Illiterary Reflections on the Subaltern

( Jason Barker ) 한국영어영문학회 2019 영어 영문학 Vol.65 No.2

This paper uses a review of Gayatri Spivak’s Critique of Post-Colonial Reason as a means to reappraise her theory of subalternity. Published in the London Review of Books in 1999, the review illustrates the chauvinism of which its author, Terry Eagleton, is eminently capable; and, by extension, that of literary theory and its prejudice toward postcolonial studies. My impulse for returning to this review, given its age, is that it reflects a renewed focus in the theoretical humanities on ethical questions and on right and wrong ways of speaking and writing. Such focus reflects in part the fact that westerners, too, in addition to their non-western “others,” are increasingly feeling victimized and disempowered by economic and social injustice. At least such has been the case since the start of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, when western Marxists have been lining up to include the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in their Grand Narrative of a crisis of global capitalism. To cite the title of Alain Badiou’s book, Le reveil de l’histoire (The Rebirth of History) what we are allegedly faced with here is History “waking up” or being “reborn.” The paper argues that in taking to task Spivak’s “illiteracy,” Eagleton inadvertently reveals the political stakes of Spivak’s writing, and the significance of its “illiterary” style.

Towards An Ethic and Theory of Literature without Alterity

( Jason Barker ) 한국영어영문학회 2014 영어 영문학 Vol.60 No.1

Globalization of contemporary literature raises the prospect of ethics in the name of alterity. Through cultural pluralism comes the responsibility on writers and readers alike to recognize and respect difference, or otherness. This article highlights the difficulties of constructing an ethic founded on such assumptions, which over the years has drawn theoretical inspiration from the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, often in an attempt to attest to the trauma and suffering of the post-colonial age. The philosopher Simon Critchley is arguably a promoter of such a reading of Lacan, and of a “structural homology” between Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, on ethical questions. But such an ethic is inconsistent, arguably ending up as an apology for the political states of affairs that generate trauma and suffering in the first place. This article attempts to correct certain key misunderstandings of Lacan`s work, with reference to Lacan`s Imaginary, Symbolic and Real orders of the psyche, whichalso correspond to consecutive phases of his overall teaching of psychoanalysis. Reference is also made to the work of Alain Badiou and Michel Foucault respectively as welcome antidotes to the messianic pretensions of Levinasian ethics, and in order to point the way towards a-signifying theories of literature. There is ultimately a passage in Lacan`s work through the Symbolic and Real orders of the psyche, from the concept of “signifier” to the “letter,” and in conclusion the article speculates, albeit tentatively, that here one might find the theoretical resources for a “rubbish theory of literature,” one that would seek to divorce literature from the art of pathos and the ethics of the self and its other.

Transhumanism’s Science Fiction: Critical Reflections on “The Singularity” in Luc Besson’s Lucy

Jason Barker 문학과영상학회 2023 문학과영상 Vol.24 No.1

In this essay I reflect critically on one of the most controversial hypotheses of transhumanism, “the singularity”, and its representation in Luc Besson’s 2014 film Lucy. When considering transhumanism it is all too easy to get carried away and mistake its imaginative theoretical speculations for possible worlds and technologies. Drawing on established transhumanist opinion, from Nick Bostrom to Frank J. Tipler, my aim is to question transhumanism’s outlandish claims and predictions, which are wishful thinking at best and, at worst, a symptom of technology fetishism.

Pleasure Revisited: The Male Gaze

Jason Barker 한국비평이론학회 2014 비평과이론 Vol.19 No.1

This article returns to Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, whichdates from her seminal essay of 1975, “Visual Pleasure and NarrativeCinema,” published in the British film journal Screen. Mulvey’s politicizationof Lacanian psychoanalysis in the service of a militant feminist reading offilm narrative pre-dates Žižek’s contributions to film theory by more than a decade. The article considers the strengths and weaknesses of Mulvey’s theory, correcting her reading of Freud and Lacan on the concepts of the unconscious and on desire (the latter in its “real,” as opposed to “imaginary” manifestation) and then applies a “real” theory of desire to a reading of The Dark Knight Rises. Finally the article considers whether psychoanalytic theory can, as Mulvey originally intended, retain the power of a “political weapon” in liberating feminine sexuality - as opposed to sexuality in general - from sexual objectification.

종교 풍자: 조지 오웰로부터 신무신론자에 이르기까지

Jason Barker 한국문학과종교학회 2014 문학과종교 Vol.19 No.1

1930년대와 40년대에 조지 오웰은 전체주의에 대한 주요 비평가였다. 오늘날 신무신론자로 알려진 사회의 지식인들은 이른바 “종교 근본주의”가 부상하고 있는 상황에 대한 비판을 주도하고 있다. 이 논문에서는 오웰과 신무신론에 대한 간략한 비교연구를 제시하고 있다. 1940년대 오웰의 작품은 저자의 의도와 상관없이 모든 글쓰기가 어떻게 동기부여 되고 그것의 역사적·정치적 맥락과 구분될 수 없는지를 설명하고 있다. 오웰의 맥락은 전시의 사회주의였던 반면에 신무신론자들은 동시대의 자유민주주의에 의해 자극을 받았다. 이 논문은 신무 신론자들이 그들의 책을 통하여 강력하게 주장하고 있는 자본주의에 대한 자유 이념이 간단히 말하면 이슬람 종교 근본주의자들과 관련한 신무신론자들의 전략인, “합리적”이고 “진보적”인 담론을 가진 인종 편견으로 매우 쉽게 그리고 종종 위장할 수 있다는 것을 논하고 있다. During the 1930s and 40s George Orwell was a leading critic of totalitarianism. Today, public intellectuals known as New Atheists lead a charge against an allegedly rising tide of “religious fundamentalism.” This paper presents a brief comparative study of Orwell and the New Atheism. Orwell`s work of the 1940s illustrates how all writing, regardless of the author`s intention, is motivated by and cannot be divorced from its historical and political context. Whereas Orwell`s context was wartime socialism, the New Atheists are motivated by contemporary liberal democracy. The paper concludes by arguing that the liberal ideology of capitalism, which the New Atheists strongly advocate through their work, can very easily and often disguise racial prejudice with “rational” and “enlightened” discourse, which is precisely the strategy of the New Atheists in relation to the “religious fundamentalism” of Islam.

빗나간 마주침

제이슨 바커(Jason Barker),이재원(번역자) 문화과학사 2016 문화과학 Vol.- No.86

Improved fission neutron energy discrimination with ⁴He detectors through pulse filtering

Zhu, Ting,Liang, Yinong,Rolison, Lucas,Barker, Cathleen,Lewis, Jason,Gokhale, Sasmit,Chandra, Rico,Kiff, Scott,Chung, Heejun,Ray, Heather,Baciak, James E.,Enqvist, Andreas,Jordan, Kelly A. Elsevier 2017 Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research. Vol.848 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>This paper presents experimental and computational techniques implemented for <SUP>4</SUP>He gas scintillation detectors for induced fission neutron detection. Fission neutrons are produced when natural uranium samples are actively interrogated by 2.45MeV deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction neutrons. Fission neutrons of energies greater than 2.45MeV can be distinguished by their different scintillation pulse height spectra since <SUP>4</SUP>He detectors retain incident fast neutron energy information. To enable the preferential detection of fast neutrons up to 10MeV and suppress low-energy event counts, the detector photomultiplier gain is lowered and trigger threshold is increased. Pile-up and other unreliable events due to the interrogating neutron flux and background radiation are filtered out prior to the evaluation of pulse height spectra. With these problem-specific calibrations and data processing, the <SUP>4</SUP>He detector's accuracy at discriminating fission neutrons up to 10MeV is improved and verified with <SUP>252</SUP>Cf spontaneous fission neutrons. Given the <SUP>4</SUP>He detector's ability to differentiate fast neutron sources, this proof-of-concept active-interrogation measurement demonstrates the potential of special nuclear materials detection using a <SUP>4</SUP>He fast neutron detection system.</P>