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'This issue of Philament, our twenty-second, embraces a range of poets, as well as writers, essayists, and reviewers. Adam Hulbert’s study of Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock draws attention to the many sonic figurations in Lindsay’s novel, offering a fresh reading of the precarious fates of the protagonists in this “preeminent antipodean weird tale.” Blythe Worthy’s study of Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel The Flamethrowers offers a timely problematisation of contemporary identity politics, illuminating new ways in which the novel “exposes feminism’s distinctive markings of precarity.” And Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough’s essay on Lars von Trier’s Melancholia allows us to see the film’s prologue as an example of avant-garde video art. Critics will have already perceived the way in which Melancholia allegorises Earth’s cosmic precarity, revealing this planet’s vulnerability in a universe filled with other celestial bodies, all of them potential collision threats. However, Wansbrough’s essay also shows us how von Trier’s film makes genre and aesthetic categories equally precarious—elements ever threatening to collide. The issue’s short stories—Angelina Koseva’s “The Red Room” and Sian Pain’s “Wildcat”—offer intensive glimpses at precarious milieux in the contemporary cityscape, while varied works of poetry, by Philip Porter, Mona Zahra Attamimi, and Dimitra Harvey, chart their slightly more abstract courses toward this issue’s theme. As always, it is hoped that this issue encourages more scholarship on its theme, and prompts postgraduates in particular to submit to Philament’s future issues.' (From : Facing Precarity)
Contents
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Facing Precarity,
single work
criticism
(p. 1-26)'Also sprach Judith Butler in an interview with David Runciman on Talking Politics, a podcast recorded at the University of Cambridge in the immediate wake of Donald J. Trump’s election to President-elect.1 Among her myriad incisive remarks, the final line in the passage above is illuminating—although not because it is incisive. It offers no cool-headed explanation for Trump’s ascension (that is something Butler does elsewhere in the interview). Instead, it conveys Butler’s desire to avoid facing Trump, an admission as candid as it is non-intellectualised (in the Freudian sense of “intellectualisation”). And it is illuminating precisely because it so straightforward, and acknowledges so openly perhaps what is power’s most frightening and abject dimension: its visual dimension, and particularly the visual image of its “face.”' (Publication abstract)
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The Precarity of the Inarticulate : Two Kinds of Silence in Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock,
single work
criticism
(p. 27-56)'Hulbert’s essay draws attention to the many sonic figures in Lindsay’s novel, offering a fresh reading of the precarious fates of the protagonists in this “preeminent weird Antipodean tale.”' (Publication abstract)
- The Red Room, single work prose (p. 105-114)
- Acrocorinthi"Time has scalloped and tightly crimped", single work poetry (p. 115-118)
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Salak,
single work
prose
(p. 119-120)'Every summer solstice I play a trick on my mind, I transform the past, I travel back and revamp history, and gazing at granite carvings of Hanuman brings me back to Monkey Forest Road. I imagine a girl standing by the side of a temple with my father eyeing...' (Introduction)
- Pondlife (A Diary of Aging)i"It was a kid’s pond,", single work poetry (p. 121)
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“All You Need Is... ” : A Review of Tina Giannoukos’s Bull Days,
single work
review
essay
(p. 141-149)'The modern sonnet is a precarious poetic form. It is best recognised by its number of lines— twelve to fourteen—and its sense of being written “to” a person, animal, natural place, or even an abstract idea. It may or may not be conversational. It may or may not rhyme. It might be an argument, a dedication, or even an individual’s expression of intimacy. It either has its Petrachan-style volta pulled up around its midsection, or, more likely, offers a Shakespearean volta—its last couplet comprising a sting in its tail. Upon reading a modern sonnet, you might have to read it back over to check it is not merely a short poem, and then wonder how exactly you were able to tell the difference.' (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Facing Precarity
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Philament , December no. 22 2016; (p. 1-26) 'Also sprach Judith Butler in an interview with David Runciman on Talking Politics, a podcast recorded at the University of Cambridge in the immediate wake of Donald J. Trump’s election to President-elect.1 Among her myriad incisive remarks, the final line in the passage above is illuminating—although not because it is incisive. It offers no cool-headed explanation for Trump’s ascension (that is something Butler does elsewhere in the interview). Instead, it conveys Butler’s desire to avoid facing Trump, an admission as candid as it is non-intellectualised (in the Freudian sense of “intellectualisation”). And it is illuminating precisely because it so straightforward, and acknowledges so openly perhaps what is power’s most frightening and abject dimension: its visual dimension, and particularly the visual image of its “face.”' (Publication abstract)
-
Facing Precarity
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Philament , December no. 22 2016; (p. 1-26) 'Also sprach Judith Butler in an interview with David Runciman on Talking Politics, a podcast recorded at the University of Cambridge in the immediate wake of Donald J. Trump’s election to President-elect.1 Among her myriad incisive remarks, the final line in the passage above is illuminating—although not because it is incisive. It offers no cool-headed explanation for Trump’s ascension (that is something Butler does elsewhere in the interview). Instead, it conveys Butler’s desire to avoid facing Trump, an admission as candid as it is non-intellectualised (in the Freudian sense of “intellectualisation”). And it is illuminating precisely because it so straightforward, and acknowledges so openly perhaps what is power’s most frightening and abject dimension: its visual dimension, and particularly the visual image of its “face.”' (Publication abstract)
