All Possible Stories

Franzlations

Franzlations takes the parables and aphorisms of Kafka as a starting point, and steps a few places to the left in order to reinvent them. Sometimes this means walking off a cliff and into the empty air. (Don't look down!) Sometimes this means keeping the cage and replacing the bird. For of course, Kafka's writing is a rich source of ideas, play, structure, and wit. It looks like the real world, but in the way the bootstrap that one pulls oneself up with looks like a real bootstrap. It is said that if Kafka had not existed, Kafka would have had to invent him. But since he did exist, Franzlations has invented an imaginary Kafka so that he could help create the Kafka that was already there. Perhaps it was that. Kafka who helped create these imaginary parables. This, itself, is a parable. A man once said, "If you only followed the parables, you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares." Another replied, "I bet that is also a parable." The first said: "You have won." The second said: "But unfortunately only in parable." The first said: "No, in reality: in parable you have lost." –Franz Kafka

The Bounds of Reason

The Bounds of Reason: Habermas, Lyotard & Melanie Klein on Rationality is a highly original yet accessible study of the debate between modernity and postmodernity. Emilia Steuerman clearly explains the modernity/postmodernity dispute by examining the problem that has driven the whole debate: whether the use of reason is an emancipatory or enslaving force. Steuerman clearly sets out this debate by critically examining the arguments of two of its key proponents, Jurgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard. She clearly explains Habermas' defence of modernity and his attempt to salvage Enlightenment ideas of truth, justice, and freedom through the use of reason. She contrasts this with Lyotard's postmodernism and his scepticism about the use of reason, and its claims to universalism and objectivity. Throughout, Steuerman contrasts the Habermas-Lyotard debate with important insights from psychoanalytic theory, and shows how Habermas' notions of intersubjectivity and a community of shared language users can be compared and contrasted with Melanie Klein's theory of object relations.

Stories from English history, during the Middle ages [from English stories] revised by D.M. Smith