Hidden Desires Research Articles

Le dialogue de la musique et de la langue dans « Moderato cantabile » de Marguerite Duras

Music in Duras’s works – analysed primarily in terms of intertextuality – is an element that creates the structure and sets the pace of the text. It provides an excuse to present feelings and thoughts of the characters, their hidden desires and yearnings. Music soothes the pain of parting, lets listeners forget about their problems, and brings forward true passions that cannot be put into words. Duras’s fondness of music is manifested by her attitude to reality and her vision of love. A piece of music with its depth and richness in a way reflects the inner self of the author.

The Comical Sense of Difference and Emotional Movement in Twelfth Night

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night deals with the typical subject of romantic comedy such as fertility, reconciliation and harmony as well as the functional relation between desire for power and sexual desire in human life. Shakespeare tries to show that western society, with the arrival of Renaissance, entered the era in which the structure of economy and social status were changing and faced the fear of social fluidity, and that the relation of men and women changed through the mediation of idealistic marriage. That is to say, many people of middle class standing started to dream the promotion of social status by using the social fluidity of the Renaissance. Two characters can be contrasted in the viewpoint of Deleuze’s ‘difference’ and ‘repetition’ in this work. Malvolio tries to fulfill the desire for power and sex through the coupling with Olivia even in daydream and by using distorted literal translation of the letter. In this process he imitates the images of high class prominence such as Olivia so that he just remains in monotonous repetition of them. Eventually he is forced to be isolated and punished by showing his hidden desire for her, explicated by Sir Toby. Sir Toby, as a deputy of power, strives to punish him into imprisonment, the punishment as Foucault’s concept, for which Malvolio announces his revenge to the community. In spite of Olivia’s asking for his understanding and forgiveness, he cannot transfer to good emotion on the border line between reconciliation and revenge. He enters into an ugly situation over the limit of revenge spirit, so that he cannot transfer to good emotions of reconciliation and forgiveness for the community by which he was punished. In contrast, Viola creates the difference by differentiating herself into various images through disguise into male person and unmasking as her strategy of survival. In addition, she leads Olivia and Orsino to overcome the sameness and to create the differences through ‘good meeting’ of Deleuze. Accordingly Olivia can escape from excessive sadness from her brother’s death through the meeting with Cesario(Viola) and comes to love Sebastian. Also, Orsino comes to marry Viola by overcoming his narcissism in loving Olivia. Sir Toby overcomes social status to marry Maria and shows mild attitude later about the punishment of Malvolio. In the end, Viola’s ensuing results in marriage with Orsino after her unmasking, by which the form of romantic comedy, endangered by the announcement of revenge, can be maintained even incompletely by restoring the comic vision.

“Old Father, Old Artificer”: Queering Suspicion in Alison Bechdel’s <i>Fun Home</i>

“Old Father, Old Artificer”: Queering Suspicion in Alison Bechdel’s <i>Fun Home</i>

Organising affluence: the Norwegian Consumer Council and comparative product testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Technocratic roots and practices

The work of the Consumer Council, established in 1953, can be regarded as the first overall attempt in Norway to organise the capitalist marketplace from the consumers’ point of view. As a source of counter-information to seductive commercial marketing techniques that appealed to people's hidden desires, the Council aimed to enlighten the consumer with objective expert advice on buying the best value-for-money goods according to their ‘true needs’. The idea of the good and functional market was based neither on planning nor on the complete autonomy of market forces, nor was it opposed to an abundant commodity culture as such. In fact, publishing results from scientific product tests for certain items could be seen as a major contribution to the spread and legitimisation of a modern consumer culture. The article discusses this attempt to organise affluence through the construction of a context-free, objective reality by a scientific bureaucracy of consumption and looks into the historical roots of such practices.

Nineteenth-century English politeness

In this paper we argue that the kind of individualistic ethos Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness model is accused of — and in particular its notion of (non-imposition) negative face — is not simply a reflection of British culture, but a reflection of British culture at a specific point in time. That point is the nineteenth century. Before then, the notion of an individual self separate from society and with its own hidden desires was not fully established. We argue that sociocultural developments, such as secularisation, the rise of Protestantism, social and geographical mobility, and the rise of individualism, created conditions in which the self became part of a new ideology where it was viewed as a property of the individual, and was associated with positive values such as self-help, self-control and self-respect. We also trace the history of conventional indirect requests, specifically can/could you X structures, the most frequent request structures used in British English today and, moreover, emblematic of British negative politeness. We show how such ability-oriented structures developed in the nineteenth century, and propose a tentative explanation as to why ability in particular was their focus.

The Ritual of Dark Play in Brat Camp

The Ritual of Dark Play in Brat Camp Katie Anderson Egging (bio) On the television screen an image of a skinny adolescent boy appears. He curls into the fetal position and frantically rocks back and forth on the ground. His pale skin seems illuminated by the night-vision cameras, contrasting with the dark wilderness beyond him. He repeatedly lets out the piercing cry "Mommy!" A viewer just tuning in might think this image would come out of a horror film or from a serial-killer plot in a crime drama. The scene, however, is part of American Broadcast Company's summer 2005 Brat Camp, a show that presented a new twist on reality television. On the program, frustrated parents sent their problem teenagers to Sage Walk, a wilderness camp in Oregon, to be transformed into socially acceptable beings. While the cameras rolled, the nine troubled teens were subjected to strict discipline, long hikes, and mental challenges, interspersed with on-air therapy sessions. Their guides in this process, counselors with "nature" names like Glacier, Mountain Wind, and Boulder, helped the teens cooperate and work through their issues. By the end of the seven episode program all nine teenagers graduated, returning to their families and civilization supposedly transformed with new skills to brave contemporary teen life and adulthood. Not surprisingly, the show has numerous critics. The majority condemn the show for its exploitation of nonconsensual minors: "Adults can freely humiliate themselves however they wish on TV, but the scales should tip differently when minors are involved," Brian Lowry writes for Variety Online (1). Another site of contention is the show's exposure of private therapy sessions. Mark Snow, a writer for about.com, argues, "Therapy is an intensely personal process and deserves the confidentiality accorded by law." Even some viewers express disgust with the show. Posting on an online message board, Rich Jahn declares, "This show is appalling, and it should be taken off the air. The program is exploiting teens who are unwilling participants and have real serious problems." Despite condemnations from critics and viewers alike, the show was a summer hit for ABC, pulling in large numbers of viewers. Brat Camp's debut was the "second most-watched premiere of the summer," averaging 10.4 million viewers for the initial two hour special (Rogers). That week, July 11-17, the show ranked as the fourth most watched program out of all the broadcast networks (Bauder "ABC"). The show remained popular throughout the summer, maintaining a ranking of the seventh most watched program with 8.9 million viewers per episode (Bauder "Crime"). This seemingly conflicting evidence prompts one to question: why did so many people watch this program—what were they getting out of it? Analysis of Brat Camp reveals two underlying reasons for its popularity; first, the show engages viewers in dark play, letting them carry out their hidden desires while in the privacy of their own homes. Secondly, because the show creates an exact replica of an "exoticized" rite of passage, through the play of watching viewers can participate in an American culture enriched with successful rites of passage. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Brat Camp, ABC Television According to Johan Huizinga, the way people play says something important about them. Play "is a significant function—that is to say, there is some sense to it. In play there is something 'at play' which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something" (Huizinga 1). In his theory of the communication of play, Gregory Bateson analyzes the ways that animals and people "frame" play: "the messages or signals exchanged in play are in a certain sense untrue or not meant; and […] that which is denoted by these signals is nonexistent" (124). Play uses specific words or actions to indicate that one is playing. These words or actions do not necessarily mean what they normally would; they simply provide a frame for the play, letting everyone involved know that play is happening. Not all play, [End Page 57] however, has clear frames. Bateson writes that in some instances, "there may be no explicit verbal reference to the frame, and...

Objects on a Table: Anxiety and Still Life in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

In A Farewell to Arms, informed by his study of modern painting, Hemingway creates a highly-coded visual text where objects frequently speak volumes. Hemingway's repeated focus on objects, especially in certain passages framed as still-life compositions, performs as a strategy for revealing characters' hidden desires, motivations, and anxieties. Specifically, Hemingway uses an array of still-life structures as a distancing strategy that allows the narrator, Frederic Henry, to both mask and reveal his emotional turmoil surrounding the death of Catherine Barkley. At the novel's conclusion, she becomes the narrative's most treasured "object on a table."

Recognising desire: a psychosocial approach to understanding education policy implementation and effect

It is argued that in order to understand the ways in which teachers experience their work—including the idiosyncratic ways in which they respond to and implement mandated education policy—it is necessary to take account both of sociological and of psychological issues. The paper draws on original research with practising and beginning teachers, and on theories of social and psychic induction, to illustrate the potential benefits of this bipartisan approach for both teachers and researchers. Recognising the significance of (but somewhat arbitrary distinction between) structure and agency in teachers’ practical and ideological positions, it is suggested that teachers’ responses to local and central policy changes are governed by a mix of pragmatism, social determinism and often hidden desires. It is the often under‐acknowledged strength of desire that may tip teachers into accepting and implementing policies with which they are not ideologically comfortable.

Twilight Moments

In 1863 the Codrington divorce trial exposed to the light of day what had long been concealed in darkness. Although married to an admiral, for years Helen Codrington had spent her nights in bed with the mannish feminist Emily Faithfull without exciting suspicion. In fact, when their marriage broke down, the admiral charged Helen with having affairs with male officers. Defending her honor, Helen countercharged that one night, as she slept with Emily, the admiral silently entered her bedroom and slipped into the bed—by implication, to molest Emily. At the time, it appeared, this incident was one of those private quarrels that mark unhappy marriages. But in the legal proceedings Emily initially verified Helen's accusation. To ward off this damaging information the admiral acquired a "sealed packet" of incriminating information about Emily, who, in response, withdrew her testimony. What was in the packet? Nobody knew for sure, but rumors spread that this "romantic and credulous" woman had formed an attachment to a "dangerous friend"; Emily was said to be "of impure mind," and the poet Robert Browning gossiped that she lied to "interest" another female poet, a new twist to the "sportings of the fancy." As Martha Vicinus recounts, no one openly expressed the suspicion that the two women had a sexual relationship, but vague rumors and gossip served to police their behavior all too effectively. As a result of the trial both Helen and Emily [End Page 139] had to withdraw from society—Helen permanently and Emily temporarily. Admiral Codrington, however, remarried soon after the divorce.1 This incident does not fit comfortably into the dominant model of the history of sexuality, which has been inspired by Foucault's delineations of sexual identities in the first volume of his History of Sexuality. Had the case occurred in the late 1920s, according to the model, Faithfull would have been stigmatized as a perverted lesbian spinster, a danger to young women.2 By then discourses incorporating the concept of sexual identities were widely employed to define and discipline those with unconventional desires. In the 1860s, however, the public was presumably aware only of deviant sexual acts, not of sexual identities. However, the absence of both the stigmatized identity "lesbian" and any evidence that she had committed deviant sexual acts did not permit Emily Faithfull to elude harmful rumors and gossip. We need additional conceptual tools to discuss cases like Emily Faithfull's, which involved sexual desires, relationships, and practices that did not produce identities, that were half-understood, expressed only by oblique gestures, veiled in silence. Looking at the period before modern sexual identities, historians sometimes claim that societies "uneasily tolerated" unconventional sexual behavior such as interracial sex or sex between women, but it is all too easy for readers to confuse toleration and acceptance.3 Hidden desires could still be subject to discipline. This article uses the metaphor of "twilight" to explore these issues, drawing upon histories of interracial sex, prostitution, sex between men and between women, and unmarried motherhood. I propose "twilight" as a metaphor for those sexual practices and desires that societies prohibit by law or custom but that people pursue anyhow, whether in secret or as an open secret. Twilight can be a metaphor for those silent moments when a married man picked up a boy on the street, when a wife caressed her female friend, or, more sinisterly, when the master crept into the slave quarters to rape a woman. These people's desires did not create a fixed identity; they indulged in these forbidden moments and then returned to their ordinary lives, just as twilight fades into darkest night, and night is succeeded by the dawn. Just as one can see only vague shapes in the dim light of dusk, twilight words conveyed sexual desires and practices that were only half-understood—like the abortion information whispered in the aisles of the pharmacy or the pornography hidden in a respectable man's library. The metaphor of twilight...

The biography of ancient Israel: national narratives in the Bible

The nation - particularly in Exodus and Numbers - is not an abstract concept but rather a grand character whose history is fleshed out with remarkable literary power. In her innovative exploration of national imagination in the Bible, Pardes highlights the textual manifestations of the metaphor, the many anthropomorphisms by which a collective character named springs to life. She explores the representation of communal motives, hidden desires, collective anxieties, the drama and suspense embedded in each phase of the nation's life: from birth in exile, to suckling in the wilderness, to a long process of maturation that has no definite end.In the Bible, Pardes suggests, history and literature go hand in hand more explicitly than in modern historiography, which is why the Bible serves as a paradigmatic case for examining the narrative base of national constructions. Pardes calls for a consideration of the Bible's penetrating renditions of national ambivalence. She reads the rebellious conduct of the nation against the grain, probing the murmurings of the people, foregrounding their critique of the official line. The Bible does not provide a homogeneous account of nation formation, according to Pardes, but rather reveals points of tension between different perceptions of the nation's history and destiny. This fresh and beautifully rendered portrayal of the history of ancient Israel will be of vital interest to anyone interested in the Bible, in the interrelations of literature and history, in nationhood, in feminist thought, and in psychoanalysis.

Raising awareness of transport issues: The potential to bring about behavioural change?

Changes in the directions of transport policy in the UK in the last few years have led to a wider consideration of possible measures to bring about behavioural change, in particular measures which have the potential to reduce car dependence. Among the measures currently being implemented by local authorities are public awareness or travel awareness campaigns. This paper examines the findings of a research project which evaluated a travel awareness scheme in the context of an integrated transport policy. The research project monitored the attitudes, beliefs and intentions of a sample of the residents who had been targeted by the Maidstone Initiative for Sustainable Transport (MIST) implemented by Kent County Council and Maidstone Borough Council. The research project found some remarkably consistent attitudes about car and bus travel over a period of three years, It also found that whilst people seem to be aware of the impact of travel on the environment they do not consider the environmental impact with the same degree of importance as other attributes of travel. A further finding was a hidden desire to switch modes from the car. The paper will conclude by looking critically at the future for travel awareness campaigns.

The Anatomy of Prejudices

1, he Anatomy of Prejudices is a fornudal)le 1)00k: forniidable in its length-almost 600 pages-and in its 27 pages of references, l)ut also in its intentions. It is tile ambitious goal of the author, Elisabeth “t’ung-Bnlehl, to replace tile received (and fitulty) visdoiii on the sul)ject of prejudice th her own new fornluiations. Not one for half measures, she lal)elS as a co.iipletely wrong overgeneralization tile generally accepted dictum of Gordon Allport that prejudice, whatever fornl it mamfests, is of one nature and one root. Her iconoclaSlil continues in her dismissal of Niax Adorno’s description of a particular personality structure-the authoritanian or fascist PenSonalit’-as characterizing prejudiced pers iis. Much of tile first section of the 1)00k iS devoted to a critical analysis of the extensive literature on )rejudice, particularly of American origin. She sees this literature as flawed by its cxcessive reliance on material from sociology and group psvcholog c its em1)hdsis on cogmtive approaches, and its failure to take into account tile Specific experiences and individual psychology ofthe oppressed victims. Her l)asic contention and taking-off point is that there is no single “prejudice,” l)Ut 11lUitiI)le arid different prejudices. In tile second section the author advances her own foniiulations. She acknowledges that prejudices, especiallv iacisii , n ay l)e a product of ethnocentnisiii, the conviction within a group of people, especially when iSOlated or, for various reasons, relatively separated from others, that the alone represent humanity and that other people are innately inferior. However, she illaintains that the ethnocentrisnis do iiot offer a sufFicient explanation of many current prejudices. These she labels the ideologies of desire or the “onecticisnls,” after the Greek root for “desirous. “ The orecticisnls are world views shaped by hidden desires and projected, both positively and negativel) onto others, who became scapegoats. They are far more malevolent and I)otentiaiiY destructive than ethnocentrism. It should be noted, however, that the distinction bebveen tile two kinds of prejudices, and how they relate to each other, is not niade very clean. The orecticisms considered by the author are racism, anti-Semitism, sexiSITI, and honlophobia. All exist in today’s world either overtly or as “modcnn” prejudice in whicli the bias is not

Hidden Desires and Missing Persons: A Feminist Deconstruction of Foucault

Hidden Desires and Missing Persons: A Feminist Deconstruction of Foucault

Hidden Desires and Missing Persons: a Feminist Deconstruction of Foucault

Hidden Desires and Missing Persons: a Feminist Deconstruction of Foucault

What Are (Breton's) Women for?

revolutionary action (to change life, transform society). One can see in this contradiction the source of its paradoxical glory (surrealism will survive in spite of suggesting once and for all the conditions for a revolutionary art). But one also sees here the cause of surrealism's downfall, betrayed as much by those who preferred their own work as by those who subordinated their work to political engagement. Whichever the case, only Breton would have understood the seriousness of this conflict; only Breton would have remained faithful to an ethic: surrealism is Breton, all Breton, and nothing but Breton. This is certainly ironic, for he who is recognized for his desire not to succeed is in the the only name that still remains. Should one conclude then that Breton has been retrieved thanks to the wiles of History? I don't believe so (and don't know, moreover, what the term retrieve really means, nor what an unretrieved artistic practice would look like), and I would like to demonstrate that Breton's is a thoroughly bookish operation, one of transmission that requires the book itself in order to be made manifest. I don't mean to say that Breton's hidden desire, like that of all writers, was for his books to be found later on in a library, even if this turns out to be an inevitable result of his endeavors. The act of transmission envisaged here is intended to be absolute. It exists beyond the book, although the book itself must necessarily remain. Disqualified as an end in itself, the work of art remains behind as the indispensable witness of an activity of transmission that appears to be situated outside the work: in a place wherein lies the ethic proper to surrealism, and in which I see a version of Mallarme's complete book (that is to say, perhaps nothing) marked, no doubt, by a misreading. In any case, one finds in Breton considerable fascination for an immediate and totally efficient discourse that represents a pure effect of

Philip the Fair--A "Constitutional" King

THE reign of Philip the Fair offers one of the great paradoxes of French history. On the one hand, it sees the culmination of the medieval French monarchy; the royal government reaches a peak of power which it is not to attain again for generations. On the other hand, the king who presides over the government during these crowded years of great events is a shadowy, elusive figure, almost completely hidden behind a screen of bureaucrats. It is hard to prove that any important act of the reign was the result of a personal decision by the king. It is easy to argue that he did nothing, and by doing nothing allowed his ministers to express the traditions of the bureaucracy in a relentless drive for power. And yet those who believe that the important decisions of the reign were made by Philip's ministers merely change the form but not the substance of the paradox. For no one minister held power throughout the reign and no one minister had complete control of the government for even a short period. Yet basic policy remained constant, though tactics changed. If the king did not give continuity and direction to policy, who did? Can it be true that the whole bureaucracy was so imbued with the spirit of aggrandizement that it made no difference who was selected to sit in the royal Council? Or did Philip express his hidden desires through a careful choice of ministers? This problem worried Philip's contemporaries, and it has worried historians ever since. On the whole, French writers of the early fourteenth century tended to believe that Philip was dominated by evil counsellors. This is the story of Yves of St. Denis,' of Geoffroi de Paris,2 even of such an ardent supporter of the monarchy as Pierre Dubois.3 Bishop Bernard Saisset made many indiscreet remarks, but the one which stung most and hias been re-