Papers by Nicholas Manganas
This special issue, Sticky Memories: The Emotional Landscape of Food, explores the profound impac... more This special issue, Sticky Memories: The Emotional Landscape of Food, explores the profound impact of culinary experiences on our emotional and cultural landscapes. It examines how food, beyond its material form, becomes a powerful symbol in our personal and communal narratives. The issue engages with Sara Ahmed's (2004) concept of 'stickiness' in food memories, where culinary experiences not only linger but also shape identity, resist replication, and reflect complex sociopolitical realities. The narratives demonstrate food's role in memory-making, highlighting the intricate intersections of taste, emotion and cultural heritage.
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2023
University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Acc... more University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Access is restricted indefinitely. The hardcopy may be available for consultation at the UTS Library.NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Access is restricted indefinitely. ----- This thesis explores narratives of terror in contemporary Spain by taking a multidisciplinary approach, rooted in the disciplinary areas of contemporary Spanish studies and critical terrorism studies. The thesis argues that there is a dialogical and symbiotic relationship between discourses of terrorism and the ritual of contemporary Spanish politics. The thesis posits that two key constituent narratives drive terror related discourses in Spain: the narrative of las dos Espanas and the global metanarrative of terror. I argue that the partisan manipulation of these two narratives in mass-mediated discourse serves to situate terrorism at the centre of Spanish political discourse. As such, terror acts and political violence are vehicles for political parties to project their ideological narratives and sell themselves to the Spanish electorate. I thus consider narratives of terror in Spain as a mass-mediated process that can provide deeper understanding into how narratives of terror are linked to fundamental and historically constituent narratives. Unlike much scholarship on terrorism and terrorism related debates that come from political science, this thesis engages with contemporary Spanish history in an attempt to provide some context and historicity to the tattered narratives that circulate in Spanish mass-mediated discourse. By ignoring history, much scholarship potentially misses the dynamic convergences and disputes of power relations and identity politics, and understanding those convergences are necessary in understanding contemporary Spain. The thesis thus explores selective case studies of terror related events in the Spanish state, including in its panorama the long-running Basque conflict, the GAL scandal in the 1980s, the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid, the peace process between ETA and the Spanish government in 2006 and 2007, as well as the semantics of victims of terror groups. I argue that these terror-related events can, and must, be re-read as traces and links to long-standing historically constituent narratives
European Journal of Cultural Studies
Mediterranean port cities share a number of trajectories that reveal their constitutive interconn... more Mediterranean port cities share a number of trajectories that reveal their constitutive interconnectedness. Among the more recent is the process of urban regeneration that many of these cities have undergone over the last two decades. Several studies have analysed the implications of urban renewal from a socio-economic and urban planning perspective. However, the intersection between diverse urban restructuring processes and the emotions that crisscross these cities is still largely underexplored. This article aims to begin filling this gap by identifying possible emotional responses that mirror local concerns in three port cities located on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. More specifically, the article investigates Barcelona in light of the hope that emerges when a city is in crisis, Marseille and the nostalgia that is mobilised to reimagine the city’s national consciousness and Genova with regard to an uncanny feeling when more-than-human balances are altered. Drawing fr...
The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities offers analyses of articulations and performan... more The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities offers analyses of articulations and performances that link populism to masculinity
Sussex Academic Press, 2016
The idea of a divided Spain, where one half is antagonistic to the other half, dates back at leas... more The idea of a divided Spain, where one half is antagonistic to the other half, dates back at least to the 19th-century Spanish satirist Mariano Jose de Larra who, in his essay "All Souls' Day 1836", wrote "Here lies half of Spain. It died of the other half". The narrative of las dos Espanas is evident across many political and historical debates operating in the Spanish state, and contemporarily it shadows and informs national issues from Catalan independence to the teaching of history in schools. But it is most polemical in debates concerning the issue of terror in all its manifestations. Las dos Espanas takes a multidisciplinary approach in understanding narratives of terror in contemporary Spain, in an attempt to contextualise terrorism socially and politically, as well as ideologically. Selective case studies of terror related events in the Spanish state will include the long-running Basque conflict, the state-sponsored death squad (GAL) scandal in the 1980s, the March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid, and other terror episodes. The author argues that these terror-related events can be re-read in terms of traces and links to long-standing historical narratives. However, since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2009, and its devastating effect on Spanish society, narratives of economic crisis have begun to supersede narratives of terror in the construction of the two Spains. The conclusion drawn is that the narrative of las dos Espanas still has the power to continue to divide Spain ideologically in political discourse. Terror and crisis narratives are intertwined with the narrative of las dos Espanas to provide a coherent argument that allows one to better understand the subversive nature of contemporary Spanish politics. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE
Coolabah, 2018
Reimagining an Australia where diversity and difference are welcomed rather than feared holds par... more Reimagining an Australia where diversity and difference are welcomed rather than feared holds particular challenges for academics charged with the task of educating new undergraduate students who have been raised on a diet of conservative binary discourses and fear-inducing political slogans. This paper reports on the thinking we have done and on the practices we adopt to create a one-semester undergraduate unit on working respectfully and inclusively across diversity and difference. The unit is designed for delivery to students who will be working as professionals in contemporary Australia. Although our unit is currently being taught to students in the human services and community development areas, it can be tailored to suit students bound for any professional arena including teachers, health workers, engineers, social workers, psychologists, business executives, musicians and media commentators.
Journal of European Studies
In January 2019, 30 leading European intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Orhan Pamuk,... more In January 2019, 30 leading European intellectuals, including Bernard-Henri Lévy and Orhan Pamuk, pronounced that ‘the idea of Europe is in peril’. Their voices added to a general sense from all corners of the European continent that the liberal narratives that have sustained the European Union integration project are under attack. Is it true, as Pamuk suggested, that Europe no longer makes us dream? What would it take to reactivate Europe’s ability to inspire? Aligned with Sudeep Dasgupta and Mireille Rosello’s approach of queering European culture, I imagine the possibilities that might emerge if we reenergise Queer and Europe with their original radical potential. In my reading of Panos H. Koutras’ film Xenia, I ask the following: what happens if we imbue Queer Europe with a grammar of hope instead of a grammar of hopelessness? I posit that Xenia queers the space between the European centre and periphery in its celebration of ‘diva citizenship’ and in so doing, the film reconfigu...
In season four of AMC's Mad Men (2007), Faye, one of Don Drapers' discarded playthings utters: "I... more In season four of AMC's Mad Men (2007), Faye, one of Don Drapers' discarded playthings utters: "I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things" (Henderson 2014). The scathing one-liner exposes the underlying selfishness of Don Draper and the kind of man he represents. Draper's fondness for "newness," for new playthings, feeds an unending spiral of reckless consumption for men like himself who can have something new, anytime, anyplace, whenever and wherever they may desire it. The mysterious, handsome and debonair Don Draper, encapsulates the brilliant, driven ad man, in a seeming 1950s and 1960s male utopia, where the supply of women willing and able to have sex with him is endless. Much has been written about the season four finale of Mad Men where Draper unexpectedly proposes to Megan, a secretary whose character until that episode was barely fleshed out. The shock to viewers was not that Draper dared propose to a pretty secretary they knew almost nothing about, but 1 All definitions of look are taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. that by proposing to Megan, he had completely discarded Faye, a brilliant professional woman who was Draper's intellectual equal. Viewers are left to ponder what a relationship between Don and Faye would have entailed. Instead, Draper opts for the new, and we see him absolutely smitten with his new love. So when Faye cuts him down with "I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things" we are forewarned that even the glamorous Megan will too, one day, no longer be new. Mad Men's audience implicitly knows that not all men can be Don Draper. Don Draper is the pivotal centre of a male-driven universe where he, and only he, has the luxury of being able to like "only the beginnings of things. " What would a world look like where every man is Don Draper? Look no further than the gay male universe created by Andrew Haigh and Michael Lannon in HBO's gay dramedy Looking. In Looking there is not one Don Draper upon which the sexual drama hinges. Instead, everybody is Don Draper. Looking is a light-hearted series that explores the lives of three gay men, Patrick ( Jonathon Groff), Agustín (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett) in present day San Francisco. The series premiered on
This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited ... more This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatolo ...
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
Introduction to the curated issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, T... more Introduction to the curated issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, The Great Dis-Equalizer: The COVID-19 Crisis.
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research
ABSTRACT This article argues that economic crisis and austerity ruptured how many young Spaniards... more ABSTRACT This article argues that economic crisis and austerity ruptured how many young Spaniards understand their place in the world by disrupting their sense of what makes home home. It analyses two Spanish films in the emergent subgenre of crisis cinema, Techo y comida (2015) and Hermosa juventud (2014) and argues that crisis cinema not only viscerally depicts the Spanish economic crisis as a failure of late capitalism, but it also challenges us to think about what Spanish pop star Marta Sanchez called “a place to finally rest” may mean during times of economic crisis. The article argues that both films articulate narratives of shame that can be read on a national and individual level, suggesting that the emotional resonance of shame is a potent emotion that weakens the individual connection with the nation-state during times of economic crisis.
Celebrity Studies
In Spectre (2015), British pop star Sam Smith contributed the James Bond theme The Writing's on t... more In Spectre (2015), British pop star Sam Smith contributed the James Bond theme The Writing's on the Wall and in so doing was accused of emasculating the towering figure of Bond who has been the epitome of 'manliness' since the franchise's inception in 1962. In this article I argue that Smith Smith's voice discomforted many of its critics because it penetrated the Bond universe with its passivity, revealing the enigmatic nature of masculinity in a franchise that has attempted to rebrand itself as an authentic representation of masculinity in the current moment. By giving Bond an 'authentic' voice, Smith's theme song laid bare Bond's emptiness and, in the process, undermined Smith's own claim to authenticity. I argue that the weight of the franchise's history precludes any real, deep-rooted, authentic 'unveiling' of Bond's character. As such authenticity is impossible, Smith's Bond might have challenged Bond's masculinity on the surface, but ultimately it could not disrupt Bond's elusiveness.
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2007
Abstract This paper seeks to explore the grand narratives that have been produced in the post 9/1... more Abstract This paper seeks to explore the grand narratives that have been produced in the post 9/11 era in Europe by looking at the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid, and the July 7, 2005 attacks in London. The paper will posit that the random nature of the Madrid and London attacks, and the apparent lack of meaning behind the ‘message’ of these attacks, destabilises a fundamental and mythological narrative of the European project: that the ‘new Europe’ is somehow beyond politics and has entered into a Kantian ‘perpetual peace’.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2007
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicat... more Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies.
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2007
This article posits that two constituent mythologies sustain and drive the EU integration process... more This article posits that two constituent mythologies sustain and drive the EU integration process. The first is the tension between the twin narratives of “perpetual peace” and “perpetual suffering.” The second fundamental mythology of the EU project is the tension between the narratives of Europe as on the one hand “authentic” and as “cosmopolitan” on the other. Both of these constituent mythologies are essential in forming what is emerging as a pan-European, Europtimist raison d’etre. This article posits that two recent novels, the Australian Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe (2005) and the French Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island (2006) subvert these two mythologies and in the process undermine the legitimacy of recent works of Europtomist scholarship.
If indeed we are living in the golden age of television, a golden age promulgated by the US cable... more If indeed we are living in the golden age of television, a golden age promulgated by the US cable network HBO, then the gay dramedy Looking (2014) seemed, to use United Statesean parlance, a no-brainer. Girls (2012), which had premiered two years earlier, was a huge success and the liberal media quickly adopted it into the canon of “zeitgeist” TV shows that reflect something important that is happening out there. If Girls could inspire so much media discourse about what it means to be a “girl” today, packed into a quirky dramedy, then surely a similar show on the modern gay male experience would tap into the market that Girls had opened up. Looking, on paper, ticked all the right boxes. Written by Michael Lannan and with many episodes directed by Andrew Haigh of Weekend (2011) fame, Looking sought to create a realistic portrayal of modern gay men in San Francisco. The show failed, however, to attract a decent-sized audience and was cancelled after just two short seasons (a total of 18 episodes). Looking: The Movie completed the various storylines and premiered in July 2016.
In season four of AMC’s Mad Men (2007), Faye, one of Don Drapers’ discarded playthings utters: “I... more In season four of AMC’s Mad Men (2007), Faye, one of Don Drapers’ discarded playthings utters: “I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things” (Henderson 2014). The scathing one-liner exposes the underlying selfishness of Don Draper and the kind of man he represents. Draper’s fondness for “newness,” for new playthings, feeds an unending spiral of reckless consumption for men like himself who can have something new, anytime, anyplace, whenever and wherever they may desire it. The mysterious, handsome and debonair Don Draper, encapsulates the brilliant, driven ad man, in a seeming 1950s and 1960s male utopia, where the supply of women willing and able to have sex with him is endless. Much has been written about the season four finale of Mad Men where Draper unexpectedly proposes to Megan, a secretary whose character until that episode was barely fleshed out. The shock to viewers was not that Draper dared propose to a pretty secretary they knew almost nothing about, but
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Papers by Nicholas Manganas