Applying pure mathematics: mathematics in the natural sciences

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. This quotation, attributed to Galileo, seemed to hold to an unreasonable1 extent in the era of quantum mechanics.

[Tagebuch] 1941-

Typescript with handwritten corrections of a memoir, written in the form of a diary

Before Memories Fade.

Autobiographical manuscript

Ze'ev Jabotinsky Commemorative Medal

Obverse: Portrait of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Reverse: Betar emblem, quotation from Jabotinsky.

Yhteisöllisyys juutalaisessa kansallisuusajattelussa ja Israelin valtion itsenäisyysjulistuksessa

The Idea of Community in the Jewish National Thinking and in the Proclamation of Independence The aim of this study is to clarify the idea of community in the Jewish national thinking and in the Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel in 1948. The method is the community analysis. The values of the culture are studied by two- and threefold dimensions on the arena. On the field of that arena one can find the society of order, the society of pressure, the societies made by mosaics and the societies that are breaking apart. The community way of behaving means, that the individuals voluntarily follow common values. The earliest Jewish ideals elevated the concept of unity among the people. The reality in the society was different especially in Roman times when the religious and national thinking was fragmented into four different main views. During the Diaspora the religious tradition mostly warned against pursuing a Jewish state, but many forms of Anti-Judaism and the new national thinking in the nineteenth century created the Zionist movement. The religious Jewish people did not rely on the earthy nationalism and when some of them later chose Zionism, they stressed the religious aspects in governing the state. The cultural Zionists preferred a slower and more low key spiritual way of change. The Revisionists saw no alternatives but to use military force. Many in the majority, the Labour movement, hoped that the progress brought to the region by Zionism would change the minds of opponents. The general appearance of the proclamation is optimistic. It characterizes national and political unity gathering people who think differently and who come from different factions of the Jewish political and cultural orientation. These people can be placed on different corners in the community analysis. The proclamation concentrates on state and administrative points of view. It aims at a state for the Jews, and the Jewishness of the state is more clearly seen in later legislation. The hope for co-operation from all sides was clearly articulated. The central aim was the security of the Jews. The proclamation has a community quotation because it aimed to build up a net of cooperation. The vision of building a nation of their own is balanced by the collaboration with the Arabs and the international community. In the same roclamation the individual civil rights are side by side with the Prophets thoughts about peace and justice. The Proclamation describes a society of a good order which aims at uniting the people. In the midst of grave difficulties a noble proclamation of national and international co-operation was created. It was not taken for granted that the ideals would be realized. The care of the national homeland could become egocentric nationalism and the attention to the Prophets heritage could turn to emphasizing strict religious rules or to isolation from others. The emphasis of civil rights could turn to assimilation or in other words to other kinds of values in their own country.

Like a burden

'Like A Burden' was an exhibition developed and presented for Metro Arts Galleries in 2015. It drew together several large scale fabric works 'Heavy Thinking'; 'Quick Draw II' and 'Well Hung' within the gallery space, along with a large series of ink and pencil drawings and a lecture performance recorded and projected as a digital video. This body of work foregrounds the activist feminist voice through quotation, citation and reiteration and is part of a broader practice strategy to re-perform a subjective feminist archive.

La tortura en las Siete Partidas : la pena, la prueba y la majestad. Un análisis sobre la reinstauración del tormento en la legislación castellana del siglo XIII

Resumen: Nadie, de entre los historiadores del derecho, podría animarse a negar la presencia de fuentes romanas (en especial esa compilación tardía denominada Corpus Iuris Civilis) dentro de Partidas; con particular acento en el caso del Digesto. Por esto, en términos de su materialidad, lo que se presentará aquí será un trabajo de cotejo entre títulos específicos de las obras citadas y que refieren al tópico de la tortura. Por un lado, el título 18 del libro XLVIII del Digesto junto con el título 41 del libro IX del Codex. Del otro lado, el título 30 del libro VII de Partidas. Esta comparación buscará no tanto las equivalencias textuales (que son conscientemente obviadas por los redactores a pesar de conocer a la perfección los sistemas de citado) como el sentido último de introducir estos textos en el corpus legislativo castellano. En este sentido, lo que se buscará será plantear métodos posibles para sortear el problema de la intertextualidad en un mundo sin autores.

Moon Palace I

Moon Palace I takes its title from the novel “Moon Palace” by Paul Auster and is loosely influenced by the following quotation from the novel: "I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, the one thing powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity." (Auster has authorised reproduction of the quotation) The opening pitches of moon palace I were composed while sitting at the piano exploring the sound of my tinnitus/inner ringing. From an initial rather delicate, graceful presentation of these pitches, the music intensifies rhythmically and dynamically, becoming more aggressive, emphasising the invasive quality inherent in tinnitus. A study at any one time of the pitches and rhythms present in my tinnitus can yield interesting results, the relationship between the sounds heard in each ear sometimes producing unison pitches or clashing dissonances. However, for all the fascination and intrigue, tinnitus can be relentless and disturbing, interrupting concentration and hindering sleep. Moon Palace I is an exploration of these two opposing elements. Laurina Sableviciute gave the first performance at St John's Church, Edinburgh, May 2006. It has also been performed by Tricia Dawn Williams at the Manoel Theatre, Valletta, Malta, November 2011.

Death Aesthetization in Contemporary Artistic Practices

Starting from the famous and enigmatic quotation of the Aristotle’s Poetics, who argues that the human has a natural desire and pleasure to see corpses if mediated by art, is intended to show the relationship between the attraction for the horror and some contemporary art practices surrounding the depiction of death, particularly with regard to the ultimate use of the human corpse as an artistic resource. Avoiding any kind of ethical approach or questioning of the limits of the artistic production, is meant to highlight the phenomenon through the examples brought out by the work of some contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Eric Fischl, Damien Hirst, Von Hagens, Andres Serrano, Joel-Peter Witkin and Teresa Margolles: From those who use the corpse in and turn it in something aesthetically pleasant, to others who turn human corpses in sculptures of scientific value, and further other kind of artists who assume the morbid and dramatic life of the corpse in their art production as something structural.

'Small places like St Helena have big questions to ask': the inaugural lecture of a Professor of Island Geography

This publication takes the form of a written version of my inaugural lecture, which was presented at Queen’s University Belfast on 10 March 2010. It is more personal and considerably more self-indulgent than would normally be acceptable in an article, with more of my own experiences and also my own references than would usually be considered proper. However, the bestowal of such a title as Professor of Island Geography is something of a marker of the maturity not just of myself but maybe also for island studies. After a section describing my path into island geography, the lecture deals with the negativities of islands and the seeming futility of studying them only then to identify a new or at least enhanced regard for islands as places with which to interact and to examine. Reference is made to islands throughout the world, but with some focus on the small islands off Ireland. The development of island studies as a discipline is then briefly described before the lecture concludes with reference to its title quotation on St Helena by considering that place’s islandness and how this affected/affects it in both the 17th and 21st centuries.

Speaking Out Against Rape:Feminist (Her)Stories and Anti-Rape Politics

In 1976, Susan Brownmiller published 'Against Our Will', widely credited as the founding text of feminist anti-rape theory, in which she famously declared that rape was 'nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear'.While the scholarship and politics of Against Our Will have been subjected to numerous and compelling critiques, the work retains canonical and even foundational status within feminist anti-rape politics. In this article I attempt a critical re-examination of feminist (her)story telling practices. By situating the story told in Against Our Will beside and within Brownmiller's story of the creation of the book and her own coming-to-consciousness, a more general reexamination of the role of women's speech and (her)story-telling in feminist anti-rape politics is afforded. This re-reading draws out two central aspects of the politics of (her)story-telling which can be found in Brownmiller's work and in the Joan W. Scott quotation above. Firstly, the need to be recognised as a 'just source' of women's stories has resulted in the granting of epistemological primacy to stories of women's experience or personal statements. Secondly, the desire to compensate for the lack of a 'classical myth' to authorise women's claims, resulting in an attempt to imbue these feminist (her)stories with their own mythology.

Ecos do silêncio : para um estudo iconológico do fado

Tese de doutoramento, História (Arte Património e Restauro), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2015

Citer la révolte : la reprise québécoise du discours de la décolonisation francophone

Ayant recours aux théories de l’intertextualité et de la citation telles que développées par Genette, Compagnon et Morawski, ce mémoire met en relation deux corpus distincts mais complémentaires : les principaux essais d’Hubert Aquin, de Gaston Miron et des collaborateurs de la revue Parti pris sont analysés comme réécriture des textes (ou réélaboration des idées) d’Aimé Césaire, de Frantz Fanon et d’Albert Memmi, figures dominantes du discours de la décolonisation francophone. L’approche adoptée vise à mettre en lumière les bases sur lesquelles les intellectuels québécois tâchèrent de justifier leur réutilisation du discours de la décolonisation. Elle permet aussi d’observer dans quelle mesure ce discours orienta la réflexion entourant la redéfinition du nationalisme au Québec, en plus de faciliter sa diffusion. Articulé autour de trois grands axes – l’identité culturelle, les conflits linguistiques ainsi que le rôle de la littérature et de l’écrivain dans le combat pour l’émancipation nationale –, ce mémoire démontre que l'établissement d'un tel partenariat symbolique a été d'un grand apport quant à l'appartenance du Québec à la francophonie.

Du littéraire sans littérature : la logique de la parole dans l’œuvre de Pierre Perrault

Ce mémoire prend comme point de départ le paradoxe central qui marque l’écriture de Pierre Perrault : le fait qu’en dehors de son travail cinématographique, il écrit des textes littéraires alors qu’il refuse à la fois le statut d’écrivain et la catégorie même de « littérature ». L’analyse du discours des poèmes du recueil Gélivures et des essais du recueil De la parole aux actes permet de montrer que Perrault arrive, grâce à tout un imaginaire de la parole, à écrire en se dégageant symboliquement de la littérature, dont il critique la volonté de conquête. Ce mémoire fait appel à une critique où la réflexion sur la langue joue un grand rôle, à la croisée de l’histoire et du social. Le premier chapitre traite de ce que signifie la parole chez Perrault et de ce qu’elle implique. Sont abordés en particulier le champ sémantique qui entoure ce motif omniprésent dans son œuvre ainsi que les rapprochements métaphoriques entre parole, mémoire et identités. Le deuxième chapitre porte sur les manifestations plus directes de la parole, soit le don que fait Perrault de la parole à travers son œuvre. Sont étudiés l’intertextualité, la mise en page et le travail de la citation. La volonté de prise de parole de Perrault lui-même est étudiée au dernier chapitre. Son écriture est alors envisagée comme un combat pour la défense d’une parole qui est d’ailleurs étroitement liée à sa quête identitaire, laquelle inspire un style foncièrement polémique et la recherche d’une énonciation qu’on pourrait qualifier de performative.

Écrire la théorie littéraire : l'œuvre littéraire de John Cage et la révision du commentaire critique

Toutes les illustrations qui ponctuent cette thèse ont été réalisées par Chantal Poirier. Elles ont été insérées dans le texte selon un ordre méticuleusement aléatoire.