Commentary archive

Postcolonial melancholy A reply to Luke Gibbons Francis Mulhern Luke Gibbons (RP67) certainly has a way with words, especially those of others; his representation of my views (RP65) is something less than fastidious. l However, there is little value in dwelling much on this; an appropriately detailed self-defence would consist mainly of requotation. Interested readers […]

COMMENTARY Post-sexual ity? The Wilde Centenary Joseph Bristow A lmost one hundred years ago to the day, Oscar Wilde found himself in the midst of the first of three trials that would eventually go against him. Although it was Wilde who initially sued for libel, the defendant rallied sufficient evidence to have him sentenced to […]

COMMENTARY The value of community Sean Savers W hether the policies of the Thatcher and Reagan years brought any overall economic benefits is doubtful; that they have had high social costs is now quite evident. The unfettered pursuit of self-interest has weakened social bonds and led to social decay and disintegration on a scale which […]

Hiding Out or Moving On? Feminism in Psychoanalysis ‘Why are we all here?’, Juliet Mitchell asks her audience, rhetorically. She is opening a conference in London held in May to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism. ‘Why are we all here, and not there – as feminists, that […]

Dialogue Without the Other? A Reply to Francis Mulhern Luke Gibbons Condemning national values has a different meaning depending on whether one lives in a little country (one’s own) in the orbit ofanother, larger one, or whether one lives abroad, in a third country, where one is – where one believes oneself to be – […]

COMMENTARY Return of the Translator Jonathan Ree ‘The Death of the Author’ is one of the great catchphrases of recent philosophy. It started as the title of an essay by Roland Barthes in 1968, and cleverly captures the idea that the act of reading ought to attend to textual structures rather than authorial personalities – […]

COMMENTARY Sexuality and Subcultures in the Wake of Welfare Capitalism A/an Sinfie/d When the British Parliament eventually debated the Gulf War – journalists had earnestly demanded this, pretending to believe that it might somehow make a difference; when we finally got this debate, just two new ideas were produced. One, from an Ulster Unionist, was […]

Fleshy Memory Kelly Oliver Freud conceived of the ego as energetically self-contained, though formed in relations with the maternal and paternal figures of the Oedipal situation. In his Hegelian reading of Freud, Lacan emphasises the relationships that give rise to (and undermine) a sense of ego identity with his famous account of the infant’s self-recognition […]

COMMENTARY Looking for the Good Life Bob Brecher It is almost impossible these days to stumble across anything like a vision of the good society lurking even in the background of a left position. From the intellectual void that is the Labour Party, to the labyrinthine morass of postmodern and postfeminist postponements that constitutes the […]

COMMENTARY Coal Economics versus Emotions? Andrew G/yn On 13 October 1992 the British government sanctioned the closure by British Coal of 31 collieries by the end of the year. It completely miscalculated the scale of public response, especially from such unlikely quarters as the streets of Cheltenham and the pages of the Sun and Express. […]

COMMENTARY Ethnic War in Bosnia? Cornelia Sorabji Bosnia is fading from the news, winter has descended to sever its population from the outside world, and military intervention of any significant scale has not occurred. In Britain much of the debate over the desirability of such intervention has revolved around the idea of ‘ethnic war’. Given […]

COMMENTARY Endgame Joseph McCarney Every now and then an event occurs which brings a shift of perspective on the intellectual scene, relating familiar components in new ways and by its oblique light revealing the contents of dark corners and alleys. Such an event is the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s The End ofHistory and the Last […]

Conservatism, Ideology, Rationale, and a Red Light Ted Honderich Among reviews of my Conservatism, Kevin Magill’s in Radical Philosophy 59 several times struck me as the most challenging. It is not Tory bumble, of course, and it has all his characterful intelligence. But in my re-readings of it, it fails to fulfil its promise. It […]

COMMENT Compulsive Communism A Reply to the Reply by Gregory Elliott and Peter Osborne Tony Skiffen In ‘Active Citizenship as Political Obligation’ (RP 58) I argue that it is in principle as legitimate for us to be required to perform ‘community service’ as it is for us to be subjected to compulsory taxation. Here I […]

COMMENT A Sweet and Sour Victory in Eastern Europe Arpad Szakolzai and Agnes Horvath Sudden and unexpected changes have an air of miracles about them. And the events that are happening right now in Eastern Europe certainly belong to this category. The pace and character of the changes are inexplicable, not only for people unfamiliar […]

The Personal and Political 20 Years On fan Craib Thinking about 1968, the most interesting thing for me is 1967. 1967 comes back more easily; it is the signpost from which, sometimes with difficulty, I can move forward to what I remember of 1968. The reason is quite simple: in 1967, I was in love, […]

The’A’LeveICanon Sally Minogue [This is a slightly revised version of a paper delivered at the Conference for Higher Education Teachers of English at the University of Kent, Easter 1987.] I want to begin by saying something about the institutionalisation of English in education, and we don’t need to look far for images of this institutionalisation. […]

COMMENT Ideology and the Media: A Response Martin Barker’s examination of problems and evasions discernible in the use made of the concept of ideology by major strands of media research (Radical Philosophy 46) is timely. Media analysis in Britain seems now to be well-launched into a phase in which empirically-based studies, including studies of audience […]

Philosophy and Aggression Jean Grimshaw It is not uncommonly suggested that whereas men tend to have an aggressive or competitive style of interacting or conducting a debate or a discussion, women tend to be more co-operative. They listen better, are more supportive of other people’s contributions; they are less prone to be assertive, more anxious […]

COMMENT Strange Days for Philosophers Geoffrey Thomas Philosophers appear to have an unquiet certainty that something is happening to their subject. What I don’t think is happening is the “end” of philosophy. Rather there is a confusion of two things which are very easily detachable. As a distinctive activity philosophy is ineliminable at a certain […]

COMMENT A New Marxist Paradigm? Joseph McCarney I agree with a great deal in Gregor McLennan’s review of Jon Elster’s Making Sense of Marx (RP42), and most of all with his idea of the book’s importance. He may well be right in thinking it ‘likely to dominate discussions of Marx and Marxism for the next […]