IN PRAISE OF FOLLY? THEOLOGY AND THE UNIVERSITY

To suppose the possibility of dialogue between theology and science is to suppose that theology is an intellectually worthy partner to engage in dialogue with science. The status of theology as a discipline, however, remains contested, one sign of which is the absence of theology from the university. I argue that a healthy theology‐science dialogue would benefit from the presence of theology as an academic discipline in the university. Theology and theologians would benefit from the much closer contact with university disciplines, including the sciences. The university and the sciences would benefit from the presence of theology, providing a department of ultimate concern, where big questions may be asked and ideologies critiqued. A university theology would need to meet standards of academic integrity.     

PATERNAL FUNCTION AND THIRDNESS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LEGEND: HAS THE FUTURE BEEN FORETOLD?

This paper examines the Akedah, the biblical narrative of the Binding of Isaac, and suggests that this story may be interpreted as inaugurating paternal function and thirdness. It marks the passage from the narcissistic father to the symbolic, dead father, and the institution of the Law that forbids all killings, opening up the succession of the generations. The author suggests that time is an essential element in establishing thirdness, creating a link between the here and now and the there and then in the après coup of the psychoanalytic process. The author also briefly reviews the psychoanalytic literature on thirdness and indicates this paper's contribution to it.     

HOMELESSNESS AND CONTAINMENT – A PSYCHOTHERAPY PROJECT WITH HOMELESS PEOPLE AND WORKERS IN THE HOMELESS FIELD

A high percentage of homeless people suffer from a severe degree of personality disorder that causes them to fall through the net of psychiatric and caring services. Their persistent inability to maintain an actual dwelling‐place as a location of stability and meaning, is also reflected in an inner state of fragility, and in relationship difficulties that lead to destructive behaviours that inevitably alienate others. In this paper, the relationship between homelessness, the maternal body, buildings and containment is explored, using clinical material which illustrates how the claustro‐agoraphobic dilemma (Henri Rey 1994 Rey, H. 1994. Universals of Psychoanalysis in the Treatment of Psychotic and Borderline States, Edited by: Magagna, J. London: Free Association Books.  [Google Scholar]), intrinsic to the state of homelessness and to borderline conditions, impacts on vulnerable individuals and on care workers in this field. Examples drawn from staff consultations demonstrate how psychodynamic thinking can help to provide containment within systems of care.     

“JEWISH TRAFFICKING” AND LONDON JEWS IN THE AGE OF MIGRATION

There are excellent accounts of the Jewish response to “trafficking” in women for prostitution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but recent analyses of the white slavery phenomenon have raised new questions. This article concerns the response of Jews in England, and specifically the motivations and activities of those who founded the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW). The JAPGW set the model for initiatives carried out by Jewish communities throughout the British Empire and was a primary contributor to internationalisation of the issue on the part of the League of Nations after the First World War. The JAPGW’s motivations were complex: they involved a particular religious outlook, the response to antisemitism and assumptions along lines of class and gender. In addressing “Jewish trafficking”, Britain’s established Jewish community sought to take ownership of what it meant to be a Jew in British society.     

REFLECTIONS ON JANET ZUCKERMAN AND LISA HORELICK’S “THE AFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE ANALYST IN THE EXTRA-ANALYTIC MOMENT”

A review and amplification of the article by authors Horelick and Zuckerman regarding the clinical phenomena of encountering patients (analysands) outside of the physical boundaries of the consultation room. Their clinical examples and the literature used to buttress their position and in particular the open disclosure of the deeply personal reactions they experienced are examined and used as launching points for further understanding. Ferenczi, Balint, Freud and other luminaries are incorporated into the topic of extra-analytic encounter, in an attempt to further demystify this inevitable and unplanned moment of disclosure, which, much like resistance and countertransference offer more opportunity than obstacle.     

FEMALE VOICES IN GURBĀNĪ SANGĪT AND THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN PROMOTING FEMALE KĪRTANĪE

This paper discusses the performance of Gurbānī kīrtan rendered by female singers, an activity that is an integral part of the Sikh spiritual practice, yet at a professional level has always been considered a male domain.

The study is framed within the wider context of Indian traditional culture, analyzing the social norms that for centuries prevented women from public exposure in the fields of religious and classical music. In relation to the Sikh tradition, the author explores the variety of musical forms (classical and folk) adopted by female kīrtanīe for performing Gurbānī hymns, raising important issues about music education.

Based on ethnographic research among the community of contemporary kīrtanīe, the article explores the key role of media in promoting female performers during the last three decades, through dedicated TV and radio shows, social networks and web sites. In the author's analysis, each decade has brought about radical shifts in the strategies of production and perception of Gurbānī kīrtan, opening up new opportunities for performance by female kīrtanīe.     

WHO DESIRES THE RHINOCEROS? PROSAIC POETICAL AND MNEMONIC VISUAL REFRACTIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WAKE OF OPERATION BLUE STAR

This paper seeks to bring together artistic and poetic productions as sites of historical memory wherein forgetting and remembering occur so as to forge dominant narratives as well as resistance and alterity through their mutual relation to the modern postcolonial technocratic state. Twenty-five years have passed since the armed altercation between a group of so-called ‘Sikh Separatists’ and the Indian Military within the confines of the Golden Temple, Amritsar, in Panjab. This watershed moment signalled a shift in the typically amicable relations between nationalist Hindus and Sikhs. It also led to a decade-long ordeal of reckless, unmitigated violence and torture of ‘men with beards’ being taken categorically to represent a national threat. I posit that art and poetry serve as a sites where the cathexis of Sikh desires are continually projected upon an imaginal canvas; it is here that the longing for a form of sovereignty in relation to the nation-state may potentially and partially begin to be engaged. This paper examines a small number of such emanations as latent resurrections of sublimated desires that challenge subjectivity as limited solely to a single purview but is rather mitigated through a process of altercation, contestation, continuation and re-association.     

ACT AND POTENCY IN WITTGENSTEIN?

The philosophy of language pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, far from being inimical to the metaphysical concerns of philosophy, can be understood as complementing and perhaps even deepening the approach to metaphysics first employed by the Belgian Jesuit philosopher Joseph Marèchal: a ‘metaphysics of knowledge’ illuminating the deeper‐than‐conceptualist movement in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The relationship of words and reality was radically reconfigured in the linguistic turn inaugurated in the work of Wittgenstein, but that work itself still presupposes what might be called the existential act of judgement, which was the foundation of Marèchal's Thomistic retrieval.     

DEAFNESS IN THE FAMILY: WILL THE THERAPIST LISTEN?

This discussion of Harvey's paper suggests a basic approach to working with families of the deaf. It emphasizes the utilization of the natural resources and strengths of these families in helping them solve problems. The approach assumes that communication is always secure in families and that therapists must learn to capitalize on the family's intrinsic style of communication. The use of an interpreter is viewed as resourceful in some cases, depending upon individual family circumstance.     

HIGHLY ANXIOUS PUPILS IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL PRIMARY CLASSROOMS; THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFERRED COPING STRATEGIES AND: I—COGNITIVE ATTAINMENT

Summary . This study was carried out in conjunction with the Teaching Styles project (Bennett, 1976). Questionnaire measures of ‘anxiety’ and ‘achievement motivation’, together with cognitive tests of English, mathematics and reading were administered to a sample of 956 primary school pupils in classes taught by teachers representing formal, informal and mixed teaching styles at the beginning and towards the end of the final year in primary school. Based on the premise that self-report measures of ‘anxiety’ and ‘achievement motivation’ may be indicative of coping strategies, zonal analyses of post-test data were carried out separately by sex and within teaching style. Results showed higher levels of attainment for highly anxious highly motivated pupils (an inferred coping strategy of approach) than for highly anxious low motivated pupils (an inferred coping strategy of avoidance). Further analyses indicated a close link between anxiety, motivation and ability for girls, a finding interpreted in terms of sex-related conformity, but for boys considerable discrepancies in attainment in relation to the inferred coping strategies were still in evidence at the lower ability level under all teaching styles. At the upper ability level significant discrepancies in attainment were shown only for boys in formal classrooms, where an inferred coping strategy of ‘approach’ was found to be associated with the highest level of attainment and an inferred coping strategy of ‘avoidance’ was associated with the lowest level of attainment. These findings are interpreted in terms of extrinsic motivational incentives, success and failure experience and possible parental influence. Further analysis indicated that ‘avoiders' tended to be introverted and ‘approachers' extraverted in personality. This finding is interpreted in the light of Gray's 1970 postulate that introverts are relatively more susceptible to punishment/non-reward, whereas extraverts are relatively more susceptible to reward.     

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. GENDER, ‘YOUTH’, AND THE DELHI GANG RAPE CASE OF 2012

Following the Delhi gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandhey in New Delhi and the unprecedented levels of protest that followed, high numbers of young people in the subcontinent and specifically urban India were blamed for sexual violence, while also heralded as a progressive vanguard.¹1 The Justice Verma Commission report that followed the Delhi gang rape described a ‘…?mass of young, prospectless men’ who were blamed for violent assaults of women in urban India. The report further concluded that ‘?…?large scale disempowerment of urban man is lending intensity to a pre-existing culture of sexual violence’. Paradoxically, Justice Verma also praised the young for their political activism following the Delhi gang rape and murder case. Justice Verma specifically praised the Youth Movement, stating that:Much to Learn from the youth, not possible to name everyone who contributed. Even when there was provocation, they did not react and continued to maintain calm. It was the young men who were conscious that this gender inequality has to be done away with.One can see how discourses concerning young urban Indians are fraught with contradictions that gesture to how political leaders want to cease on the energies of young people to support national interests, while also blaming them for their insecurity within a neoliberal economy. In this piece, I discuss the paradoxical discourses that surround the Delhi gang rape and the unprecedented levels of protest that followed in relation to global austerity and anxieties concerning youth. While ‘idle young men’ are blamed for sexual violence and ‘young’ women are subject to paternalistic protectionism, I suggest that gendered violence in urban India must be thought of in relation to a wider moment of global recession and austerity. I use the Delhi gang rape case and discursive constructions of ‘youth’ as both deviant and politically progressive to discuss the gendered effects that increased forms of global precarity supports.     

“MASTERY REGAINED”—ISRAELI JEWISH SOVEREIGNTY AND SPACE IN THE ISRAELI NOVEL 1967–1973

This article identifies key characteristics of sovereign Israeli Jewish identity and its relationship with space in Israeli novels and novellas published between 1967 and 1973, in the context of the complicated dialogue between these texts and Israeli public discourse. Interacting with their contemporary public discourse, the canonical novels and novellas of the period—Michael Sheli [My Michael] by Amos Oz (1968), Nemalim [Ants] by Yitzhak Orpaz (1968), and Hapardes [The Orchard] by Benjamin Tammuz (1972), create an Israeli space in which a Jewish sovereign is surrounded and threatened by an Arab enemy, and as a precondition to his survival, must renew his sovereignty and declare a state of emergency to confirm it. As opposed to the besieged space constructed in contemporary discourse and in these canonical novels, David Shahar's novels of the period construct a fluid space in which contrasting identities can shift and replace each other with no existential threat.