Ancient Wisdom, Stigmatised Knowledge, and Sacred Landscapes: Ontologies and Epistemologies of New Age Culture in Post-Soviet Russia

The four articles in this section deal with anthropological study of New Age beliefs and practices in post-Soviet Russia. They are in part the result of a joint German–Russian research project titled New Religious Cultures in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Ideology, Social Networks, Discourses, supported by the German Research Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. In this introductory paper I will briefly discuss the principal outcomes of this research as well as general analytical issues related to the field of New Age studies both in global and local (post-Soviet) contexts.

Comment: Evolution 2.0—Rewriting the Biosphere

The chapters in this section deal with rather diverse topics like gene drives and de-extinction, the resurrection of the heath hen, cultured meat and the (dis)enhancement of domesticated anmals, but they all explicitly or implicitly engage with ecomodernism. I have chosen the various ways in which the authors confront ecomodernist views as the red thread of my commentary.

Gender, Power and Privilege in the Parliamentary Workplace

This introduction to the Special Section ‘Parliaments as workplaces: gendered approaches to the study of legislatures’ makes the case for revisiting the conditions under which male and female Members of Parliament (MPs) and staff carry out their parliamentary duties, thereby furthering the understanding of parliaments’ inner workings. It shows that adopting a workplace perspective grounded on feminist institutionalist analyses and gender organisational studies opens up new avenues for studying parliaments and the outcomes of political representation. The article then outlines how contributors to this Special Section deal with various aspects of the parliamentary workplace and concludes by highlighting the wider implications of this perspective for examining crucial questions of the parliamentary studies research agenda.

Dialogues

This collection of essays reconsiders a seminal 1961 article by George Kubler, the most important art historian of Latin America of the English-speaking world at the time of its writing. Often greeted with indifference or hostility, Kubler’s central claim of extinction is still a highly contested one. The essays in this section deal with Kubler’s reception in Mexico, the political stakes of his claim in relation to indigeneity, as well as the utility of Kubler’s categories and objects of “extinction” beyond their original framing paradigm.

Translating

The three texts of this section deal with translation, a field where Meschonnic is of particular influence and importance. Meschonnic’s own experience of translating the Bible, and a very particular understanding of meaning-making procedures in biblical Hebrew, establishes in fact the basis for his theory. The exposure to the semantic accent system of biblical Hebrew allowed Meschonnic to develop a theory of language which saw meaning as residing not only in linguistic reference but in what he called a ‘serial semantics’: motivated forms of verbal patterning, chains of signifiers, prosodic contours, distributions of and connections between speech sounds and motifs across a longer text. He posits that, more than what a text says, it is what a text does that is to be translated: its force. The third text on translation then offers a demonstration of how Meschonnic applies the continuous of his theory of language to a text.

Clinical Theory: Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of some of the central issues in clinical psychoanalytic theory explored in this section, such as those relating to drives and symbolism, the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, and the intentionality of defences. The chapters in this section deal with topics ranging from transference and ‘transference neurosis’ to Sigmund Freud’s contributions to psychoanalysis, with particular emphasis on the shifts in the psychoanalytic theory of symbolism since Freud, his drive theory, his core concept of wish fulfilment, and his understanding of mourning, repetition, and the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. Also discussed are therapeutic transformation and making the unconscious conscious, along with the meaning of inner integration.