Search Results

This chapter identifies the literary neo-Nietzschean critical ethos that defined the review from its opening issues, whilst also tracing how this ethos shifted in response to changes in the French social and political climate. The review’s progressive emphasis on anti-essentialist and post-foundational thought is contrasted to the return to Enlightenment thought, French values and communicational rationality proposed by Jürgen Habermas and Alain Finkielkraut. In contrast to the more abstract, conceptual emphasis of Derridean deconstruction, the review’s materialist approach to literary writing is demonstrated with particular reference to the works of Jean-Noël Vuarnet and Michel Surya. The review’s early, staunch secularism is then seen to become more tempered after scandals surrounding Islamic headscarves, laïcité, and the terrorist threats made towards Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen, Robert Redeker and Charlie Hebdo, as the review refuses to be drawn into outright condemnation of France’s stigmatised Muslim minority. Lastly, the review’s Nietzschean stress on amoral philosophy is seen to be more responsible than nihilistic when placed in the context of shifting social mores, especially regarding changing philosophical perspectives on paedophilia.

This chapter details how Thai attitudes to homosexuality and transgenderism vary according to social context. Ethnographic accounts of the supposed “loose structuring” of Thai culture and of the variable and contextual nature of cultural norms are summarised. The importance of patron-client relations in Thailand, and the influence of this phenomenon upon gay relationships, is described. Intergenerational relationships and paedophilia reflected in the letters to Uncle Go are also discussed.

This chapter will be twofold. Firstly an examination of the narrative place of incest within both Murdoch’s and de Beauvoir’s work and questioning the role of the ephebophilic attitudes of the central male characters to the younger, less experienced Julian Baffin (The Black Prince, 1973) and Nadine Dubreuilh (The Mandarins, 1954). Both of these texts are informed by philosophical idea of the virtuous and it seems clear that Murdoch takes much from de Beauvoir’s earlier novel. The structure of Murdoch’s work is far more relaxed and this is clearly seen in the style that Murdoch presents us with the sexual relations of the characters whereas de Beauvoir’s work aims to bring the reader to a better understanding of the underlying existentialist position. Is love debased by both Murdoch and de Beauvoir via the taboo of incest to heighten the eventual outcomes of the respective novels or does it form a signifying position that point us toward a new moral reality that developed after the Second World War? Little work has been produced relating these two authors to the other and a reassessment of their work is both timely and necessary.