A few words for Axel Vander: John Banville and the pursuit of deconstruction

The revelations about Paul de Man’s activities in Belgium during the Second World War placed him, and by extension deconstruction, on public trial. The affair gave rise to a series of novels, such as Gilbert Adair’s The Death of the Author (1992) or Bernhard Schlink’s Homecoming (2008), that dismiss critical theory as ethically bankrupt charlatanism. John Banville’s Shroud (2002) and Ancient Light (2012) place the enigmatic theorist Axel Vander, a figure resembling de Man, in the dock, but these novels form no decisive judgement about his guilt. The texts reflect on memory, mourning, forgetting and responsibility, and about what writing might consign to the future, questions persistently raised by de Man and Jacques Derrida. As such, they might be said to speak to, or “inhabit”, deconstruction, rather than condemning it. This essay traces how Banville reckons with Axel Vander, and pursues the thought of de Man and Derrida, by means of three words: shroud, ash and cleave. These words at once connote concealment, destruction and separation and also preservation, survival and connection. As the discussion suggests, such words testify to the memory work performed by deconstruction.     

Reenacting ethnic cleansing: people's history and elitist nationalism in contemporary Poland

This article addresses the problem of the present‐day historical discourse in Poland by taking under scrutiny one specific event: the historical re‐enactment of the ethnic cleansing of Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, staged in a small town in southeastern Poland, Radymno, in the summer of 2013. It is based on research, carried out by the author and a group of students in Radymno and its surroundings in the period preceding and following the performance, as well as on content analysis of the press. The comparison of the top‐down political and mass media discourse with local responses to the idea of re‐enactment and, more broadly, local understandings of Polish–Ukrainian relations, reveal many contradictions. In attempting to understand them, the article discusses broader ramifications of the ‘democratization of history’: the political contestation, class rhetoric and societal tensions that are tangled up in historical debates.     

On making noise: Hokkolorob and its place in Indian student movements

This article focuses on the 2014 Hokkolorob (‘Let there be noise’) movement at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal, a student agitation that ultimately led to the forced resignation of a vice-chancellor after intervention by the Chief Minister of the state. This movement has passed into campus folklore, with a Wikipedia entry devoted to it signposting its distinctive cultural features, including public art and hashtag activism. However, in many ways Hokkolorob did not entirely fit the pattern of student protests at other Indian universities, not only because it achieved short-term success, drawing the wider public into openly expressed sympathy with the agitating students, but also because it eschewed party politics and opened the way for new expressions of dissent. Moreover, it drew attention to the problem of providing safe spaces on campuses to students across genders and orientations. Unique among the many upheavals in the Indian higher education landscape over the past few years, Hokkolorob needs to be understood in the context of a crisis that affects both the public university and the Indian polity.     

Variability and sampling strategy of cave wall concretion: Case study of the moonmilk found in Leye Cave (Dordogne)

Cave Art is a fragile testimony of past human societies and the development of modern behaviours. In limestone caves, moonmilk commonly endanger the artworks. It is a calcite deposit with a large variability of chemical composition and morphological structures and it hosts numerous microbial communities. The possibility to characterize this deposit in the field would aid in a better understanding of cave behaviour and allow the setting up of proper conservation measures. The present study analyses the variability of a moonmilk strip of metric size in Leye Cave in the Vézère Valley (Dordogne, France). The cave was not ornate and was selected as a laboratory cave in which in‐situ observations and micro‐sampling could be carried out, before they were performed in cavities hosting parietal artworks. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations of 24 samples allowed, for the first time, an investigation of the variability of moonmilk deposits over the same wall of a few metres dimension. The observations highlighted the low variability of the moonmilk at the microscopic scale when regarding the chemical composition and morphological structures, despite significant macroscopic diversity, thus providing insights into how to optimize the sampling strategy of moonmilk in ornate caves.     

Syrian refugee resettlement and the role of local immigration partnerships in Ontario,Canada

We examine Canada's recent Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative (SRRI) paying close attention to the resettlement role played by mid‐sized urban communities. We elaborate on a key policy dimension at work at this scale of action: local immigration partnerships (LIPs). We start with a very brief review of Canada's history of mass refugee resettlement. Second, we assess the policy of LIPs, particularly how they have been presented as a form of “place‐based policy,” and third, we offer an overview of the role the LIPs played in three case study communities (Hamilton, Ottawa, and Waterloo) during the SRRI. Finally, we present three overarching themes that emerged from our research in each of these communities: the importance of each community's history of immigration and refugee resettlement; the embeddedness of the LIP and its leadership in the local community; and how the positioning of each LIP relative to the three levels of government and its official Resettlement Assistance Program agreement holders impacted its ability to act. The history, location, and place characteristics of each community influenced the nature of intersectoral and intergovernmental relations in distinctive ways, and differentially shaped the effectiveness of each LIP's ability to contribute to the SRRI.     

The role of local immigration partnerships in Syrian refugee resettlement in Waterloo Region,Ontario

As of January 29, 2017 Canada had received 40,081 Syrian refugees. The scale and scope of this resettlement is historic, with the only comparable event being the arrival of 60,000 Indo‐Chinese refugees in the late 1970s. Since that time, much has changed in local resettlement policy. This research focuses on one component of these changes—the role of Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) in Syrian refugee resettlement—through a case study of an official refugee reception centre in the Waterloo Region of Ontario and a series of interviews with key informants from multiple sectors involved in resettlement. Results indicate Waterloo's LIP playing a sizable role, but not acting as the sole response body to refugee resettlement. Nevertheless, participants saw the LIP as a crucial part of Waterloo's resettlement efforts. Despite being a product of a tri‐level intergovernmental agreement, the LIP played a central role in shaping a local strategy by using local solutions. LIPs represent an example of place‐based policy that worked well during the Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative, but LIPs’ success may set a challenging precedent for future mass refugee resettlement events.     

‘‘The Acceptable Face of the Unintelligible’: Intermediality and the Science Play’

Abstract

The limitations of the ‘science-in-theatre’ genre is explored and the concept of the intermedial science play is introduced as an alternative to conventional science plays. How the science-in-theatre play dampens the mediality of the stage in order to establish a specific contract with its audience in order to realize what Carl Djerassi calls ‘didactic realism’ is considered. By virtue of the dramatic form and the didacticism it establishes, the science-in-theatre play limits the means by which audiences may encounter and enjoy responding to science. In particular, when staging concepts from the postclassical sciences, the intermedial science play offers artists and spectators new approaches to the sciences of infinities, complexity and emergence whilst also establishing a new, interactive contract with the audience based on forms of pedagogy associated with the thinking of Jacques Rancière. Using the media theory of Peter Boenisch and others, intermediality is identified as more than the mere presence of multimedia, but in terms of the effects it produce on the sensorium of the spectator.     

Immigrants,Banlieues, and Dangerous Things: Ideology as an Aesthetic Affair

Abstract: This paper engages with the notion of ideology, bringing together Laclau's theorisation of the specificity of the ideological, and Rancière's notion of aesthetic regimes. Ideology, I argue, works through what it makes available to the senses and what it makes to make sense. It is in this sense that it is an aesthetic affair. This argument is illustrated with an account of the so‐called “securitarian ideology” in France that characterises the repressive policies of the recent governments.