Violent Children?

By | March 17th, 2019|LRO 135|

Due to much stricter controls on the sales of firearms in the UK, we haven’t had the same problem with shootings and mass killings as witnessed in the USA. But while all the energy of government has been sucked into the impasses of Brexit, we suddenly find ourselves confronted with another kind of national emergency [...]

The Security State

By | November 19th, 2018|LRO 105|

Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers has for years been unremittingly brutal. It isn’t because those seeking asylum are criminals, since to seek asylum is not a crime; and it isn’t because those arriving by boat lack grounds for seeking refuge, since over 80% are eventually assessed as being legitimate refugees. The conditions under which the [...]

Art and Fiction – Lucy Orta’s Procession Banners

By | November 14th, 2018|LRO 104|

Outstanding! To encounter the performance Procession Banners (2018)[1] by Lucy Orta is to face the “sovereign image”.[2] This work leads the viewer beyond the sense of the conventional, as it draws attention to the written words. We can use Lacan’s registers – the symbolic, imaginary and real – to aid our understanding of this work [...]

“[…] and I did not open my mouth anymore”

By | November 3rd, 2018|LRO 101|

In Europe today, the question of politics as faced with human phenomena is effaced in favour of a discourse of necessity. The decision makers think that they are managers. The logic of numbers buries the political question. This cold discourse creates a climate of exclusion and widespread disquiet in a silent world faced with the [...]

Time Does Not Stop

By | October 28th, 2018|LRO 100|

“Time does not stop” is the title of a famous song by the Argentine rock band Bersuit Vergarabat.[1] This could be the title of a television series, since the phenomenon of temporal distortion is one of television’s essential characteristics. This feature is quite frequent in recent series. However, the limitlessness of the contemporary experience of [...]

The Green Tide

By | October 15th, 2018|LRO 97|

For years groups of women have been demonstrating in Argentina. Women who, through different manifestations, make a claim for equal gender rights, protection, security, expansion of social benefits, etc. From the parliamentary debate on the decriminalization of abortion, this movement has grown exponentially, taking to the streets of the country’s main cities, identifying itself with [...]

The Secret Substance

By | October 11th, 2018|LRO 96|

If popular wisdom baptized money as "the excrement of the Devil", the cunning of Luther (whose bowel movements inspired the Reformation, according to the biographers) consisted in robbing money from the devil and having it blessed by God. This gave the green light to capitalism, which is not without reason is doing much better with [...]