[Urbanstudy] TOC : j_spot the Journal of Social and Political Thought

[Arul Selvan]

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Arul Selvan
TMA Pai Fellow
Manipal Institute of Communication
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/icernet

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The editorial collective of j_spot the Journal of Social and Political
Thought is announced the publication of its fourth issue (Vol.
I, No. 4), now available on-line at: http://www.yorku.ca/jspot

j_spot is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed electronic journal
focusing on a wide range of intersections between theory, politics,
culture and social justice. In light of contemporary political and
intellectual conditions in late capitalist society, j_spot aims to
expand the space for interdisciplinary critique, innovation and
originality. Already situated in the rapidly evolving nexus of
technologically mediated social and political change--a transformative
nexus which must itself not escape critique--j_spot aims to give free
rein to the crucial, critical energies that aim beyond a deadly
acceptance of the status quo.

Kathy Walker writes, in this issue's editorial: "Our call raised the
question of the linguistic nature of contemporary theory. Here we
identified a 'linguistic turn' in twentieth-century thought, an
overwhelming tendency to understand social and political structures in
linguistic terms...as a social text, a cultural narrative, or a
political discourse. We asked whether this linguistic turn is confining;
in thinking about society and politics as linguistic is our analysis
bound or limited, or is it fecund with possibility?"

Three articles comprise this issue, each challenging "the possibility of
an attainable end, engag(ing) with this failure of meaning. Sandra
Raponi's 'Meaning and Melancholia in Beckett's _Endgame_' suggests
[that] meaning is completely elusive, such that at best we can 'claw at
meaning.' D.G. Wright's 'Rousseau's Confessions: The Tragedy of
Teleology' presents the Zeno's paradox of communication, _i.e._, the
linguistic referent-the life to be recounted-as fundamentally
unapproachable. Similarly, Karen Engle's 'The Post of the Post,' via the
metaphoric figure of the rogue post-man, claims our trust in
communication to be 'mythic.'"