many voices,one chant: 30th anniversary roundtable

This article is extracted from a discussion between Camel Gupta, Jay Bernard and Sita Balani. We took as our starting point ‘Becoming visible: Black lesbian discussions’ (Carmen et al, 1984), featured in the 1984 special issue of Feminist Review on black feminism. Here, we reflect on the political, cultural and technological transformations of queer life since the publication of ‘Becoming visible’. The original discussion focused on questions of identity, safety, the public and the private, and the tensions between race and sexuality. The discussants took personal and political risks to be active organisers. As the beneficiaries of that activism, we interrogate not only the broader ideas of race, sexuality and feminism, but critique some of the discussions circulating within our own ranks. We also consider our responsibility to follow our predecessors and to learn from their mistakes. We are more visible than ever, but at what price? What has been gained and lost? Beyond visibility, what is our responsibility? In an attempt to understand these questions we cover contemporary notions such as QTIPOC, monolithic whiteness and online activism.     

Criminal law

The close temporal coincidence of International Human Rights Day 2010 (10 December 2010) and the tenth anniversary of the Human Rights Act 1998 (2 October 2010) stimulates some reflections on the progressive scope and influence of this domestic statute of towering importance. In addition, it seems especially appropriate to examine how Article 2 of the European Convention, which protects the individual’s right to life and is a cornerstone of this treaty, has featured in the jurisprudence of both the European Court and domestic courts. This article considers the celebrated Conjoined Twins case, together with other challenging issues which have confronted the courts – termination of pregnancy, medical prolongation of life, assisted suicide and so-called ‘mercy killing’.     

The inflationary aspect of repetitive devaluation: A comment

In this paper we use primary data on 500 Ghanaian FBOs collected through semi-structured interviews and risky dictator games (RDG) to test the validity of the cooperative life cycle theory and formulate a measure of cooperative health. We first define cooperative health as the alignment of heterogeneity in risk preferences and the effectuation of collective investments. We then use cluster and correlation analysis to categorize FBOs on the basis of their health and correlate these typologies with various performance indicators. Our findings reveal that organizational health is generally low as there are only a few organizations that manage to provide member-farmers with both risk-sharing and cost-saving opportunities. Further, healthier FBOs experience stronger growth in membership while health is lower in FBOs that have been established for the purpose of benefitting from external incentives.     

Frenzies of the Visible

Hard Core is initially a historical study showing how the sexual explicitness of hardcore is located within cinema's initial promise of the visually real. The book is informed by a Foucauldian perspective on this 'will to truth; but also utilizes psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts of fetishsm and its discussion of the main hardcore films is through genre.Its aim is to show how a seemingly male-oriented discourse actually exhibits ambiguities and polymorphously perverse pleasures, therefore making it possible for women to gain some erotic purchase on pornography. However, there are a number of problems with this analysis; In its use of foucault, which promises a setting of pornography in more of a socio-political formation than is given: in the arguments on truth and fetishism, in the treatment of hardcore as a genre, which uses a restricted body of films to make a more general argument. A deeper attention to the institutional and social settings of varieties of pornography is therefore needed to give a more nuanced picture.