the conflicts and problems of a specific historical moment, some of what Eagleton says seems misdirected or barely relevant. The tragic, as presented in fifth-century Athenian tragedy at least, may partly be about the difficulties of accommodating difference, that is, about plurality, but about its problems; it may be about how the self (society) tries to deal with that it seeks to exclude, about whether the self (society) will fracture when confronted with desire and with the varieties of inevitable otherness. 10 What Eagleton views as prescriptive (a preference for pluralizing and destabilizing) may in fact be descriptive (plurality and instability as lurking and possibly dangerous). Or, to put it in Eag leton’s rhetorically reversed terms, the pluralizing and destabilizing he sees as so characteristic of a specific historical moment in theory may be transhistorical. But one thing Eagleton’s argument does do is illuminate unexpected differences between self-avowed leftists. There is certainly something interesting in seeing Eagleton argue for the importance of continuity and even of permanence. Is Eagleton’s approach almost – dare one say it? – conservative? In this edition of Semantron , I am very pleased to present what very well may be the best collection of essays I have been able to publish in the twenty- one years since the magazine’s rebirth. The range of topics the reader will encounter here is not now unexpected: we have essays dealing with the design of social housing, with music, with epigenetics, health service reform, supersonic flight, quantum computers, cybersecurity, with history from the Normans to the Cold War, to various problems in our legal system, to the strange directions inwhich the study of economics can take us. What is particularly arresting, however, and even moving, I would say, is the number of essays which are devoted to problems which the adults of this world have demonstrably failed to solve (for example, the varieties of inequality, climate change, the dark side of social media), and which we are leaving to the young. Perhaps the intelligence and thoughtfulness of what is printed here will give the reader some hope. Most of the contributions were originally drafted as extended essays, and a few as dissertations for the extended project qualification. Two – those of Max Franklin Davis and Aiken Furlong – were entered for last year’s Erasmus essay competition, in which Aiken Furlong’s essay was awarded third prize. Finally, we are honoured to have a fascinating essay by Professor John M. Blakey of Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, North Carolina on how the ancient Greek inscription on the lid of the font in the chapel is, as it were, the locus classicus of just about every known stylistic and rhetorical feature.
Bibliography
Binet, L. (2018) The Seventh Function of Language . Vintage Carson, A. & Bruno, R. (2021) The TrojanWomen: a comic . Bloodaxe Eagleton, E. (1976) Criticism and Ideology . London (1984) The Function of Criticism . London (2003) Sweet Violence . The Idea of the Tragic . Oxford Jameson, F. (1984) ‘Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capital’, New Left Review 146: 53-92 Judt, T. (2008) Reappraisals . London
10 In relation to this point, one could mention many Athenian tragedies , but Euripides’ Hippolytus represents the eponymous hero’s failure to accommodate desire and the destructive fragmentation he experiences as a result. And the same author’s Bacchae represents something similar, this time showing Pentheus’ refusal to accommodate Dionysus and all the otherness for which he stands.
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