There is a strain of Freudians whose existence continues to go unrec-ognized by the intellectual public and unacknowledged by the members themselves. Of these, only Stanley Cavell was unaccredited as a psychoanalyst, but he, along with Adam Phillips, Christopher Bollas, and Jonathan Lear have reached similar conclusions, using comparable means, at roughly the same time, in a context as much literary as psychoanalytic. Freud himself described the mind in literary terms, but whereas he understood the human psychic drama as Oedipal (...) and thus tragic, these four revisionists have shown that the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements of the mind can be comical and thus benign. The sorts of ambivalence, conflictedness, or multi-mindedness that Freud described as departures from a normative singlemindedness, Cavell and company have redescribed as achievements of maturity and as a means of enlarging the self. Moreover, they all look to literature for figures that connect us to our preverbal selves and help to stimulate self-transformation. Artists—from Sophocles to Emerson, Melville, and Freud—teach invaluable lessons not only about how our minds work but also about how to invent our own idioms and even our own worlds. And “the dialogue of the mind with itself” that Matthew Arnold assessed as the characteristic modern disease, these most sophisticated of postmodern revisionists redescribe as normative and democratic. (shrink)

The design of democratic institutions includes a variety of barriers to protect against the tyranny of the majority, including international human rights, cultural minority rights, and multiculturalism. In the twenty-first century, majorities have re-asserted themselves, sometimes reasonably, referring to social cohesion and national identity, at other times in the form of populist movements challenging core foundations of liberal democracy. This volume intervenes in this debate by examining the legitimacy of conflicting majority and minority claims. Are majorities a legal concept, holding (...) rights and subject to limitations? How can we define a sense of nationhood that brings groups together rather than tears them apart? In this volume, world-leading experts are brought together for the first time to debate the rights of both majorities and minorities. The outcome is a fascinating exchange on one of the greatest challenges facing liberal democracies today. (shrink)

Reviews/interviews Capital Ellowen Deeowen: A Review of The Making of London: London in Contemporary Literature by Sebastian Groes - Adam Sumera Deconstruction and Liberation: A Review of Simon Glendinning’s Derrida - Wit Pietrzak Authenticity, Transdifference, Survivance: Native American Identity Masked: A Review of Native Authenticity: Transnational Perspectives on Native American Literary Studies, ed. Deborah L. Madsen - Monika Kocot Literature, the Arab Diaspora, Gender and Politics - Fadia Faqir Speaks with Maria Assif Absent Fathers, Outsider Perspectives and Yiddish Typewriters (...) - Norman Ravvin Talks to Krzysztof Majer. (shrink)

Pashmina is one of the most luxurious and finest fibres in the world. It is a special kind of wool obtained from Cashmere goats. Counterfeiting Pashmina is becoming a prevalent malpractice because of limited supply, expensive pricing and high demand in western markets. Presently, there is a lack of a low-cost and easily available approach for distinguishing authentic Pashmina apparels from other similar-looking products. Because of technological advances and cost reductions in digital image processing, we have been able to implement (...) a variety of image recognition systems on a practical level. In this study, we propose a deep learning model PashmNet for identification of Pashmina fabric using transfer learning. The technique proposed herein classifies Pashmina and non-Pashmina images accurately with classification accuracy of 97.4%. (shrink)

The invention of Bitcoin in 2008 as a new type of electronic cash has arguably been one of the most radical financial innovations in the last decade. Recently, developer communities of blockchain technologies have started to turn their attention towards the issue of governance. The features of blockchain governance raise questions as to tensions that might arise between a strictly “on-chain” governance system and possible applications of “off-chain” governance. In this paper, we approach these questions by reflecting on a long-running (...) debate in legal philosophy regarding the construction of a positivist legal order. First, we argue that on-chain governance shows striking similarities with Kelsen’s notion of a positivist legal order, characterised by Schmitt as the machine that runs itself. Second, we illustrate some of the problems that emerged from the application of on-chain governance, with particular reference to a calamity in a blockchain-based system called the DAO. Third, we reflect on Schmitt’s argument that the coalescence of private interests is a vulnerability of positivist legal systems, and accordingly posit this as an inherent vulnerability of on-chain governance of existing blockchain-based systems. (shrink)