Journal articles on the topic 'Other philosophy and religious studies not elsewhere classified'

AbstractIn conversation with Morgan (2015), I point out that the view ofrelational faithI have elsewhere defended (McKaughan 2013, 2016, 2017) fits rather well with the understanding ofpististhat emerges from Morgan's careful reading of New Testament texts. Moreover, the fact that New Testament authors display little interest in examining interior aspects of faith makes it difficult to justify the claim that their understanding of thepistislexiconrequiresbelieving in the modern sense as the attitude Christians must take towards relevant content, in contrast to various other positive but non-doxastic attitudes that philosophers recognize today. Such faith is of contemporary interest, given its congruity with early Christian tradition, the role it can play in helping relationships to persevere through various kinds of challenges (including doubts significant enough to preclude believing), and for the wide range of evidential circumstances in which it can be enacted with intellectual integrity.

According to some theists, God will never completely destroy moral evil or banish it from his creation entirely; instead, he will eventually confine moral evil to a specific region of his creation, a region known as hell, and those condemned to hell, having no hope of escape from it, will live out eternity in a state of estrangement from God as well as from each other. Let us call that the traditional doctrine of hell. Elsewhere I have argued that any form of theism which includes such a doctrine, even one that tries to preserve consistency by denying the universal love of God, is in fact logically inconsistent. But moderately conservative theists, as I have called them, have an argument for the traditional doctrine that some have found convincing, one that emphasizes libertarian free will. The argument is this. Because God is perfectly loving, he wills the good for every created person and wills the redemption of all who have fallen into evil; but because he has also given his loved ones the gift of freedom and some of them in fact exercise their freedom to reject him forever, it is simply not within his power, even as an omnipotent being, to redeem all of those who fall into evil. According to moderately conservative theists, therefore, the following hypothesis, which I shall call the Rejection Hypothesis (RH), is at least possibly true:(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

The date was 19 July 1859; the occasion, the commencement address at the Harvard Divinity School. Twenty-one years earlier, as Henry Whitney Bellows well knew, Ralph Waldo Emerson had there delivered the famous Divinity School Address, which offended the Unitarian faculty by berating historical Christianity, by advancing that the moral and religious sentiments were synonymous, and by claiming that intuitive apprehension of these sentiments could elevate persons to Christ-like stature. The ensuing “miracles controversy”—including, on the one hand, Andrews Norton's charges about “The Latest Form of Infidelity” and, on the other, George Ripley's, Theodore Parker's, and (early on, at least) Orestes Brownson's efforts to establish a “religion of the heart” by championing Kant over Locke—has been chronicled elsewhere. More to the present point is the way that, at a time when heated controversy over Emerson and his intuitionalist disciples might have seemed dated, Bellows attacked the self-reliant tendencies of Emerson's 1838 address: “The Emersonian and transcendental school at home, acknowledge[s] only one true movement in humanity—the egoistic—the self-asserting and self-justifying movement—which is Protestantism broken loose from general history.” Such criticism was hardly unprecedented in the school of divinity from which Bellows himself had graduated just a year before Emerson would deliver the Divinity School Address; nor would the faculty at Harvard have deemed Bellows innovative in chastising “the transcendental philosophy” for “making the … human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural, one and the same.

AbstractWilliam Carey is reviewed as both product and producer of journalism, with an emphasis on the latter and its synergistic relationship to his mission work and the work of others. Carey's philosophy of life was formed largely by the written works of his predecessors and contemporaries. Specifically, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Captain James Cook, and Robert Hall, among others, clearly affected his outlook on theology, missions, Bible translation, ecumenism, and a host of related topics. Writings by Cook opened Carey's eyes to distant people, whom he evaluated in the light of his journalistically influenced theology. Consequently, Carey became concerned about the spiritual and moral state of the world abroad. His concern found expression in the Enquiry – a polemic for missionary work – and ultimately led him to Bengal, where his own attempts to influence people through journalism expanded.Carey's own writings and those of his colleagues at the Serampore Mission are the most obvious examples of his journalistic works. But they hardly stand alone. Thus, after the authors describe the emergence and significance of the Enquiry and the Serampore Press, they refer to other publications printed either at Serampore or elsewhere in response to the press' influence. Among these are works as diverse as textbooks, governmental publications, and periodical apologetics for Hinduism. The Serampore mission's expansion of Indian literacy also is reviewed because of its relevance to understanding the influence of others' writings on his life's philosophy and work. It further helps to shed light on Carey's distinct approach to evangelization, presented herein as a form of inculturation. Lastly, many would not have become readers of the mission's works had it not equipped them to read through its network of native schools. The authors suggest that Serampore's journalistic mission extended beyond the mere production of writings; it also included the production of a readership.

Thus we are told in one of the most famous narratives in talmudic literature, in its most elaborate and complex version in the Babylonian Talmud. The late ancient and early medieval rabbinic popularity of Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai's (henceforth Rashbi) sojourn in the cave is demonstrated by the wide distribution of the motif in various rabbinic texts. It later gained additional prominence in the Jewish collective imagination to such a degree that no less than the composition of the Zohar was attributed to Rashbi; indeed, the text was considered a product of his sojourn in the cave. As is the case with other extensive narratives in the Babylonian Talmud about early rabbinic sages from the days of the Mishnah, different and most likely earlier versions of the whole or parts of this story can be found elsewhere in rabbinic literature. Others have gone about the task of carefully assembling and comparing the versions of the story, and various interpretations of it have been offered. Surely, any additional attempt at making sense of the story and decoding what the rabbinic narrators in the Babylonian Talmud sought to convey with its inclusion in the larger corpus needs to take this work into account.

Disputes about Newton's religious beliefs have already began during Sir Isaac’s life. Over the past two hundred years his beliefs been classified as Anglican, Puritan, Arian, Socinian, Deistic, and even Judaic. Now researchers have come to an unambiguous agreement about Newton's hetero-doxy - the first two versions are refuted, as well as the statement about Sir Isaac's deism. Howev-er, later divergences arose, emphasizing different traditions, whose influence, as different scholars suggest, had the greatest influence on Newton's theology. These discrepancies are related to two problems. First, they require a critical analysis of existing hypotheses, as well as their correlation with each other, in order to establish the validity of each one of them. Some scholars have empha-sized the originality of Newton's theology and rejected attempts to "squeeze" him into any particu-lar tradition. True in itself, this thesis suffers from vagueness, since the real uniqueness of New-ton's theology can be regarded as the specific combination of two theological traditions: Arianism with Socinianism. The author of the article, recognizing the fundamental importance of both for the thought of Sir Isaac, aims to show that the uniqueness of his theology is constituted by the combination of Socinian premises with Arian results in triadology. The version about the influ-ence of Judaism on Newton's antitrinitarianism is denied: though it has some grounds, after closer examination in turn out to be untenable. All the parallels and connections of Newton with Juda-ism, which the researchers has pointed out, are either false, or have analogues in the Christian tra-dition.

AbstractIn his Sefer ha-'Ikkarim [Book of Principles] R. Joseph Albo discusses Maimonides' proofs for the existence of God. The following paper offers an analysis of Albo's discussion of the proofs, advancing two theses: (1) Albo's main argument in his central discussion is that proofs for the existence of God cannot be based on the theory of the eternity of the universe. This argument, however, is contradicted by his other remarks on the topic, which appear elsewhere in the Sefer ha-'Ikkarim. (2) Albo's discussion of this issue includes several expressions of independent and critical thought.

Malthus' theological ideas were most clearly presented in the final two chapters of the first edition (1798) of his Essay on the Principle of Population. They can be classified under eight main headings. (i) He admitted that the pressure of population causes much misery and evil, but he did not accept that this in any way impugned the benevolence of the Creator. He situated the population problem within the general context of the problem of evil, and argued that population pressure is permitted and ordained by the Creator as a means of stimulating mankind to attain a higher good. (ii) He opposed the traditional Christian notion that this world is a state of trial, with population pressure being one aspect of that trial. He believed that this notion of a state of trial is inconsistent with the notion of an omniscient Creator, and that it is therefore necessary to reject the notion of a state of trial in order to save the notion of Divine omniscience. (iii) Instead of viewing this world as a state of trial, he viewed it ‘as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mindr. This notion of the growth of mind is the central aspect of Malthus' theology. (iv) He expressed doubts about the omnipotence of the Creator, arguing that God did not have the power to create perfect human beings instantaneously, but required a certain process or a certain time to form beings with ‘exalted qualities of mind’. Malthus seemed to argue that Divine omnipotence and Divine benevolence are incompatible – because a truly benevolent creator would not have subjected mankind to the miseries of this world if He had the power to create a perfect world. Malthus was prepared to sacrifice the notion of Divine omnipotence in order to save the notion of Divine benevolence. (v) He saw the principle of population as part of the Divine plan for the replenishment of the earth, i.e. its full cultivation and peopling. (vi) His attitude to worldly pleasures and comforts was distinctly unpuritanical, and leaning towards hedonism. His ethics were world-enhancing, rather than world-denying and retreatist. (This point is discussed more fully in Part II below.) (vii) He gave a naturalistic interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of original sin, describing original sin as the original state of torpor and sluggishness of every human being at the moment of birth. The purpose of the principle of population, and of the other difficulties encountered in life, is to stimulate man to raise himself out of this original state. (viii) Finally, Malthus' theology included the doctrine of annihilationism (or conditional immortality), according to which eternal life is not an essential part of the human soul at birth, but is granted only to those who attain during life on earth an adequate growth of mind. The others are, at death, not condemned to eternal suffering, but are annihilated, body and soul.

It is of course generally recognized that the carvings on medieval misericords, in England as elsewhere, are preponderantly secular in subject, including only a slight sprinkling of biblical and other religious motifs; according to a recent study, ‘only about 4.5 per cent of Britain's almost 8,600 surviving centrepieces and supporters have primarily religious significance, and 1.5 per cent are Scriptural, as compared with over twice that in France.’ To this basic situation we must add that of all medieval art forms, misericords are among those most completely lacking in context, and so are likely to be among the most mute about their own intended meanings. As M. D. Anderson remarks on another of their enigmatic aspects, ‘Between the clearly identifiable subjects and those as clearly not intended to convey any particular meaning lies a mass of work presenting a wide variety of iconographical puzzles’; and while she is referring to the difference between the purely decorative and the iconographically significant in any way, a similar no-man's land must surely be allowed to exist between the clearly non-biblical and the biblical or possibly biblical. An instructive example can be found in a fifteenth-century French misericord now in the church of St.-Cernin, which shows a ‘handsome dancing man with … oriental turban and earrings’ and is identified by its editors — attractively though by no means conclusively — as David dancing before the Lord in 2 Kings (Vulgate) 6.14–16.

Dr. Akira Mizuta Lippit, author of Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife, explores, in the context of the development of cinema, how the concept of “the animal” has become central to modern understandings of human subjectivity. Lippit considers the disappearance of real animals and their concurrent appearance in various conceptual and material uses, particularly noting the ways in which the conjoined notions of humanity and animality figure into and through cinema. The animal, he argues, haunts the foundation of western logical systems. Yet, despite the fact that humans and animals suffer under the discursive weight of the signifier, Lippit is careful to note the increasing instability of the human-animal boundary and what might be done to realize more just relationships among both humans and other animals. On February 12, 2008, Lauren Corman spoke with Lippit as part of the “Animal Voices” radio program, a weekly show dedicated to animal advocacy and cultural critique. They discussed how Lippit developed his thesis and the ramifications of his theoretical work. Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife was published in 2000 by the University of Minnesota Press. “Animal Voices” can be heard weekly on CIUT 89.5 FM in Toronto, or online at animalvoices.ca.Full TextLauren Corman: How have questions regarding animals and animality figured into your film scholarship? When did you bring these themes into your work, and why? Akira Mizuta Lippit: That is its own story in a way. The book that you refer to, Electric Animal, was written initially as my doctoral dissertation, and at the time, I was thinking in particular about the moment at which cinema appeared in the late 19th century. There are all kinds of phantasmatic and imaginary birthdays of cinema, but generally people agree that 1895, or thereabouts, was when cinema appeared as a set of technological, aesthetic, and cultural features, and as an economic mode of exchange. People sold and bought tickets and attended screenings. And I was thinking about what it must have felt like at that moment to experience this uncanny medium. There are various reports of early film performances and screenings, some of them apocryphal and inventive and embellished and so forth, but I think the fascination, the kind of wonder that cinema evoked among many early viewers had to do with this uncanny reproduction of life, of living movement, and the strange tension that it created between this new technology (and we are in the middle of the industrial revolution and seeing the advent of all sorts of technologies and devices and apparatuses), and its proximity to, in a simple way, life: the movements of bodies. And I began to think that the principle of animation, here was critical. To make something move, and in thinking about the term animation and all of its roots, to make something breathe, to make something live. What struck me, in this Frankensteinian moment was the sense that something had come to life, and the key seemed to be about how people understood, conceived of, and practiced this notion of animating life through a technology. I started to hear a resonance between animals and animation. I started to think about the way in which animals also played a role, not only in early cinema and in animation and the practice of the genre but leading up to it in the famous photographs of Edward Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, the moving images of animals that were produced serially, as well as the “chronophotographs” that rendered animal motion. And it occurred to me that there was a reason to pause and think about what role animals were playing at that moment in history. As I began to read, and as I began to collect materials and to think through this question of the status and function of the animal, what animality meant, it took on its own set of values, and essentially Electric Animal ended up being a kind of preamble, or an introduction to a book that I haven’t yet written, because I only reach at the end of the book, and in a very perfunctory manner, the advent of cinema. So in a sense, this book, and this question, about what an animal meant for generations before, at that moment and in successive generations, became its own subject, one I still think is critically linked to the question of cinema, and the arrival of cinema, and the force of cinema throughout the 20th century. LC: Let’s return to that piece that you mentioned about life, and that cinema could show or play this Frankensteinian role; of course, a parallel stream is around death, and some of the work that I have read about early cinema shows that people were quite afraid, initially, of what it meant. Could you comment on that theme of death and the animal in cinema? AML: This emerged as a major issue during the course of my study. The discourse on death and the uncanny, the idea that something appears to be there, in the form of a ghost or a phantom, already existed in discussions of photography throughout the 19th century. The sense that photography forges a material connection to the object, that the photograph establishes a material connection to the photographed object, and as such when you look at a photograph you are not simply looking at a rendering, like an artist’s interpretation in a painting or sculpture, but you are actually looking at, experiencing a kind of carnal, physical contact with the persons themselves, or with an object, reappears frequently in the discourses on photography. This creates a real excitement, and also fear. I think that effect, the photographic effect of somehow being in the presence of the thing itself, is enhanced by the addition of movement, because with movement you have the feeling that this being is not just there, looking at you perhaps, but also moving in its element, in its time, whether (and this is very important to the discussions of photography) that person is still alive or not. I think that gap is produced at the moment of any photograph and perhaps in any film: the person who appears before you, who appears to be alive, who at that moment is alive, may or may not still be alive. So it produces, among those who have thought in this way, a sense of uncanniness, something is there and isn’t there at once. Where I think that this is particularly important in this discussion of “the animal,” and as I began to discover in doing the reading (I should add that I am not a philosopher, I don’t teach philosophy, but I am a reader of philosophy; I read it sporadically, I read here and there wherever my interests are) is that with very few but important exceptions, there is a line of western philosophy that says animals are incapable of dying. On the most intuitive level this seems nonsensical. Of course animals die. We know that animals die. We kill animals; we kill them andwe see them die. No question that animals die. But the philosophical axiom here—which begins with Epicurus, but is repeated over and over, by Descartes perhaps most forcefully, and in the 20th century by Martin Heidegger—is that death is not simply a perishing, the end of life, but it is a experience that one has within life, a relationship with one’s own end. The claim that is made over and over again, which has been disputed by many people – and it is certainly not my claim – but the claim that one finds repeatedly in philosophy is that animals don’t die – they don’t have death in the way human beings have, and carry with them, death. Animals know fear, they know things like instinctual preservation, they seek to survive, but they don’t have death as an experience. Heidegger will say in the most callous way, they simply perish. It struck me that this problem was not a problem of animals, but rather a problem for human beings. If human beings don’t concede the capacity of animals to die, then what does it mean that animals are disappearing at this very moment, in the various developments of industry, in human population, in urbanization, environmental destruction, that animals are increasingly disappearing from the material and everyday world? And where do they go, if we don’t, as human beings, concede or allow them death? (Of course this is only in a very specific, and one might argue, very small, discursive space in western philosophy. Many people have pointed out that this is not the case in religious discourses, in a variety of cultural practices, and in various ethnic and cultural communities. This is a certain kind of western ideology that has been produced through a long history of western philosophy.) So the question of death, the particular form of suspended death that photography and cinema introduced appeared in response to perhaps a crisis in western critical and philosophical discourse that denied to the animal, to animals, the same kind of death that human beings experience. You have this convergence of two death-related, life-anddeath related, problems at a time when I think that these issues were particularly important. LC: So from there, the question that comes to mind is what purpose does it serve and the word that is coming to mind is identity, and the idea of human identity and subjectivity. There must be some reason that western thought keeps going back to this denial of animal death. You tie it in, as others have, to language. AML: Two key features of human subjectivity, in the tradition of western philosophy, have been language and death, and the relationship between language and death. This goes back to Plato, to Socrates, and before. The point at which I was writing Electric Animal, at the end of the 20th century, gave me the ability to look back at developments in critical theory, philosophy, and the history of ideas throughout the 20th century, and it became clear with the significant interventions of the late 1960s that from at least one century earlier, the question of human subjectivity, its stability, its absoluteness, had already been in question. This question is slowly working its way toward a radical re-evaluation of the status of, the value of, and ultimately the confidence that human beings place in their own subjectivity, and there are many, many influences: around questions of gender and sexuality, questions of race and identity, and in crimes like genocide, for example, during World War II, but before and after as well. All of these developments contribute to this reevaluation, but one could argue that at this moment, in the late 19th century already, there was a certain sense that what had been insisted upon as absolutely unique, as an absolute form in itself – the human subject – required a whole series of constant exclusions and negations for it to survive. One such exclusion is to claim as properly human, language; what makes the human being human, is the capacity for language, and through this capacity, the capacity for death. As many philosophers argue, only human beings can name death as such, because language gives us the capacity to names those things, not just objects around us, but to name those things that do not appear before us, and these would be the traditional philosophical objects: love, death, fear, life, forgiveness, friendship, and so on. And it will be assumed that animals have communication, they communicate various things within their own groups and between groups, they signal of course, but that animals don’t have language as such, which means they can’t name those things that are not before them or around them. And it is very clear that there is an effort among human beings to maintain the survival of this precious concept of human subjectivity, as absolutely distinct and absolutely unique. So you find in those long discourses on human subjectivity, this return to questions of language and death. I would suggest that at this time, with the appearance of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and with other disruptive thinkers like Sigmund Freud and the advent of psychoanalysis, there is a great sense of uncertainty regarding these edifices of human subjectivity, language and death. In Electric Animal this moment is particularly rich with such shifts and instabilities, and the sense that language is not exclusive to human beings, as many people thought, but also that language is not as self-assured in human beings as people thought. Here psychoanalysis plays an important role in indicating, at least speculatively, that we are not as in control of the language that we use to the extent that we would like to believe. LC: What are the consequences of this process in western thought, where the subject is conceived through an exclusion or a negation of the animal? What are the implications for humans, and also what are the implications for animals? I know that is a huge question. AML: It is a huge question; It is a very important question. One could argue that the consequences of a certain practice, let’s say, of the politics of the subject have been disastrous, certainly for animals, but also for human beings. If you take one of the places where the form of the human subject is created, it would be Descartes’ Discourse on Method, his attempt to figure out what, when everything that can be doubted and has been doubted, is left to form the core. And this is his famous quote: “Je pense donc je suis”, I think therefore I am, I am thinking therefore I am. If you read the Discourse on Method, this is a process of exclusion: I exclude everything that I am not to arrive at the central core of what I am. The process he follows leads him to believe that it is his consciousness, it is his presence, his selfpresence with his own consciousness that establishes for him, beyond any doubt, his existence. This is somewhat heretical, it is a break from theological discourses of the soul; it represents a form of self-creation through one’s consciousness. But consciousness is a very complicated thing, a very deceptive thing, because what I believe, what I feel, is not always exactly the way things are. Looking at a series of important shifts that have taken place during what we might call generally the modern period, which extends further back than the recent past, one finds a number of assaults on the primacy of consciousness. Freud names one as the Copernican revolution, which suggested that the earth was not the centre of the universe and that human beings were not at the centre of the universe; the Darwinian revolution, which suggested that humans beings were not created apart from other forms, all other forms of organic life, and that human beings shared with other animate beings, organic beings a common history, a pre-history. And Freud (he names himself as the third of these revolutionaries), is the one who suggested that consciousness itself is not a given at any moment, or available at any moment, to us as human beings. What constitutes our sense of self, our consciousness, is drawn from experiences that we no longer have access to—interactions with others, the desires of others, the kinds of influences and wishes that were passed into us through others, our parents, other influential figures early in our life— and that what we believe to be our conscious state, our wishes, desires, dreams and so forth, are not always known to us, and in fact can’t be known because they might be devastating and horrifying, in some cases. They will tell us things about ourselves that we couldn’t properly accept or continue to live with. I think that what is happening, certainly by the time that we enter the 20th century, around this discourse of the subject is that it is no longer holding, it is no longer serving its original purpose; it is generating more anxiety than comfort. Key historical events, World War I, for example, are producing enormous blows to the idea of western progress, humanism, and Enlightenment values, to the cultural achievements of the West— Hegel, for example, a 19th century philosopher, is very explicit about this—to those values that helped to shape the world, and ultimately were supposed to have created a better world for human beings: the Enlightenment, the pursuit of knowledge, science, medicine, religion and so forth. And yet, by the mid-twentieth century many of these beliefs were exposed as illusions, especially after the advent of death camps, camps created for the sole purpose of producing, as Heidegger himself says, producing corpses, a factory for corpses. It’s not a place where people happen to die. This is an entire apparatus designed in order to expeditiously, efficiently, and economically, create corpses out of living human beings. Similarly, with the first use of the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, on human beings. This was a machine, a science, a technology, a weapon devised for maximizing, efficiently and economically, the destruction of human beings. I think what this created for many thinkers, philosophers, writers, artists, activists, citizens around the world was a sense that in fact what had helped to create this situation and these catastrophic results was not a matter of totalitarian regimes and bad politics, but something more fundamental: a certain belief that I have the right to destroy or take life from others. And how is that achieved? By first denying that those others are like me. So the discourse on Jews practiced throughout Nazi Germany is in fact even more extreme than that of the discourse on animals; in fact, as many people have pointed out, that many Nazis were famous for their love of animal, some were practicing vegetarians; they outlawed animal experimentation. In a sense animals were more like Aryan Germans, than Jews were. You have a series here of rhetorics that allow you to cast the enemy, the Other, at a distance from your own subjectivity, and in order to achieve this you have to deny them any form of subjectivity. Not just that they are just culturally different, or that they engage in different practices: They are radically and absolutely unlike me. And I believe that as many people began to think about this condition (Adorno has a very famous passage in which he talks about this), it became clear that one of the sources of this, is in fact the very ideology of the subject, which insists on an absolute autonomy, singularity, and distinct mode of existence from that which is not the subject, not any subject, the Other. Adorno, in a passage he wrote in a book titled Minima Moralia, which is a collection of aphorisms and observations he wrote during and after World War II, offers an observation I quote in Electric Animal. He titles it “People are looking at you”, and he says there is a moment in a typical scene of hunting where a wounded animal looks into the eyes of the hunter, or the killer as it dies. It produces at that moment, an effect that is undeniable: This thing, that is alive, that I have wounded and which is now dying, is looking at me. How can I deny that it is alive, that it is there, that it exists in the world, with its own consciousness, its own life, its own dreams, and desires? Adorno says the way you shake this off is you say to yourself, “It’s only an animal.” He will then link that gesture to the history of racism, and what he calls the pogrom, or genocide, against other human beings. You transfer this logic. So the ability to say to an animal, toward an animal that you have killed, whose death you’ve brought about, “It’s only an animal”, becomes the same logic you apply to other human beings when you harm or kill them. It’s a very profound observation because it suggests that in fact there is no line that separates the killing of animals from the killing of human beings. And in fact already at the moment when we kill an animal, we recognize something immediately that we have to erase from our consciousness with this phrase, “It’s only an animal.” LC: It seems to me then, too, that it’s this kind of perpetual haunting, because in that erasure, in that statement, “It’s only an animal,” there’s the animal itself that you had to assert yourself against and its living beingness. Do you think in that moment that he’s talking about—because it seems like kind of a struggle, or a narrative that you have to tell yourself—do you think that is also a moment potentially of agency, or resistance, in terms of an assertion of an animal subjectivity, or umwelt, or however you want to describe it? AML: Absolutely, and I think that Adorno’s phrase and that passage in which he is writing about this scene, an arbitrary, perhaps imaginary but typical scene of the hunt written shortly after the end of World War II, as well as all of Adorno’s pessimistic observations about the state of human culture, are written in a state of deep anguish. As he says in this very brief aphorism, we never believe this, even of the animal. When we tell ourselves, “It’s only an animal”, we in fact never believe it. Why? Because we are there and we see in the presence of an Other, a life that is there. For him it is important that the gaze, as he says, of the wounded animal, falls on the person who has perpetrated the crime. You seek to exclude it, to erase it, to dismiss it by saying that it is only an animal, but it allows you to transfer that very logic into the destruction of other human beings. Your phrase “haunting” is really important because I think that it suggests that a phantom animal becomes the crucial site not only for an animal rights, but for human ethics as well. The ability to kill another, is something in fact we—we, human beings—never properly achieve; we never truly believe this, “It’s only an animal” at that moment, Adorno says. We tell ourselves this, we insist upon it, try to protect ourselves through this mantric repetition of a phrase, “It’s only an animal,” “It’s only an animal,” yet we never believe it. And as such, we are haunted by it. I think the crisis in human subjectivity, in discourses on the human subject that arrive in the late 1950s, has everything to do with this kind of haunted presence. Human subjectivity is now a haunted subjectivity, haunted by animals, by everyone that has been excluded, by women, by people of different races, different ethnicities, different sexual preferences. And in fact the convergence of civil rights, critical theory, animal rights, feminism, the gay and lesbian movements, all of these things really shape—to use Foucault’s term—the episteme in which the primary political focus for many philosophers and theorists erupts in a critique of the subject. LC: Without getting you to offer something prescriptive [both laugh] about where to go from here, I do, I guess, want to ask about where to go from here. Because our audience is sort of the average person, turning on their car radio, or the animal rights activist, what does this mean then for… It just seems like a huge juggernaut, this huge weight, of Western history for people who want to shift, or people talk about blurring the boundaries between humans and animals (and this, of course, is very anxiety-provoking considering the legacy of Western thought), where is the turn now? Or where do you think there are potentials for (I think your phrase is) “remembering animals”? Is that the best can we can do? AML: Again, it’s an important question in so many ways. There are so many things I would like to speak to in response to that question. I would say that I don’t know if I am, by nature, an optimist or a pessimist. I do think, however, that a lot of things have been turning away from this condition, let’s say, or a certain kind of assumption, about the longevity of the human subject. I think that human subjectivity practiced honestly and ethically will continue to re-evaluate the terms of its own existence in relationship to Others, defined in the modern sense. And I do think that a certain ability to exist with an Other—an Other that may not share the same language that I speak, but certainly exists in a world that is as valuable, authentic, legitimate, as my own—will be the goal. I’ll introduce a phrase by Jacques Derrida. Somebody asked him, what does justice mean? What would justice be? He says justice is speaking to the Other in the language of the Other. I find this to be a very beautiful and very optimistic expression. It is not my task to exclude from my world those that I don’t understand; but it is my responsibility, or it is the practice or task of justice, to learn the Other’s language, which is to give the Other that capacity for language, to assume that there is in the Other, language. Language is, according to that earlier part of our conversation, language is that which is traditionally denied to the Other. “I don’t know what you mean when you speak”;, “women speak emotionally”; “ animals don’t have any language”; “the language that less developed cultures speak is not as articulate or precise as the language that I speak”, and so on and so forth. I think this pursuit of justice, defined as Derrida does, is very important. The other thing I will add is that the development of a field that some have called, perhaps temporarily, provisionally “Animal Studies”, is absolutely critical. I think there was a time when Animal Studies would have meant zoology, or in a very focused and direct manner, the pursuit of animal rights. What has been really been exciting for me to observe in this field of animal studies— and it’s not merely a community of scholars and academics; they are artists and performers, who engage in expressive and creative actions, activists who are committed politically, activists who are engaged in their daily lives and daily practices, and also a wide range of scholars in a variety of fields (feminists, literary scholars, historians, historians of ideas, philosophers, and so forth)—there is a certain understanding that “the question of the animal”, as it’s been called, or “of animals” or “of animality”, is not something that is restricted in the end just to the well-being of animals: it affects everybody in fact in ways that are obvious and perhaps less obvious. I think this kind of realization and this kind of community, let’s say, ex-community of people, who are in the field but also outside of their fields but in contact with one another is another way in which, much of what has been established can being critiqued, rethought, unthought, reformulated, toward a viable existence for all forms of life on this earth, and elsewhere. LC: It seems to me that it’s a difficult but important place to be, working in Animal Studies, in these divergent fields. My own experience was coming from Women’s Studies. It’s interesting how you point to these different groups, marginalized groups, and I think that one of the saddest things for me has been also that there’s this incredible moment of optimism, and potential to be thinking about “the animal” in different ways, (and thus us in different ways) but also in those moments of marginalization there has been a scrambling, a push towards a reinforcement of that human subject to say, “Ah, we are just like that, though. We are not like animals.” I think that this is very classic, in terms of an older feminism: liberation is about inclusion into a human culture that is necessarily exclusionary of animals. I think that’s still happening, that while there’s a kind of opening up of what this question means, “the question of the animal”, there’s also a concern, my concern anyway, that a simultaneous reinforcement as marginalized groups fight, using language, using the discourse of rights, etc., to become a part of what they were always excluded from. AML: That’s right. That’s a very difficult situation that traditionally marginalized groups have had to address. When you have been denied very basic civil rights, for example, one of the immediate and legitimate goals of any movement is to make sure that one secures those rights for one’s constituencies, for one’s members, and at the same time to make sure that the pursuit or achievement of that right does not reproduce the exclusion of others that one was fighting against initially. That’s why I think the role of animal rights is so important, because the animal is perhaps the place where life as such has been most excluded in the history of human cultures. And as such it is the place, perhaps, where this rethinking has to begin. There will be all sorts of differences, and all sorts of different objectives and agendas, but when this discussion is practiced rigorously and in good faith, I think ultimately it will be productive. Remember that most of those whom we now think of as the great thinkers were often marginalized in their time; many endured this marginalization, ridicule, hostility. It’s part of the task, and I think one of the comforts we can draw in these situations is that the process is ongoing and one makes a contribution where one can, one engages where one can, and it continues forward hopefully toward some better formulation of life for all beings. LC: Thank you very much. I hope you can join us again on the program sometime. It was really a great honour, and a great pleasure, to speak with you today. AML: It was a great pleasure for me today. And I really appreciate the work you’re doing. The questions were just fantastic. I enjoyed every moment of it. LC: Thank you so much. Today we’ve been speaking with Dr. Akira Mizuta Lippit.

Christianity was the religion of spirit (and freedom), and critiqued Islam as a religion of flesh (and slavery); later, Christianity was the religion of reason, and critiqued Islam as the religion of fideism; later still, Christianity was the religion of the critique of religion, and critiqued Islam as the most atavistic of religions. Even now, when the West has critiqued its own Chris- tianity enough to be properly secular (because free, rational, and critical), it continues to critique Islam for being not secular enough. In contrast to Christianity or post-Christian secularism, then, and despite their best ef- forts, Islam does not know (has not learned from) critique. This sentiment is articulated at multiple registers, academic and popular and governmen- tal: Muslims are fanatical about their repressive law; they interpret things too literally; Muslims do not read their own revelation critically, let alone literature or cartoons; their sartorial practices are unreasonable; the gates of ijtihād closed in 900CE; Ghazali killed free inquiry in Islam… Such claims are ubiquitous enough to be unremarkable, and have political traction among liberals and conservatives alike. “The equation of Islam with the ab- sence of critique has a longer genealogy in Western thought,” Irfan Ahmad writes in this book, “which runs almost concurrently with Europe’s colonial expansion” (8). Luther and Renan figure in that history, as more recently do Huntington and Gellner and Rushdie and Manji.Meanwhile in the last decade an interdisciplinary conversation about the stakes, limits, complicities, and possibilities of critique has developed in the anglophone academy, a conversation of which touchstones include the polemical exchange between Saba Mahmood and Stathis Gourgouris (2008); the co-authored volume Is Critique Secular? (2009), by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Mahmood; journal special issues dedi- cated to the question (e.g. boundary 2 40, no. 1 [2013]); and Gourgouris’s Lessons in Secular Criticism (2013), among others. At the same time, the discipline of religious studies remains trapped in an argument over the lim- its of normative analysis and the possibility of critical knowledge.Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Mar- ketplace seeks to turn these debates on their head. Is critique secular? Decidedly not—but understanding why that is, for Ahmad, requires revising our understanding of critique itself. Instead of the object of critique, reli- gion here emerges as an agent of critique. By this account, God himself is the source of critique, and the prophets and their heirs are “critics par ex- cellence” (xiv). The book is divided into two parts bookended by a prologue and epilogue. “Formulation” comprises three chapters levying the shape of the argument. “Illustration” comprises three chapters taking up the case study of the South Asian reformer Abul-A‘la Maududi and his critics (es- pecially regarding his views on the state and on women) as well as a fourth chapter that seeks to locate critique in the space of the everyday. There are four theses to Ahmad’s argument, none of them radically original on their own but newly assembled. As spelled out in the first chap- ter (“Introduction”), the first thesis holds that the Enlightenment reconfig- uration of Christianity was in fact an ethnic project by which “Europe/the West constituted its identity in the name of reason and universalism against a series of others,” among them Islam (14). The second thesis is that no crit- ic judges by reason alone. Rather, critique is always situated, directed, and formed: it requires presuppositions and a given mode to be effective (17). The third thesis is that the Islamic tradition of critique stipulates the com- plementarity of intellect (‘aql, dimāgh) and heart (qalb, dil); this is a holistic anthropology, not a dualistic one. The fourth thesis is that critique should not be understood as the exclusive purview of intellectuals (especially when arguing about literature) or as simply a theoretical exercise. Instead, cri- tique should be approached as part of life, practiced by the literate and the illiterate alike (18).The second chapter, “Critique: Western and/or Islamic,” focuses on the first of these theses. The Enlightenment immunized the West from critique while subjecting the Rest to critique. An “anthropology of philosophy” approach can treat Kant’s transcendental idealism as a social practice and in doing so discover that philosophy is “not entirely independent” from ethnicity (37). The certainty offered by the Enlightenment project can thus be read as “a project of security with boundaries.” Ahmad briefly consid- ers the place of Islam across certain of Kant’s writings and the work of the French philosophes; he reads their efforts to “secure knowledge of humani- ty” to foreclose the possibility of “knowledge from humanity” (42), namely Europe’s others. Meanwhile, ethnographic approaches to Muslim debates shy away from according them the status of critique, but in so doing they only maintain the opposition between Western reason and Islamic unrea- son. In contrast to this view (from Kant through Foucault), Ahmad would rather locate the point of critical rupture with the past in the axial age (800-200BCE), which would include the line of prophets who reformed (critiqued) their societies for having fallen into corruption and paganism. This alternative account demonstrates that “critical inquiry presupposes a tradition,” that is, that effective critique is always immanent (58). The third chapter, “The Modes: Another Genealogy of Critique,” con- tests the reigning historiography of “critique” (tanqīd/naqd) in South Asia that restricts it to secular literary criticism. Critique (like philosophy and democracy) was not simply founded in Grecian antiquity and inherited by Europe: Ahmad “liberates” critique from its Western pedigree and so allows for his alternative genealogy, as constructed for instance through readings of Ghalib. The remainder of the chapter draws on the work of Maududi and his critics to present the mission of the prophets as critiquing to reform (iṣlāḥ) their societies. This mandate remains effective today, and Maududi and his critics articulate a typology of acceptable (tanqīd) and unacceptable (ta‘īb, tanqīṣ, tazhīk, takfīr, etc.) critiques in which the style of critique must be considered alongside its object and telos. Religion as Critique oscillates between sweeping literature reviews and close readings. Readers may find the former dizzying, especially when they lose in depth what they gain in breadth (for example, ten pages at hand from chapter 2 cite 44 different authors, some of whom are summarizing or contesting the work of a dozen other figures named but not cited di- rectly). Likewise there are moments when Ahmad’s own dogged critiques may read as tendentious. The political purchase of this book should not be understated, though the fact that Muslims criticize themselves and others should come as no surprise. Yet it is chapters 4–6 (on Maududi and his critics) which substantiate the analytic ambition of the book. They are the most developed chapters of the book and detail a set of emerging debates with a fine-grained approach sometimes found wanting elsewhere (espe- cially in the final chapter). They show how Islam as a discursive tradition is constituted through critique, and perhaps always has been: for against the disciplinary proclivities of anthropologists (who tend to emphasize discon- tinuity and rupture, allowing them to discover the modern invention of traditions), Ahmad insists on an epistemic connection among precolonial and postcolonial Islam. This connection is evident in how the theme of rupture/continuity is itself a historical topos of “Islamic critical thinking.” Chapter 4 (“The Message: A Critical Enterprise”) approaches Maududi (d. 1979) as a substantial political thinker, not simply the fundamentalist ideologue he is often considered to be. Reading across Maududi’s oeuvre, Ahmad gleans a political-economic critique of colonial-capitalist exploita- tion (95), a keen awareness of the limits of majoritarian democracy, and a warning about the dispossessive effects of minoritization. Maududi’s Isla- mism (“theodemocracy”), then, has to be understood within his broader project of the revival of religion to which tanqīd (“critique”), tajdīd (“re- newal”), and ijtihād (“understanding Islam’s universal principles to de- termine change”) were central (103). He found partial historical models for such renewal in ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Ahmad Sirhindi, and Shah Wali Ullah. A key element of this critique is that it does not aim to usher in a different future. Instead it inhabits a more complicated temporality: it clarifies what is already the case, as rooted in the primordial nature of humans (fiṭra), and in so doing aligns the human with the order of creation. This project entails the critique and rejection of false gods, in- cluding communism, fascism, national socialism, and capitalism (117). Chapter 5 (“The State: (In)dispensible, Desirable, Revisable?”) weaves together ethnographic and textual accounts of Maududi’s critics and de- fenders on the question of the state (the famous argument for “divine sov- ereignty”). In doing so the chapter demonstrates how the work of critique is undertaken in this Islamic tradition, where, Ahmad writes, “critique is connected to a form of life the full meaning of which is inseparable from death” (122). (This also means that at stake in critique is also the style and principles of critique.) The critics surveyed in this chapter include Manzur Nomani, Vahiduddin Khan, Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, Amir Usmani, Sadrud- din Islahi, Akram Zurti, Rahmat Bedar, Naqi Rahman, Ijaz Akbar, and others, figures of varying renown but all of whom closely engaged, defend- ed, and contested Maududi’s work and legacy in the state politics of his Jamaat-e Islami. Chapter 6 (“The Difference: Women and In/equality”) shows how Maududi’s followers critique the “neopatriarchate” he proposes. Through such critique, Ahmad also seeks to affirm the legitimacy of a “nonpatri- archal reading of Islam” (156). If Maududi himself regarded the ḥarem as “the mightiest fortress of Islamic culture” (159)—a position which Ahmad notes is “enmeshed in the logic of colonial hegemony”—he also desired that women “form their own associations and unbiasedly critique the govern- ment” (163). Maududi’s work and legacy is thus both “disabling” and “en- abling” for women at the same time, as is borne out by tracing the critiques it subsequently faced (including by those sympathetic to his broader proj- ect). The (male) critics surveyed here include Akram Zurti, Sultan Ahmad Islahi, Abdurrahman Alkaf, and Mohammad Akram Nadwi, who seriously engaged the Quran and hadith to question Maududi’s “neopatriarchate.” They critiqued his views (e.g. that women were naturally inferior to men, or that they were unfit for political office) through alternative readings of Islamic history and theology. Chapter 7 (“The Mundane: Critique as Social-Cultural Practice”) seeks to locate critique at “the center of life for everyone, including ordinary sub- jects with no educational degrees” (179). Ahmad writes at length about Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (d. 1988), the anticolonial activist who led a massive movement against colonial domination, and whose following faced British brutality with nonviolence. The Khudai Khidmatgār movement he built was “a movement of critique” (195), Ahmad writes, composed of or- dinary men and women, peasants and the unlettered. The brief remainder of the chapter suggests that the proverbs which punctuate everyday life (for example, in the trope of the greedy mullah) also act as critiques. By the end of Religion as Critique it is difficult not to see critique na- scent in every declaration or action. This deflates the analytic power of the term—but perhaps that is one unstated aim of the project, to reveal critique as simply a part of life. Certainly the book displaces the exceptional West- ern claim to critique. Yet this trope of exposure—anthropology as cultural critique, the ethnographer’s gaze turned inward—also raises questions of its own. In this case, the paradigmatic account of critique (Western, sec- ular) has been exposed as actually being provincial. But the means of this exposure have not come from the alternative tradition of critique Ahmad elaborates. That is, Ahmad is not himself articulating an Islamic critique of Western critique. (Maududi serves as an “illustration” of Ahmad’s ar- gument; Maududi does not provide the argument itself.) In the first chap- ters (“Formulation”) he cites a wide literature that practices historicism, genealogy, archeology, and deconstruction in order to temper the universal claims of Western supremacists. The status of these latter critical practices however is not explored, as to whether they are in themselves sufficient to provincialize or at least de-weaponize Western critique. Put more directly: is there is a third language (of political anthropology, for example) by which Ahmad analytically mediates the encounter between rival traditions of cri- tique? And if there is such a language, and if it is historically, structurally, and institutionally related to one of the critical traditions it is mediating, then what is the status of the non-Western “illustration”? The aim of this revision of critique, Ahmad writes, is “genuinely dem- ocratic dialogue with different traditions” (xii). As much is signalled in its citational practices, which (for example) reference Talal Asad and Viveiros de Castro together in calling for “robust comparison” (14) between West- ern and Islamic notions of critique, and reference Maududi and Koselleck together in interpreting critique to be about judgment (203). No matter that Asad and de Castro or Maududi and Koselleck mean different things when using the same words; these citations express Ahmad’s commitment to a dialogic (rather than dialectical) mode in engaging differences. Yet because Ahmad does not himself explore what is variously entailed by “comparison” or “judgment” in these moments, such citations remain as- sertions gesturing to a dialogue to come. In this sense Religion as Critique is a thoroughly optimistic book. Whether such optimism is warranted might call for a third part to follow “Formulation” and “Illustration”: “Reckoning.” Basit Kareem IqbalPhD candidate, Department of Anthropologyand Program in Critical TheoryUniversity of California, Berkeley

Kierkegaard's writings contain seemingly divergent pictures of the relation of God's grace and human works. The differences are evident in the ways that he portrays the connection of human beings’ natural loving capacities to God's gracious enabling of love. What is the relation of human affiliative dispositions, such as attachment to family and friends, to the more extraordinary forms of Christian love, such as loving strangers, enemies, and God? Kierkegaard sometimes stressed the continuity of natural loves and God's grace and sometimes their discontinuity because in different contexts he was pursuing different edifying purposes. On the one hand, he emphasized the continuity of the two when he was attempting to stimulate the appropriate yearning that is a precondition for welcoming God's grace. On the other hand, elsewhere he stressed the difference of the natural loves and Christian love in order to foster an appreciation for the uniqueness and gratuity of God's self-giving.

The principles of Mulla Sadra’s theology as they relate to multiple intelligences have not been considered. Inferring multiple intelligences from Sadraean philosophy opens a new window for education focusing on transcendence-centered learning. The present essay discusses the powers of human souls as they relate to the formation of fourteen intelligences, and which are classified under five broad categories. Paying attention to the process of learning based on distinct types of intelligences sets the stage for designing a consistent educational program ensuring both worldly and other worldly happiness.

The question of the universality of the protection of rights has been an area of debate on different levels. This article will begin with a comparative reading of parallel debates on inclusion and universality in the scholarships of jurisprudence, Human Rights, and the Islamic legal tradition, represented by the classical positions of the major Sunni schools of law. By surveying examples of classical legal primary texts of Islamic law, the divergence on the inviolability of all human beings and the two different stands towards the legal protection of the non-Muslims is explored. Rationales will be classified for the inviolability of all human beings in Islamic law, a position represented by the Universalistic school. The article will arrive at the conclusion that the division within the Islamic legal tradition resonates with the other divergences. The inviolability of all human beings, a stand represented by major scholars of law, offers a Universalist lens for human rights that is well-situated within the Islamic tradition.

History as a body of knowledge, a loose bundle of working routines and writing practices, of genres, memories, imaginaries, and institutions, has struggled with its relationship to “religion” for a long time. In the European tradition, but also elsewhere, historical writing often served to fill the gaps in the knowledge about the past that had been, in the main, supplied by scriptural tradition. At the same time, historical writing also became a competitor with this tradition. The resulting relationship was, and continues to be, uneasy. In its familiar present-day form, for example, the quality of being “historical,” i.e. “historicity,” requires the exclusion of divine agency as a permissible explanation of events in the course of worldly affairs. In what François Hartog calls the modern “regime of historicity,” the culture of historical writing after 1750 became dominated by scholarship and aligned with mechanist understandings of the philosophy of nature. Enlightenment-era historical writing increasingly conceived of the world as a nexus of cause–effect relations that afforded space to the divine agency only in the function of “prime mover.” History then appeared to fall in line with the other forces of reason-driven “secularization” that stripped religious knowledge of the privilege of explaining things in the world, ultimately transforming it into “dogma” and “belief,” both only tenuously connected to reality. Knowledge based on the divinely “revealed” texts and the divinely “inspired” thought of traditionally recognized religious authorities lost its previous epistemic standing. Yet this loss occurred, to the extent that it did, in the form of a highly complicated negotiation, with compromises stacked on top of other compromises, generating a continuously confusing and mobile state of affairs.

Purpose: Public transport provides one of the most important modes in fulfilling the travel needs of the society. More so in case of the developing and underdeveloped nations in the world. Bus public transport apart from rail provides very economical means to travel and hence are popular modes. This study focuses on the bus public transport and the two important employees within the organization who provide the services to the people i.e., the driver and the conductor. These two employees of the organization play a very vital role in satisfying customers and retaining their loyalty. Methodology: The study focuses on the importance of Market Orientation of these employees and how their market orientation is affected by different demographic factors. The study examines the relationship of age, educational qualification, organizational tenure and job position with different dimensions of market orientation of the employees. Findings: The lowest age group employees belong to compassionate appointment batch i.e., family member provided with job on death of employee while in service their education levels are higher than others and show more commitment towards organisation as they are a part of organisation from their child hood. The age groups (44-51, 52-59) may be classified into a disappointed group as expected benefits like salaries and retirement benefits are not being paid on time. It is also seen that the employees with different educational backgrounds do not show significant difference in intelligence dissemination, intelligence generation and responsiveness. Originality / Value: Bus transport system is an ideal for meeting the huge increasing demand for passenger transport services. Bus transport system makes the most optimum use of the available road space and fossil fuel by transporting maximum number of people per unit of road space. This is one of the first empirical studies that examined the relationship of demographic characteristics, age, education and tenure in the state road transportation corporation in Telangana state and India as well. Based on the empirical evidence, this study provides the practical and theoretical implications of these findings and will be useful to other public road transport corporations in India and other countries.

Anyone contemplating the role of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in literary and cultural studies must concede that the phrase is rarely used—even by its most devout practitioners, who usually think of themselves engaged in something called “critique.” What, then, are the terminological differences between “critique” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion”? What intellectual worlds do these specific terms conjure up, and how do these worlds converge or diverge? And what is the rationale for preferring one term over the other?The “hermeneutics of suspicion” is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. In spite of their obvious differences, he argued, these thinkers jointly constitute a “school of suspicion.” That is to say, they share a commitment to unmasking “the lies and illusions of consciousness;” they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths (Ricoeur 356). Ricoeur’s term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields, yet it never really took hold in literary studies. Why has a field that has devoted so much of its intellectual energy to interrogating, subverting, and defamiliarising found so little use for Ricoeur’s phrase?In general, we can note that hermeneutics remains a path not taken in Anglo-American literary theory. The tradition of hermeneutical thinking is rarely acknowledged (how often do you see Gadamer or Ricoeur taught in a theory survey?), let alone addressed, assimilated, or argued over. Thanks to a lingering aura of teutonic stodginess, not to mention its long-standing links with a tradition of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics was never able to muster the intellectual edginess and high-wattage excitement generated by various forms of poststructuralism. Even the work of Gianni Vattimo, one of the most innovative and prolific of contemporary hermeneutical thinkers, has barely registered in the mainstream of literary and cultural studies. On occasion, to be sure, hermeneutics crops up as a synonym for a discredited model of “depth” interpretation—the dogged pursuit of a hidden true meaning—that has supposedly been superseded by more sophisticated forms of thinking. Thus the ascent of poststructuralism, it is sometimes claimed, signaled a turn away from hermeneutics to deconstruction and genealogy—leading to a focus on surface rather than depth, on structure rather than meaning, on analysis rather than interpretation. The idea of suspicion has fared little better. While Ricoeur’s account of a hermeneutics of suspicion is respectful, even admiring, critics are understandably leery of having their lines of argument reduced to their putative state of mind. The idea of a suspicious hermeneutics can look like an unwarranted personalisation of scholarly work, one that veers uncomfortably close to Harold Bloom’s tirades against the “School of Resentment” and other conservative complaints about literary studies as a hot-bed of paranoia, kill-joy puritanism, petty-minded pique, and defensive scorn. Moreover, the anti-humanist rhetoric of much literary theory—its resolute focus on transpersonal and usually linguistic structures of determination—proved inhospitable to any serious reflections on attitude, disposition, or affective stance.The concept of critique, by contrast, turns out to be marred by none of these disadvantages. An unusually powerful, flexible and charismatic idea, it has rendered itself ubiquitous and indispensable in literary and cultural studies. Critique is widely seen as synonymous with intellectual rigor, theoretical sophistication, and intransigent opposition to the status quo. Drawing a sense of intellectual weightiness from its connections to the canonical tradition of Kant and Marx, it has managed, nonetheless, to retain a cutting-edge sensibility, retooling itself to fit the needs of new fields ranging from postcolonial theory to disability studies. Critique is contagious and charismatic, drawing everything around it into its field of force, marking the boundaries of what counts as serious thought. For many scholars in the humanities, it is not just one good thing but the only conceivable thing. Who would want to be associated with the bad smell of the uncritical? There are five facets of critique (enumerated and briefly discussed below) that characterise its current role in literary and cultural studies and that have rendered critique an exceptionally successful rhetorical-cultural actor. Critique, that is to say, inspires intense attachments, serves as a mediator in numerous networks, permeates disciplines and institutional structures, spawns conferences, essays, courses, and book proposals, and triggers countless imitations, translations, reflections, revisions, and rebuttals (including the present essay). While nurturing a sense of its own marginality, iconoclasm, and outsiderdom, it is also exceptionally effective at attracting disciples, forging alliances, inspiring mimicry, and ensuring its own survival. In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” Bruno Latour remarks that critique has been so successful because it assures us that we are always right—unlike those naïve believers whose fetishes we strive to expose (225–48). At the same time, thanks to its self-reflexivity, the rhetoric of critique is more tormented and self-divided than such a description would suggest; it broods constantly over the shame of its own success, striving to detect signs of its own complicity and to root out all possible evidence of collusion with the status quo.Critique is negative. Critique retains the adversarial force of a suspicious hermeneutics, while purifying it of affective associations by treating negativity as an essentially philosophical or political matter. To engage in critique is to grapple with the oversights, omissions, contradictions, insufficiencies, or evasions in the object one is analysing. Robert Koch writes that “critical discourse, as critical discourse, must never formulate positive statements: it is always ‘negative’ in relation to its object” (531). Critique is characterised by its “againstness,” by its desire to take a hammer, as Latour would say, to the beliefs of others. Faith is to be countered with vigilant skepticism, illusion yields to a sobering disenchantment, the fetish must be defetishised, the dream world stripped of its befuddling powers. However, the negativity of critique is not just a matter of fault-finding, scolding, and censuring. The nay-saying critic all too easily calls to mind the Victorian patriarch, the thin-lipped schoolmarm, the glaring policeman. Negating is tangled up with a long history of legislation, prohibition and interdiction—it can come across as punitive, arrogant, authoritarian, or vitriolic. In consequence, defenders of critique often downplay its associations with outright condemnation. It is less a matter of refuting particular truths than of scrutinising the presumptions and procedures through which truths are established. A preferred idiom is that of “problematising,” of demonstrating the ungroundedness of beliefs rather than denouncing errors. The role of critique is not to castigate, but to complicate, not to engage in ideas’ destruction but to expose their cultural construction. Barbara Johnson, for example, contends that a critique of a theoretical system “is not an examination of its flaws and imperfections” (xv). Rather, “the critique reads backwards from what seems natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal in order to show that these things have their history” and to show that the “start point is not a (natural) given, but a (cultural) construct, usually blind to itself” (Johnson xv–xvi). Yet it seems a tad disingenuous to describe such critique as free of negative judgment and the examination of flaws. Isn’t an implicit criticism being transmitted in Johnson’s claim that a cultural construct is “usually blind to itself”? And the adjectival chain “natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal” strings together some of the most negatively weighted words in contemporary criticism. A posture of detachment, in other words, can readily convey a tacit or implicit judgment, especially when it is used to probe the deep-seated convictions, primordial passions, and heart-felt attachments of others. In this respect, the ongoing skirmishes between ideology critique and poststructuralist critique do not over-ride their commitment to a common ethos: a sharply honed suspicion that goes behind the backs of its interlocutors to retrieve counter-intuitive and uncomplimentary meanings. “You do not know that you are ideologically-driven, historically determined, or culturally constructed,” declares the subject of critique to the object of critique, “but I do!” As Marcelo Dascal points out, the supposedly non-evaluative stance of historical or genealogical argument nevertheless retains a negative or demystifying force in tracing ideas back to causes invisible to the actors themselves (39–62).Critique is secondary. A critique is always a critique of something, a commentary on another argument, idea, or object. Critique does not vaunt its self-sufficiency, independence, and autotelic splendor; it makes no pretense of standing alone. It could not function without something to critique, without another entity to which it reacts. Critique is symbiotic; it does its thinking by responding to the thinking of others. But while secondary, critique is far from subservient. It seeks to wrest from a text a different account than it gives of itself. In doing so, it assumes that it will meet with, and overcome, a resistance. If there were no resistance, if the truth were self-evident and available for all to see, the act of critique would be superfluous. Its goal is not the slavish reconstruction of an original or true meaning but a counter-reading that brings previously unfathomed insights to light. The secondariness of critique is not just a logical matter—critique presumes the existence of a prior object—but also a temporal one. Critique comes after another text; it follows or succeeds another piece of writing. Critique, then, looks backward and, in doing so, it presumes to understand the past better than the past understands itself. Hindsight becomes insight; from our later vantage point, we feel ourselves primed to see better, deeper, further. The belatedness of critique is transformed into a source of iconoclastic strength. Scholars of Greek tragedy or Romantic poetry may mourn their inability to inhabit a vanished world, yet this historical distance is also felt as a productive estrangement that allows critical knowledge to unfold. Whatever the limitations of our perspective, how can we not know more than those who have come before? We moderns leave behind us a trail of errors, finally corrected, like a cloud of ink from a squid, remarks Michel Serres (48). There is, in short, a quality of historical chauvinism built into critique, making it difficult to relinquish a sense of in-built advantage over those lost souls stranded in the past. Critique likes to have the last word. Critique is intellectual. Critique often insists on its difference from everyday practices of criticism and judgment. While criticism evaluates a specific object, according to one definition, “critique is concerned to identify the conditions of possibility under which a domain of objects appears” (Butler 109). Critique is interested in big pictures, cultural frameworks, underlying schema. It is a mode of thought well matched to the library and seminar room, to a rhythm of painstaking inquiry rather than short-term problem-solving. It “slows matters down, requires analysis and reflection, and often raises questions rather than providing answers” (Ruitenberg 348). Critique is thus irresistibly drawn toward self-reflexive thinking. Its domain is that of second-level observation, in which we reflect on the frames, paradigms, and perspectives that form and inform our understanding. Even if objectivity is an illusion, how can critical self-consciousness not trump the available alternatives? This questioning of common sense is also a questioning of common language: self-reflexivity is a matter of form as well as content, requiring the deployment of what Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb call “difficult language” that can undermine or “un-write” the discourses that make up our world (1–14). Along similar lines, Paul Bove allies himself with a “tradition that insists upon difficulty, slowness, complex, often dialectical and highly ironic styles,” as an essential antidote to the “prejudices of the current regime of truth: speed, slogans, transparency, and reproducibility” (167). Critique, in short, demands an arduous working over of language, a stoic refusal of the facile phrase and ready-made formula. Yet such programmatic divisions between critique and common sense have the effect of relegating ordinary language to a state of automatic servitude, while condescending to those unschooled in the patois of literary and critical theory. Perhaps it is time to reassess the dog-in-the-manger attitude of a certain style of academic argument—one that assigns to scholars the vantage point of the lucid and vigilant thinker, while refusing to extend this same capacity to those naïve and unreflecting souls of whom they speak.Critique comes from below. Politics and critique are often equated and conflated in literary studies and elsewhere. Critique is iconoclastic in spirit; it rails against authority; it seeks to lay bare the injustices of the law. It is, writes Foucault, the “art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intractability” (194). This vision of critique can be traced back to Marx and is cemented in the tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Critique conceives of itself as coming from below, or being situated at the margins; it is the natural ally of excluded groups and subjugated knowledges; it is not just a form of knowledge but a call to action. But who gets to claim the mantle of opposition, and on what grounds? In a well-known essay, Nancy Fraser remarks that critical theory possesses a “partisan though not uncritical identification” with oppositional social movements (97). As underscored by Fraser’s judicious insertion of the phrase “not uncritical,” critique guards its independence and reserves the right to query the actions and attitudes of the oppressed as well as the oppressors. Thus the intellectual’s affiliation with a larger community may collide with a commitment to the ethos of critique, as the object of a more heartfelt attachment. A separation occurs, as Francois Cusset puts it, “between academics questioning the very methods of questioning” and the more immediate concerns of the minority groups with which they are allied (157). One possible strategy for negotiating this tension is to flag one’s solidarity with a general principle of otherness or alterity—often identified with the utopian or disruptive energies of the literary text. This strategy gives critique a shot in the arm, infusing it with a dose of positive energy and ethical substance, yet without being pinned down to the ordinariness of a real-world referent. This deliberate vagueness permits critique to nurture its mistrust of the routines and practices through which the everyday business of the world is conducted, while remaining open to the possibility of a radically different future. Critique in its positive aspects thus remains effectively without content, gesturing toward a horizon that must remain unspecified if it is not to lapse into the same fallen state as the modes of thought that surround it (Fish 446).Critique does not tolerate rivals. Declaring itself uniquely equipped to diagnose the perils and pitfalls of representation, critique often chafes at the presence of other forms of thought. Ruling out the possibility of peaceful co-existence or even mutual indifference, it insists that those who do not embrace its tenets must be denying or disavowing them. In this manner, whatever is different from critique is turned into the photographic negative of critique—evidence of an irrefutable lack or culpable absence. To refuse to be critical is to be uncritical; a judgment whose overtones of naiveté, apathy, complacency, submissiveness, and sheer stupidity seem impossible to shrug off. In short, critique thinks of itself as exceptional. It is not one path, but the only conceivable path. Drew Milne pulls no punches in his programmatic riff on Kant: “to be postcritical is to be uncritical: the critical path alone remains open” (18).The exceptionalist aura of critique often thwarts attempts to get outside its orbit. Sociologist Michael Billig, for example, notes that critique thinks of itself as battling orthodoxy, yet is now the reigning orthodoxy—no longer oppositional, but obligatory, not defamiliarising, but oppressively familiar: “For an increasing number of younger academics,” he remarks, “the critical paradigm is the major paradigm in their academic world” (Billig 292). And in a hard-hitting argument, Talal Asad points out that critique is now a quasi-automatic stance for Western intellectuals, promoting a smugness of tone that can be cruelly dismissive of the deeply felt beliefs and attachments of others. Yet both scholars conclude their arguments by calling for a critique of critique, reinstating the very concept they have so meticulously dismantled. Critique, it seems, is not to be abandoned but intensified; critique is to be replaced by critique squared. The problem with critique, it turns out, is that it is not yet critical enough. The objections to critique are still very much part and parcel of the critique-world; the value of the critical is questioned only to be emphatically reinstated.Why do these protestations against critique end up worshipping at the altar of critique? Why does it seem so exceptionally difficult to conceive of other ways of arguing, reading, and thinking? We may be reminded of Eve Sedgwick’s comments on the mimetic aspect of critical interpretation: its remarkable ability to encourage imitation, repetition, and mimicry, thereby ensuring its own reproduction. It is an efficiently running form of intellectual machinery, modeling a style of thought that is immediately recognisable, widely applicable, and easily teachable. Casting the work of the scholar as a never-ending labour of distancing, deflating, and diagnosing, it rules out the possibility of a different relationship to one’s object. It seems to grow, as Sedgwick puts it, “like a crystal in a hypersaturated solution, blotting out any sense of the possibility of alternative ways of understanding or things to understand” (131).In this context, a change in vocabulary—a redescription, if you will—may turn out to be therapeutic. It will come as no great surprise if I urge a second look at the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur’s phrase, I suggest, can help guide us through the interpretative tangle of contemporary literary studies. It seizes on two crucial parts of critical argument—its sensibility and its interpretative method—that deserve more careful scrutiny. At the same time, it offers a much-needed antidote to the charisma of critique: the aura of ethical and political exemplarity that burnishes its negativity with a normative glow. Thanks to this halo effect, I’ve suggested, we are encouraged to assume that the only alternative to critique is a full-scale surrender to complacency, quietism, and—in literary studies—the intellectual fluff of aesthetic appreciation. Critique, moreover, presents itself as an essentially disembodied intellectual exercise, an austere, even abstemious practice of unsettling, unmaking, and undermining. Yet contemporary styles of critical argument are affective as well as analytical, conjuring up distinctive dispositions and relations to their object. As Amanda Anderson has pointed out in The Way We Argue Now, literary and cultural theory is saturated with what rhetoricians call ethos—that is to say, imputations of motive, character, or attitude. We need only think of the insouciance associated with Rortyan pragmatism, the bad-boy iconoclasm embraced by some queer theorists, or the fastidious aestheticism that characterises a certain kind of deconstructive reading. Critical languages, in other words, are also orientations, encouraging readers to adopt an affectively tinged stance toward their object. Acknowledging the role of such orientations in critical debate does not invalidate its intellectual components, nor does it presume to peer into, or diagnose, an individual scholar’s state of mind.In a related essay, I scrutinise some of the qualities of a suspicious or critical reading practice: distance rather than closeness; guardedness rather than openness; aggression rather than submission; superiority rather than reverence; attentiveness rather than distraction; exposure rather than tact (215–34). Suspicion, in this sense, constitutes a muted affective state—a curiously non-emotional emotion of morally inflected mistrust—that overlaps with, and builds upon, the stance of detachment that characterises the stance of the professional or expert. That this style of reading proves so alluring has much to do with the gratifications and satisfactions that it offers. Beyond the usual political or philosophical justifications of critique, it also promises the engrossing pleasure of a game-like sparring with the text in which critics deploy inventive skills and innovative strategies to test their wits, best their opponents, and become sharper, shrewder, and more sophisticated players. In this context, the claim that contemporary criticism has moved “beyond” hermeneutics should be treated with a grain of salt, given that, as Stanley Fish points out, “interpretation is the only game in town” (446). To be sure, some critics have backed away from the model of what they call “depth interpretation” associated with Marx and Freud, in which reading is conceived as an act of digging and the critic, like a valiant archaeologist, excavates a resistant terrain in order to retrieve the treasure of hidden meaning. In this model, the text is envisaged as possessing qualities of interiority, concealment, penetrability, and depth; it is an object to be plundered, a puzzle to be solved, a secret message to be deciphered. Instead, poststructuralist critics are drawn to the language of defamiliarising rather than discovery. The text is no longer composed of strata and the critic does not burrow down but stands back. Instead of brushing past surface meanings in pursuit of hidden truth, she dwells in ironic wonder on these surface meanings, seeking to “denaturalise” them through the mercilessness of her gaze. Insight, we might say, is achieved by distancing rather than by digging. Recent surveys of criticism often highlight the rift between these camps, underscoring the differences between the diligent seeker after buried truth and the surface-dwelling ironist. From a Ricoeur-inflected point of view, however, it is their shared investment in a particular ethos—a stance of knowingness, guardedness, suspicion and vigilance—that turns out to be more salient and more striking. Moreover, these approaches are variously engaged in the dance of interpretation, seeking to go beyond the backs of texts or fellow-actors in order to articulate non-obvious and often counter-intuitive truths. In the case of poststructuralism, we can speak of a second-order hermeneutics that is less interested in probing the individual object than the larger frameworks and conditions in which it is embedded. What the critic interprets is no longer a self-contained poem or novel, but a broader logic of discursive structures, reading formations, or power relations. Ricoeur’s phrase, moreover, has the singular advantage of allowing us to by-pass the exceptionalist tendencies of critique: its presumption that whatever is not critique can only be assigned to the ignominious state of the uncritical. As a less prejudicial term, it opens up a larger history of suspicious reading, including traditions of religious questioning and self-scrutiny that bear on current forms of interpretation, but that are occluded by the aggressively secular connotations of critique (Hunter). In this context, Ricoeur’s own account needs to be supplemented and modified to acknowledge this larger cultural history; the hermeneutics of suspicion is not just the brain-child of a few exceptional thinkers, as his argument implies, but a widespread practice of interpretation embedded in more mundane, diffuse and variegated forms of life (Felski 220).Finally, the idea of a suspicious hermeneutics does not invalidate or rule out other interpretative possibilities—ranging from Ricoeur’s own notion of a hermeneutics of trust to more recent coinages such as Sedgwick’s “restorative reading,” Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” or Timothy Bewes’s “generous reading.” Literary studies in France, for example, is currently experiencing a new surge of interest in hermeneutics (redefined as a practice of reinvention rather than exhumation) as well as a reinvigorated phenomenology of reading that elucidates, in rich and fascinating detail, its immersive and affective dimensions (see Citton; Macé). This growing interest in the ethos, aesthetics, and ethics of reading is long overdue. Such an orientation by no means rules out attention to the sociopolitical resonances of texts and their interpretations. It is, however, no longer willing to subordinate such attention to the seductive but sterile dichotomy of the critical versus the uncritical.ReferencesAnderson, Amanda. The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.Asad, Talal. “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 20–63. Bewes, Timothy. “Reading with the Grain: A New World in Literary Studies.” Differences 21.3 (2010): 1–33.Billig, Michael. “Towards a Critique of the Critical.” Discourse and Society 11.3 (2000): 291–92. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.Bove, Paul. Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. Butler, Judith. “The Sensibility of Critique: Response to Asad and Mahmood.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 101–136.Citton, Yves. Lire, interpréter, actualiser: pourqoi les études littéraires? Paris: Editions Amsterdam, 2007. Culler, Jonathan and Kevin Lamb, “Introduction.” Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. Ed. Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 1–14. Cusset, Francois. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Trans. Jeff Fort. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008.Dascal, Marcelo. “Critique without Critics?” Science in Context 10.1 (1997): 39–62.Felski, Rita. “Suspicious Minds.” Poetics Today 32.2 (2011): 215–34.Fish, Stanley. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1989.Foucault, Michel. “What is Critique?” The Political. Ed. David Ingram. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 191–211. Fraser, Nancy. “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender.” New German Critique 35 (1985): 97–131. Hunter, Ian. Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994.Johnson, Barbara. “Translator’s Introduction.” Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination. London: Continuum, 2004. vii–xxxv. Koch, Robert. “The Critical Gesture in Philosophy.” Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art. Ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Cambridge: MIT, 2002. 524–36. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–48.Macé, Marielle. Facons de lire, manières d’être. Paris: Gallimard, 2011. Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.Milne, Drew. “Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique.” Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 1–22. Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. Ruitenberg, Claudia. “Don’t Fence Me In: The Liberation of Undomesticated Critique.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 38.3 (2004): 314–50. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You.” Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 123–52. Serres, Michel and Bruno Latour. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Trans. Roxanne Lapidus. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.Vattimo, Gianni. Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy. Trans. David Webb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

This article aims to analyse an intercultural telephone invitation given by a Chinese tutor to an Australian student, and highlight general principles of intercultural invitations. This anecdote is based on a true story that took place in a university in Australia, but the persons' names used here are fictitious for the sake of confidentiality. Below is the transcript of the actual conversation between the Chinese tutor Dr Lin Liang (L) and his student Catherine Jones (C): C: Catherine speaking. L: Hi, Catherine, this is Lin. C: Hi, Teacher Lin. L: I would like to invite you to our New Year's party to be held in my house this Saturday evening. C: This Saturday? I am afraid I won't be able to make it because I am going to my best friend's birthday party. L: You know this is the end of our school year. It would be so nice for all of our classmates to gather together. C: But I have already promised my friend. L: En... It is a pity... C: Sorry about that, but -- L: Never mind. Enjoy your party then. C: Thanks. L: That's OK, bye. C: Bye. However, the story does not end here. About two hours later, Dr Lin rang Catherine a second time, asking if it was still possible for her to consider attending the Saturday party. Late in the evening around 9.00 pm, Dr Lin rang her yet again to invite her to the party, saying it would be OK even if she stayed just for a short while. The next day, Catherine lodged a complaint with the Dean, alleging that Dr. Lin's repeated calls constituted sexual harassment. Dr. Lin was highly distressed to learn of the complaint, and explained that he just wanted to indicate sincerity and warmth as required by an invitation, and had no other intentions. This communication breakdown invites a number of questions: What are the factors underlying Catherine's interpretation that Dr. Lin's repeated calls constituted sexual harassment? What are the factors underlying Dr. Lin's contention that his actions were intended to emphasise his sincerity? What factors would need to be recognised in order to facilitate culturally competent performances on both their parts? In order to answer these questions, this article will adopt a holistic approach based on an analytic framework encompassing three theoretical dimensions. This framework is comprised as follows: Differences in intercultural exchange and politeness behaviour; Aristotle's distinction between the three orientations of persuasive/rhetorical appeal; ethos, pathos, and logos; Austin and Searle's theory of speech acts, as applied to politeness behaviour and felicity conditions in communicative interaction as applied to the act of inviting. These approaches are conceptualised as three overlapping spheres, and their relatedness can be further illustrated: Figure 1 First and foremost, the case study in question is related to an intercultural interaction between the Australian and Chinese culture, and some research findings in relevant areas may help highlight the differences in politeness behaviour between high-context and low-context cultures (Hall). According to Hall, high-context cultures such as Chinese tend to stress the use of internalised or implicit message while low-context cultures tend to emphasise the use of explicit messages. In other words, in Chinese culture, the message may have some shared implied meanings that may go beyond the linguistic forms used in the message. Kaplan's model on oriental circularity and western linearity seemed to in accordance with Hall's model. Young's exploration of the directness and indirectness of American and Chinese requests further substantiated this point. In a similar way, differences may arise in determining the criteria for appropriate behaviour relating to the use of other directives across cultures. As Gao and Ting-Toomey suggest, Chinese culture seems to pay attention to qing (reciprocity and feelings of obligation) and guanxi (relationship building), while in low-context cultures such a stress tends to be missing. This difference may also help explain the differences in communicative patterns as discussed by Kaplan and Young. Zhu found that in making a sales offer, Chinese companies often try to establish a long-term relationship with their clients ("Structural Moves"). In contrast, Australian companies seem to mainly focus on promoting products. The stress on qing in Chinese culture may also be a crucial factor that contributes to the different criteria for a polite invitation as compared to the Australian culture. The following discussion will further explore the other two parameters (see Figure 1) the two cultures differ in when making an invitation, which may have finally led to the breakdown in communication between Dr. Lin and Catherine. As shown in Figure 1, the argument underpinning this approach is that a given illocutionary act reflects culture-specific preferences for certain persuasive/rhetorical orientations, thereby affecting the socio-linguistic performance, i.e. parole as opposed to langue (Cullen) related to politeness principles. In short, the persuasive/rhetorical orientation varies between cultures, which means that the nature of ostensibly equivalent illocutionary acts also varies. Consequently, cross-cultural competence will be limited unless one is aware of the rhetorical and politeness codes implicit in the performance of certain communicative actions. Note that rhetorical orientation may also influence the politeness behaviour directly as a specification of that orientation. This in turn requires an awareness of cultural preferences toward certain persuasive/rhetorical orientations. The interconnections between them and the theoretical utility of this approach will be made explicit in the course of this discussion. Austin and Searle conceptualise the speech acts as comprising of locution (langue) and illocution (parole). What is of vital importance is the illocutionary force of an utterance which is the performance of a speech act, such as an invitation. According to Searle, an invitation is a directive used to get the addressee to do something. Invitation can be understood as a particular form of persuasive speech act. It is generally intended to produce a particular response (i.e. acceptance). As an illocutionary action, an invitation seeks to establish a relationship of social expectations between the host and invitee. This requires certain felicity conditions to be met. In other words, for the speech act to be socially significant, it must create a shared sense of meaning in regard to some perceived change or modification to existing social relations. These are often so obvious that they require little explanation. However, felicity conditions in speech-acts are culture-specific and may include rhetorical and politeness devices that are not obvious to other cultures. Politeness behaviour in invitations, related to using appropriate language forms, is an important element in competent illocutionary performance. Leech contends that polite illocutions are likely to be seen as minimising the addressee's cost and maximising his/her benefits, and the opposite is true for the addresser. Politeness behaviour can also be further explained in the light of Brown and Levinson's face-saving theory. Many actions we perform with words are potential face-threatening acts, such as requests and invitations (Brown and Levinson). The addresser is thus often confronted with negative face wants and has to address them by applying Leech's principles, in which maximising the addressee's benefits is the dominant strategy to gain politeness. However, strategies to maximise the addressee's benefits can be culture-specific. This is further connected to the persuasive/rhetorical orientation. Based on Aristotle, the appeal from ethos emphasises the persuader's (host's) character and status or other social conventions which might oblige compliance. The appeal from pathos emphasises emotion/feelings (either positive or negative) in inducing the desired response. The appeal from logos emphasises reason and the logical consistency of the proposal with the ideas and motives of the persuadee (invitee). Moran and Stripp found that western cultures tend to have a logical orientation, while others such as Japanese and Chinese tend to be characterised by emotional or dogmatic orientations. In a similar manner, Chinese scholars seem to address ethos, logos and pathos at the same time, in particular the logos and pathos. These principles remain a well-accepted principle in Chinese writing theories. Li, for example, clearly explicates the persuasive principle in writing as qing li (the combination of the emotional and logical approaches). The explicitly preferred qing (feelings/emotions) can be seen as part of the Confucian values relating to harmony, consensus and relationship building as noted by Hofstede and Bond. The different rhetorical orientations are also further explored by Campbell. This difference may suggest that the preferred rhetorical orientations are also a key aspect underpinning competent illocutionary performance. For example in Chinese invitations, a stress on the emotional approach may validate behaviours such as repeating the invitation even after initial refusal. However, a stress on the logical orientation, such as in western cultures, may negate the validity of these politeness conditions. This clearly points out the necessity of understanding the criteria for competent performance across cultures. The felicity conditions of invitation in Euro-Australian culture require, first, that the potential host be in a legitimate position to offer hospitality, and second, that the potential guest be -- at least theoretically -- able and willing to accept. Thirdly, the locutionary form of politeness requires use of conventionally appropriate terms of address and wording. The illocutionary form requires that the host symbolically offer hospitality to the invitee without the imposition of charges or other demands. Furthermore, the implied benefit to the invitee would ideally be achieved though implied cost to the host (even if the invitee is addressed as if their presence constitutes the bestowal of a favour). Fourthly, depending on the nature of the relationship between the host and invitee, certain persuasive/rhetorical orientations are preferred over others (eg. an appeal to emotion may seem out of place in formal invitation). The initial invitation meets these criteria. Dr. Lin offers and Catherine declines, citing a plausible and legitimate reason for being unavailable. From Catherine's perspective, the felicity conditions for invitation are now redundant. She has already declined in a manner which makes it clear that she is socially obliged to be elsewhere. From a persuasive/rhetorical perspective, the first invitation was primarily based on an appeal from logos/reason. i.e. Dr. Lin did not know that Catherine had already committed herself to other plans and it would be reasonable to suppose that she might appreciate being invited to a social occasion. This was backed up by a secondary appeal from pathos/emotion, whereby Dr. Lin pointed out that it would be nice for the whole class to get together. However, the priority of attending a best friend's birthday-party over-rides both these appeals. In Euro-Australian culture, close personal friends enjoy greater social priority than classmates or more distant associates. For Dr. Lin, however, the politeness criteria for invitation were still applicable. From a Chinese cultural perspective, the illocutionary performance of invitation may require repetition of the offer, even if the initial approach has been declined. According to Zhu (Business Communication), in Chinese culture repeating invitations is an accepted ritual to indicate sincerity and hospitality. Thus in Dr. Lin's view the second approach is required to perform the illocutionary act competently. The persuasive appeal, however, has become oriented toward ethos, reflecting Chinese conventions pertaining to politeness behaviour. For Dr. Lin not to repeat the invitation might suggest that Catherine's presence was of merely casual concern. Therefore the sincerity of the invitation demanded the gesture of repetition, regardless of the logical grounds cited for the initial refusal. Unfortunately, Dr. Lin and Catherine perceive the second invitation in very different ways based on the illocutionary performance criteria of their respective cultures. For Catherine, the logical basis for her initial refusal renders Dr. Lin's performance incompetent, and creates uncertainty about his apparent motives. In Euro-Australian culture, the repeated invitation makes no logical sense, since a perfectly legitimate reason for declining has already been provided. Therefore the communicative action cannot be interpreted as an invitation. If it is, then it is performed in a culturally incompetent fashion which could legitimately be construed as pestering. Repeating an invitation which has already been declined may appear to be an emotional appeal. While an illocutionary invitation based on pathos conceivably may be competent in Euro-Australian culture, the only circumstances that it would occur in is between relatively close friends. The power-relations between Catherine, as student, and Dr. Lin, as tutor, precludes felicity in this case. Thus the same locutionary action is interpreted as two quite different illocutionary actions. This depends on the interpreter's culturally specific understanding of the social significance of the locution. Since Catherine's cultural conventions would implicitly deny the validity of a repeated invitation, the communicative action must be construed as something else. Catherine may have classified the repeated invitation as a minor issue of little consequence. However, when Dr. Lin called her up to invite her a third time, she interpreted the illocutionary act as harassment. From a contemporary Euro-Australian perspective, pestering may be irritating, but harassment is political in nature. Three factors lead Catherine to this conclusion. First, after two previous declinations, the third invitation could not fulfil the illocutionary performance criteria of a legitimate invitation. In particular, the persuasive/rhetorical orientation of the repeated appeals were not oriented toward logos, as befits the formality of the lecturer-student relation. Indeed, it was Dr. Lin's apparent attempt to approach Catherine in a non-formal manner (apparently oriented toward pathos rather than logos) which led her to this interpretation. Second, the fact that Dr. Lin' social status is higher than Catherine's introduced the problem of the implicit power-relations in the discourse. For Catherine, the third invitation was intrusive and pushy, and it seemed that her explanations had been ignored. The evening call demanded that she re-engage in the discourse of day-time student-tutor power-relations. Since she is subordinate to Dr. Lin, other strategies through which she might have asserted her rights may have carried the risk of subsequent disfavour. However, she obviously resented what she perceived as an attempt to inappropriately use status to interfere with her personal affairs and sought out higher authority to rectify the situation, hence the complaint of harassment made to the Dean. Ironically, Dr. Lin's third invitation in the evening may well have been intended to reduce the social distance between himself and Catherine created by workplace space-time power-relations. For Dr. Lin, the first invitation expressed the illocutionary intent. The second call made sure that the invitee was made to feel assured of the sincerity of the invitation, and the third ring expressed the would-be host's appreciation. Establishing a host-guest relationship is a key illocutionary function in Chinese invitation. Note though, that there may also be a 'face' consideration here. Dr. Lin attempts to facilitate Catherine's attendance by pointing out that it would be acceptable to attend for a brief period. This suggests a re-emphasis on the orientation to logos, since it points out a compromise which allows Catherine to attend both parties. It also allowed Dr. Lin to save 'face' by not having his invitation totally disregarded. However, it failed as an illocutionary performance because the felicity conditions for polite invitation had already been violated as far as Catherine was concerned, even though they remained intact throughout for Dr. Lin. In conclusion, it can be seen from the above analysis of the communication breakdown that persuasive orientations and politeness principles are interrelated and culturally sensitive. Euro-Australian culture stresses the logical orientation in illocutionary performance whereas Chinese culture seems to emphasise both the logical and emotional approaches. Without a recognition of this difference, specific politeness behaviours in intercultural invitations can lead to illocutionary incompetence. This has been exemplified by Catherine's misconstrual of Dr. Lin's intended invitation-performance as harassment. Therefore in intercultural communication, one ought not to judge a speech act such as an invitation based on one's own culture's felicity conditions. First and foremost, a basic understanding of persuasive orientations between cultures is essential. With appropriate understanding of these principles one can avoid misinterpreting the intent of the addresser, thus overcoming barriers in intercultural communication. Specifically, further appreciation of the interplay between rhetorical orientation, politeness codes and felicity conditions in illocutionary performances in different cultures is required for a fuller comprehension of potential cross-cultural incompetence. With this in mind, greater tolerance can be achieved, and intercultural competence enhanced. References Aristotle. Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Austin, John. L. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1987. Campbell, Charles. P. "Rhetorical Ethos: A Bridge between High-Context and Low-Context Cultures? The Cultural Context in Business Communication. Eds. Susanne Niemeier, Charles P. Campbell and René Dirven. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1998. 31-47. Cullen, Johnathan. Saussure. 2nd ed. London: Fontana, 1985. Ge Gao, and S. Ting-Toomey. Communicating Effectively with the Chinese. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998. Hall, E. T. Beyond Culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1977. Hofstede, G., and M. H. Bond. "The Confucius Connection: From Cultural Roots to Economic Growth." Organisational Dynamics 16.4 (1988): 4-21. Kaplan, R. B. "Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education." Language Learning 16 (1966): 1-20. Leech, Geoffery. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman, 1983. Li Xiaoming. "Good Writing" in Cross-Cultural Context. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1996. Moran, R. T., and W. G. Stripp. Successful International Business Negotiations. Houston: Gulf, 1991. Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1969. Young, Linda Wai Ling, ed. Crosstalk and Culture in Sino-American Communication. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1994. Zhu Yunxia. Business Communication in China. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 1999. ---. Structural Moves Reflected in English and Chinese Sales Letters. Discourse Studies (In Press). Citation reference for this article MLA style: Zhu Yunxia, Peter Thompson. "Invitation or Sexual Harassment? An Analysis of an Intercultural Communication Breakdown." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/invitation.php>. Chicago style: Zhu Yunxia, Peter Thompson, "Invitation or Sexual Harassment? An Analysis of an Intercultural Communication Breakdown," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/invitation.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Zhu Yunxia, Peter Thompson. (2000) Invitation or sexual harassment? An analysis of an intercultural communication breakdown. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/invitation.php> ([your date of access]).

Technique and creativity Having been called upon to provide a contribution to a publication dedicated to “Techne”, I feel it is fitting to start from the theme of technique, given that for too many years now, we have fruitlessly attempted to understand the inner workings of cinema whilst disregarding the element of technique. And this has posed a significant problem in our field of study, as it would be impossible to gain a true understanding of what cinema is without immersing ourselves in the technical and industrial culture of the 19th century. It was within this culture that a desire was born: to mould the imaginary through the new techniques of reproduction and transfiguration of reality through images. Studying the development of the so-called “pre-cinema” – i.e. the period up to the conventional birth of cinema on 28 December 1895 with the presentation of the Cinématographe Lumière – we discover that the technical history of cinema is not only almost more enthralling than its artistic and cultural history, but that it contains all the great theoretical, philosophical and scientific insights that we need to help us understand the social, economic and cultural impact that cinema had on the culture of the 20th century. At the 1900 Paris Exposition, when cinema had already existed in some form for a few years, when the first few short films of narrative fiction also already existed, the cinematograph was placed in the Pavilion of Technical Discoveries, to emphasise the fact that the first wonder, this element of unparalleled novelty and modernity, was still there, in technique, in this marvel of innovation and creativity. I would like to express my idea through the words of Franco Moretti, who claims in one of his most recent works that it is only possible to understand form through the forces that pulsate through it and press on it from beneath, finally allowing the form itself to come to the surface and make itself visible and comprehensible to our senses. As such, the cinematic form – that which appears on the screen, that which is now so familiar to us, that which each of us has now internalised, that has even somehow become capable of configuring our way of thinking, imagining, dreaming – that form is underpinned by forces that allow it to eventually make its way onto the screen and become artistic and narrative substance. And those forces are the forces of technique, the forces of industry, the economic, political and social forces without which we could never hope to understand cinema. One of the issues that I always make a point of addressing in the first few lessons with my students is that if they think that the history of cinema is made up of films, directors, narrative plots to be understood, perhaps even retold in some way, then they are entirely on the wrong track; if, on the other hand, they understand that it is the story of an institution with economic, political and social drivers within it that can, in some way, allow us to come to the great creators, the great titles, but that without a firm grasp of those drivers, there is no point in even attempting to explore it, then they are on the right track. As I see it, cinema in the twentieth century was a great democratic, interclassist laboratory such as no other art has ever been, and this occurred thanks to the fact that what underpinned it was an industrial reasoning: it had to respond to the capital invested in it, it had to make money, and as such, it had to reach the largest possible number of people, immersing it into a wholly unprecedented relational situation. The aim was to be as inclusive as possible, ultimately giving rise to the idea that cinema could not be autonomous, as other forms of art could be, but that it must instead be able to negotiate all the various forces acting upon it, pushing it in every direction. This concept of negotiation is one which has been explored in great detail by one of the greatest film theorists of our modern age, Francesco Casetti. In a 2005 book entitled “Eye of the Century”, which I consider to be a very important work, Casetti actually argues that cinema has proven itself to be the art form most capable of adhering to the complexity and fast pace of the short century, and that it is for this very reason that its golden age (in the broadest sense) can be contained within the span of just a hundred years. The fact that cinema was the true epistemological driving force of 20th-century modernity – a position now usurped by the Internet – is not, in my opinion, something that diminishes the strength of cinema, but rather an element of even greater interest. Casetti posits that cinema was the great negotiator of new cultural needs, of the need to look at art in a different way, of the willingness to adapt to technique and technology: indeed, the form of cinema has always changed according to the techniques and technologies that it has brought to the table or established a dialogue with on a number of occasions. Barry Salt, whose background is in physics, wrote an important book – publishing it at his own expense, as a mark of how difficult it is to work in certain fields – entitled “Film Style and Technology”, in which he calls upon us stop writing the history of cinema starting from the creators, from the spirit of the time, from the great cultural and historical questions, and instead to start afresh by following the techniques available over the course of its development. Throughout the history of cinema, the creation of certain films has been the result of a particular set of technical conditions: having a certain type of film, a certain type of camera, only being able to move in a certain way, needing a certain level of lighting, having an entire arsenal of equipment that was very difficult to move and handle; and as the equipment, medium and techniques changed and evolved over the years, so too did the type of cinema that we were able to make. This means framing the history of cinema and film theory in terms of the techniques that were available, and starting from there: of course, whilst Barry Salt’s somewhat provocative suggestion by no means cancels out the entire cultural, artistic and aesthetic discourse in cinema – which remains fundamental – it nonetheless raises an interesting point, as if we fail to consider the methods and techniques of production, we will probably never truly grasp what cinema is. These considerations also help us to understand just how vast the “construction site” of cinema is – the sort of “factory” that lies behind the production of any given film. Erwin Panofsky wrote a single essay on cinema in the 1930s entitled “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” – a very intelligent piece, as one would expect from Panofsky – in which at a certain point, he compares the construction site of the cinema to those of Gothic cathedrals, which were also under an immense amount of pressure from different forces, namely religious ones, but also socio-political and economic forces which ultimately shaped – in the case of the Gothic cathedral and its development – an idea of the relationship between the earth and the otherworldly. The same could be said for cinema, because it also involves starting with something very earthly, very grounded, which is then capable of unleashing an idea of imaginary metamorphosis. Some scholars, such as Edgar Morin, will say that cinema is increasingly becoming the new supernatural, the world of contemporary gods, as religion gradually gives way to other forms of deification. Panofsky’s image is a very focused one: by making film production into a construction site, which to all intents and purposes it is, he leads us to understand that there are different forces at work, represented by a producer, a scriptwriter, a director, but also a workforce, the simple labourers, as is always the case in large construction sites, calling into question the idea of who the “creator” truly is. So much so that cinema, now more than ever before, is reconsidering the question of authorship, moving towards a “history of cinema without names” in an attempt to combat the “policy of the author” which, in the 1950s, especially in France, identified the director as the de facto author of the film. Today, we are still in that position, with the director still considered the author of the film, but that was not always so: back in the 1910s, in the United States, the author of the film was the scriptwriter, the person who wrote it (as is now the case for TV series, where they have once again taken pride of place as the showrunner, the creator, the true author of the series, and nobody remembers the names of the directors of the individual episodes); or at times, it can be the producer, as was the case for a long time when the Oscar for Best Picture, for example, was accepted by the producer in their capacity as the commissioner, as the “owner” of the work. As such, the theme of authorship is a very controversial one indeed, but one which helps us to understand the great meeting of minds that goes into the production of a film, starting with the technicians, of course, but also including the actors. Occasionally, a film is even attributed to the name of a star, almost as if to declare that that film is theirs, in that it is their body and their talent as an actor lending it a signature that provides far more of a draw to audiences than the name of the director does. In light of this, the theme of authorship, which Panofsky raised in the 1930s through the example of the Gothic cathedral, which ultimately does not have a single creator, is one which uses the image of the construction site to also help us to better understand what kind of development a film production can go through and to what extent this affects its critical and historical reception; as such, grouping films together based on their director means doing something that, whilst certainly not incorrect in itself, precludes other avenues of interpretation and analysis which could have favoured or could still favour a different reading of the “cinematographic construction site”. Design and execution The great classic Hollywood film industry was a model that, although it no longer exists in the same form today, unquestionably made an indelible mark at a global level on the history not only of cinema, but more broadly, of the culture of the 20th century. The industry involved a very strong vertical system resembling an assembly line, revolving around producers, who had a high level of decision-making autonomy and a great deal of expertise, often inclined towards a certain genre of film and therefore capable of bringing together the exact kinds of skills and visions required to make that particular film. The history of classic American cinema is one that can also be reconstructed around the units that these producers would form. The “majors”, along with the so-called “minors”, were put together like football teams, with a chairman flanked by figures whom we would nowadays refer to as a sporting director and a managing director, who built the team based on specific ideas, “buying” directors, scriptwriters, scenographers, directors of photography, and even actors and actresses who generally worked almost exclusively for their major – although they could occasionally be “loaned out” to other studios. This system led to a very marked characterisation and allowed for the film to be designed in a highly consistent, recognisable way in an age when genres reigned supreme and there was the idea that in order to keep the audience coming back, it was important to provide certain reassurances about what they would see: anyone going to see a Western knew what sorts of characters and storylines to expect, with the same applying to a musical, a crime film, a comedy, a melodrama, and so on. The star system served to fuel this working method, with these major actors also representing both forces and materials in the hands of an approach to the filmmaking which had the ultimate objective of constructing the perfect film, in which everything had to function according to a rule rooted in both the aesthetic and the economic. Gore Vidal wrote that from 1939 onwards, Hollywood did not produce a single “wrong” film: indeed, whilst certainly hyperbolic, this claim confirms that that system produced films that were never wrong, never off-key, but instead always perfectly in tune with what the studios wished to achieve. Whilst this long-entrenched system of yesteryear ultimately imploded due to certain historical phenomena that determined it to be outdated, the way of thinking about production has not changed all that much, with film design remaining tied to a professional approach that is still rooted within it. The overwhelming majority of productions still start from a system which analyses the market and the possible economic impact of the film, before even starting to tackle the various steps that lead up to the creation of the film itself. Following production systems and the ways in which they have changed, in terms of both the technology and the cultural contexts, also involves taking stock of the still considerable differences that exist between approaches to filmmaking in different countries, or indeed the similarities linking highly disparate economic systems (consider, for example, India’s “Bollywood” or Nigeria’s “Nollywood”: two incredibly strong film industries that we are not generally familiar with as they lack global distribution, although they are built very solidly). In other words, any attempt to study Italian cinema and American cinema – to stay within this double field – with the same yardstick is unthinkable, precisely because the context of their production and design is completely different. Composition and innovation Studying the publications on cinema in the United States in the early 1900s – which, from about 1911 to 1923, offers us a revealing insight into the attempts made to garner an in-depth understanding of how this new storytelling machine worked and the development of the first real cultural industry of the modern age – casts light on the centrality of the issues of design and composition. I remain convinced that without reading and understanding that debate, it is very difficult to understand why cinema is as we have come to be familiar with it today. Many educational works investigated the inner workings of cinema, and some, having understood them, suggested that they were capable of teaching others to do so. These publications have almost never been translated into Italian and remain seldom studied even in the US, and yet they are absolutely crucial for understanding how cinema established itself on an industrial and aesthetic level. There are two key words that crop up time and time again in these books, the first being “action”, one of the first words uttered when a film starts rolling: “lights, camera, action”. This collection of terms is interesting in that “motore” highlights the presence of a machine that has to be started up, followed by “action”, which expresses that something must happen at that moment in front of that machine, otherwise the film will not exist. As such, “action” – a term to which I have devoted some of my studies – is a fundamental word here in that it represents a sort of moment of birth of the film that is very clear – tangible, even. The other word is “composition”, and this is an even more interesting word with a history that deserves a closer look: the first professor of cinema in history, Victor Oscar Freeburg (I edited the Italian translation of his textbook “The Art of Photoplay Making”, published in 1918), took up his position at Columbia University in 1915 and, in doing so, took on the task of teaching the first ever university course in cinema. Whilst Freeburg was, for his time, a very well-educated and highly-qualified person, having studied at Yale and then obtained his doctorate in theatre at Columbia, cinema was not entirely his field of expertise. He was asked to teach a course entitled “Photoplay Writing”. At the time, a film was known as a “photoplay”, in that it was a photographed play of sorts, and the fact that the central topic of the course was photoplay writing makes it clear that back then, the scriptwriter was considered the main author of the work. From this point of view, it made sense to entrust the teaching of cinema to an expert in theatre, based on the idea that it was useful to first and foremost teach a sort of photographable dramaturgy. However, upon arriving at Columbia, Freeburg soon realised whilst preparing his course that “photoplay writing” risked misleading the students, as it is not enough to simply write a story in order to make a film; as such, he decided to change the title of his course to “photoplay composition”. This apparently minor alteration, from “writing” to “composition”, in fact marked a decisive conceptual shift in that it highlighted that it was no longer enough to merely write: one had to “compose”. So it was that the author of a film became, according to Freeburg, not the scriptwriter or director, but the “cinema composer” (a term of his own coinage), thus directing and broadening the concept of composition towards music, on the one hand, and architecture, on the other. We are often inclined to think that cinema has inherited expressive modules that come partly from literature, partly from theatre and partly from painting, but in actual fact, what Freeburg helps us to understand is that there are strong elements of music and architecture in a film, emphasising the lofty theme of the project. In his book, he explores at great length the relationship between static and dynamic forms in cinema, a topic that few have ever addressed in that way and that again, does not immediately spring to mind as applicable to a film. I believe that those initial intuitions were the result of a reflection unhindered by all the prejudices and preconceived notions that subsequently began to condition film studies as a discipline, and I feel that they are of great use to use today because they guide us, on the one hand, towards a symphonic idea of filmmaking, and on the other, towards an idea that preserves the fairly clear imprint of architecture. Space-Time In cinema as in architecture, the relationship between space and time is a crucial theme: in every textbook, space and time are amongst the first chapters to be studied precisely because in cinema, they undergo a process of metamorphosis – as Edgar Morin would say – which is vital to constructing the intermediate world of film. Indeed, from both a temporal and a spatial point of view, cinema provides a kind of ubiquitous opportunity to overlap different temporalities and spatialities, to move freely from one space to another, but above all, to construct new systems of time. The rules of film editing – especially so-called “invisible editing”, i.e. classical editing that conceals its own presence – are rules built upon specific and precise connections that hold together different spaces – even distant ones – whilst nonetheless giving the impression of unity, of contiguity, of everything that cinema never is in reality, because cinema is constantly fragmented and interrupted, even though we very often perceive it in continuity. As such, from both a spatial and a temporal perspective, there are technical studies that explain the rules of how to edit so as to give the idea of spatial continuity, as well as theoretical studies that explain how cinema has transformed our sense of space and time. To mark the beginning of Parma’s run as Italy’s Capital of Culture, an exhibition was organised entitled “Time Machine. Seeing and Experiencing Time”, curated by Antonio Somaini, with the challenge of demonstrating how cinema, from its earliest experiments to the digital age, has managed to manipulate and transform time, profoundly affecting our way of engaging with it. The themes of time and space are vital to understanding cinema, including from a philosophical point of view: in two of Gilles Deleuze’s seminal volumes, “The Movement Image” and “The Time Image”, the issues of space and time become the two great paradigms not only for explaining cinema, but also – as Deleuze himself says – for explaining a certain 20th-century philosophy. Deleuze succeeds in a truly impressive endeavour, namely linking cinema to philosophical reflection – indeed, making cinema into an instrument of philosophical thought; this heteronomy of filmmaking is then also transferred to its ability to become an instrument that goes beyond its own existence to become a reflection on the century that saw it as a protagonist of sorts. Don Ihde argues that every era has a technical discovery that somehow becomes what he calls an “epistemological engine”: a tool that opens up a system of thought that would never have been possible without that discovery. One of the many examples of this over the centuries is the camera obscura, but we could also name cinema as the defining discovery for 20th-century thought: indeed, cinema is indispensable for understanding the 20th century, just as the Internet is for understanding our way of thinking in the 21st century. Real-virtual Nowadays, the film industry is facing the crisis of cinema closures, ultimately caused by ever-spreading media platforms and the power of the economic competition that they are exerting by aggressively entering the field of production and distribution, albeit with a different angle on the age-old desire to garner audiences. Just a few days ago, Martin Scorsese was lamenting the fact that on these platforms, the artistic project is in danger of foundering, as excellent projects are placed in a catalogue alongside a series of products of varying quality, thus confusing the viewer. A few years ago, during the opening ceremony of the academic year at the University of Southern California, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas expressed the same concept about the future of cinema in a different way. Lucas argued that cinemas would soon have to become incredibly high-tech places where people can have an experience that is impossible to reproduce elsewhere, with a ticket price that takes into account the expanded and increased experiential value on offer thanks to the new technologies used. Spielberg, meanwhile, observed that cinemas will manage to survive if they manage to transform the cinemagoer from a simple viewer into a player, an actor of sorts. The history of cinema has always been marked by continuous adaptation to technological evolutions. I do not believe that cinema will ever end. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the great masters of the Nouvelle Vague, once said in an interview: «I am very sorry not to have witnessed the birth of cinema, but I am sure that I will witness its death». Godard, who was born in 1930, is still alive. Since its origins, cinema has always transformed rather than dying. Raymond Bellour says that cinema is an art that never finishes finishing, a phrase that encapsulates the beauty and the secret of cinema: an art that never quite finishes finishing is an art that is always on the very edge of the precipice but never falls off, although it leans farther and farther over that edge. This is undoubtedly down to cinema’s ability to continually keep up with technique and technology, and in doing so to move – even to a different medium – to relocate, as contemporary theorists say, even finally moving out of cinemas themselves to shift onto platforms and tablets, yet all without ever ceasing to be cinema. That said, we should give everything we’ve got to ensure that cinemas survive.

This paper argues that artist Dope Saint Jude is transforming South African hip-hop by queering a genre that has predominantly been male and heteronormative. Specifically, I analyse the opening skit of her music video “Keep in Touch” in order to unpack the ways which she revives Gayle, a gay language that adopted double-coded forms of speech during the apartheid era—a context in which homosexuals were criminalised. The use of Gayle and spaces close to the city centre of Cape Town (such as Salt River and Woodstock) speaks to the city as it was before it was transformed by the decline of industries due to the country’s adoption of neoliberal economics and, more recently, by the gentrification of these spaces. Dope Saint Jude therefore reclaims these city spaces through her use of gay modes of speech that have a long history in Cape Town and by positioning her work as hip-hop, which has been popular in the city for well over two decades. Her inclusion of transgender MC and DJ Angel Ho pushes the boundaries of hegemonic and binary conceptions of gender identity even further. In essence, Dope Saint Jude is transforming local hip-hop in a context that is shaped significantly by US cultural imperialism. The artist is also transforming our perspective of spaces that have been altered by neoliberal economics.Setting the SceneDope Saint Jude (DSJ) is a queer MC from Elsies River, a working class township located on Cape Town's Cape Flats in South Africa. Elsies River was defined as a “coloured” neighbourhood under the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which segregated South Africans racially. With the aid of the Population Registration Act, citizens were classified, not merely along the lines of white, Asian, or black—black subjects were also divided into further categories. The apartheid state also distinguished between black and “coloured” subjects. Michael MacDonald contends that segregation “ordained blacks to be inferior to whites; apartheid cast them to be indelibly different” (11). Apartheid declared “African claims in South Africa to be inferior to white claims” and effectively claimed that black subjects “belonged elsewhere, in societies of their own, because their race was different” (ibid). The term “coloured” defined people as “mixed race” to separate communities that might otherwise have identified as black in the broad and inclusive sense (Erasmus 16). Racial categorisation was used to create a racial hierarchy with white subjects at the top of that hierarchy and those classified as black receiving the least resources and benefits. This frustrated attempts to establish broad alliances of black struggles against apartheid. It is in this sense that race is socially and politically constructed and continues to have currency, despite the fact that biologically essentialist understandings of race have been discredited (Yudell 13–14). Thanks to apartheid town planning and resource allocation, many townships on the Cape Flats were poverty-stricken and plagued by gang violence (Salo 363). This continues to be the case because post-apartheid South Africa's embrace of neoliberal economics failed to address racialised class inequalities significantly (Haupt, Static 6–8). This is the '90s context in which socially conscious hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City or Black Noise, came together. They drew inspiration from Black Consciousness philosophy via their exposure to US hip-hop crews such as Public Enemy in order to challenge apartheid policies, including their racial interpellation as “coloured” as distinct from the more inclusive category, black (Haupt, “Black Thing” 178). Prophets of da City—whose co-founding member, Shaheen Ariefdien, also lived in Elsies River—was the first South African hip-hop outfit to record an album. Whilst much of their work was performed in English, they quickly transformed the genre by rapping in non-standard varieties of Afrikaans and by including MCs who rap in African languages (ibid). They therefore succeeded in addressing key issues related to race, language, and class disparities in relation to South Africa's transition to democracy (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire). However, as is the case with mainstream US hip-hop, specifically gangsta rap (Clay 149), South African hip-hop has been largely dominated by heterosexual men. This includes the more commercial hip-hop scene, which is largely perceived to be located in Johannesburg, where male MCs like AKA and Cassper Nyovest became celebrities. However, certain female MCs have claimed the genre, notably EJ von Lyrik and Burni Aman who are formerly of Godessa, the first female hip-hop crew to record and perform locally and internationally (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166; Haupt, “Can a Woman in Hip-Hop”). DSJ therefore presents the exception to a largely heteronormative and male-dominated South African music industry and hip-hop scene as she transforms it with her queer politics. While queer hip-hop is not new in the US (Pabón and Smalls), this is new territory for South Africa. Writing about the US MC Jean Grae in the context of a “male-dominated music industry and genre,” Shanté Paradigm Smalls contends,Heteronormativity blocks the materiality of the experiences of Black people. Yet, many Black people strive for a heteronormative effect if not “reality”. In hip hop, there is a particular emphasis on maintaining the rigidity of categories, even if those categories fail [sic]. (87) DSJ challenges these rigid categories. Keep in TouchDSJ's most visible entry onto the media landscape to date has been her appearance in an H&M recycling campaign with British Sri Lankan artist MIA (H&M), some fashion shoots, her new EP—Reimagine (Dope Saint Jude)—and recent Finnish, US and French tours as well as her YouTube channel, which features her music videos. As the characters’ theatrical costumes suggest, “Keep in Touch” is possibly the most camp and playful music video she has produced. It commences somewhat comically with Dope Saint Jude walking down Salt River main road to a public telephone, where she and a young woman in pig tails exchange dirty looks. Salt River is located at the foot of Devil's Peak not far from Cape Town's CBD. Many factories were located there, but the area is also surrounded by low-income housing, which was designated a “coloured” area under apartheid. After apartheid, neighbourhoods such as Salt River, Woodstock, and the Bo-Kaap became increasingly gentrified and, instead of becoming more inclusive, many parts of Cape Town continued to be influenced by policies that enable racialised inequalities. Dope Saint Jude calls Angel Ho: DSJ: Awêh, Angie! Yoh, you must check this kak sturvy girl here by the pay phone. [Turns to the girl, who walks away as she bursts a chewing gum bubble.] Ja, you better keep in touch. Anyway, listen here, what are you wys?Angel Ho: Ah, just at the salon getting my hair did. What's good? DSJ: Wanna catch on kak today?Angel Ho: Yes, honey. But, first, let me Gayle you this. By the jol by the art gallery, this Wendy, nuh. This Wendy tapped me on the shoulder and wys me, “This is a place of decorum.”DSJ: What did she wys?Angel Ho: De-corum. She basically told me this is not your house. DSJ: I know you told that girl to keep in touch!Angel Ho: Yes, Mama! I'm Paula, I told that bitch, “Keep in touch!” [Points index finger in the air.](Saint Jude, Dope, “Keep in Touch”)Angel Ho's name is a play on the male name Angelo and refers to the trope of the ho (whore) in gangsta rap lyrics and in music videos that present objectified women as secondary to male, heterosexual narratives (Sharpley-Whiting 23; Collins 27). The queering of Angelo, along with Angel Ho’s non-binary styling in terms of hair, make-up, and attire, appropriates a heterosexist, sexualised stereotype of women in order to create room for a gender identity that operates beyond heteronormative male-female binaries. Angel Ho’s location in a hair salon also speaks to stereotypical associations of salons with women and gay subjects. In a discussion of gender stereotypes about hair salons, Kristen Barber argues that beauty work has traditionally been “associated with women and with gay men” and that “the body beautiful has been tightly linked to the concept of femininity” (455–56). During the telephonic exchange, Angel Ho and Dope Saint Jude code-switch between standard and non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans, as the opening appellation, “Awêh,” suggests. In this context, the term is a friendly greeting, which intimates solidarity. “Sturvy” means pretentious, whilst “kak” means shit, but here it is used to qualify “sturvy” and means that the girl at the pay phone is very pretentious or “full of airs.” To be “wys” means to be wise, but it can also mean that you are showing someone something or educating them. The meanings of these terms shift, depending on the context. The language practices in this skit are in line with the work of earlier hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap, to validate black, multilingual forms of speech and expression that challenge the linguistic imperialism of standard English and Afrikaans in South Africa, which has eleven official languages (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire; Williams). Henry Louis Gates’s research on African American speech varieties and literary practices emerging from the repressive context of slavery is essential to understanding hip-hop’s language politics. Hip-hop artists' multilingual wordplay creates parallel discursive universes that operate both on the syntagmatic axis of meaning-making and the paradigmatic axis (Gates 49; Haupt, “Stealing Empire” 76–77). Historically, these discursive universes were those of the slave masters and the slaves, respectively. While white hegemonic meanings are produced on the syntagmatic axis (which is ordered and linear), black modes of speech as seen in hip-hop word play operate on the paradigmatic axis, which is connotative and non-linear (ibid). Distinguishing between Signifyin(g) / Signification (upper case, meaning black expression) and signification (lower case, meaning white dominant expression), he argues that “the signifier ‘Signification’ has remained identical in spelling to its white counterpart to demonstrate [. . .] that a simultaneous, but negated, parallel discursive (ontological, political) universe exists within the larger white discursive universe” (Gates 49). The meanings of terms and expressions can change, depending on the context and manner in which they are used. It is therefore the shared experiences of speech communities (such as slavery or racist/sexist oppression) that determine the negotiated meanings of certain forms of expression. Gayle as a Parallel Discursive UniverseDSJ and Angel Ho's performance of Gayle takes these linguistic practices further. Viewers are offered points of entry into Gayle via the music video’s subtitles. We learn that Wendy is code for a white person and that to keep in touch means exactly the opposite. Saint Jude explains that Gayle is a very fun queer language that was used to kind of mask what people were saying [. . .] It hides meanings and it makes use of women's names [. . . .] But the thing about Gayle is it's constantly changing [. . .] So everywhere you go, you kind of have to pick it up according to the context that you're in. (Ovens, Saint Jude and Haupt)According to Kathryn Luyt, “Gayle originated as Moffietaal [gay language] in the coloured gay drag culture of the Western Cape as a form of slang amongst Afrikaans-speakers which over time, grew into a stylect used by gay English and Afrikaans-speakers across South Africa” (Luyt 8; Cage 4). Given that the apartheid state criminalised homosexuals, Gayle was coded to evade detection and to seek out other members of this speech community (Luyt 8). Luyt qualifies the term “language” by arguing, “The term ‘language’ here, is used not as a constructed language with its own grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, but in the same way as linguists would discuss women’s language, as a way of speaking, a kind of sociolect” (Luyt 8; Cage 1). However, the double-coded nature of Gayle allows one to think of it as creating a parallel discursive universe as Gates describes it (49). Whereas African American and Cape Flats discursive practices function parallel to white, hegemonic discourses, gay modes of speech run parallel to heteronormative communication. Exclusion and MicroaggressionsThe skit brings both discursive practices into play by creating room for one to consider that DSJ queers a male-dominated genre that is shaped by US cultural imperialism (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166) as a way of speaking back to intersectional forms of marginalisation (Crenshaw 1244), which are created by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 116). This is significant in South Africa where “curative rape” of lesbians and other forms of homophobic violence are prominent (cf. Gqola; Hames; Msibi). Angel Ho's anecdote conveys a sense of the extent to which black individuals are subject to scrutiny. Ho's interpretation of the claim that the gallery “is a place of decorum” is correct: it is not Ho's house. Black queer subjects are not meant to feel at home or feel a sense of ownership. This functions as a racial microaggression: “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solorzano, Ceja, and Yosso 60). This speaks to DSJ's use of Salt River, Woodstock, and Bo-Kaap for the music video, which features black queer bodies in performance—all of these spaces are being gentrified, effectively pushing working class people of colour out of the city (cf. Didier, Morange, and Peyroux; Lemanski). Gustav Visser explains that gentrification has come to mean a unit-by-unit acquisition of housing which replaces low-income residents with high-income residents, and which occurs independent of the structural condition, architecture, tenure or original cost level of the housing (although it is usually renovated for or by the new occupiers). (81–82) In South Africa this inequity plays out along racial lines because its neoliberal economic policies created a small black elite without improving the lives of the black working class. Instead, the “new African bourgeoisie, because it shares racial identities with the bulk of the poor and class interests with white economic elites, is in position to mediate the reinforcing cleavages between rich whites and poor blacks without having to make more radical changes” (MacDonald 158). In a news article about a working class Salt River family of colour’s battle against an eviction, Christine Hogg explains, “Gentrification often means the poor are displaced as the rich move in or buildings are upgraded by new businesses. In Woodstock and Salt River both are happening at a pace.” Angel Ho’s anecdote, as told from a Woodstock hair salon, conveys a sense of what Woodstock’s transformation from a coloured, working class Group Area to an upmarket, trendy, and arty space would mean for people of colour, including black, queer subjects. One could argue that this reading of the video is undermined by DSJ’s work with global brand H&M. Was she was snared by neoliberal economics? Perhaps, but one response is that the seeds of any subculture’s commercial co-option lie in the fact it speaks through commodities (for example clothing, make-up, CDs, vinyl, or iTunes / mp3 downloads (Hebdige 95; Haupt, Stealing Empire 144–45). Subcultures have a window period in which to challenge hegemonic ideologies before they are delegitimated or commercially co-opted. Hardt and Negri contend that the means that extend the reach of corporate globalisation could be used to challenge it from within it (44–46; Haupt, Stealing Empire 26). DSJ utilises her H&M work, social media, the hip-hop genre, and international networks to exploit that window period to help mainstream black queer identity politics.ConclusionDSJ speaks back to processes of exclusion from the city, which was transformed by apartheid and, more recently, gentrification, by claiming it as a creative and playful space for queer subjects of colour. She uses Gayle to lay claim to the city as it has a long history in Cape Town. In fact, she says that she is not reviving Gayle, but is simply “putting it on a bigger platform” (Ovens, Saint Jude, and Haupt). The use of subtitles in the video suggests that she wants to mainstream queer identity politics. Saint Jude also transforms hip-hop heteronormativity by queering the genre and by locating her work within the history of Cape hip-hop’s multilingual wordplay. ReferencesBarber, Kristin. “The Well-Coiffed Man: Class, Race, and Heterosexual Masculinity in the Hair Salon.” Gender and Society 22.4 (2008): 455–76.Cage, Ken. “An Investigation into the Form and Function of Language Used by Gay Men in South Africa.” Rand Afrikaans University: MA thesis, 1999.Clay, Andreana. “‘I Used to Be Scared of the Dick’: Queer Women of Color and Hip-Hop Masculinity.” Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology. Ed. Gwendolyn D. Pough, Elain Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist. California: Sojourns, 2007.Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”. Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–299.Didier, Sophie, Marianne Morange, and Elisabeth Peyroux. “The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale: Fifteen Years of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg.” Antipode 45.1 (2012): 121–39.Erasmus, Zimitri. “Introduction.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Gqola, Pumla Dineo. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015.Hames, Mary. “Violence against Black Lesbians: Minding Our Language.” Agenda 25.4 (2011): 87–91.Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. London: Harvard UP, 2000.Haupt, Adam. “Can a Woman in Hip Hop Speak on Her Own Terms?” Africa Is a Country. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-double-consciousness-of-burni-aman-can-a-woman-in-hip-hop-speak-on-her-own-terms/>.Haupt, Adam. Static: Race & Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media & Film. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012. Haupt, Adam. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008. Haupt, Adam. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1979.Hogg, Christine. “In Salt River Gentrification Often Means Eviction: Family Set to Lose Their Home of 11 Years.” Ground Up. 15 June 2016. <http://www.groundup.org.za/article/salt-river-gentrification-often-means-eviction/>.hooks, bell. Outlaw: Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994.Lemanski, Charlotte. “Hybrid Gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across Southern and Northern Cities.” Urban Studies 51.14 (2014): 2943–60.Luyt, Kathryn. “Gay Language in Cape Town: A Study of Gayle – Attitudes, History and Usage.” University of Cape Town: MA thesis, 2014.MacDonald, Michael. Why Race Matters in South Africa. University of Kwazulu-Natal Press: Scottsville, 2006.Msibi, Thabo. “Not Crossing the Line: Masculinities and Homophobic Violence in South Africa”. Agenda. 23.80 (2009): 50–54.Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls. “Critical Intimacies: Hip Hop as Queer Feminist Pedagogy.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2014): 1–7.Salo, Elaine. “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa: Adolescent Women and Gangsters in Manenberg Township on the Cape Flats.” Journal of European Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 345–65.Solórzano, Daniel, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso. “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69.1/2 (2000): 60–73.Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York UP, 2007.Smalls, Shanté Paradigm. “‘The Rain Comes Down’: Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity.” American Behavioral Scientist 55.1 (2011): 86–95.Visser, Gustav. “Gentrification: Prospects for Urban South African Society?” Acta Academica Supplementum 1 (2003): 79–104.Williams, Quentin E. “Youth Multilingualism in South Africa’s Hip-Hop Culture: a Metapragmatic Analysis.” Sociolinguistic Studies 10.1 (2016): 109–33.Yudell, Michael. “A Short History of the Race Concept.” Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Ed. Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.InterviewsOvens, Neil, Dope Saint Jude, and Adam Haupt. One FM Radio interview. Cape Town. 21 Apr. 2016.VideosSaint Jude, Dope. “Keep in Touch.” YouTube. 23 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ux9R839lE>. H&M. “H&M World Recycle Week Featuring M.I.A.” YouTube. 11 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7MskKkn2Jg>. MusicSaint Jude, Dope. Reimagine. 15 June 2016. <https://dopesaintjude.bandcamp.com/album/reimagine>.

Introduction Utopia has always been countercultural, and ever since technological progress has allowed, utopia has been using alternative media to promote and strengthen its underpinning ideals. In this article, I am seeking to clarify the connections between counterculture and alternative media in utopian contexts to demonstrate their reciprocity, then draw together these threads through reference to a well-known figure of the Rainbow Region–Rusty Miller. His trajectory from iconic surfer and Aquarian reporter to mediator for utopian politics and ideals in the Rainbow Region encompasses in a single identity the three elements underpinning this study. In concluding, I will turn to Rusty’s Byron Guide, questioning its classification as alternative or mainstream media, and whether Byron Bay is represented as countercultural and utopian in this long-running and ongoing publication. Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts Counterculture is an umbrella that enfolds utopia, among many other genres and practices. It has been most often situated in the 1960s and 1970s as a new form of social movement embodying youth resistance to the technocratic mainstream and its norms of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and language (Roszak). Many scholars of counterculture underscore its utopian impulses both in the projection of better societies where the social goals are achieved, and in the withdrawal from mainstream society into intentional communities (Yinger 194-6; McKay 5; Berger). Before exploring further the connections between counterculture and alternative media, I want to define the scope of countercultural utopian contexts in general, and the Rainbow Region in particular. Utopia is a neologism created by Sir Thomas More almost 500 years ago to designate the island community that demonstrates order, harmony, justice, hope and desire in the right balance so that it seems like an ideal land. This imaginary place described in Utopia (1516) as a counterpoint to the social, political and religious shortcomings of contemporary 16th century British society, has attracted accusations of heresy (Molner), and been used as a pejorative term, an insult to denigrate political projects that seem farfetched or subversive, especially during the 19th century. Almost every study of utopian theory, literature and practice points to a dissatisfaction with the status quo, which inspires writers, politicians, architects, artists, individuals and communities to rail against it (see for example Davis, Moylan, Suvin, Levitas, Jameson). Kingsley Widmer’s book Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts reiterates what many scholars have stated when he writes that utopias should be understood in terms of what they are countering. Lyman Tower Sargent defines utopia as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” and utopianism as “social dreaming” (9), to which I would add that both indicate an improvement on the alternatives, and may indeed be striving to represent the best place imaginable. Utopian contexts, by extension, are those situations where the “social dreaming” is enhanced through human agency, good governance, just laws, education, and work, rather than being a divinely ordained state of nature (Schaer et al). In this way, utopian contexts are explicitly countercultural through their very conception, as human agency is required and their emphasis is on social change. These modes of resistance against dominant paradigms are most evident in attempts to realise textual projections of a better society in countercultural communal experiments. Almost immediately after its publication, More’s Utopia became the model for Bishop Vasco de Quiroga’s communitarian hospital-town Santa Fe de la Laguna in Michoacan, Mexico, established in the 1530s as a counterculture to the oppressive enslavement and massacres of the Purhépecha people by Nuno Guzmán (Green). The countercultural thrust of the 1960s and 1970s provided many utopian contexts, perhaps most readily identifiable as the intentional communities that spawned and flourished, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (Metcalf, Shared Lives). They were often inspired by texts such as Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America (1970) and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and this convergence of textual practices and alternative lifestyles can be seen in the development of Australia’s own Rainbow Region. Located in northern New South Wales, the geographical area of the Northern Rivers that has come to be known as the Rainbow Region encompasses Byron Bay, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Clunes, Dunoon, Federal, with Lismore as the region’s largest town. But more evocative than these place names are the “rivers and creeks, vivid green hills, fruit and nut farms […] bounded by subtropical beaches and rainforest mountains” (Wilson 1). Utopian by nature, and recognised as such by the indigenous Bundjalung people who inhabited it before the white settlers, whalers and dairy farmers moved in, the Rainbow Region became utopian through culture–or indeed counterculture–during the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin when the hippies of Mullumbimby and the surfers of Byron Bay were joined by up to 10,000 people seeking alternative ways of being in the world. When the party was over, many Aquarians stayed on to form intentional communities in the beautiful region, like Tuntable Falls, Nimbin’s first and largest such cooperative (Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality 74-83). In utopian contexts, from the Renaissance to the 1970s and beyond, counterculture has underpinned and alternative media has circulated the aims and ideals of the communities of resistance. The early utopian context of the Anabaptist movement has been dubbed as countercultural by Sigrun Haude: “During the reign of the Münster (1534-5) Anabaptists erected not only a religious but also a social and political counterculture to the existing order” (240). And it was this Protestant Reformation that John Downing calls the first real media war, with conflicting movements using pamphlets produced on the new technology of the Gutenberg press to disseminate their ideas (144). What is striking here is the confluence of ideas and practices at this time–countercultural ideals are articulated, published, and disseminated, printing presses make this possible, and utopian activists realise how mass media can be used and abused, exploited and censored. Twentieth century countercultural movements drew on the lessons learnt from historical uprising and revolutions, understanding the importance of getting the word out through their own forms of media which, given the subversive nature of the messages, were essentially alternative, according to the criteria proposed by Chris Atton: alternative media may be understood as a radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media. Alternative media privileges a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of “objectivity” with overt advocacy and oppositional practices. Its practices emphasize first person, eyewitness accounts by participants; a reworking of the populist approaches of tabloid newspapers to recover a “radical popular” style of reporting; collective and antihierarchical forms of organization which eschew demarcation and specialization–and which importantly suggest an inclusive, radical form of civic journalism. (267) Nick Couldry goes further to point out the utopian processes required to identify agencies of change, including alternative media, which he defines as “practices of symbolic production which contest (in some way) media power itself–that is, the concentration of symbolic power in media institutions” (25). Alternative media’s orientation towards oppositional and contestatory practices demonstrates clear parallels between its ambitions and those of counterculture in utopian contexts. From the 1960s onwards, the upsurge in alternative newspaper numbers is commensurate with the blossoming of the counterculture and increased utopian contexts; Susan Forde describes it thus: “a huge resurgence in the popularity of publications throughout the ‘counter-culture’ days of the 1960s and 1970s” (“Monitoring the Establishment”, 114). The nexus of counterculture and alternative media in such utopian contexts is documented in texts like Roger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution and Bob Osterlag’s People’s Movements, People’s Press. Like the utopian newspapers that came out of 18th and 19th century intentional communities, many of the new alternative press served to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the countercultural movements, often focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events (see also Frobert). The radical press in Australia was also gaining ground, with OZ in Australia from 1963-1969, and then from 1967-1973 in London. Magazines launched by Philip Frazer like The Digger, Go-Set, Revolution and High Times, and university student newspapers were the main avenues for youth and alternative expression on the Vietnam war and conscription, gay and lesbian rights, racism, feminism and ecological activism (Forde, Challenging the News; Cock & Perry). Nimbin 1973: Rusty Miller and The Byron Express The 1973 Aquarius Festival of counterculture in Nimbin (12-23 May) was a utopian context that had an alternative media life of its own before it arrived in the Rainbow Region–in student publications like Tharnuka and newsletters distributed via the Aquarius Foundation. There were other voices that announced the coming of the Aquarius Festival to Nimbin and reported on its impact, like The Digger from Melbourne and the local paper, The Northern Star. During the Festival, the Nimbin Good Times first appeared as the daily bulletin and continues today with the original masthead drawn by the Festival’s co-organiser, Graeme Dunstan. Some interesting work has been done on this area, ranging from general studies of the Rainbow Region (Wilson; Munro-Clark) to articles analysing its alternative press (Ward & van Vuuren; Martin & Ellis), but to date, there has been no focus on the Rainbow Region’s first alternative newspaper, The Byron Express. Co-edited by Rusty Miller and David Guthrie, this paper presented and mediated the aims and desires of the Aquarian movement. Though short-lived, as only 7 issues were published from 15 February 1973 to September 1973, The Byron Express left a permanent printed vestige of the Aquarian counterculture movement’s activism and ideals from an independent regional perspective. Miller’s credentials for starting up the newspaper are clear–he has always been a trailblazer, mixing “smarts” with surfing and environmental politics. After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Diego State College, he first set foot in Byron Bay during his two semesters with the inaugural Chapman College affiliated University of the Seven Seas in 1965-6. Returning to his hometown of Encinitas, he co-founded the Surf Research accessory company with legendary Californian surfer Mike Doyle, and launched Waxmate, the first specially formulated surf wax in 1967 (Davis, Witzig & James; Warshaw 217), selling his interest in the business soon after to spend a couple of years “living the counterculture life on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai” (Davis, Witzig & James), before heading back to Byron Bay via Bells Beach in 1970 (Miller & Shantz) and Sydney, where he worked as an advertising salesman and writer with Tracks surfing magazine (Martin & Ellis). In 1971, he was one of the first to ride the now famous waves of Uluwatu in Bali, and is captured with Steven Cooney in the iconic publicity image for Albe Falzon’s 1971 film, Morning Of The Earth. The champion surfer from the US knew a thing or two about counterculture, alternative media, advertising and business when he found his new utopian context in Byron Bay. Miller and Guthrie’s front-page editorial of the inaugural issue of The Byron Express, published on 15 February 1973, with the byline “for a higher shire”, expressed the countercultural (cl)aims of the publication. Land use, property development and the lack of concern that some people in Byron had for their impact on the environment and people of the region were a prime target: With this first issue of the Byron Express, we hope to explain that the area is badly in need of a focal point. The transitions of present are vast and moving fast. The land is being sold and resold. Lots of money is coming into the area in the way of developments […] caravan parts, hotels, businesses and real estate. Many of the trips incoming are not exactly “concerned” as to what long term effect such developments might have on the environment and its people. We hope to serve as a focus of concern and service, a centre for expression and reflection. We would ask your contributions in vocal and written form. We are ready for some sock it to ya criticism… and hope you would grab us upon the street to tell us how you feel…The mission of this alternative newspaper is thereby defined by the need for a “focal point” that inscribes the voices of the community in a freely accessible narrative, recorded in print for posterity. Although this first issue contains no mention of the Aquarius Festival, there were already rumours circulating about it, as organisers Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen had been up to Main Arm, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on reconnaissance missions beginning in September 1972. Instead, there was an article on “Mullumbimby Man–Close to the Land” by Nicholas Shand, who would go on to found the community-based weekly newspaper The Echo in 1986, then called The Brunswick Valley Echo and still going strong. Another by Bob McTavish asked whether there could be a better form of government; there was a surf story, and a soul food section with a recipe for honey meade entitled “Do you want to get out of it on 10 cents a bottle?” The second issue continues in much the same vein. It is not until the third issue comes out on 17 March 1973 that the Aquarius Festival is mentioned in a skinny half column on page four. And it’s not particularly promising: Arrived at Nimbin, sleepy hamlet… Office in disused R.S.L. rooms, met a couple of guys recently arrived, said nothing was being done. “Only women here, you know–no drive”. Met Joanne and Vi, both unable to say anything to be reported… Graham Dunstan (codenamed Superfest) and John Allen nowhere in sight. Allen off on trip overseas. Dunstan due back in a couple of weeks. 10 weeks to go till “they” all come… and to what… nobody is quite sure. This progress report provides a fascinating contemporary insight into the tensions–between the local surfies and hippies on one hand, and the incoming students on the other–around the organisation of the Aquarius Festival. There is an unbridled barb at the sexist comments made by the guys, implicit criticism of the absent organisers, obvious skepticism about whether anyone will actually come to the festival, and wonderment at what it will be like. Reading between the lines, we might find a feeling of resentment about not being privy to new developments in their own backyard. The final lines of the article are non-committal “Anyway, let’s see what eventuates when the Chiefs return.” It seems that all has been resolved by the fifth issue of 11 May, which is almost entirely dedicated to the Aquarius Festival with the front page headline “Welcome to the New Age”. But there is still an undertone of slight suspicion at what the newcomers to the area might mean in terms of property development: The goal is improving your fellow man’s mind and nourishment in concert with your own; competition to improve your day and the quality of the day for society. Meanwhile, what is the first thing one thinks about when he enters Byron and the area? The physical environment is so magnificent and all encompassing that it can actually hold a man’s breath back a few seconds. Then a man says, “Wow, this land is so beautiful that one could make a quid here.” And from that moment the natural aura and spells are broken and the mind lapses into speculative equations, sales projections and future interest payments. There is plenty of “love” though, in this article: “The gathering at Nimbin is the most spectacular demonstration of the faith people have in a belief that is possible (and possible just because they want it to be) to live in love, through love together.” The following article signed by Rusty Miller “A Town Together” is equally focused on love: “See what you could offer the spirit at Nimbin. It might introduce you to a style that could lead to LOVE.” The centre spread features photos: the obligatory nudes, tents, and back to nature activities, like planting and woodworking. With a text box of “random comments” including one from a Lismore executive: ‘I took my wife and kids out there last weekend and we had such a good time. Seems pretty organized and the town was loaded with love. Heard there is some hepatitis about and rumours of VD. Everyone happy.” And another from a land speculator (surely the prime target of Miller’s wrath): “Saw guys kissing girls on the street, so sweet, bought 200 acres right outside of town, it’s going to be valuable out there some day.” The interview with Johnny Allen as the centrepiece includes some pertinent commentary on the media and reveals a well-founded suspicion of the mediatisation of the Aquarius Festival: We have tried to avoid the media actually. But we haven’t succeeded in doing so. Part of the basic idea is that we don’t need to be sold. All the down town press can do is try and interpret you. And by doing that it automatically places it in the wrong sort of context. So we’ve tried to keep it to people writing about the festival to people who will be involved in it. It’s an involvement festival. Coopting The Byron Express as an “involved” party effects a fundamental shift from an external reporting newspaper to a kind of proponent or even propaganda for the Aquarius festival and its ideas, like so many utopian newspapers had done before. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that The Byron Express should disappear very soon after the Aquarius festival. Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis explain that Rusty Miller stopped producing the paper because he “found the production schedule exhausting and his readership too small to attract consistent advertising” (5). At any rate, there were only two more issues, one in June–with some follow up reporting of the festival–and another in September 1973, which was almost entirely devoted to environmentally focused features, including an interview with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Byron Bay 2013: Thirty Years of Rusty’s Byron Guide What Rusty did next is fairly well known locally–surfing and teaching people how to surf and a bit of writing. When major local employer Walkers slaughterhouse closed in 1983, he and his wife, social geographer Tricia Shantz, were asked by the local council to help promote Byron Bay as a tourist destination, writing the first Byron guide in 1983-4. Incorporating essays by local personalities and dedicated visitors, the Byron guide perpetuates the ideal of environmental awareness, spiritual experimentation, and respect for the land and sea. Recent contributors have included philosopher Peter Singer, political journalist Kerry O’Brien, and writer John Ralston Saul, and Miller and Shantz always have an essay in there themselves. “People, Politics and Culture” is the new byline for the 2013 edition. And Miller’s opening essay mediates the same utopian desires and environmental community messages that he espoused from the beginning of The Byron Express: The name Byron Bay represents something that we constantly try to articulate. If one was to dream up a menu of situations and conditions to compose a utopia, Australia would be the model of the nation-state and Byron would have many elements of the actual place one might wish to live for the rest of their lives. But of course there is always the danger of excesses in tropical paradises especially when they become famous destinations. Australia is being held to ransom for the ideology that we should be slaves to money and growth at the cost of a degraded and polluted physical and social environment. Byron at least was/is a refuge against this profusion of the so-called real-world perception that holds profit over environment as the way we must choose for our future. Even when writing for a much more commercial medium, Miller retains the countercultural utopian spirit that was crystallised in the Aquarius festival of 1973, and which remains relevant to many of those living in and visiting the Rainbow Region. Miller’s ethos moves beyond the alternative movements and communities to infiltrate travel writing and tourism initiatives in the area today, as evidenced in the Rusty’s Byron Guide essays. By presenting more radical discourses for a mainstream public, Miller together with Shantz have built on the participatory role that he played in launching the region’s first alternative newspaper in 1973 that became albeit briefly the equivalent of a countercultural utopian gazette. Now, he and Shantz effectively play the same role, producing a kind of countercultural form of utopian media for Byron Bay that corresponds to exactly the same criteria mentioned above. Through their free publication, they aim to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the Rainbow Region, focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events. 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