"In 1968-1969 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides", wrote Helene Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream o...

Franz Kafka was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His writing contributed greatly to existentialism, and the term "Kafkaesque" is now synonymous with the literature of the surreal, the complex and the illogical. His works...

"The Call of the Trance" is a magnificent book that takes us to the unchartered frontiers of the forbidden. From initiation ceremonies to crises of hysteria, from suicide attempts to the ecstasies of witches, Catherine Clement explores in simple but...

Rene Char (1907-1988) is considered the most important French poet of his generation. A member of the surrealists in the early 1930s, he became increasingly preoccupied by the rise of Nazi Germany and later played a key role in the French Resistance....

From cannibalism to light-calligraphy, from self-harming to animal sacrifice, from meat entwined with sex toys to a commodity-embedded ice wall, the idiosyncratic output of Chinese time-based art over the past twenty-five years has invigorated contem...

Among liberal thinkers, there is an optimistic belief that men and women are on a cultural journey toward equality – in the workplace, on the street, and in the home. But observation and evidence both tell us that in many ways this progress has stopp...

"Remembered Rhythms" explores the role of music and cultural memory in shaping and creating diasporic identities. With contributions from leading scholars in the fields of ethnomusicology, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology, the essays ran...

In her book "In a Different Voice", psychologist Carol Gilligan proffered the controversial idea that a psychology of male development could not suffice as a psychology of all human development, both male and female. Since the publication of that rev...

Based on fieldwork carried out in West Bengal, "Sailing on the Sea of Love" is a pioneering study of the songs of the Baul – a Bengali religious sect, widely beloved for its enchanting music. Charles Capwell describes the role Baul song plays in the...

In this collection of conversations that were conducted in Calcutta, at the London School of Economics, through Jewish Book Week, and on the radical website openDemocracy, internationally renowned Jewish scholar Jacqueline Rose explores the debates t...