology and planning in Britain and Sweden, with a particular emphasis on the by‐passing of the planning system. The prevailing ideology in each country over the last 10 years is outlined and the impact on planning identified. The argument is then given greater depth through case studies of two major projects. For Britain, this involves setting out the main features of Thatcherism and the way this has changed the purposes underlying planning and created a diversified planning system. This is followed by a case study of Canary Wharf. For Sweden, the consensus culture and the emphasis on participation and decentralization are discussed. The new planning legislation of 1987 is outlined. These aspects are then contrasted with the fiscal crisis and the development of ‘negotiation planning’. These themes are illustrated in the case study of the Globe in Stockholm.     

Anarchism,utopianism and hospitality: the work of René Schérer

Abstract

René Schérer (born 1922) is lamentably almost unknown to the Anglo-American world as his work has, as yet, not been translated. He is one of the main specialists of the French ‘utopian socialist’, Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and a major thinker in his own right. He is the author of more than twenty books and co-editor of the journal Chimères. Colleague and friend at Vincennes University (Paris 8) of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, François Châletet, Alain Brossat, Georges Navet, Miguel Abensour, Pierre Macherey..., he continues to host seminars at Paris 8 (now located at Saint-Denis). He is a living testimony to a radical past, and a continuing inspiration to a new generation of young thinkers. This article aims to convey the original specificity of his understanding of anarchism. By so doing, it will stress the importance of his work for any thinking concerned with a politicised resistance to social conformity and the supposed ‘state of things’ today.     

Mundane Myths: Heritage and the Politics of the Photographic Cliché

This paper considers the impact of photographic clichés on the management, conceptualization, and experience of heritage. Working along the grain of pejorative readings of ‘snapshot’ photography, this account views the repetitiveness and redundancy of the cliché as a critical point of departure, rather than a cause for reproach. Taking the World Heritage Site of Angkor as a core case study, three intersecting axes of political concern are sketched out to elucidate the broad social, material, and affective implications of clichéd photography for heritage. First, processes of dehistoricization and depoliticization are interrogated in relation to the role certain images play in constructing a mythic sense of the past in the present. This leads directly in to the second strand of analysis, which examines the various ways in which individuals negotiate these myths through the production of their own highly personalized photographic clichés. Here I develop the concept of an embodied politics of heritage photography to grasp the multivalent resonances of tourist clichés in particular. Finally, the implicit and explicit forms of spatial control that permeate sites such as Angkor are examined in relation to the photographic clichés they respond to and help shape.     

Rescuing the Future: César Vallejo and Postcolonial Thought

This article explores some of the ways in which the Heptaméron's thirteenth nouvelle plays upon epistolary expectations established by medieval letter-writing traditions, and it suggests how sixteenth-century epistolary exchange had shifted from its medieval antecedents, particularly in regard to the materiality of letters. It also considers the implications of Marguerite's epistolary play for the letter-writing landscape and for the subject at the very heart of the Heptaméron: love, and the fictions we necessarily engage in writing about it.     

Religion,Politics and Liberation: A Dialogue between Gustavo Gutiérrez,the 14th Dalai Lama and Gianni Vattimo

Abstract

This paper explores the contributions to scholarship and to the globalized imagination concerning religion and politics by the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, the 14th Dalai Lama and the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Their common theme of "liberation," personal and political through a common humanity, love and compassion, with or without God, deserves a very detailed examination. The three of them have made an enormous contribution to conversations on religion and politics centred on a human commonality as human beings, and to the practice of religion and politics centred on the poor, on the commandment of love and of service to the marginalized as a way of life and in a new era of hermeneutics and commonality. This paper argues that the practice of a religion of love and a compassionate politics stressing commonalities rather than differences have a lot to offer to a contemporary practice and critical reflection on political theology.     

Détente as a Strategy: Greece and the Communist World, 1974–9

The transition to democracy in 1974 was a turning point in modern Greek history. The two Turkish invasions of Cyprus and the emergence of the dispute over the Aegean seabed complicated Greek security dilemmas. Apart from cold-war challenges, including the traditional ‘menace from the North’, the country had to face a new threat that was coming from within NATO. The implementation of a détente policy was motivated by political as well as security considerations. In terms of national security, the ‘opening’ to the Communist bloc aimed to balance the perceived Turkish hegemonism and ameliorate Greek defence problems. Moreover, following the humliating military dictatorship of 1967–74, a multidimensional foreign policy was also demanded by the vast majority of the Greek public. Last but not least, an active regional policy could also aid Greece's effort to secure accession to the European Communities. The article will analyse and interpret the political and security dilemmas that were posed by the international developments of the period and the ways these interacted with Greek perceptions to shape Athens’ new détente policy.     

Exclusionary secularism: the Front national and the reinvention of laïcité

After two decades of privileged relations with Catholic traditionalism, the Front national (FN) now presents itself as the staunchest defender of laïcité. This article aims to examine this alleged secular turn by analysing its relation with Marine Le Pen’s strategy of normalisation. It argues that laïcité in today’s bleu marine FN must be understood both as a new frame to legitimise old preferences and as a strategy to reach heterogeneous constituencies. Furthermore, the article places the FN’s understanding of laïcité into the larger context of the diffusion of exclusionary readings of French secularism since 1989.     

Gabrielle Lévy and the Roussy-Lévy syndrome

In 1934, Gabrielle Lévy died at the age of 48. She became well known for an article she published on a hereditary polyneuropathy in cooperation with Gustav Roussy, resulting in the eponym Roussy-Lévy syndrome. Not much is known about this extraordinary neurologist/neuropathologist. Her family declared that she died from the disease she was studying. She was a pupil of Pierre Marie, with whom she worked at the Salpêtrière in Paris and wrote on war neurology. In cooperation with Marie, she published a number of articles on postencephalitic syndromes, which also became the subject of her 1922 thesis. Three years later, she became associate physician at the Paul-Brousse Hospital in Paris, where the study of brain tumors became one of the subjects of her scientific work. Remarkably, Lévy was first author in a few of her many articles, although Roussy confirmed that she often initiated the study and even wrote the main part. In this article her career is considered in the context of the struggle of women physicians to improve their position during the early-twentieth century. She probably died from a brain tumor or a postencephalitic syndrome.