Impossible Speech

In what ways can or should art engage with its social context? Authors, readers, and critics have been preoccupied with this question since the dawn of modern literature in Korea. Advocates of social engagement have typically focused on realist texts, seeing such works as best suited to represent injustices and inequalities by describing them as if they were before our very eyes. Christopher P. Hanscom questions this understanding of political art by examining four figures central to recent Korean fiction, film, and public discourse: the migrant laborer, the witness to or survivor of state violence, the refugee, and the socially excluded urban precariat. Instead of making these marginalized figures intelligible to common sense, this book reveals the capacity of art to address the “impossible speech” of those who are not asked, expected, or allowed to put forward their thoughts, yet who in so doing expand the limits of the possible. Impossible Speech proposes a new approach to literature and film that foregrounds ostensibly “nonpolitical” or nonsensical moments, challenging assumptions about the relationship between politics and art that locate the “politics” of the work in the representation of content understood in advance as being political. Recasting the political as a struggle over the possibility or impossibility of speech itself, this book finds the politics of a work of art in its power to confront the boundaries of what is sayable.

“Inspired and inspiring . . . By telling his remarkable story, Bill Strickland shows us that an impossible notion is just an idea nobody had the guts to try.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of A Whole New Mind “Make the Impossible Possible will show you how you can achieve even your wildest dreams.”—Jeff Skoll, first president of eBay and founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation Bill Strickland has spent over thirty years transforming the lives of thousands of people through Manchester Bidwell, the jobs training center and community arts program he founded in Pittsburgh. Working with corporations, community leaders, and schools, he and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and build a better, brighter future. In Make the Impossible Possible, he shows how each of us, by adopting the attitudes and beliefs he has lived by every day, can reach our fullest potential and achieve the impossible in our lives and careers—and perhaps change the world a little in the process. Through lessons from Strickland’s own life experiences and those of countless others who have overcome challenging circumstances and turned their lives around, Make the Impossible Possible teaches us how to build on our passions and strengths, dream bigger and set the bar higher, achieve meaningful success, and inspire the lives of others.

J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice. In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Impossible Women fills a critical gap in queer theory by spotlighting representations of lesbian sexuality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Reading through the lens of feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Valerie Rohy considers texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kate Chopin, Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and Elizabeth Bishop.Addressing American ideologies of reproduction and representation, Impossible Women suggests that lesbian figures are made to symbolize both the unrepresentable and the failures of meaning inherent in language. Rohy traces the ways lesbian sexuality—relegated to the domain of the ineffable, yet endlessly subject to inscription—appears in tropes of transference and displacement, the disembodied voice, repetition-compulsion, and the uncanny. Impossible Women also asks what cultural work such figures perform, locating lesbian desire in American literary history and engaging issues of genre and narrative, social formations such as the rhetoric of the "New Woman," and intersections of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

From politics and religion to workplace negotiations, ace the high-stakes conversations in your life with this indispensable guide from a persuasion expert. In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you're online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall—or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative—dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger. In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation—whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy. "This is a self-help book on how to argue effectively, conciliate, and gently persuade. The authors admit to getting it wrong in their own past conversations. One by one, I recognize the same mistakes in me. The world would be a better place if everyone read this book." —Richard Dawkins, author of Science in the Soul and Outgrowing God

The iconic Impossible Mission games by Epyx Inc. enthralled a generation, pitting the player’s wits against the diabolic genius of the mad scientist Elvin Atombender in a race against time to save the world! Now in this official guide to Impossible Mission I and II we get the chance to hear from some of the people who both created and brought the games to market such as: Dennis Casswell, Chris Crigg, Peter Filiberti, Mihaly Kenczler and many more. This definitive work contains dozens of chapters, from the history of Epyx the company, the various versions and ports over the years, the in-game music, the ground-breaking synthesized speech, to extensive hints, tips and walkthroughs. Written by established retro computer writer Holger Weßling, and with a foreword by Darren Melbourne who has been associated with many of the games’ incarnations.

When Jon Fosse had his playwright début with And We Shall Never Part at the National Theatre in Bergen in 1994, he was already an established author of several novels, collections of poetry and children’s books. Since his breakthrough in 1996 with the world premiere of Someone Will Arrive at the Norwegian Theatre he has written over twenty more plays and has become the world’s most performed contemporary European playwright. Oberon Books publishes Nightsongs, The Girl on the Sofa and I Am the Wind, together with his other plays in five collections. Fosse was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007 and received The International Ibsen Award in 2010. ‘Since the early 1990s, Jon Fosse’s plays have been produced in countless venues internationally, and have been translated into dozens of languages – winning awards, inspiring critical adulation, and intriguing and inspiring theatregoers throughout the world. Strangely, however, his work remains largely unknown to English-speaking audiences – an oversight that Leif Zern’s The Luminous Darkness will do much to redress. In twelve short chapters, the book explores Fosse’s career, offering a lucid and insightful argument that is enriched by Zern’s intimate knowledge of the plays in production. The result is an important and timely study of a playwright who demands and deserves our attention.’ - Patrick Lonergan, National University of Ireland Galway

Weaving sound historical research with rich ethnographic insight, An Impossible Inheritance tells the story of the emergence, disavowal, and afterlife of a distinctive project in transcultural psychiatry initiated at the Fann Psychiatric Clinic in Dakar, Senegal during the 1960s and 1970s. Today’s clinic remains haunted by its past and Katie Kilroy-Marac brilliantly examines the complex forms of memory work undertaken by its affiliates over a sixty year period. Through stories such as that of the the ghost said to roam the clinic’s halls, the mysterious death of a young doctor sometimes attributed to witchcraft, and the spirit possession ceremonies that may have taken place in Fann’s courtyard, Kilroy-Marac argues that memory work is always an act of the imagination and a moral practice with unexpected temporal, affective, and political dimensions. By exploring how accounts about the Fann Psychiatric Clinic and its past speak to larger narratives of postcolonial and neoliberal transformation, An Impossible Inheritance examines the complex relationship between memory, history, and power within the institution and beyond.