Amal Treacher

Reading the Other Women, Feminism, and Islam

This essay focuses on the complex gendered particularities of the Arab region (including Iran). The debate between Islamic feminists and secular feminists is explored. Islamic feminists claim that liberation for men and women lies in following the Islamic faith and it is Islam that provides the best protection for women. Secular feminists argue for the separation of religion from civil society and the State. The essay explores the inextricable link between masculinity and the nation, and the impact of postcolonial relations on subjectivity.

Narrative and Fantasy in Adoption

Adoption touches on basic personal and cultural narratives, emotions and fantasies surrounding the self and family. Amal Treacher and ***Ilan Katz explore the narratives of all those involved in the process — both professionals and those with personal investments. They draw on contemporary theory of narrative and psychoanalytic theory of fantasy in order to explore and understand some of the issues arising in adoption. A central contention is that all identity, whether adopted or not, is multifaceted, inherently conflicted and constantly developing. The theoretical and emotional endeavour is to place this view of identity as a central backbone to understanding adoption. The authors argue that many narratives and fantasies function to pass over problematical feelings and fantasies. For example, life story books can silence the difficulties experienced for the adoptee and may not allow space for an exploration of troublesome feelings and fantasies. They contend that maturity is based on the capacity to face up to contradictions and conflict, and to allow for such complex narratives.

On Postcolonial Subjectivity

This article focuses on an exploration of the intertwined relationship between coloniser and colonised subjects. These political, social and emotional relationships with historical roots persist in the present and draw upon deeply held fantasies, strong emotions and intense belief systems. These entrenched states are not external to subjectivity, a matter of politics that can be projected outwards, but rather are profoundly internalised and constitute part of contemporary subjectivity. It is important for group analysts to have an understanding of the continuing and damaging social and psychic effects and consequences on all subjectivities formed within this particular political and social constellation. Critical thinkers include: Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Robert Young.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR: OTHERNESS, RECOGNITION AND ETHICS

This essay will address the troublesome matter of relatedness between human beings. Taking everyday interactions as a point of investigation and exploration I will explore how recognition is simultaneously essential to human relatedness and impossible to achieve. Similarly, I will argue that an ethical stance is crucial for human relatedness. Using a psychoanalytic and philosophical framework, I will contend that it is essential to know our separateness and our profound connections to one another, and that in short, we are nothing without the other. Drawing upon the work of Arendt, Benjamin, Levinas and Young the complexities of recognition and alterity will be explored. The illusion of feeling emotionally settled and bolstered through the fantasies of recognition are here conceptualised as part of being human and sustaining oneself, and are approached here as problematic processes that need urgent investigation and action.

Postcolonial subjectivity: Masculinity, shame, and memory

Abstract Egypt in 1952 was poised to overthrow the past and make a fresh and vigorous future. The revolutionary coup instigated and led by a group of Army Officers succeeded in overthrowing the monarchy and severely undermining British rule and influence. The hopes following this dramatic event were not borne out as the early successes did not lead to a more dynamic future. Instead, corruption continued, the economy declined, industry did not flourish, and an adequate welfare system was not put in place. There are various explanations for this state of affairs, and while these are valid and provide answers, they do not adequately address postcolonial subjectivity. Postcolonial masculine subjectivity is fraught, endures and has to be endured. This article will focus on shame and remembering/forgetting as states of mind, and silence as a response, in order to explore how a colonized past led to the wish for a different future while simultaneously inhibiting a different future to be made.

children's imaginings and narratives: inhabiting complexity

Drawing on two studies of children aged between seven and 10 years this article explores their narratives of themselves, families, sibling and peer relationships. Their narratives were full of push-pull and contradictory processes. The children moved towards knowledge as well as a disavowal of ‘reality’ about their families and material conditions. Critically they revealed profound wishes for something better alongside the knowledge that ‘this is it’. This article focuses on theorizing childrens understandings of and relationships to social and material life in order to argue that meanings matter and meanings have matter. Narratives are social in two critical ways: they involve reaching out and connecting with others, and narratives are constructed within and through the social sphere, while simultaneously they are shot through with conscious and unconscious fantasies. Children are moving towards being in a complex – engaged in and inhabiting many relationships.

the gendered embroilments of war

For the last few years – but especially since 11 September 2001 – our daily newspapers and nightly news have been saturated with images of death and destruction on such grand scale that for some there is a fear that human beings are becoming anaesthetized to the everyday tragedies of loss and dispossession – the inevitable corollaries of war. For many, the bloody images, alongside the incessant posturing of the power elite, lubricate the machinery that primes audiences to accept the necessity of future wars on the basis of those vague but hallowed notions of ‘national security’ and the faceless but ever-present ‘terror’. Alongside this fear, however, there can be indifference towards the suffering and violence wrought against others. This special issue was envisaged and produced through our political commitment against and horror at unremitting conflict and aggression. As Jean Said Makdisi writes in this issue ‘I am sick to death of violence, death, and ruin and waste. And I am sick also of compromise, surrender and defeat. I am sick of the corruption and cruelty of the world in which we live, of which war is but the tip of the iceberg’. To echo a heartfelt comment by Frosh: ‘Under such circumstances and in the midst of such clouds of darkness, one wonders if any lessons ever get learned’ (Frosh 2002: 389).

Equal Opportunities Matter

Through exploring the dynamics in two different seminar groups with undergraduates the paper analyses the dynamics that arise in teaching situations. The emphasis is on the communications and fantasies that occur across axis of ethnicity and class. Drawing upon a theoretical framework the paper argues that emotional and moral recognition is based on placing self and other on a difference/similarity spectrum.