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A new book edited by Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts has just appeared in print: Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-between (Routledge). The volume is the outcome of a symposium held at Liverpool John Moores University in July 2010, “Liminal Landscapes: Remapping the Field”. Ideas and concepts of liminality have long shaped debates around the uses and practices of space in constructions of identity, particularly in relation to different forms of travel such as tourism, migration and pilgrimage, and the social, cultural and experiential landscapes associated with these and other mobilities. The ritual, performative and embodied geographies of borderzones, non-places, transitional spaces, or ‘spaces in-between’ are often discussed in terms of the liminal, yet there have been few attempts to problematize the concept, or to rethink how ideas of the liminal might find critical resonance with contemporary developments in the study of place, space and mobility.

Liminal Landscapes fills this void by bringing together a variety of new and emerging methodological approaches of liminality to explore new theoretical perspectives on mobility, space and socio-cultural experience. By doing so it offers new insight into contemporary questions about technology, surveillance, power, the city, and post-industrial modernity.

Professor Thomassen’s chapter is entitled “Revisiting liminality: the danger of empty spaces”. In this chapter, Thomassen suggests a typology of liminal experiences and indicate different topic areas in which the concept of liminality is currently applied in the social sciences. The chapter critically reviews how liminality has come to signal fluid and hybrid culture and the playful, carnivalesque, inversion of normality, without due attention to the clearly dangerous and problematic aspects of liminality. The chapter suggests that a crucial feature of modernity relates to what has been paradoxically termed ‘permanent liminality’. Building on this diagnosis, it is further suggested that this fixation of liminal conditions has a joint temporal and spatial dimension that underpins the modern episteme, leading to an implosion of non-places.

Iddar belongs to a Tuareg nomad tribe and grew up between Mali, Niger, Algeria and Libya before moving to Italy, where he received his high school diploma with the highest grade. He will graduate in International Relations in 2014. Meanwhile, he has been working as an interpreter for the Italian Interior Ministry and has been accepted on an internship in the Emergencies Department of the FAO for 3 months, starting in June.

Some of the papers from that conference have now been published as a special issue in Symposium (volume 3, number 2), in the peer-reviewed journal, Bulletin of Italian Politics. The issue is edited by Isabella Clough-Marinaro and James Walston. The articles look at the history of the process which led to unification and at how the process continued after the formal proclamation of the kingdom of Italy. They also look at the ways in which interpretations of the Risorgimento have changed over the last century and a half. One of the articles is by Bjørn Thomassen from the Department of International Relations, co-authored with Rosario Forlenza (NYU), “From Myth to Reality and Back Again: The Fascist and Post-Fascist Reading of Garibaldi and the Risorgimento,”, while James Walston is author of the general Introduction.

The Bulletin of Italian Politics is an open access journal, so enjoy the reading!

The delegation arrived on March 31st to a cold and rainy New York City; we were all tired, anxious, and very excited for the days ahead. Most conversations were about the committees, draft resolutions, topics, and plans, although sightseeing and shopping was a good distraction to keep everyone awake for a couple of hours after landing. We lived in a quaint hotel in Chelsea and jumped into classic NYC yellow cabs every morning to get to the committees.

The delegation was divided into teams, each team representing Paraguay in their committees, we had delegates in General Assembly I, Natalie and Iddar, General Assembly II, Gabby and Daniel, and General Assembly III, Henry and Katarina, we were also in specialized committees: Organization of American States, Kiersten and Monika, Rio + 20, Amber and Vevve, and Zam, who was the only one by himself, in Arms Trade Treaty. Students came from all AUR departments. I was the Head Delegate of our delegation and for 5 long days, I spent almost every hour with each team in committee, walking back and forth, running around, doing research and trying to keep the teams motivated and answer questions. And I must admit, I was proud to be part of our delegation; each team did amazingly, always in the halls speaking, working actively and being proactive throughout the entire stay. Although only 4 out 6 draft resolutions were passed, it is safe to say that the AUR team did extremely well. All members of the delegation supported and helped each other throughout the entire duration and although Paraguay was a small country, our delegation had a lot to say!

On behalf of the delegation, we would like to thank acting President, Andrew Thompson, who supported this study trip. Without the University’s help, we would not have been able to go. The MUN remains a unique learning experience for AUR students, and we already look forward to next year’s trip!

By Marielle Lunde Berntsen, on behalf of the AUR NMUN team.

The AUR NMUN Delegation, 2012

• Date: April 10th, 2012
• Time: 18:40 – 20:00
• Location: Auriana Auditorium

In collaboration with the US Embassy, Roberto Menotti of the Aspen Institute and Raffaello Matarazzo of the Istituto per gli Affari Internazionali analyse the personalities, the policies and the issues which will face the United States between now and the November elections. Representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties will take part in the debate.

Stephen Anderson, Embassy Spokesman, will moderate.

Mina Tavano and Luigi Birilli of the American Citizen Services of the US Consulate will be available before and after the debate to advise Americans on voter registration.

Prof. Walston (left) with the Exeter PGCE visitors

Agroup of trainee teachers from University of Exeter in the UK visited AUR as part of their exercise targeting and delivering the lessons to a hypothetical group of 9-11 year old children. They were particularly interested in the human geography of Rome, in particular migration and how Rome promotes multiculturalism.

Professors Bjørn Thomassen and James Walston gave them an overview of Italy’s policies on migration and a picture of the realities of multicultural Rome followed by a lively question and answer seminar session.

For more information, please visit The Center for the Study of Migration and Racism in Italy.

The article is about bungee jumping and how it somehow reflects the world in which we live. During the 1980s bungee jumping became one of the most popular ways of seeking a ‘real experience’, when the practice was commercialised and introduced as a leisure activity all around the world. This happened in the same period as outdoor sport activities or ‘outdoor recreation’ exploded in kinds and numbers, clearly linked to the ‘experiential turn in tourism’ and the proliferation of ‘adventure tourism’. A key feature of these activities is the experience of danger: going to the limits, or indeed, standing on the limit. Hence, bungee jumping can be seen as an apt metaphor for understanding liminality in contemporary tourism and leisure. The bungee jumping adventure quite literally positions the subject standing on an edge, facing an abyss, jumping into a void. But what kind of limit experiences are these?

This question can be addressed by matching contemporary bungee jumping experiences against practices of jumping rituals in non-modern, which seem to contain some common features with the modern bungee jump. In contrast to more ‘classical’ ritual passages, contemporary bungee jumping is clearly an example of what the anthropologist Victor Turner called the ‘liminoid’. Turner suggested that liminal experiences in modern consumerist societies to a large extent have been replaced by ‘liminoid’ moments, where creativity and uncertainty unfold in art and leisure activities. Every culture has ways of incorporating the playful. Insofar as modern adventure tourism and leisure rarely involve a transformation of subjectivity, bungee jumping exemplifies a further shift from the liminoid to what Thomassen has termed the ‘limivoid’: the inciting of near-death experiences, a jump into nothingness, a desperate search for experience in a world of ontological excess.

The conference “Shared Traumas – Silent Loss. Public and Private Mourning” was organized between 9-11 March 2012 by Psychoanalysis and Politics. Prof. Salgó in her presentation used Hungary’s example to demonstrate that the path toward democracy is not irreversible. In order to unveil the causes of the country’s moving away from European values, she explored the profound meaning and the unconscious roots of aggressive nationalism.

From her point of view the loss of the illusion that the European Union would represent the Garden of Eden, provoked in society a collective trauma. Hungary’s integration into the European Union in 2004 didn’t create those paradisiacal life conditions that people had been yearning for – instead of disappearing, problems proliferated and deepened. Hungarians failed to accept that their dream did not match reality, and were unable to respond creatively to their experience of loss. Prof. Salgó relied on Cornelius Castoriadis’ and Donald Winnicott’s theories to show that an autonomous and playful society is still to emerge in Hungary.

Psychoanalysis and Politics is an interdisciplinary conference series, which aims to address how crucial contemporary political issues may be fruitfully analyzed and addressed through psychoanalytic theory. It is financed by, and forms a part of, NSU, an initiative of The Nordic Ministerial Council.

• Date: April 4th, 2012
• Time: 18:40 – 20:00
• Location: Room B204

Saklaine Hederaly, the legal officer in the Office of the Prosecutor conducted the prosecution of Croatian general Ante Gotovina in the The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

A question and answer session with the audience will follow his presentation.

• Date: March 28th, 2012
• Time: 18:40 – 21:00
• Location: Auriana Auditorium

Ghana’s 2008 presidential election was only decided after three ballots over a whole month. In Kenya the year before, thousands died in the controversial elections. In the US in 2000, the Supreme Court had to decide. Despite the nail biting closeness of the results, Ghana chose its new president with almost no violence and no recourse to the courts, an example in democracy not just to Africa but to the rest of the world.

Swiss born filmmaker, Jarreth Merz grew up in Ghana, Germany and Switzerland and studied directing at NYU. This film gives the flavour of Ghana and the character of the politicians in the election but above all, it is a thriller in which no one knows the outcome until the end of the film.

Merz will present the film and discuss it afterwards.

Links

• “An African Election” Website