WITH SPLINTERS (OR STARS) IN OUR EYES: ON READING THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL WITH MARTIN JAY

This mostly admiring review article focuses on Martin Jay's 2020 essay collection entitled Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations. Though it highlights details and insights from nearly every essay in the collection, the review devotes significant attention to chapter 4, which focuses on the relationship of the Frankfurt School's first-generation scholars with Sigmund Freud. The departure point for my engagement with Jay's fourth chapter is the translation of the German word Trieb (drive) as “instinct” throughout The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Although Jay's treatment of Max Horkheimer's, Theodor W. Adorno's, and Herbert Marcuse's recourses to Freudian psychoanalysis emphasizes their abiding commitment to Freud's theory of instinctual forces (over and against objections to his biologism), the question of whether a drive differs from an instinct does not arise. This question therefore offers an occasion to speculate on how distinguishing more firmly between instinct and drive might matter for the Frankfurt School's opposition between first and second nature. Though I praise Jay's decision to include a chapter on Miriam Hansen's Benjaminian revision of the public sphere, I also criticize his practice, in this volume at least, of consigning most scholarship authored by women to the endnotes rather than engaging with it in the main text.     

Analysis of the Gulf of Mexico’s Veracruz-Havana Route of La Flota de la Nueva España

During colonial times, an active maritime trade existed between Spain and the New World, with convoys sailing annually to and from Mexico and returning via Havana, Cuba, after wintering in America. A database constructed from secondary and open sources revealed that Spanish vessels were sailing over open waters along a northern path near Louisiana and a southern path across the central Gulf of Mexico. These routes were traversed in about one month and scheduling for the convoy was based on an understanding of the Americas’ meteorological and oceanographic climate. However, other factors may also have been involved in the directional layout of the routes. Today these ancient routes crisscross planning areas for oil and gas lease sales in the US Exclusive Economic Zone and the information presented in this article may aid in identifying areas where historic shipwrecks may lie. Maps and documents found during this study helped piece together the evolution of our understanding of the Gulf of Mexico surface circulation and how this knowledge influenced sailing during colonial times.     

The US Government’s Role in Deepwater Archaeology: The Deep Gulf Wrecks Project

The deepwater part of the Gulf of Mexico has shown a remarkable increase in oil and gas exploration, development, and production. In part, this is because of the development of new technologies reducing operational costs and risks, as well as the finding of reservoirs with high-production wells. With expanding development in deep water come increasing challenges in managing our nation’s Submerged Cultural Heritage on the Outer Continental Shelf and Slope. To fulfill obligations under Section 106 of the Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (36 CFR 800), managers need a clearer understanding of the size of debris fields expected around deepwater shipwrecks, as well as their state of preservation and future research potential—both cultural and biological. With this in mind, the Minerals Management Service, in partnership with the National Oceanographic Partnership Program and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Explorations, launched the Deep Gulf Wrecks Project.     

Books: Notes & reviews

Australian

T. Brennan, New Community, Problems and Policies, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, pp. 353, $3.95.

J. E. Richardson, Patterns of Australian Federalism, Centre for Research on Federal Financial Relations, Research Monograph No. 1, ANU, Canberra, 1973, pp. 142 + x, $4.00.

Australian Women in Governments Past and Present, revised as of July, 1973, pp. 15. Survey of Women in Local Government in Australia, 3rd edn, September, 1973, pp. 60. Both compiled by A. Viola Smith, 6 Baden Road, Neutral Bay, NSW 2089.

The Government Law Newsletter (the Newsletter of the Government Law Interest Group of the Australasian Universities Law Schools Association), No. 1, August, 1970; from No. 2, March, 1972, issued twice a year. Editor: Stan Hotop, University of Sydney Law School, 173–5 Phillip St, Sydney, NSW 2000. Free.

Australian Law Librarians’ Group Newsletter, No. 1, December, 1973. Six times a year. Editor: Robert Watt, Law Reform Commission, Box 6, GPO, Sydney, NSW 2001. Free.

Non‐Australian

Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at all, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes. University of California Press, 1973, pp. 182 + xviii.

Dusan Sidjanski, ed., Political Decision Making Processes: studies in national, comparative and international politics, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1973, pp. 237, Dfl 27.50.

P. R. Kaim‐Caudle, Comparative Social Policy and Social Security: A Ten Country Study, Martin Robertson, 1973, pp. viii + 357, £2.25.

Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Voting and Collective Choice. Some Aspects of the Theory of Group Decision‐Making, Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. viii + 184, $9.50.

Government Publications Review: an international journal, 1 (1), Fall, 1973, quarterly, $US35 p.a. Published by SEBD Publications Inc., 380 Saw Mill River Road, Elmsford, New York 10523.

Bertell Oilman, Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, Cambridge University Press, 1971. pp. 325 + xvi, paperback, £1.80.

L. G. Churchward, The Soviet Intelligentsia: An essay on the social structure and roles of Soviet intellectuals during the 1960s, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 1973, pp. xiii + 204, $9.85.

Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 1971, pp. xi + 319, $12.50.

Leslie R. Marchant, The Phoenix Seat: An Introductory Study of Maoism and the Chinese Communist Quest for a Paradise on Earth, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1973, pp. 276, $7.95.

F. C. Langdon, Japan's Foreign Policy, University of British Columbia Press, 1973, pp. 231 + xiv, $9.00.

Donald F. Miller, Pervasive Politics: a study of the Indian district, Melbourne Politics Monograph, 1972.

Brian Edwards, ed., Right Out—>The Labour Victory 1972, A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1973, pp. 262, $6.50.

Mahdi Elmandjra, The United Nations System: An Analysis, Faber and Faber, London, 1973, pp. 329 + annexes, $16.50.

Gerhard Mally, The European Community in Perspective, the New Europe, the United States and the World, D. C. Heath and Co., Lexington, Massachusetts, 1973, pp. xvi + 349, $11.50.     

The New York and the Josephine: two steamships of the Charles Morgan Line

Charles Morgan (1795 to 1882) was one of the most important figures in the development of steam packet service in the United States. Morgan's career spanned over a half century, during which he controlled some 117 steamships. Of the three known wrecks of Morgan Line steamers, two, the New York (1837–1845) and the Josephine (1867–1881), have been documented by the Minerals Management Service, a Federal agency responsible for overseeing the extraction of mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf. The two vessels document the changing technology of steam navigation through the middle part of the 19th century.