Adrian Rifkin

JR cinéphile, or the philosopher who loved things

This contribution will be neither doctrinal nor critical. I am neither a philosopher nor am I a political theorist, still less a historian, and in this respect largely because of my readings of JR. I have spoken elsewhere of a certainmoment in 1978, when for the first time I stumbled upon his articles in the beautiful review that was Les Révoltes logiques: it was precisely at this moment, I think, that I renounced any claim of being a historian. This came as something of a relief, a way out of the dry and doctrinaire debates in England between the conflicting schools of Social History, with their respective tendencies (Gramscian,Althusserian,workers or populist histories, and tutti quanti, with their different modes of over-enthusiasm on the one hand or stiflingly ‘rigorous’ peer review on the other). In turning away from them, and it was an infinitesimal movement, I think that I gained a right to think across, at an unpredictable tangent, or better still apart; even if thatmeant running the risk of sinking intomyown stupidity, of taking vaguely shameful risks, all the while feigning the pretention of great seriousness demanded within a university environment, wherein all those quality measures, so disastrous for us today, were being hatched. So the incipit from JR fromwhich I set out here I take as having some value for academics, for the professionals of this system in thinking theneed for their ownemancipation fromthedrearyproceduresofpeer esteem and quality control.

Sexual Anaphora: A reverie of kinds …

Tony would never forget the time he wore his first corset [...] it was his initiation into a world of transvestitism [...] Tears came into his eyes. The pressure from her girdle and her nails was too much. Everything became hazy. From his flanks to his armpits he was welded into the steel girdle. Tony could hardly bend. He glanced at his waist and saw that his flanks were now wide-spread but his waist-line had been successfully nipped in – it was unbelievable! How positively miraculous. The hazy feeling returned and Tony swooned! Cynthia, Adonis in High Heels parallax, 2008, vol. 14, no. 2, 42–52