Pseuds Corner

 Here is Judith Butler's winning entry in the 1999 "Bad Writing Contest" for academics, established by the journal Philosophy and Literature.

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibilities of ..."

(John Maier, The Observer, 2025)

The move from repetition marked a shift in power, thinking and the possibilities of social insights.

The Writing Lesson
Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

My hair is a bandmate. It's a way of expressing and flailing and raging. It's like a typewriter. It speaks on my behalf. Without me, even. It's a friend who protects me when I'm feeling vulnerable onstage.

(Alanis Morissette interviewed by the Guardian) (Private Eye, 2025)

My bandmate is a friend who protects me and speaks on my behalf when my hair is flailing onstage. 

The world is burning, but Prada offers you a trench, the colour of calm. Spring Summer 2026 is a lesson in gentle resistance. A meditation on menswear in an age  of collective burnout. This isn't a collection - it's a wardrobe for men in emotional, affective and existential transition. For those who read the news like a funeral announcement for civilisation yet still stand: in polished loafers, anthracite socks and a pistachio trench.

(PURPLE magazine on the new Prada offering) (Private Eye, 2025)

The world is burning in an age of collective burnout. It's like a funeral announcement, a lesson in gentle resistance, a meditation on polished loafers, anthracite socks and a pistachio trench.