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Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004)
On the occasion of Derrida’s recent death we publish a huge bloc
on his work.
Derrida’s name has probably been mentioned more frequently in books,
journals, lectures, and common-room conversations during the last 30
years than that of any other living thinker. Deconstruction, the
word he transformed from a rare French term to a common expression
in many languages, became part of the vocabulary not only of
philosophers and literary theorists but also of architects,
theologians, artists, political theorists, educationists, music
critics, filmmakers, lawyers and historians. If he is remembered in
future centuries, it is likely to be for contributions to our
understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethical decisions and
aesthetic values.
Though Jacques Derrida was perhaps France’s best-known living
philosopher, his presence has always been disturbing-even to French
philosophers. He not only blurs the boundaries between literature
and philosophy and unveils the ambiguous metaphors that thinkers
from Plato to Heidegger had assumed to lay down as basic concepts,
but his reading of these metaphors claims to find in Western
philosophy a crypto- theology. His analyses regularly uncover
presuppositions about foundations and primacies, points of origin
and authoritative presences that correspond to nothing other than a
Supreme Being, however veiled or unapproachable.
Lies and Advertising
Brain-child of media men Richard Metzger and Gary Baddeley,
Disinfo.com began its internet voyage in late 1996. Now
Disinformation is a large scale operation, including TV shows, a
music label, and its latest book publishing venture. You Are Being
Lied To is the first off the ranks, and begins with a typical piece
of disinformation that sets the stage for much of what’s to come:
The Disinformation Company Ltd. has not verified and neither
confirms nor denies any of the foregoing. The reader is encouraged
to keep an open mind and to independently judge for him- or herself
whether or not he or she is being lied to. Subtitled The
Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashers &
Cultural Myths, this collection of conspiracy theories, media
analysis and cultural criticism is one hell of a trip through 21st
Century culture.
Featuring the works of, among many, Noam Chomsky, Douglas Rushkoff,
Howard Bloom, and a roundtable compiled by Australian online editor
Alex Burns, You Are Being Lied To gives an in-depth deconstruction
of the many ways our myths and media-reliance have worked together
to deceive us into believing official versions over the more complex
and difficult task of sifting through reams of information to reach
our own conclusions. Topics tackled include the usual suspects - why
no federal agents were killed in the Okalahoma explosions, how the
US government assisted South American death squads in Nicaragua
during the 80s - and the dangerous. Among the latter include an
in-depth expose on how Alcoholics Anonymous draws much of their
material from evangelical Christian teachings and a challenging of
the role of sexual identity in youth suicides.
You Are Being Lied To asks us to ask more questions, certainly more
questions than answers given. It calls on us to be educated media
interpreters, and it demands our attention and our action rather
than a passive acceptance so easily obtained in a world of Big
Brother and CNN.
Brad Fox, God’s boot
We decided to publish three chapters from the first book of the
American Humanitarian worker Brad Fox, God’s Boot. The last chapter,
as well as the end of the whole book refers to his stay in Macedonia
during the Refugee’s crisis in 1999. Fox’s imagination combined with
documentaristic style of writing gives precise yet ironical insights
of “our reality”. And the outside view is always provoking since it
is so different than ours’, mainly pathetic, narcissist and
megalomaniac. With great sense of characterization, grotesque
portraying the book offer many characters that create our destiny on
a grassroots level. Here are also the domestic stuff, the victims,
the smugglers and the kamikazes of our post-communist everyday. As
the author himself states “the book presents some perverse aspects
of the humanitarian work” - corruption, sinful life, drugs,
decadence.
Adam Haslett, Short stories
In his debut story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, Adam
Haslett drags into the light subjects often left in the cellar. Most
of his stories are told from the viewpoint of the mentally ill
(though one, “The Good Doctor,” shows us madness from a caregiver’s
perspective). Haslett is an enormously compassionate writer, and
shows a lovely, plain-written acuity about his people. His writing
is a convincing inside job - he never romanticizes or
oversimplifies.
Haslett has a gift for writing quietly about sensational topics: men
cruising each other in the park at night; an abusive, self-hating
relationship between two adolescent boys. The stories can get a bit
too fancy: the writer can’t resist the ironic twist or the surprise
ending. Still, this is a beautifully written collection that’s as
heartfelt as it is intelligent.
Haslett possesses a rich assortment of literary gifts: an
instinctive empathy for his characters and an ability to map their
inner lives in startling detail; a knack for graceful, evocative
prose; and a determination to trace the hidden arithmetic of
relationships.
Mile Nichevski - Notes from the Newsagent’s
Throughout Margina we use drawings from the latest exhibition of
Mile Nichevski, representative of the young generation Macedonian
artists, from the most southern town of Gevgelija. The drawings,
made in the period between 1996 - 2004, mainly on paper, in which
the author uses several techniques: pen, pencil, ink, felt-tip pen,
and part of them are collages.
Mile Nichevski’s characteristic expression is based on the use of
pure line, free from extra encumbrance, which is in relation to his
graphic education and experience as an illustrator of comics. The
drawings are inspired from certain conditions-fragments from the
reality as shown in mass-media, which results with specific
narativity in his works. Although each drawing explicitly presents
certain conditions, still there is no distinctive schedule of the
narration, but dada principle of coincidence in composing the parts.
Mile Nichevski’s characters are dominantly children naively posing
for photographing juxtaposed opposite sadistic scenes with absurd
naive children’s drawings. Suggested is the simplicity of
illustrations for children, scenes from TV and magazines, enriched
with commercial notes of incestuous, everyday dictators
(politicians, pop-stars, fashion icons...).
Jim Woodring, Comics
Jim Woodring was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and enjoyed a
childhood made interesting by frequent hallucinations, apparitions,
disembodied voices and other psychological malfunctions.
Despite the generally frightening nature of his delusions he learned
to accept them as part of life and was accordingly a reasonably
cheerful and good-natured lad.
After barely graduating from high school Woodring got a job as a
garbage man and lived in picturesque squalor as he set about the
task of capturing his inner life in words and pictures.
Some of these fledgling efforts were printed in various
"underground" publications of the day: Two-Bit Comics (a weekly
tabloid), the Los Angeles Free Press, and an early effort at
self-publishing, The Little Swimmer.
Eventually Woodring landed a salaried job in an L.A. animation
studio where he worked on some of the worst cartoons this degraded
planet has ever seen.
Response was good enough to persuade Woodring to leave animation and
embark on a career as a full-time cartoon artiste.
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