Lacanian Psychoanalysis looks at the current debates surrounding Lacanian practice and explores its place within historical, social and political contexts. Download What Is Psychoanalysis books , In a radically powerful interpretation of the human condition, this book redefines the discipline of psychoanalysis by examining its fundamental assumptions about the unconscious mind, the nature of personal history, our sexualities, and the significance of the "Oedipus Complex".
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Download Lacanian Left books , In recent years psychoanalysis - especially Lacanian theory - has been gradually acknowledged as a vital resource in the ongoing re-orientation of contemporary political theory and analysis.
Of particular note is that the work of Jacques Lacan is increasingly being used by major political philosophers associated with the Left. This indicates the dynamic emergence of a new theoretico-political horizon: that of the 'Lacanian Left'. However, this has yet to be properly conceived and structured as a field.
The Lacanian Left is the first book to bring it into academic consciousness and to draw its implications for concrete political analysis in a systematic way. It should be clarified that Lacan does not believe in the concept of mental health or normality, but like Freud, holds that all individuals exist in varying degrees of disease.
These three categories are essentially those that were formulated by Freud. The mechanism of negation functions differently in neurosis, psychosis or perversion. This method of arriving at a diagnosis, i. Fink, Lacanians do not look favorably upon the multiplication of categories and subcategories that continues to grow in the American psychiatric literature on diagnosis.
This is essentially the system adopted in the various editions of the DSM. Although the number and presentation of symptoms can vary throughout the life of a person, their essential structure does not change.
For example, a man may be diagnosed as a substance abuser, and this diagnosis is evident in the fact that he uses certain drugs with a particular frequency, etc.. However, if we conceptualize his psychic structure as that of an obsessive, then we understand that the role played by the drug use in his adult years may be the same as his defiance in early school years, and his controlling approach in his relationship with his employees and wife.
Psychosis For Lacan, the psychic structure that refers to psychosis is produced by foreclosure of the Name-of-the-father Lacan, As has been elaborated in previous sections, this refers to the absence of the symbolic function of the father.
Psychoanalytic treatment can help to make psychotic symptoms recede but, for Lacan, there is no cure for psychosis. Lacanians assert that an individual either has a psychotic structure or does not, and even those who have their first psychotic break later in adulthood have always been psychotic, and further, there are those with a psychotic structure who often remain undiagnosed by virtue of never having had an overt break.
It is helpful to make a clear distinction between the real father, the imaginary father and the symbolic father in the theory of Lacan. The real father is the father here and now, the one who is the actual, biological father.
However, this real father is never the one who operates directly in the course of the Oedipus Complex; this is the role of the imaginary father.
Dor, According to Lacan, the symbolic father is a signifying effect within the oedipal dialectic that produces a new structure: a child inscribed in castration and therefore, in the world of language, of signification. Lacan uses a particular linguistic image to indicate the function of the paternal metaphor, in which the symbolic father overrides, for the child, the desire of the mother: Name of the father Mother as desire So far we have seen that the real father has no direct implications in this process; in some ways it is irrelevant if he is present or not, if he is deficient or not.
Issues pertaining to the real father do not affect the entrance of the child into the symbolic order. Thus, 86 Borderline Personality Disorder: A Lacanian Perspective it is the relationship of the child with the imaginary or symbolic father that will have important consequences. This means that while the father signals what is his, he also signals what belongs to his child. While the father may deny something, he gives something else in return.
One reason for this is that the actual father provides an occasion or opportunity for fantasy and signification. Returning to our discussion, the question arises; what are the tools that Lacanians rely upon to confirm a diagnosis of psychosis? Although the best indicator of psychosis in American psychiatric circles is always the presence of hallucinations, Lacanian analysts suggest that the presence of hallucinations is not definite proof of the presence of psychosis.
In fact, hallucinations are a form of primary process thinking, used very early on by the infant and which play an important role in ordinary daydreams, fantasies and dreams.
Further, it is important to differentiate between true hallucinations and voices and visions that non-psychotic people have. Such individuals, although reporting a vision or having heard someone who was not present, may be surprised and wonder about these phenomena.
Fink reports on a patient who believed he saw his ex-wife at the end of a corridor in his home. He was surprised but at the same time questioned this vision, thinking that he had to have noticed her entrance or the possibility that he let her into the house. He did believe he had a vision but did not believe in its content.
In spite of the hallucinatory symptom, the capacity for reality testing is intact, and the diagnosis of psychotic structure is not substantiated. Further, many hysterics have the most elaborate fantasies that are so hypercathected that they appear to be real; they see and hear things that are not present to others and experience them as if they were palpable. However, according to Lacan, in the end, the hysteric will be doubtful about the veracity of his experience, which again speaks to her intact reality testing and the ruling out a psychotic diagnosis.
For Lacan, the characteristic most salient in psychotic thinking is that of certainty. The psychotic patient is certain that reality in the form of a thought, vision, noise, etc, has a meaning and that the meaning involves her or him.
The psychotic thought is without error or misinterpretation. The certainty of their statements is irreversible for the psychotic. On the other hand, hysterics and obsessives always doubt. Doubt is a characteristic of a neurotic process. In sum, when hallucinations are reported, the clinician has to explore this phenomenon conscientiously, if there is no conclusive evidence one way or another, other criteria should be employed.
These other criteria are focused around language disturbances. In order to fully comprehend this assertion it is important to again think in terms of the registers mentioned earlier, the imaginary, symbolic and real.
As described above, the imaginary register is the first structure that organizes the chaos within which the child lives i. As we have also seen, this 88 Borderline Personality Disorder: A Lacanian Perspective register provides an image of the self that is invested libidinally by the child The language of the parents, their approval of and recognition of the child, through their gestures, voice and words, ratifies his mirror identification.
The earlier formation of the mirror stage, which represents a somewhat primitive organization, is finalized through a symbolic act that comes from outside the child. This supremacy of the symbolic over the imaginary is instrumental to the formation of subjectivity. Where aggresivity and rivalry were the main affects in the imaginary order, in the symbolic order the child is organized around different criteria: guilt, law, performance, achievement, etc.
The symbolic order is linked to the castration complex, which, according to Lacan, initiates this new order for the child. Therefore, with the establishment of the symbolic order several interrelated factors are put into motion: the function of the paternal metaphor, the overriding of the imaginary world, the separation of the child from the mother, the creation of desire for that which is prohibited will be desired , and the immersion of the child in the world of language.
If this does not occur, if this initial knot is not tied, the individual will have no anchor point in a public language; indeed he will create his own language, leading to the language disturbance that is evident in psychosis. Psychotic patients will have difficulty Lacanian Psychoanalysis 89 producing a whole sentence, as they will be unable to punctuate, anchor and convert the chain of signifiers.
The anticipatory and retroactive movements involved in producing meaning that is, the possibility of the metaphoric substitution are absent in the psychotic person. Words become things Fink, Neologisms are the most salient evidence of psychosis. The formation of neologisms in psychosis replaces the metaphoric function, by creating new words with an idiosyncratic meaning known only to the psychotic himself. Thus these terms do not refer to others in language; we cannot infer any meaning by association or contiguity.
They are untranslatable. Among other criteria of psychosis, Lacan discusses the predominance of imaginary relations. While the neurotic generally has conflicts derived from his struggle with the symbolic order, such as conflicts with parents or other authoritative figures, social expectations or issues of self-esteem, the psychotic typically presents with conflicts related to someone approximately their own age usually in the figure of a peer or a lover.
The issue for the psychotic is not manifest in terms of obtaining parental approval; rather, according to Lacan, psychotics have the experience that someone is usurping their place. The phenomenon of paranoia is typically encountered in psychosis as a type of imaginary relationship.
Lacan holds that because there is no true access to language the psychotic is directly related to the imaginary world. However, while this relation to the imaginary is an important feature of psychosis, a positive diagnosis is, according to Lacan, only possible when language disturbance is present. Whereas the neurotic organizes his libido, refocusing it from his body as a whole to his erogenous zones, the psychotic feels invaded by libido, his body is taken over by it. This, according to Lacan, touches upon the register of the real.
The body is literally, as Lacan puts it, overwritten with signifiers, biology is for the most part lost, only maintained in the erogenous zones. This means that the psychotic is prone to, in the face of any slight provocation; express his or her lust or aggression overtly. Because there is no repression, guilt is not present in these patients and when they are hospitalized for a criminal act towards others they do not feel genuine guilt for their actions.
Another symptom that is present in psychotic men is a slow process towards feminization. Schreber Freud, , the paranoiac who Freud discussed in his initial study of the psychotic process, initially related how the rays of God were penetrating him.
This thought evolved into the belief that he was the wife of God. In clinical practice some psychotic patients claim to feel like a woman and they sometimes request sex change surgery. For Lacan, the attitude of the father towards his son is to delimit a space for the child, in a distributive way, by giving himself certain rights and bequeathing others to the child.
This important aspect of the paternal function does not occur in psychosis. A father may act in an authoritarian, antagonistic or aggressive manner towards his child. At this point the child may take the feminine position before this dominating imaginary figure, especially when no triangularization is possible. If and when the patient later becomes psychotic, he may feel that this feminine position is imposed on him.
Therefore the presence of feminization appears to be the result of identification with an imaginary father but not a symbolic one. Although this feminization may take place in a neurotic person as well, it is usually intermittent and of short duration, whereas the psychotic person feels invaded by a feminine identity that he cannot escape. A final note on the issue of diagnosis in psychosis is provided by Lacan in his discussion of the absence of self-questioning in psychotics.
Lacanian Psychoanalysis Neurosis 91 For Lacan the defining mechanism in neurosis is repression. Further, according to Lacan, primary repression effects an individuation of the unconscious in the individual subject. At that time the unconscious is constituted in a singular way for each particular individual.
The child inserts himself in language, in the Other, where all signifiers exist, and positions himself in the discourse.
Therefore, the position that the subject occupies allows him a place but also represents a loss, one that is tied to the lost promise of being the phallus of the mother, the object that will be lost forever.
According to Lacan, this object never existed, but throughout life we keep looking for it. Repression impacts upon the connection between thoughts and affects, and this disconnect is the source of neurotic symptoms; for example, the neurotic may experience emotions that he cannot link to any knowledge; even his own rationalizations fail to explain his emotions.
However, the different neuroses have specific modes of repression. For example, hysterics have an overabundance of feelings without thoughts, whereas obsessives have a profusion of thoughts that evoke no feelings.
The more interesting question from a Lacanian point of view is the differentiation of one neurosis from another. Lacan utilizes this formula to clarify how the subject imagines him or herself in relation to the Other. Hysteria and obsession can be defined as radically different ways in relation to the Other.
In analysis, the analysand is always recreating his or her fundamental fantasy in relation to the analyst, by pleasing the analyst, making her anxious or neglecting her, etc.
Lacan describes three sub-categories of neurosis and thus three fundamental fantasies: hysteria, obsession and phobia. The positions of the hysteric, obsessive and phobic, that we are about to describe are, according to Lacan, simply the three positions that clinical experience has shown analysands take up in the transference. Psychoanalysis is concerned with the position of the analyst in the transference as a means to orient the interventions with different patients.
Further, Lacan studied and worked with these three fundamental neuroses in a manner that neither Freud nor other analysts had ever done previously. Lacanians have long affirmed that these three categories are extremely useful in clinical work and that there is no need for further classifications. This quest for the possession of the phallus, this idea of having it, is the quest of the hysteric. Although sexual difference is an important determinant of the way hysterics behave, e.
This other serves a very important identificatory function and is the key to all meaning that emerges in analysis. When Dora pursues Mrs. K, in the famous case of hysteria analyzed by Freud, what she wants is the answer to the question: what does a man want from a woman? This question presupposes that Mrs. K knows the answer, that she has the key to the enigma of what constitutes a woman, and it is on this tacit assumption that Dora pursues her endlessly.
It is important to note that the hysteric can also take the position of the male partner and desire as if she were him. This question has a direct connection with the dual identification of their desire. In the case of a satisfied couple, the hysteric always finds a 94 Borderline Personality Disorder: A Lacanian Perspective way to provoke a desire for something else that her partner does not have. This characteristic is a subtle way of shining through the other, by displacement.
Hysterics always feel that they have not received enough from their mother and this comes through via their identification with the phallus; instead of being an ideal object worthy of total love, they see themselves as devalued and unworthy objects. Their sense of identity is always deficient and unfulfilled.
The ideal object is an impossible object, but the hysteric never ends the cycle of aspiring to be one. Therefore all of their efforts tend to be drawn towards a phallic narcissistic identification as a way of avoiding the issue of castration or the lack thereof. This is the most important aspect of hysteria. This position assures that the hysteric will forever be linked with the mother.
The phallus could be represented in the arena of the image, or through their speech or in their bodies. How does the hysterical woman approach this encounter? Curiously, with ideas based on stereotypes supported by the culture. This search for the ideal is viewed through the eyes of the models of beauty and femininity that are purported in the media. In the hysterical woman, beauty equals femininity and in that sense, she does not spare any efforts, as perfection as it is culturally defined i.
The hysteric is very critical of herself Lacanian Psychoanalysis 95 and attempts to erase all of her imperfections. As a result, her behavior and speech will reflect a permanent state of indecision and doubt and at a later date she will voice regrets.
Hysterics are plagued by indecision and doubt. The difficulty the hysteric has in making up her mind is very acute in relation to a choice of lover. She will pick a lover but continue to be absent in the intimacy of the relationship, as she needs to remain unsatisfied at any cost. Either you know everything or you are totally ignorant. The search for perfection is related to another characteristic of hysteria: the identification with a woman from which she will learn what femininity is all about.
In this case, we have the emergence of a hysterical homosexuality that is not related to a choice of love object but to an identificatory process. As a result of this identification, the hysteric wants to think like her, be like her, love like her, to have her men, etc.
Perfection is that to which she aspires, therefore, there is always a man better equipped, more charming, more intelligent than the one she has.. What is important to address is that the man she pursues is always unattainable; if she could get him, she would not be interested in him any longer. In the area of sexual encounters the hysteric has a discourse of claim or demand usually surrounding phallic potency. This challenge to men usually starts a cycle of continuous misunderstandings; the man trying to desperately prove his virility and the hysteric constantly disappointed.
According to Lacan, this is not really the case. Hysterics are looking for a man that is complete, what could be represented as an ideal father. Usually we find hysterics dating men of importance, full of knowledge, powerful men.
These types of men will make up for the deficiencies of her imaginary father. Along these lines, it is common to hear the fantasy of prostitution in hysterics who are in treatment. In the figure of a prostitute, we have a woman who can offer herself for money to all men, insofar as she can give herself to only one, the pimp.
This man does not really possess any special talent but the assurance of lacking something. He needs her and her money to be complete. The more she pays, the more she completes him. The sacrificial position of the hysteric is a very important topic. In the name of that renouncing we constantly hear in the clinical work how people renounce their own pleasure in favor of that of their children, their husbands, their country, etc.
This position allows the hysteric to keep her desire unsatisfied many of the protagonists in opera portray this aspect of hysteria quite well. The versagung was taken by the post Freudians as frustration, however, Lacan sees it as refusal. The term frustration implies that the subject is frustrated passively, from the exterior, whereas the term versagung suggests an act of relinquishment.
A good example of this occurs in the case of those people who become ill when they are successful, where there appears to be a mechanism by which the person refuses the satisfaction of his desire. As we will see, the idea of sacrifice is noteworthy in the obsessive individual as well.
In the name of his sacrifice he will give up everything to keep his desire impossible and unattainable. In analysis, we must ask ourselves, what is the subject renouncing when he presents to the analyst an endless list of possible motives for his sacrifices? What benefits does this sacrifice have? Hysteria in Men Hysteria in men is difficult to diagnose because of the way it is concealed by our culture. Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics Yannis Stavrakakis Abstract In recent years psychoanalysis — especially Lacanian theory — has been gradually acknowledged as a vital resource in the ongoing re-orientation of contemporary political theory and analysis. More In recent years psychoanalysis — especially Lacanian theory — has been gradually acknowledged as a vital resource in the ongoing re-orientation of contemporary political theory and analysis.
Authors Affiliations are at time of print publication. The middle-class subjects were University of Crete the historical outcome of both structural forc- es and of their own actions. Their inventive practices and representations imbued the changing social relations with novel mean- ings and, thus, led to the construction, per- The inappropriateness of class analysis has formance and challenging of class identities.
Sev- in Piraeus as on the changes in the systems eral specialised works on philanthropy, first- of signification through which its middle- wave feminism, female education and sports class inhabitants experienced them. Relying upon historically specific cri- teria, Yannitsiotis reconstructs the actually Taking his cue from these pioneering at- existing social hierarchies and identifies the tempts, the work of Yannis Yannitsiotis con- middle-class men of Piraeus as that diverse stitutes the first systematic effort to use class stratum encompassing those with a certain as an analytical tool to explore social rela- amount of property, who retained at least one tions in nineteenth-century Greece.
By the late nine- how family ties strengthened the unity of the teenth century, changes in the field of labour enterprise and its position in a multitude of such as commercial specialisation, the sep- networks. In turn, entrepreneurial growth or aration of manual work from management failure determined the public image of the and of the home from the workplace meant family and structured the gender identity of its that this stratum was further distinguished by members.
Despite multiple female contribu- a remarkable professional diversity and novel tions to the enterprise, only middle-class man- labour practices. He discerns four groups that correspond to an Part Three shifts the focus of analysis from equal number of distinct, generational-cum- structures to discourses and explores the migratory waves, each with its own particu- importance of a certain configuration of the lar professional orientation.
By recon- tions of leisure. Thus, he provides epidemic victim were incessantly produced the most systematic critique to date of the through the novel discourses of public mo- stereotype of the self-made Greek entrepre- rality, public safety and social hygiene.
Pros- neur and convincingly demonstrates that so- titution, interpersonal violence, drunkenness cial mobility must be understood as the ever- and epidemic disease were criminalised and precarious outcome of a complex interplay attributed to the particular practices of lei- between family networks, marital and dis- sure and sociability characterising the pop- tribution strategies, economic structures and ular strata, which were now demonised and conjunctures, movement and locality.
This symbolic pro- duction of social distinctions fashioned a par- A meticulously researched account of middle- ticular set of core middle-class values under class professional life further demonstrates threat as well as novel middle-class subjec- the deep interdependence of family and enter- tivities exemplified in the figure of the philan- prise. Extending his analysis beyond the neg- thropist. Yannitsiotis moves beyond the func- ligible role of the dowry to include an exami- tionalist explanatory scheme of social control nation of marital alliances based on the local- and approaches philanthropy as an essential ity and commonality of profession as well as component of middle-class identity.
It pro- al, fully class-based forms of institutional or- moted the social status of its practitioner, en- ganisation. Even leisure, as the final chapter forced his political power and forged his pub- shows, had a role to play in this process.
The lic image. Such an individualistic configura- passage from the early educational associa- tion resulted in the predominance of private tions to the various sports clubs not only sig- initiatives. Unlike Athens, subsidised charita- nalled the emergence of new fields of social ble institutions appeared in Piraeus only very distinction and new concepts of proper male late in the nineteenth century. Hence, by the Piraeus its emergence in the late s to its wan- middle class was by all accounts entering into ing in the early s.
Piraeus was initially a wholly different phase of its existence. Local identity nitsiotis imaginatively approaches hitherto un- was now forged around the axes of opposi- tapped sources as a set of historically specific tion to the state, fierce competition with the cultural practices.
Finally, by the surprising vistas. Its entrepreneurs now expressed their the press employed, manifesting a particular growing self-confidence and sense of inde- middle-class worldview. Yet, by the early s, having con- urgently needed correctives to a number of solidated their position as leaders in what long-standing historiographically received had finally become a unified national mar- wisdoms. Consequently, the impor- dominant paradigm of patronage. The result tance of local cultural systems in shaping the is the portrait of a dynamic social class and a distinct outlook of this middle class is over- convincing demonstration of the importance looked.
Thus, Yannitsiotis neglects the im- of class analysis for the study of late nine- pact of Greek Orthodoxy on the values of what teenth-century Greek society. How such pur- ysis.
Its sensitivity to both the structural and portedly universal values were read and re- the discursive, its approach to class as both a signified in situ is nevertheless of critical im- social relation and a rhetorical trope may not portance, particularly since Yannitsiotis rightly always result in a seamless analysis, as the insists that class gradually replaced locality as abrupt transition from Part Two to Part Three the chief site of identity formation in late nine- demonstrates; nevertheless, it does present teenth-century Piraeus.
The impact of the assumptions and historical conclusions also great strikes of and is dealt with raise some critical questions. To begin with, only schematically. However, greater atten- he rightly foregrounds the question of space tion to those early but pivotal moments of and the ways class is always spatialised. A more thorough examina- flicts that dominated Greek politics throughout tion of the central role of the port in the lives the first half of the twentieth century.
Yannitsiotis formation. Howev- er, their causes remain largely obscure. The analytical, expansive narrative strategy em- Eftyhia D. Liata ployed ultimately downplays the importance of one critical moment, namely the s. Thus, while Yannitsiotis rightly rejects Athens: Institute for Neohellenic monocausal explanations, he misses the op- portunity to reflect on the importance of the Research of the National conjuncture in class formation and hence to Hellenic Research Foundation, formulate an even richer methodological pro- Yet, this omission is equally to his credit.
This is a virtuosic work employing diverse methodologies and imagi- by Thomas W. Gallant natively examining a dauntingly wide array of University of California, San Diego different fields. Accordingly, it is also, by de- fault, an open work, and it should therefore be highly praised even for that, for ultimately succeeding in generating among its readers as many questions as it answers.
In the spring of anti-Semitic riots erupt- ed on the islands of Kerkyra Corfu and Za- kynthos Zante. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, property. The significance of these events, and William H.
Sewell, Jr. Social Theory and Social Transformation, of these insular communities. The pogroms Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Across Eu- gressed. Eventually, troops and police were rope, editorials were published that castigat- deployed and the violence was brought to ed Greece for allowing such calamitous out- an end, but only after intense pressure had rages to occur.
So important were the Ionian been brought to bear, including the dispatch- island anti-Semitic pogroms that even two ing of British warships with orders to inter- years later they were the subject of a panel vene in order to protect British subjects in at the Parliament of World Religions.
In spite the Jewish community. On these grounds alone, its lic prosecutor, Theagenis Kefalas, Liata gives publication is to be welcomed. But in addi- the story a very local twist. It appears that the tion to presenting us with the most detailed attacks on the Jewish communities were in- and best discussion of the Ionian island anti- timately connected to Greek politics, and par- Semitic riots, she also reproduces a number ticularly to the upcoming June mu- of the key primary sources on which her ac- nicipal elections, with the supporters of the count is based.
Deligiannis party accusing the Trikoupists of masterminding the riots to drive off the pro- The book is divided into five substantive Deligiannis Jewish vote.
As she shows, there chapters and an appendix containing a se- was more than just Greek anti-Semitism in- lection of primary sources. But this time the au- alive again. When she failed to return home, thorities intervened more quickly.
A cohort of her parents began a search and notified the 50 soldiers was deployed and stopped the vi- police. Later that night, three Jews found her olence. The respite, however, was fleeting. Her murder was the procession of the Cross descended into never solved and never will be. In spite of the an orgy of violence against the Jews, result- fact the victim was herself a Jew, rumours ing in five fatalities and numerous causalities quickly spread among Orthodox Greeks that before order could be restored.
Relying al- the Jews had in fact killed a Christian girl in most exclusively on an account by Frederick order to collect her blood to make the special Carrer, she shows that events on Zakynthos, bread Jews ate during Passover.
Over the not carbon copies of the events on Kerkyra. Not a mass exodus. She the Ionian Island blood libel riots. All future divides her discussion into two sections, one scholarship on them will begin with this book, devoted to the press and the other to pam- and especially with the primary sources con- phlets and broadsheets.
The blood libel vio- tained in it. The deficiencies of the book are on lence incited a wave of editorialising in local, the analytical side. In spite of the wealth and national and foreign newspapers.
Laid out in richness of the primary sources, Liata never the papers were the full range of interpreta- provides us with a full narrative of what actu- tions and explanations. Some, like the piec- ally happened.
We do not learn, for example, es by Iakovos Polylas in his Kerkyran paper, who was attacked, when, and by whom. What Rhigas o Feraios, adopted a very anti-Semitic were the chronological and spatial dimen- tone; while others, like the articles published sions of the attacks?
As she notes, there ex- by Ioannis Gennadios in England, admitted ists complete lists of the victims and the prop- that anti-Semitism was at the root of the vio- erties destroyed during the violence, but she lence, but glossed it by arguing that among does nothing with them.
We know that the Greeks only the Ionian islanders were anti- police and military intervened, but what hap- Semites. The overall impression one comes pened when they did? How many casualties were was political orientation, pro-Trikoupis or sustained on each side? In short, the story of pro-Deligiannis, that largely shaped how the riots is not narrated in this book.
Neither the press wrote about the blood libel events. She focuses mitic violence at the time. The problem here is most of her attention on the writings of Grig- lack of context. The events were just the orios Xenopoulos and Alexandros Papdia- latest in the long history of tensions and occa- mantis. Xenopoulos, who had grown up on sional violence between Jews and Christians Zakynthos, was an early and vocal critic of on Kerkyra and Zakynthos. They must also be seen in a broader written about since , she also discusses context as well.
Virulent anti-Semitism swept the work that has been done on the Jewish across Europe and the Near East during the communities on the islands during the nine- nineteenth century and violence against Jew- teenth century. How did the events on the Ionian Islands resemble these? How did they differ? How do we explain the similarities and the differences? She does, then, a masterful job of deal- ing with the sources.
Where she falls down is Athens: Ed. Polis, So, while she has laid the foundation for by Paris Gounaridis detailed historical analysis of the blood libel riots on the Ionian Islands, we still await University of Thessaly such a study.
Tonia Kiousopoulou, a specialist in the final period of the Byzantine Empire, has produced a book about the society during the first half of the fifteenth century, before the fall of Con- stantinople What remained of the once powerful empire was transformed into a city-state, similar to the Italian commercial cities such as Venice and Genoa.
While ement in the development of an economically the author attempts to frame the latter as unified Mediterranean. The its subsequent collapse, but as an instrument politeia was constituted by civilian dignitaries, necessary for its survival. The through their enterprising activities or from first presents Constantinople not so much the hiring of the right to collect taxes.
The author clearly traces the changing the ideological components of political life. She investigates the constitution of collective identities, the attitudes towards and the per- The second part deals with the political life of ceptions of the social transformation, as well Byzantium, which was characterised by the as the content that concepts such as home- distinction between the secular officials, on land and nation acquired.
As a result of the one hand, and the dignitaries of the patriar- turn to political order in the city-state, like the chate, on the other.
Here, the author exam- Italian cities, the author considers that the at- ines the collective physiognomy of the political titude of the Palaiologos dynasty towards the personnel, the civilian dignitaries archontes. In caused by the ecclesiastical dignitaries, who, this context, the Byzantine emperor, indebted in moving away from the traditional concep- to and dependent economically on the West tion of the emperor as being divinely chosen, and also obliged to pay a tribute in tax to the adopted the more critical perception of him sultan, could not but be a manager of public as an administrator of political power.
Thus, finances. Byzantine society, in order to sur- they disputed his right to regulate ecclesiasti- vive, broke the bonds with the imperial past cal affairs, while the influence of the church and the holder of political power, the emperor, decreased in the higher levels of Constanti- in this new arrangement, was nothing more nopolitan society. While the clergy claimed than the first between equals.
The bureau- greater autonomy, the differentiation allowed cratic mechanism of administration was no the emperors to promote the policy of Church longer needed. The emperor coordinated two unity, so as to safeguard their power in the collective bodies that took the decisions: the city-state.
However, the fall of Constantinople court, which constituted himself and his high changed the political scene and influenced the dignitaries, and the politeia, a body in which choices that were developed.
Mediterranean city-state. Participat- ing in the symposium were Greek research- ers mainly occupied with the Greek Enlight- enment and the activity of Greek scholars of the early modern period. The papers deal with letter writing reasons for the letters, the different forms since the Byzantine period and the tradition used in corresponding with various recipi- that was created in continuation of the ancient ents, as well as the vocabulary, the different period.
The majority of the papers focus on grammatical forms, the form of the letters, as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the well as the quotations and the proverbs used period called the Greek Enlightenment. Al- in them. They examine the corpus of letters though letter writing was a common practice as texts and provide a general description of for all people who wished to communicate for their content.
Apostolopoulos investigates the merchants, even though other corpuses of way in which a corpus of letters of Nicolaos correspondence from the same period have Mavrogordatos has been ascribed to Alexan- not yet been researched in Greek historiog- dros Mavrogordatos, tracing a series of un- raphy.
Under this restriction some of the pa- lucky coincidences that have led to that mis- pers focus on epistolaria, printed guides for take. Machi Paizi-Apostolopoulou follows the correct letter writing that circulated either as transformation of a private collection of cor- manuscripts since the Byzantine period or in respondence into an epistolarion in the eight- printed form, from the seventeenth to the late eenth century, seeking to establish who had eighteenth centuries.
Pinelopi Stathi, in her contribution, browses In his paper, Dimitrios Z. Sofianos provides a the correspondence of the dependency of survey of letter writing since ancient times to the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople where, the late Byzantine period. He remarks that the during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- correspondence in the ancient period did not ries, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, who resid- share the character of that of the Byzantine ed there for long periods, engaged in corre- period, when a particular form of and strict spondence with a variety of people.
A signifi- rules for letter writing were formulated. He cant part of the correspondence comprises of continues by saying that letter writing was letters received from the dragomans of the exercised by highly literate men, scholars and Supreme Porte and the rulers of Wallachia church officials; for the Byzantine period there and Moldavia, who maintained strong rela- are no examples of letters written by people tions with the patriarchs.
From the late seventeenth to the eighteenth During the Byzantine period most scholars centuries, many printed guides on proper wrote many letters since it was part of their letter writing appeared. This reflected, on scientific work.
Some letters served as ex- the one hand, the need and demand of the amples of letter writing and were copied for educated public for such guidelines and, on several centuries. The papers of Niki Papatri- the other, the need of scholars to contribute antaphyllou-Theodoridi and Chariton Karana- epistolaria to bibliographical traffic. New letter types reflecting different order to show that the letters contained in needs reflect the emergence of new social the Grammatoforos were written mostly as perceptions.
The author remarks that during rhetorical exercises and their collection rep- that period the letter was something that ex- resents more a prolongation of his book on isted in the public and the private sphere. In rhetoric. This collection of letters does not many cases, letters were read by more than serve as an example for correct letter writing one person. At the same time, the language but for correct rhetorical texts. From the per- Grigorios Palaiologos, presented by Yiannis spective of their complication, form and types Papatheodorou in his contribution.
This also explains the to meet these changes and requirements. Nassia Yakovaki re- alterations in the Greek editions followed the searches the origins of this new social real- changes in other European guides.
Yakovaki discusses the crea- although written in ancient Greek, served as tion of a public sphere by the Greek-speaking an example for letter writing and teaching for Ottoman and European diaspora reading au- teachers and scholars for many decades af- dience and the formation of new social reali- ter its publication. Triantaphyllos E. Sklaven- ties through eighteenth-century epistologra- itis looks at the printed eighteenth-centu- phy. He follows friends and acquaintances and tries to estab- the changes, evident in successive editions of lish to what degree the public and the individ- the epistolarion of Spyridon Milias and other ual are interwoven in letter writing and read- epistolaria printed in Venice, that reflect the ing.
Even Korais took different attitudes to- change in readership from scholars to most- wards his letters; on the one hand, he knew ly merchants. The changes are evident in the and accepted the fact that more than one language used in the books and the letter ex- person read them and, on the other, strongly amples they provide.
Maria A. Stassinopou- reacted to the publication of letters which he lou, in her article on the epistolarion of Dimi- had intended to be private. Anna Mandilara uses the letters of emerge from them. He compares his letter another nineteenth-century merchant, Dim- writing with that of previous and subsequent itrios Petrokokkinos, in order to investigate letter writers and tries to establish their dif- the mentality and the principles of a mer- ferences and their meaning.
Demetrios I. Po- chant living in Smyrna and Marseille. Within the same framework, Vassi- organisation of post offices in the Venetian lis Panayotopoulos seeks the cultural aspects and the Ottoman areas of administration. He investigates the private contained tolography as evidence for ideology and a in the public content of an administrative ar- changing social environment. The authors chive. He raises questions on the use of the have used the letters as remnants of a spe- Greek language in the official papers of the cific social and political environment that they Ottoman province and tries to explain the cul- wished to research.
The language of the let- tural bilingualism of the letter writers and re- ters and the examples of letters contained in cipients. Spyros I. Asdrachas utilises, for the epistolaria can be used as evidence of a cer- same purpose, the letters sent to the Venetian tain political reality.
As some of the authors authorities of Lefkada and Preveza at the end of the book admit, it is a process that has not of the eighteenth century by different people been yet been undertaken by Greek historiog- from central Greece. He remarks while the raphy.
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