Clare O’Farrell reflects on the question of multiple authorship in The Australian.
BY the late 1960s, French theorists Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault had pronounced the author to be, if not dead, then decidedly fragile.
Authorship is perhaps one of the most highly prized commodities in the academic world, used as a measure of reputation and the means by which individuals are judged worthy of promotion through the ranks of what remains an intricately feudal hierarchy…
Four years ago, Neil and I had a series of work sessions in the Café Algiers, just off Harvard Square. These were in preparation for the ‘Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory’ paper – though our acknowledgement of the Café itself got cut from the acknowledgements by an over-zealous copy-editor. Went back there today for a nice lunch and with a vague sense that I might get an idea or two, and made a minor break-through on the ‘Outside Territory’ paper that led to me writing 900 words on an iPad. Not recommended without a keyboard, but now back with a laptop tidying up the text.
Some of the geographers at Royal Holloway have recently launched a Geopolitics and Security blog – only a handful of posts so far, but looks interesting.
Long list of books, in multiple languages, for review in Historical Materialism here.
Interesting interview with geographer and urbanist Matthew Gandy (via Pop Theory). Also check out Matt’s blog.
Just as with New York – when I spoke at the Anachronic Shakespeare conference at NYU before the AAG – I’ll be speaking about Shakespeare before the RGS in Edinburgh.
This will be the first (only?) outing for my paper on Coriolanus. It will be given as a keynote to a seminar organised by the ‘Bodies in Movement’ project at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Edinburgh, 2 July.
The draft title is “Bellies, Wounds, Infections, Animals, Territories: The Political Bodies of Coriolanus”. There are some early thoughts here and I used some of the work to inform my piece on the recent Ralph Fiennes film. This is part of the Shakespearean Territories project I mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m currently rereading The Tempest and Richard II for the banishment part of my ‘Outside Territory’ lecture in Paris and a paper in Nottingham in early May.
A very critical, and detailed, analysis here.
Graham Harman on the latest details of Žižek’s Hegel book. You can find the table of contents of Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism here.
The Verso page is here.
– it is really necessary to have a 24 page document outlining protocols and procedures for expense reimbursement when basically you are allowing a hotel of less than £100 and standard-class rail fare?
– it is not ‘easier’ for me to buy the tickets and have you reimburse me, it is easier for you.
– why does it take you 4-5 weeks after the event to process that expense claim, when you know two months in advance how much it will cost?
– it is really necessary to send me 79 pages of material for me to read in order to write an evaluation of a 5 page fellowship? In 300 words.
– and, finally, if you want me to do something for you, it is a request. If I might like what you are offering, then it is an invitation. Compare: ‘can I invite you to dinner’ with ‘please can you buy me a drink?’ You should not invite me to referee an article, grant, proposal, etc. You are requesting I do it for you.
