ISIS Trinity 2014

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Editorial Rune Singer - Austin Hagwood Fraud Ward - Max Leak The Naked Truth - Holly Whiston Behind Closed Doors - Alexander Beecham ISIS Eye - Emily Garthwaite The Killers - Aaron Payne Death CafĂŠ - Lamorna Ash ISIS Art - Max Mulvany Invisible People - Raphael Hogarth Love Plus - Lamorna Ash To See and Be Seen - Jack Saville ISIS Art - Percy Preston Staying in Vogue - Sadie Levy Gale In the Pink - Miranda Hall and Holly Isard High Time - Chloe Ingersent Holy Land - Miranda Hall Saudade - Miriam Gordis Intellectual Rebirth - Daniella Shreir Soviet Spirit - Alice Rivers Hikikomori - Livvi Yallop ISIS Art - Sage Goodwin Depoliticising Empowerment - Mirela Ivanova Soccer and Sexuality - Callum MacRae

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EDITORIAL

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ver the years our magazine has been by turns provocatively outrageous and wilfully irrelevant. But whether exposing the behinds of Germany’s militant nudists

simply trying to shed their drab scholars’ gowns and pull on some brighter hues.

ISIS to the self-involved navel-gazing of Oxford at its most stagISIS in 1919: we hope we have brought a splash of Picasso-bright colour to the stone streets of Oxford in 2014. We are resolved keep our Please don’t de-bag us. A pair of cubist trousers is waiting for you too. Put them on.

We will wear cubist trousers.

ISIS editors TT14

‘admirable for its intelligence’ – A.L. Kennedy

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2014-05-19 05:45:37 PM

The Rune SingeR

An Ancient Art Achieves revivAl Written by AUSTIN HAGWOOD

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n the rim of the Arctic Circle, in a timber house half-buried by snow, Jussi Huovinen sits

poised to pluck a wooden kantele. Dust fall against the windowpane. The smell of boiling lamb warms the room.

Three hundred meters away, a tower of blackened steel dominates the treeline along the Russian-Finnish border, an ominous reminder of a history inked in bloodshed. Finally, Jussi clears his throat, and Finland’s last rune singer begins his ancient song.

Over 600 kilometers northeast of Helsinki sits the remote village of Hietajärvi, in the region of Viena Karelia, the last place on earth where the ancient art of Finnish rune singing survives. For thousands of years, the epic tales of Finland’s folklore passed between generations through oral tradition. Songs echoed while felling trees and weaving nets, reverberating of war. Before written letters, local shamans and wise men were spiritual icons, as well as guardians of language.

“The songs were everywhere,” Jussi says. “When cooking, when feeding the when harvesting the hay. The music was everywhere.”

The Kalevala’s publication in 1849 sparked a revival of Finnish culture and linguistic sovereignty, reversing the trend set by Swedish invasions of Finland throughout the late Middle Ages. These conquests left most educated Finns speaking Swedish by the 18th century. Gathering momentum, this revival ultimately led to Finland’s independence from Russia in 1917.

But when the border was drawn between Finland and Russia, it divided Karelia in half, severing the region without respect for its ethnic and cultural uniformity. “When this border was closed in the 1920s, people couldn’t go across as they used to – families were divided in two.” Jussi says. During the Russian revolution, ‘‘people from the villages were taken to working camps; some were taken to prison; some were shot. After those

‘‘For thousands of years, the epic tales of Finland’s folklore passed between generations through oral tradition.’’

Today, the villages of Viena Karelia stand silent and depleted. At 90 years old, Jussi is the last of the Finnish rune

years, only 10% of the population of the villages was Viena-Karelian. Most of the villages were destroyed.”

heritage born in the wilds of the nomadic north, and the last resident of Hietajärvi.

His voice breaks. Anna-Leena, Jussi’s living assistant, expands on his story.

“His mother’s sister was in prison for ten years for no special reason, and his mother’s brother was shot,” she says.

“Later, during the years of Yeltsin and perestroika [the political reformation of the Soviet system during the 1980s], some people were able to reach out to their families and go across the borders. Families could meet again, but most of the rune singers were already gone. Only a few old women remained.

Most of them are gone now, and the young generation has grown up in a Russian culture and does not know the language.”

In 1828, physician and linguist Elias journeys to Karelia in search of the folklore and mythology preserved in poems. Villagers such as Tauriel Huovinen, Jussi’s great-greatgrandmother, gave him shelter and a window into a lost world. The 22,795 verses Lönrott heard and catalogued into a chronological narrative form the Kalevala, an epic of Homeric size and scope, an inspiration for Tolkien’s Elvish language, and a cornerstone of Finnish and Karelian identity. Jussi has committed the entire poem to memory.

As if in protest against this erasure of his art, Jussi reaches for his kantele – a

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wooden box hollowed out and strung to resemble a neckless guitar – and strokes it into life. “I was very young

plants and stems growing by the lake and also a kantele. It was not made from wood; instead, I made it from a cigarette carton and used the hair from a horse’s tail for strings. My sisters had socks at the time that were held up with a rubber band. So I went secretly and took strings from my sister’s sockholders.”

Jussi picks up a black-and-white photograph of a couple from his mantelpiece. The woman gazes back with glistening eyes like a poised Ingrid Bergman. He met Annie, its subject, when he was nine years old, and their romance endured for over seventy years. “I would ski 11 kilometers to visit her village,” he explains. “We had to keep our meetings secret, so I would only go at night.” He giggles and blushes, vanishing behind a cloud of pipe smoke. “He went through subzero temperatures,” Anna-Leena adds. “He tells me that he would move his cap from one ear to the other to prevent frostbite, and all the time you could hear the other one crackling in the cold.”

Jussi’s birth in 1924 fell between the two most disruptive events in Karelian history. If the fragmentation of Karelia after Finnish independence fractured the rune singing tradition, the Winter War II obliterated it. Troops stormed towns and razed houses. Karelian culture disintegrated under pressure to align with either Finland or the Soviet Union. “You could sense the fear,” Jussi remembers. “During the war years, we were forced to move out of these villages and only allowed to come back during the summer months to grow hay and potatoes. During the Winter War of 1939, the villages were burned down again.”

By 1943 Finland was at war with the USSR, and Jussi had been drafted into the army, assigned to posts in Finnish prison camps. The rune singer of Hietajärvi, a 19 year old in love with music and his childhood sweetheart,

‘‘if the fragmentation of Karelia after Finnish independence fractured rune singing culture, the Winter War and Stalinist Russification of the region in World War ii obliterated it.’’

now found himself tasked with guarding Russian POWs. But even in the wreckage of burned villages and the desolation of prison camps, he carried with him the rune songs of his got engaged and he wanted to have a dance to celebrate the engagement,” he recalls. “He knew I was a musician, and his friend had a banjo. And so I played the banjo, and one of the Russian prisoners had a balalaika. We did not know each other, but the folk songs were so similar that we could play music together.”

Jussi and Annie reunited in 1945, hoping to start a life together and rebuild the ruins of the Karelian villages. Further opposition appeared in the form of a mandate from the government, forbidding the construction of any homes in the Karelian style. With the state only agreeing to fund houses built according to Finnish architectural standards, Jussi set to work building his own.

But the struggle to preserve his culture extended beyond architecture. Children sent to school dozens of kilometers away in Suomussalmi returned to a changed climate. The Finns mocked their neighbors’ Karelian dialect – the term ‘Russi’ became a name of scorn and badge of shame – and the next generation of Karelians quickly forgot their language in favor of Finnish and

Swedish. “At the end, after the Second World War, Jussi was the only one who gave any credit or any value to the old traditions,” Anna-Leena says. “He was the only one who wanted to keep them alive.”

learning the Kalevala’s verses, and Jussi’s appearance in National Geographic’s 2001 documentary The Lord of the Rings: Beyond the Movie brought renewed focus to the wisdom of a people hidden in his mind.

Until the 1990s, Jussi’s cause appeared futile. Elders died, settlements broke apart, and the oral life of Finland’s

For graphic artist Hanneriinaa Moisseinen, Jussi’s songs embody not only the legends of the land but also the essence of an age. Her time as the rune singer’s pupil is the focus of Laulu

memory and myth. But just as academic attention began to grasp the Kalevala, the collapse of the Soviet Union sparked a revival of Karelian identity, and breathed new life into the region’s ancient lore.

Today, the new Juminkeko Center for the Kalevala and Karelian Culture in the city of Kuhmo attracts musicians, folklorists, and enthusiasts from every corner of the globe. The Hietajärvi Trust, a foundation devoted to restoring and preserving Karelian culture, has constructed two traditional homes near the banks of Jussi’s lake. Far from being mocked as Russi, schoolchildren draped in the blue gowns and buttoned jerkins of Karelia commit verses of the Kalevala to memory and play kanteles of their own. And when visitors to a long lost library, Jussi opened his doors. Music instructors such as Pekka Huttu-Hiltunen have served as apprentices under him in the hope of

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Vilhunen, which placed Jussi’s face on newspaper covers nationwide. “When Hietajärvi, I felt a deep wisdom in him Vilhunen says. “He more than anyone else knows the meaning of culture and had the strength to keep it going. And now there will be many, many people who remember the traditions.”

As Jussi cradles his kantele amidst the echo of his song – a tribute to the generations who have passed away – he gazes outside at the sparrows perched “For me, hope has always been staying close to nature,” he says. “You always carry knowledge with you and keep your kantele with you. Maybe you can be smarter in the next generations.’’

FRAUD WARD

The injured fraudsTers Taxing The sTaTe, and paTience, of Middle england.

Written by Max Leak

J

im Greggs is a man in pain. His every waking hour is a haze of agony and nausea. In his sleep,

which scroungers like Greggs maim

A surgery frAud's injuries will Almost AlwAys be both grAphic And severe, As they Are cArefully designed to mAximise both the cost And the durAtion of convAlescence.

families. Their single overpowering us from seeing millions of

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our

of several newspapers, encouraging

The Naked Truth

THE WAR OF GERMANY’S RADICAL NUDISTS Written by HOLLY WHISTON

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here’s an old East German joke that goes: “what do you call a gathering of two or more citizens in the German Democratic Republic? An illegal meeting… or a nudist beach.” East Germany’s permissive attitude towards naturism was an engrained part of the region’s perceived cultural difference from the West. Stereotypes abounded about the Baltic’s bare-all beaches, and the Rennsteig’s hikers in nothing but socks and boots.

The pervasive popularity of ‘Free Body Culture’ (‘Freikorperkultur’ or ‘FKK’) became a recognisable aspect of East German identity, part of the mythology of the simple, socialist lifestyle as distinct from the more materialist corruptions of the capitalist West.

In the turbulent world of early 20th-century Germany, the tenets of FKK – promoting harmony with nature, cleanliness, and healthy activity in a nonsexual nudist environment – captured the population’s imagination.

Naturism gained followers in Germany faster than in any other European country, and it was German groups ists’ congress. of the 20th century, the sight of the publicly bared body quickly became a ‘Back to nature’ organisations like the Wandervogel and the Lebensreform movement promoted an implicitly nationalistic image of naturism as a means to return to the simplicity of German folk life; Adolf Koch, FKK’s most famous proponent during the Weimar period, politicised it as part sion. Though Hitler’s regime placed restraints on public nudity, naturism simultaneously developed a strong following within the Nazi regime. The naked bodies of strong, healthy Aryans were easily co-opted for Hitler’s eugenicist vision.

In spite of naturism’s ideological role, however, the communist East cracked down harshly on FKK practitioners after Germany’s post-war divide. As Kurt Fischer, current head of Deutscher Verband für Freikörperkultur (the

German Association for Free Body Culture) and one of Germany’s most prominent nudists, describes: “The East German authorities feared naturism and naturist organisations as forms of active resistance. Associations and

holidays. The prohibition, if anything, encouraged more people to join in the nudist frenzy, feeling a frisson of fear at baring all in a state where almost everything was held under constant surveillance.

the nudist movement in the Soviet oc-

When nudist beaches were closed in

banning naturists from collective orprohibiting both naked bathing within sight of third parties and fencing off areas intended for nude activity. Police raided FKK beaches; the Free German Youth movement was sent to attack locally discovered naturist groups. One letter to the authorities complaining about the treatment of illegal nudists by the East German police described of those police who were already there, formed themselves into a chain behind the dunes as if they were preparing for an invasion and then, on command, came down the whole beach in double-quick time, machine guns on their backs, and ran into the sand castles.”

The clampdown partly stemmed from ing – and, to the GDR, objectionable – philosophies with which FKK was linked. The naturist body represented both Hitler’s Ubermensch and Koch’s peaceful socialist-democratic ideal, the mosexual and the wholesome, campunstable history, the authorities could never quite trust the naturist moveknow whether the nakedness they were

nude save for socks and a tie, a nod towards wearing clothes without covering anything up. Police on the island of Rügen reported that local nudists “were stopping citizens of the GDR who wished to rest in the area or walk through it and undressing them”. In order to avoid accusations of bathing naked “in the presence of third parties”, the nudists forcibly stripped the third parties as well. Intruders who refused, the reports claimed, were thrown into the sea. What would later become a difference established its roots in acts of civil disobedience against the state.

GDR’s law, thousands of citizens embarked on a campaign of letter writing, carefully articulating to the government their arguments against the ban and emphasising explicitly that the two doctrines of nudism and communism ought to be integrated, not divorced.

Naturism, the majority of the notes and petitions claimed, made them better and more progressive GDR citizens. issued Ten Commandments of Socialist Ethics and Morals. The ninth of these exhorted citizens that “thou shalt live cleanly and decency and respect thy family” – a doctrine into which FKK, -

The Free German Youth movement was sent to attack locally discovered naturist groups. witnessing was an innocuous seaside pastime, the product of ‘degenerate’ Americanised sexuality, or a secret meeting of Nazi revivalists?

The result of the ban, however, was a dogged refusal to accept the state’s deintimidation, and despite the constant fear of Stasi intervention, FKK advocates refused to give up their naturist

ness, and public rejection of sexualised was the ultimate expression of economic communism. Removing clothes – external symbols of rank and wealth – served as an active step towards removing the burdens of class. To the disgruntled naturists writing letters to their local councillors, the active nude body represented the wholesome simplicity of life in the GDR, far removed

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from the consumerist vanities of fully-clothed capitalism. Nakedness held the potential to become a socialist symbol, instead of being censored by the state.

Naked photographs, for instance, appear with startling regularity on the pages of the state published magazine Das Magazin – simultaneously a demonstration of the GDR’s attempts at a more liberal social policy and a means of promoting a wholesome, ‘socialist’

The naked bodies of strong, healthy Aryans were easily co-opted for Hitler’s eugenicist vision.

Yet in spite of the FKK’s continual afaligned itself seamlessly with that of East Germany, engaging in naturism was an inevitably subversive act during the early years of the GDR. Swimming naked, as thousands of nudists continued to do despite the ban, meant consciously defying the authorities and risking subjection or state intimidation.

Moreover, under a regime that could exercise centralised control over every aspect of human existence, a regime that steadily erased individuality, FKK’s provision of autonomy over the body was inherently political. Even the name ‘Free Body Culture’ proved problematic in a society where ‘freedom’ had become a dangerous word.

attitude towards sexuality and the body.

Adverts for FKK holidays appeared in train stations; what had begun as playful rebellion was now state sanctioned.

Yet as FKK boomed in popularity, its ophy waned. It was no longer an act of resistance, the expression of bodily autonomy within an oppressive state. It was now, simply, the norm.

the East and West’s attitudes towards the nude body remains visible. Reuniturist cultures, commonly referred to as the ‘Höschenkreig’ or the ‘Panties War’. West Germans, accustomed to shocked by their East German counterparts cheerfully stripping down in front seaside towns on the border between East and West. Nudity had become a designator of cultural difference; removing your bikini was a small refusal to assimilate into Western norms. Once again, the right to bare all had become

Visit the most popular German beaches today, and the difference between

As Fischer explains, “It was not necessarily a consciously clandestine countermovement against the state. But it was a personal little freedom, a freedom of choice, deciding how you enjoy your free time.” Engaging in FKK was simultaneously an act of naked protest and its opposite: the naked body stood as a symbol of individual autonomy, rejecting the enforcement of any ideology upon it, whilst simultaneously manifesting the ideology it was implicitly revolting against. ‘little freedom’ had grown so great that the law preventing the establishment of nude beaches was revoked. From that point on, FKK witnessed a radiof people in their twenties or thirties had swum naked at some point, and the Germany sold out in just four weeks.

Increasingly, what had previously been an act of rule breaking was co-opted and even promoted by the state.

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Behind Closed doors

THE TRUTH ABOUT OXFORDSHIRE’S DETENTION CENTRE

Written by ALEXANDER BEECHAM

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ix miles from Oxford, in Kidlington, a motley band of radicals get together every month

an ‘immigration removal centre’.

This bland, bureaucratic terminology obscures the building’s malign purpose: keeping detainees against their will.

Unlike the inmates of Bullingdon

punished for crimes, but for their ‘immigration status’. There is no legal limit for the amount of time someone may be detained there. The state is not obligated to offer a free trial or legal representation to someone stuck, literally, in our immigration system.

If any of the above causes you concern, you’re not alone. From its inception in the early 1990s, the organisation

and residents were put at risk, had the been exposing the centre’s unethical mission statement. They return to will not stop doing so until it is shut down.

One of their main causes for concern is the treatment detainees receive, which came to a head last autumn. In October,

blaze hospitalised two other detainees.

Critics were appalled that there were Service’s strong recommendation for

MITIE, the private company running

‘‘By containing or compartmentalising

lives, and even prevent buildings from collapsing’’. These claims ring rather hollow when faced with the evidence of a blazing building, and the hospitalisation of two inmates.

press release following the incident, the

might have been halted before the lives

Secretary David Blunkett committed to closing the detention centre; in the same year, it was condemned by

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being a ‘‘place of safety’’. This stance

this U-turn, and the treatment of

perimeter. The police, a few metres away, sat watching protestors from a van. The message is clear: they’re staying in, you’re staying out.

Before long there were chants from the protestors, variously against state

respond.

The linguistic framing of the debate

‘‘removal centre’’, where ‘‘detainees are accommodated’’. This glosses over inmates, which has become the focus for monthly protests. The Campaign’s website, on the other hand, calls

These were all made with no view of any detainees or staff, except intermittently.

There is a car park and outbuilding

There is no legal limit for the amount of time someone may be detained there. between us and where detainees are held. Who are the protestors shouting

On 25 January 2014, a demonstration The red-brick blocks look more suited to a factory than the housing of human beings, and a fence, topped with rows of barbed wire, lines the whole

windows in the distance, waving at us, followed by calls to ‘‘release us’’.

Suddenly, the appearance of that single hand and voice seems to communicate something symbolic about occupying public space, about the limits of the presence of the imprisoned.

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The inmates are invisible and inaudible, but the eerie, disembodied voice coming from the building creates a small window of communication between the detainees and the crowd outside. Solidarity grows across the fence.

David - not his real name - is an exto the UK after being tortured for political subversion back in his home country. When asked what he thought was most vital to communicate about injustice of keeping ‘‘fellow human beings’’ in inhumane conditions. The experience of being detained, he told me, was a kind of ‘‘mental torture’’ because there was no prospect of release. These people are imprisoned, but they are not serving prison sentences. Describing his mental state exclaimed to me with stark frustration: ‘‘why, why, why, why, why?’’

David told me that some guards would give advice on attempting to gain release from detention, which, according to him, they’re forbidden to

The process certainly takes its toll on do, or organize activities in an attempt to keep spirits up. Some of the guards are evidently pretty uncomfortable with their own position in the detention system.

Pressed for his thoughts on the British immigration system, David told me that it was ‘‘a shambles’’, characterized above all by hypocrisy. We British like to think of ourselves as protecting the values of democracy and human rights, but ‘‘when it comes to foreign nationals, it’s the other way around’’. media as particularly harmful: ‘‘when politicians are looking for votes, that’s the picture they show: that immigrants are criminals. But people migrate for different reasons.’’

Knee-jerk xenophobia was evidently at the root of his concerns; the assumption that all immigrants are guilty until proven innocent, the scapegoating of foreigners by politicians and - something the - a general refusal to engage with the complexity of asylum seekers’ and other detainees’ individual situations.

is chequered with hunger strikes and suicides. Last year there were eight recorded cases of self-harm requiring medical treatment. In 2010, about half the centre’s detainees went on hunger strike, protesting against their unimpeded detention.

despite the considerable movement

Bureaucracy has been allowed to tie humans into inescapable webs of seemingly unending legal procedure, member of the campaign tells me, in no uncertain terms, that as the state can lock people up based solely on immigration status, ‘‘they’re literally

The inmates are invisible and inaudible, but the eerie, disembodied voice coming from the building creates a small window of communication between the detainees and the crowd outside. to do so. But that is not to say the been useless. When they can, they provide support to detainees who request it, building friendships that may continue after deportation, and providing aid in legal matters.

They play a key role in questioning the state’s treatment of immigrants, bringing human rights abuses to light and criticising the thinking used to encourage the militarization of our borders.

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locking people up for being foreign. It’s racist.’’ Racist or not, banal or not, detaining torture victims, refusing free trials, and forbidding legal of this happens in a quiet little town called Kidlington, just a few miles away from Oxford.

“Why, why, why, why, why?”

EYE

Emily GarthwaitE

E

mily Garthwaite is a 20-yearold freelance photographer.

On top of a roof, in the middle of London, with a mug of white wine, she talks about the photos on the laptop screen in front of her. They show a sequence of faces from her recent trip around India, and chart the conversations and relationships she made over the three months she spent in the country. She explains that her decision to enter photojournalism centred most on ‘‘wanting to have an adventure, and feeling stuck in London.’’

However, having just booked her

of her Grandmother’s death, and the meaning of the trip was changed. ‘‘I’ve got a history from India, where my ancestors, for many generations, were a colonial family in the northeast. So it became more than a mini-adventure; it was a pilgrimage.’’

The images shown here are from that trip; she had stories to tell for each person she photographed.

The lessons she learnt have now inspired a return to India. She explains it best herself: ‘‘the main point is that you might live in poverty, but that doesn’t mean your soul, your mind is in pov-

erty. If you live in the slums, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re part of that.

It doesn’t mean if you’re born there, that’s your only way out. For me the people I met that brought me the most joy, the most happiness, were not necessarily those that people would take the time to speak to. So [the goal of and the love that comes out of these supposed ‘hell-holes’.’’

More of Emily’s work can be found at www.emilygarthwaite.com Written by PETER ENDICOTT

‘‘This was right at the start of the trip. It was 32 degrees and we had just got on this packed train. But in this situation she has had her head shaved. And

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the riverbanks and this guy was there. And I

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THE KILLERS A SHORT STORY BY AARON PAYNE

RUNNER UP IN THE ISIS FICTION COMPETITION Illustration by SAGE GOODWIN 17

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hough they strained with all their might, the killers could not move the corpse, which was fatter than the full moon and beginning to stiffen. They had tried with Sparrow at the head and Crowe at the feet, and then the other way around; they had next tried and failed to drag the body by the arms. Also fruitless was an attempt to roll the body. The killers’ impotence drove them desperately to kicking and punching at the corpse, but bruise. At long last, the killers sat down in the snow by the side of the road, hard breathing and low in spirits.

Sparrow lit a cigarette and offered the packet to Crowe, who shook his head. “My gums have been bleeding, you idiot!” He snapped. “That will and replaced the cigarette in the packet. Crowe coughed, hawked, and spat a huge ball of goo in an arc over the snow. It left a steaming tunnel behind it as it disappeared.

“What are we going to do, sir?” asked Sparrow, already knowing the answer.

It was an answer that he liked. His master sighed darkly.

“I really thought we might be able to get through this whole thing without resorting to that fucking Mildred.”

Sparrow feigned agreement, although the sentiment pained him.

“Yes sir. But I don’t think there’s another way.”

Crowe sighed again, more deeply than last time, as if he was drawing the air from beneath the snow. His breath hung around, taking on a heart shape, Sparrow fancied, before it collapsed upwards into the night.

Sparrow’s heart jumped in his chest.

“Let’s see the problem then boys!” Mildred was American, and her distinctive waded through the deep snow.

“I fucking hate that woman,” said Crowe under his breath as she approached.

“Yes, sir, but she’s useful to us.” Sparrow kept his feelings for Mildred well hidden from his boss, who viewed emotions other than spite as weaknessthe spot if he thought he had fallen in love. Sparrow knew this, and made sure he greeted Mildred politely, without smiling. “Hello. This body down here won’t move.”

Crowe sighed impatiently, for he had relayed that information on the phone.

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the body, which lay with its purple, strained face half-buried in the snow.

“There.” Mildred took a look, lifting up her goggles. Her eyes matched her coat, more or less.

“Eesh. You sure took care of him some.” She clapped her hands, and her bouffant shivered. “My advice, boys, is to do the usual.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” said Sparrow. “I like the usual.” Mildred smiled at him, and he felt as if the sun had suddenly risen to kiss him gently on the cheek. He turned away to hide his blushes. Mildred went off to her van and came back with two chainsaws and overalls more like fallout suits than regular work wear. The two killers pulled on the overalls straight over their suits, but Mildred, who was a plump woman,

“Stay here,” said the man in charge.

“I’ll make the call.”

of onions peeling. Crowe’s voice pulled him sharply out of his reverie.

*

“Come on, dreamboat. We’ve work to do.”

Mildred arrived quickly in her big, coat of electric blue and black goggles.

Her blonde bouffant hair bounced a little as she walked, and at each bounce,

The three of them went about their gruesome business, Sparrow and Crowe manipulating the body as best they could while Mildred hacked dex-

terously at the joints. Blood fountained, painting the snow a deep red. The smell was disgusting, but the work was effective. In little time the corpse was split into torso, head, arms, and legs, with each of the limbs split at the elbows, knees, and feet.

The roaring buzz of the saw died as ers stood up to stretch their backs and catch their breath in the cold air.

Mildred shook out her shoulders and pushed her goggles back onto the bridge of her nose. Though Sparrow and Crowe were panting hard, the sawing had only warmed her up. She was used to this kind of thing.

She gestured to the body bits. “How d’ya kill him, boys? Another good one?”

“Not so bad,” said Crowe, falsely modest. “We sat him down in the snow and fed him pound coins one by one until he choked. He ate a surprising amount of them.”

Mildred was visibly impressed. “How long did it take? He looks like a guy with an appetite.”

“Long enough.”

Sparrow wished he were brave enough to interrupt and tell Mildred the pound coins had been his idea.

“Do you want the coins back?” Mildred asked. “We could just slice the fucker’s stomach open and take ‘em.”

Suggestions like that fuelled Sparrow’s love for Mildred until it threatened to consume him. “What do you think, Crowe?” he asked. “There must be at least a hundred pounds in there.”

“Fuck it, let’s do it,” said Crowe. “You row.” Mildred raised an eyebrow in Sparrow’s direction.

“Lucky boy!”

He blushed, and she took pity and looked away. “Alrighty,” she said. “I’m gonna go get a smaller knife.” She

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tramped off in the direction of her van.

he could walk away. But he had no money, and beyond killing, no skills.

He was lucky, as Crowe repeatedly told him, to be holding even this miserable job down.

nore the sound of Crowe, spitting and muttering to himself. It was then that he felt, with a great deal of confusion, Mildred’s hand slip into his own. It was smooth, and small, and warm.

yellow-eyed stare. “This is the last time we’ll use her.”

Mildred was by now halfway back from the van, holding aloft a serrated blade the length of her forearm. Sparrow managed to speak with a false normality.

“But she’s the best!” Said Sparrow, a little too quickly. His master’s eyebrows

“She’s coming back.” Crowe was still sneering. “You dirty dog. As if you

The very air around Sparrow seemed to soften. He turned, and saw that Mildred was carrying another knife in her other hand. She looked meaningfully from him, to the knife, to the back of the squatting Crowe, who was struggling to cut into the torso.

he’d revealed himself. He could feel the fury coming.

place.”

“God she drives me mad.” Crowe spat

“I think she’s quite funny,” Sparrow interrupted. There must have been a tone

But Crowe merely laughed. It was a throaty, unpleasant laugh with little sense of real mirth behind it. “You want to fuck her, don’t you!” He sneered and spat again, shaking his head. “You dirty fucking mongrel.”

Sparrow felt a cold hatred towards Crowe. Although he could not argue with his master, he felt his love cheapened to an unbearable degree. He almost protested, but lit up another cigarette instead, hiding his grimacing more fervently than ever before, that

Mildred arrived. “Here we go boys.”

She waved the knife at them. “Would one of you like a go?” She offered the knife to Crowe with a smile that Sparrow found oddly insincere. Crowe stared at her for a second, and Sparrow panicked momentarily that his master was about to out him. But doing so would have required a sense of fun Crowe didn’t possess. He merely took the knife and squatted by the body without bothering to return Mildred’s smile, poking the corpse’s abdomen in numerous places, deciding where to make an incision. Mildred stood behind him, next to Sparrow. Her arm was touching his, and he shivered. He tried to savour the moment, but couldn’t ig-

“Don’t you know I love you?” she whispered. Sparrow’s entire body was shaking. “This is your chance.” Mildred held out her knife. “We could work together. I could be yours. Kill the fucker —you don’t owe him a thing.”

Sparrow was seized by indecision. Everything he had dreamed of was before him. But was his long employment a bond he could simply cut? He knew little else. He looked at Mildred. She smiled, and he saw his miserable life

“One chance.” Mildred whispered to him. “This is your one chance.” Sparrow took the knife. Love bloomed as the blade bit home.

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Death Café Written by LAMORNA ASH Illustrated by HOLLY ISARD

D

eath Café began in 2011 in a living room in Hackney.

Since then over 800 Death Cafés have cropped up worldwide.

“At a Death Café people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death” their website declares.

A waitress led the way to a dingy upper room at Bill’s Café in South London, greeting me with: ‘‘Oh, you’re one of them.’’ My fellow coffee-daters ranged from a handful of wrinkled geriatrics to a black polo-necked twentysomething, who ably at a funeral procession.

The leader of the session was Suzanne, an ‘Energy and Consciousness Explorer’. She told us that our mortality was usually seen as

As an artist, this led him to an ambitious project to create an underwater cemetery. a taboo subject and that the café provided an open space to vocalise feelings and stories about our experiences of death. At my table sat a dreadlocked Columbian woman and the polo-necked man. The Columbian woman had recently lost two friends from back home, and came because she felt she needed

Alongside reading Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Immortal’, the Death Café had changed her view on the afterlife: from a mixture of Borges’ philosophy and cups of coffee at the Café, she had developed a personal theory of death based on ‘destratichanical process, of mixing in the also the process the soul undergoes after death.

Polo-neck shared similar beliefs about the importance of cycles and the body rejoining nature after death. As an artist, this led him to an ambitious project to create an underwater cemetery. He believed that decomposition in water was a more ecologically friendly process than burial. Happily, his preliminary experiments with pigs’ trotters in water had been very successful.

To Polo-neck, then, death was not a frightening end but a freeing of the body – he himself hopes to be buried in his underwater cemetery.

her retirement attempting to travel to as many places in the world as possible.

The oldest woman there told me that she came because ‘‘at the moment I think I’m existing, not living.’’ The oldest man told me that “it’s simple really: at my age, I’ve just experienced so much death.”

The ever-multiplying Death Cafés are not for narcissistic existentialists to discuss their own ephemerality. They are for strangers to come together and openly declare that death both scares and fascinates them- all over a cup of tea.

The eulogy writing proved to be the most poignant part of the evening.

An elderly woman worried that right now she had no real legacy to leave behind, saying, “I hope to be more interesting by the time I die.”

She wanted her grandchildren to remember her as someone who had actually done something in her life, which was why she was spending

London to talk to about what happened.

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ART: MAX MULVANY Max studied Fine Art at Oxford, graduating last year. He has worked as a staff cartoonist at The Gateway, has had his work in The Independent, and now he’s drawn for ISIS too. In 2012, he was awarded ‘Runner Up’ in the Young Cartoonist of the Year competition. Additional work can be found at www.maxmulvany.com.

INVISIBLE PEOPLE ’ getting to know oxford s rough sleepers Written by RAPHAEL HOGARTH

“I

f people haven’t had that experience of being dragged up with nothing, you couldn’t explain to them what it’s like. They would not understand.” John doesn’t talk about being brought up – the word is always ‘dragged’. Homeless since the age of 14, he has spent the last nine years sleeping rough in Oxford, along with dozens of others. John, Scout, Bill, and Graham are four particularly familiar faces, regularly pitched on Broad Street and St. Giles.

“I was dragged up with an alcoholic father and physically abused by my father every day. I watched my mum abused every day through the booze,” says John. “I got kicked out of home when I was 14, and from that day I’ve had to fend for myself.” John’s best friend, Scout, is a few years older. Scout, like ten per cent of rough sleepers, is an ex-serviceman who struggled with the return to civilian life. After leaving the army, he had a spell in jail. He and his wife had a son six months after his release, but at the age of three he was killed by a drunk driver. “The judge cope with it. I was having nightmares, and what I saw in the army didn’t help.

And I started drinking heavily. And I just fucked everything up. That was 12

years ago. My son would have been 15 this year.”

Bill, who sells The Big Issue by Blackwell’s, glosses over his arrival on the street with an unexpectedly jolly shrug.

“We’d come from Southport, like with drugs and that lot – we had some money from a compensation payout and we knew that everybody would be coming for us.” He doesn’t explain what this means, and I don’t ask. Bill’s now-kicked addiction to hard drugs landed him in trouble. “We ended up in Oxford. Put it this way – the 35 grand lasted us six weeks!”

Graham, who sells the Issue on St. Giles, has a similarly matter of fact approach.

“From the age of 15 I started taking amphetamines, which I was doing up until about my early forties. I split up with my wife back in 1993 and, I don’t know, had a breakdown or something.

Certainly everything seemed to go wrong from then. My life just crashed down and, one day, I found myself messing around with heroin. Before I knew where I was, I was homeless on the streets. ‘Oh, it won’t happen to me’ was my attitude when it started. It became a problem before I had a chance to realise it was.”

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These all seem to be stories of abuse – of people or of substances. But such generalisations are a major cause ing how all of us homeless people are tarred with the same brush,” says John.

Scout nods enthusiastically. “Because of the ones who are out here trying to get money for drugs and alcohol, drunk off their faces on cans of Special Brew, it messes it up for people like myself and Scout. Because then we get labelled the same as those people.”

All four of these men are now sober.

But on the street, sobriety can lead to social marginalisation. “I’ve been sober for two years, four months, three days, and I’m proud of that,” says Scout.

“But since I got sober, I’ve been lonely.

I can’t mix with the rest of them on the monument.”

John agrees: “They’re all mates, all those lot that sit at the monument drinking, but they all beat the shit out of each other. So I tend to avoid it, because I don’t want to be like my dad. I can’t be like my dad.” Bill tells a similar story – he got sent to a talking group for some human contact, but he just found “people talking about taking drugs all day long. I don’t want that,” he says. “I want a life.”

Sobriety can even make it harder to access food and shelter. These men don’t go to Oxford soup kitchens, because they are worried about the risk of relapse. “The majority of them are on drugs and drink,” says John. “I avoid those situations.” Even the Night Shelter, which provides beds and support, is considered too dangerous. “They stand there drinking all day long,” says Scout. “And they try and get you out of your room to drink with them, to make you fail. They don’t like to see people succeed.” Bill’s experience is similar: “I stay away from the Night Shelter nowadays – just so many bad memories. It is a pretty bleak place: drugs, alcohol, violence, all sorts.” diction can also build friendships. “I just wonder some days,” says Scout, “Is it worth being sober? Is it worth just having that drink again? But John stops me. That’s why I’m glad to have him as a friend.” John agrees: “Me and Scout, we’re like glue. We’re side by side all the time.” Graham’s account is similar.

Halfway through his recovery from addiction, he came close to relapse. “My sister had just died of cancer and I was really depressed. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s was on the shelf. I picked it up and took the bottle, went [sniffs] and put it back on the shelf. That’s as close as I got, but it’s only because Bill came through the door.”

able to sell the Issue and earn a few quid helps everybody,” says Graham.

But there’s an overwhelming sense of frustration at how the law looks upon the homeless. The legal status of begging is still given by the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which makes it a criminal offence “to beg or gather alms”, a position taken by just a handful of countries. “I’ve begging,” says Scout. “It turns poor girls from beggars into prostitutes, and I think that’s done more damage than giving them money. The police are wasting so much time and money trying to stop beggars, when they should be out trying to catch criminals.” John and Scout are both angry about the way they have been treated by police comnervous to complain. “If you make a not worth it in this town,” says Scout.

But it’s how these men are treated by passers-by which most frustrates them.

“You’ll often hear me say to people: ‘thanks for acknowledging me’,” says Bill. “That’s purely because that many people don’t.” “Some people look at you down their noses from a long way up,” Graham interrupts. But Bill and Graham, the Issue sellers, reckon Oxonians are at least comparatively polite. “You don’t get people stopping to talk to you in other towns. They’ll

was on the street, they were someone.

When people get you food, they don’t ask you what you would like as a human being. They automatically make your mind up for you. People never ask us or try to talk to us.”

John’s verdict is more damning still.

“We get blanked. We are invisible people and people just walk past us like we’re bits of shit on the bottom of their shoes.” I ask if it is any better in Oxford than elsewhere. “No. It doesn’t matter. You could be in the most beautiful city or country or whatever. Bottom line is, we’re homeless, so it doesn’t make a difference.” Indifference comes up again and again. “Because I’m so used to having nothing all my life… you could put a thousand pound in front of me now and it would just be like ‘thanks’. I’d be grateful, but it’s nothing to me.” Even death becomes mundane. “I don’t like saying this really,” confesses Graham. “But I just shrug when somebody dies now.

‘Right, another one.’”

Unsuprisingly, what upsets these rough sleepers most is the inequity of their situation. But it’s striking that the imbalance they care most about isn’t about wealth. It’s about narrative. “It’s all one-sided. Beggars are ‘bad’. We’re all ‘liars’. We’re all ‘drug thieves’. We’ll ‘rip you off ’. We’ll ‘take all your money’. No. If you get to talk to a person

say ‘thank you’, but that’s it.”

There is support available for combating addiction. Bill lavishes praise on a Night Shelter keyworker who helped him, and both Issue sellers are generally positive about the magazine: “Being

The others paint a bleaker picture.

“Most people won’t even talk to you and get to know you as a human being,” says Scout. “Before every person

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of giving them a bit of change…”

Scout never completes that conditional. He really couldn’t have explained it better.

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TO SEE AND BE SEEN The Xhiro and Albania’s Ingrained Surveillance Culture

Written by JACK SAVILLE

O

caps sit drinking spirits in plazas, while minarets form a backdrop to a typical Albanian scene.

In the city of Berat, young women’s clothing is emblazoned with familiar Western branding and slogans, but with original variations in the spelling.

Huan Bsos bags. Roy Bon sunglasses.

Holidaymakers sit on beaches beneath high-rise hotels. And yet, on closer inspection, these hotels are no more than husks, devoid of interiors or even windows, and destined never to be completed. The strange relationship between privacy and self-exposure is one of many elements of Albanian tions in a country that, for the second half of the 20th century, existed under a regime of paranoid surveillance.

On the Bulevardi Republika, running between the town’s historic centre and glected busts of the Heroes of the Republic, the same sight is replayed every evening. The streets (quiet and dusty by day, home only to a few quiet cafés and some shops selling outdated mobile phone appliances) heave for a few hours with men, women, and children.

The scene is similar to what you might Italian or Spanish town at the weekend, but there is something distinct-

ly different about it here. The Xhiro (pronounced ‘jeer-oh’) happens every evening of the year, and it is not just the teenagers of the city that attend: fathers walk beside mothers and their prams, and mingle freely with youthful couples holding hands, all under the watchful eye of the community’s elders.

When discussing their evening plans, my friends would describe to me how they were going to “do the Xhiro four times they would walk the length of the street and back again before returning home (strictly before ten for women, but a couple of hours later for some of the men). The shops are closed, only a few of the older citizens still sit in the cafes, and the town’s population simply walks to and fro, past one another.

The Xhiro is a mass social gathering in which the sole activity is to observe and be observed. Berat, like almost all Albanian towns and cities, has no nightclubs or late-night bars. These walks therefore provide one of the few opportunities for residents to don their glad rags. A young man walks past me in a full ‘Adidap’ tracksuit, whilst his friend sports a ‘Niki’ cap proudly. The Xhiro, as my friend Edmir informed Indeed, as you walk, the eyes can be

felt. Albania is a nation of starers, it must be said, but there is no sense of rudeness attached to the long, penetrating looks that a foreigner has to get used to here. The Xhiro represents one half of a tension that exists at the heart of Albanian society - between a desire to notice/be noticed and a strong but contrasting belief in the privacy of the individual. Albania, for the last half a century, has been a place where privacy and public display meet uncomfortably.

Albania has always been anomalous.

The small, mountainous country’s population is overwhelmingly ethnically homogenous, and Albanians speak an almost unique strain of the Indo-European language family, unlike many of the more diverse societies found elsewhere in the Balkans. Its cultural detachment from the rest of Europe has produced many unique traditions, some of which survive to the present day. In certain northern areas, for instance, sworn virgins will take on tionally male roles, and acting as patriarchs to their family when no male heir is present.

Albania’s historical isolation gave communities a sense of seclusion and autonomy that lasted well into the 20th century. However, with the advent of

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the Second World War Albania was thrust into global politics and out of its isolation. The communist partisans that fought the Italian invaders during the war had taken over the government by 1944, and immediately began to construct a surveillance state of paranoiac totalitarianism. In the following decades of communist rule, this surveillance would cut deep scars in the torically valued its privacy, geographically closed-off and composed of largely autonomous rural communities.

In the days of ‘The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania’, the secret police (or ‘Sigurimi’) generated over 120,000 of then only around 2 million people.

Punishments for sedition against the state were particularly harsh, and the understanding of what constituted this crime became almost absurdly broad.

Lorenc, a local guesthouse owner in Berat, told me how his father had spent ten years in a labour camp after he was reported for enjoying Italian opera. Edmir relates how friends of his parents were interned in camps for complaining about their thin potato diet during the food shortages of the 1970s.

The Xhiro was therefore championed by the communist government as a social activity that could be carried out in full view, unlike private gatherings or meetings outside of the Republic’s sight. This desire for observation of prying eyes felt there to this day.

The Sigurimi functioned, like the Stasi and the KGB, through the employment of a huge number of informers in every community throughout Albania.

However, unlike with the Stasi, neither the identities nor even the number of informants has ever been revealed. Albanians today live in the uncomfortable knowledge that any of their friends, neighbours, or even family members may have informed on them in the recent past.

Edmir claims that as many as one in three citizens at the height of the regime were informants of some sort. ble to know. This may well play a part in the continuation of a culture that

encourages the people to portray a constantly censored public image of themselves, while keeping their privacy sacred from prying eyes.

Indeed, in stark contrast to the openness of the Xhiro, Albanians have an almost-religious devotion to the privacy of their personal lives. Relationship issues like divorce, affairs, and especially same-sex experiences, are guarded from public view with good reason – these scandals becoming widely known social standing. The cleaning lady at the hostel, Xhaxha, had been abandoned by her husband for an older woman.

Even a decade later, by the time I met her, her reputation was severely tarnished in the town: she was still ‘that woman whose husband left her’.

A particularly noticeable example of this culture of privacy is the shame attached to public drunkenness. Despite the constant presence of the fruit-based spirit Rakija at almost every meal, coffee, and conversation, in three months in Albania I never once saw a drunken Albanian. Control over one’s tongue and the maintenance of public standing is far too important to jeopardise with inebriation.

a middle-aged couple proudly displayed their clothes and baby pram to a group of passing old men with communist tattoos, as if to demonstrate how well they are doing in the new Albania. Their cheap replica of their poverty in a country with young men looked at their watches as it neared ten o’clock, motioning to their sisters that it was time to go home if they didn’t want to be spoken about. Walking with me, the hostel owner, Scotty, explained that “in Albania, it isn’t what you are, but

And yet, on the Xhiro, on that last night, there was more than just the hangover from a recent history of control, gossip, and paranoia. The throngs on the high street of Berat were unable to truly let go of the judgement, suspicion, and fear that their past had bequeathed them, yet nonetheless determined to remain a community. In the mêlée of ages, from those who remember a time before Communism to those who were born after its fall, one could observe the strength of Albanian society.

In the decades of Communist rule, surveillance cut deep scars in the cultural flesh of a nation that has historically valued its privacy.

It was in drunken conversation that an Albanian might have accidentally let slip a quip about Enver Hoxha, the tioned their enjoyment of Greek radio where it carried across the border.

Even in this post-surveillance state, where fear of the government may have subsided, fear of public opinion

Despite the culture of fear, the nagformers, and the wounds of recent history, the people still chose to meet en masse to walk every evening on the Xhiro. Out of the fragments of their former oppression, they are building a new society of trust and community.

manner.

So much is illustrated by the unspoken dialogues that occur everywhere on the Xhiro. On my last evening in Berat,

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ART PERCY PRESTON Percy is an undergraduate at St Hugh’s. He has exhibited at the RCA youth exhibition, and his work has been sold at Clockwork Studios in South London.

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I Vogue

Vogue

Daily Mail Tatler Telegraph Vogue

The New York Times

STAYING IN

Vogue Vogue

VOGUE An IntervIew wIth AlexAndrA ShulmAn

Vogue

by Sadie Levy GaLe illustrated by SaGe Goodwin

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Vogue Vogue

Vogue

“I don’t feel one tiny speck of guilt ever about what’s in Vogue, never have done.”

Vogue

Vogue

Woman’s Hour Sports Illustrated Vogue

Woman’s Hour

Vogue Vogue Vogue’s

Vogue

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In The PInk An Afternoon with oxford’s nudists ‘‘Penny, reach over and press the bubbles button, would you?’’ As the tub comes to life with a loud gurgle, Jerry begins to shake with uncontrollable laughter, causing the bubbles to spill over the edge. ‘‘The bubbles help out modest naturists who don’t want to have their bits on show!’’

Penny and Jerry are members of the 140-strong Oxford Naturist Club, founded in 1979. Ten years ago, the club acquired a secluded, eleven acre wooded site with a log cabin just outside Oxford. ‘‘Think of it like a tennis club,’’ Penny explains, ‘‘only instead of tennis we take our clothes off.”

“Well, I work for Save the Children and don’t want them to know that I have nipple piercings!”

One of the main challenges they face is not attracting what Penny describes in a lowered voice as ‘‘pervy people’’, and she is keen to emphasise that the club is an entirely desexualised environment. There is a three stage screening process and a gender quota that meant that Jerry, a male widower, was on the waiting list for four years. Penny has “never, ever” seen one of the men get an erection, but were that to happen, ‘‘I think I’d discretely say ‘oh Fred, go to the bushes for a few minutes.’’’

Penny and Jerry are also keen to disassociate themselves from less reputable, independent nudist clubs, which are not part of the British Naturist Association. These include ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, a nudist swimming spot on the

Cherwell, described by Jerry as “a bit more like a hangout for gays who want to pick people up.” Penny is also sceptical about nudist beaches where she has seen people “well, making love is the wrong word; having sex, and letting people watch them.”

Penny is “not ashamed of telling people [she’s] a naturist” and jokes that it’s a great dinner party conversation topic.

She got her husband, Harry, involved when they were dating: “I said did he fancy sunbathing and he was up for it so he got into it and now he’s a cover boy!” Penny points to a naturist magazine cover framed on the wall, showing Harry sitting naked in a canoe. Her father-in-law is also a member now: “when he stays with us I don’t even have to worry about putting a dressing gown on to bring him a cup of tea!”

Jerry is more discreet about his membership because he is on the local council and concerned that his “political adversees” might use it against him.

His family know that he is a naturist but “think [he’s] a bit mad”, and when his son recently bought a hot tub he set down a rule that there would be no naked tubbing. However, at a recent family party “by the end of the night everyone had drunk enough wine to think it was a great idea”, Jerry chuckles.

taking part in the London Naked Bike Ride: ‘‘I felt like bloody royalty with all the tourists going click, click, click… this year we got talking to a lovely woman with sticky tape over her nipples. When we asked why she said ‘I work for Save the Children and don’t want them to know that I have nipple piercings!’”

Penny and Jerry are both keen to encourage young people to join the Oxford Naturists. Membership is only £54/year, and Penny said there was the possibility of a student discount.

written by MirAndA hAll and holly isArd

While many see naturism as part of a broader ideology, Penny’s attitude is that ‘‘you don’t have to be all political about it’’. The club seems to emphasise fun and games over politics. The latest weekly activity was a show-and-tell, and Penny’s face lights up as she describes

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HigH Time A pArty drug finds new potentiAl

written by Chloe ingersent

G

rinding teeth, dilated pupils, a dry mouth: these characteristics are not exclusive to the bleary-eyed late-night clubber. While you might recognise them as the side effects of popular party drug MDMA (more precisely named 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine), a doctor might also identify them as reactions to an antidepressant.

rotonin, while Citalopram – one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants in the UK – seems to dull MDMA’s efforts to pull the user up to its euphoric summit. One anonymous contributor to the web’s most popular forum for experimental drug takers glumly describes: “it’s like Citalopram is the bully in the sandbox and won’t let anyone else in to play.”

The chemical similarities between ‘ecstasy’, or ‘mandy’, and certain medically prescribed antidepressants are evident to those who have experienced both drugs’ effects and noted

The mysterious cousinhood between these drugs would not have been lost on MDMA’s pioneering developers, who were less interested in their capacity for interplay than for healthcare. Alexander Shulgin, an American medicinal chem-

the relationship between these drugs on the emotional level is much more vague. The two compounds do not function identically within the body, and when ingested at the same time one drug does not enhance the effects of the other.

MDMA induces euphoria by stimulating the release of se-

report on the drug’s psychotropic effect on humans alongside a fellow pharmacologist, David Earl Nichols. Shulgin and Nichols described an “altered state of consciousness

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with emotional and sensual overtones.”

Psychotherapist Leo Zeff was so impressed with MDMA’s effects that he came out of his semi-retirement to proselytize for the drug. Among underground psychotherapists, MDMA developed a reputation for reducing patients’ psychological defences and stimulating therapeutic introspection.

It didn’t take long for ecstasy to break free from its beaker. Seeping through the night-time raves of Ibiza and Dallas in the early 80s, its rise accompanied the birth of acid house music.

MDMA worried the authorities given its perceived association with this disorderly youth movement. In July 1984, the Drug Enforcement Administration trolled substance in the US, and European government committees followed ment and the mainstream press created a moral panic. Mandy, however, kept dancing: even today it remains as vivacious as the rave culture that fuelled its spread.

The crack of the DEA’s gun may not have been heard over the noise of the party, but it certainly echoed through pharmacology. Upon MDMA’s classiyet been conducted to deduce its effectiveness for psychotherapy. Research on MDMA ground to a halt in the US for almost a decade, although some medical professionals continued to prescribe it illegally. Since then, scientists have attempted to claim back their psychopharmaceutical research inch by inch: in 1992 Dr Charles Grob was permitted to conduct an ascending-dose safety study in healthy volunteers.

Alaskan rape victim Donna Kilgore attacks, and angry outbursts with conventional prescription drugs. One psychiatrist eventually diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suggested that she might eclipse her melancholy with ecstasy. Kilgore found that the drug offered her solace.

In an interview with The Sunday Times she described how ingestion would “clear the fog so I could see. Down there was guilt, anger, shame, fear. And it wasn’t so bad. I thought, ‘I can do this.’”

in substance misuse, psychedelic researcher, and author of The Psychedelic Renaissance cy in the treatment of alternative disorders, “especially other anxiety disorders - including panic disorder, OCD and phobias,” as MDMA may allow the patient to explore their issues in detail. “I see MDMA as acting a little like a lifejacket,” Sessa says, “It doesn’t completely numb or extinguish all the pain, but gives the patient just enough courage and strength to go into battle with their demons, to face their fears and, crucially, do important psychotherapeutic work.”

In ‘Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial,’ broadcast on Channel 4 in Septem-

reseArCh ConduCted for this promising drug is governed muCh less by ‘rigorous sCientifiC evAluAtion’ thAn by the AutoCrACy of soCiAl tAboo. ber 2012, scans of participants’ brains negative memories – the inevitable tollbooth between PTSD and therapeutic recovery – the brain scans showed a decreased activation under MDMA compared with placebo. Patients would of traumas past, their eyes dilating in a neat metaphor for their increasing emotional openness.

It should be recognised that these studies were carried out in those who had been exposed to MDMA in the past, with extremely small numbers of volunteers. Such experimental constrictions prevent this work alone from validating MDMA as a universally useful antidepressant candidate. However, what these scans could achieve is stimulation of discussion regarding MDMA’s potential in the search for

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a cure for depression. MDMA, it appears, lifts the drawbridge between two important ‘connector hubs’ in the brain that demonstrate elevated connectivity in depression; it may offer a valuable trove of potential breakthroughs in the treatment of this common illness by breaking sufferers’ overly rigid, introspective thinking patterns.

That same year scientists in Southern Australia, including Irina Majumdar and Rodney Irvine, chimed in enthusiastically in support of this hypothesis.

Their published study in the Journal of Addictive Behaviours sought the practicable truth behind the “similarities between [MDMA]’s mechanisms of action and those of prescribed antidepressants.” They concluded that those with a predisposition for depression would, so to speak, ‘feel the sunshine’ most keenly.

Optimism among psychiatric patients and their doctors about MDMA’s healing potential in a variety of mental disorders has crystallised into organisations such as the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in California. MAPS states level-headed respect arguably never demonstrated by their opponents’ hysteric predecessors: “MAPS envisions a world where psychedelics... are safely and where research is governed by

In the UK, mandy’s muzzle is heavier: much to some scientists’ frustration, research conducted for this promising drug is governed much less by ‘rigorautocracy of social taboo. The Class A status of psychedelics including ecstasy makes many of the UK’s universities and funding bodies unwilling to support much-needed research into ‘Drugs Live’ owed its heartbeat to entertainment, not science.

In the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London (a colleague of Dr Sessa’s) argues with the same acerbic the Advisory Council on the Misuse

of Drugs in 2009: “This hindering of research and therapy is motivated by politics, not science. It’s one of the censorship in modern times. The ban on embryonic stem cell research by the Bush administration is the only possible contender, but that only affected the USA, not the whole world.”

Research into its application to mental illness is strangled. Writing in The Lancet, Sessa points out that we ‘‘must avoid the pitfalls of the past by separating the therapeutic uses of these drugs from their historical recreational misuse.’’ MDMA’s usage as party drug and MDMA’s usage as potentially life-saving antidepressant are very different.

As in the 1980s, the British press’s shrill scold must shoulder some of the blame. “It is so frustrating when I see MDMA criticised in the press or the medical literature. It is as if the playing Another look at the data encourages us to push the pendulum of debate back in the opposite direction: between 2009 and 2011, there were twelve recorded deaths in the UK where an ecstasy-type drug was implicated. The British Journal of Psychiatry, conversely, offers eight for deaths involving antidepressants over a period of the same length (1998 to 2000). Dr Sessa is exasperated: “I regularly prescribe opiates to my patients. Just because heroin abuse occurs does not mean that doctors cannot safely prescribe morphine, diamorhine, pethidine, and codeine. So why shouldn’t we be trusted to safely prescribe MDMA too?” He continues in imploring the medical profession to “see it for what it is; simply a useful pharmacological compound with some impressive qualities making it useful for the treatment of anxiety problems.”

Today medical professionals suggest that to tell depressed patients about the potential side effects of their antidepressants at all is unnecessary; to do so might dissuade us from taking our medicine. Yet with a destructive hypocrisy, the same self-appointed nanny chides our scientists for even experimenting with mandy. Researched, tals of MDMA could contain hope for those battling with melancholia.

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HOLY LAND THE WORLD’S NO. 1 JESUS-THEMED AMUSEMENT PARK Written by MIRANDA HALL

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uns get free entry into Holy Land, but for the rest of us it costs 70 pesos. A trio of smug-faced sisters glides past security while the less godly are crushed together in the sweaty mass of a 20-minute queue. I am wedged in the middle of a group of Mormon missionaries from Utah wearing personalised red anoraks.

I tap “JOE: MISSION LEADER” on the back to ask him some questions.

Joe is a big fan of Tierra Santa – this being his third visit – and likes saying things twice: “oh, I think it’s wonderful.

Just wonderful.” tivity laser show. The shepherd checking tickets solemnly informs me this is the park’s most spiritual location and that visitors have heard angels talking to them during the show. In a cavernous room, multi-coloured spotlights whirl around the stage to electro music, and a disco ball illuminates suspended cherubs. The overall effect is a bit like a school disco but with fewer snogging animals. The celestial voices unfortunately aren’t audible above the woman on my row choking on the green smoke billowing out from a machine behind us.

The park’s main attraction is meant to be an 18-metre Jesus with ‘18 mechanical movements’ rising from a plastic mountain every hour, but I manage to miss it every time. My regret is compounded when I bump into Joe and the Mormons later on. Joe tells me that “it was quite a sight, quite a sight”, and Joe’s wife Marni describes the experience as “A-M-A-Z-I-N-G”.

Holy Land is not for thrill seekers. The closest thing to a ride is the “rotating round with camels and donkeys that don’t even spin or go up and down. an angry-looking man dressed as Pontius Pilate. I can’t work out whether he’s really getting into Jesus-hating character or just has an aversion to sugary snacks. In a plastic-Bethlehem alleyway encouraged to contemplate how ‘happiness is not about possessing– it is about loving’ and to ask myself ‘how many times does our pride prevent us from asking for help??’

Visitors queue up to take photos of themselves posing next to forty lifesize plastic models of Jesus. My fa-

vourite of the biblical scenes depicts Jesus angrily expelling a salesman from the temple: “do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:16).

It seems an odd message from the privately owned commercial enterprise that has turned Jesus’s life into a lucrative franchise.

The gift shop is an Aladdin’s Cave of gaudy, glittering kitsch. Gory bronzes of Christ bleeding on the Cross jostle behind glass, a crowd of collectable bling cabbage-patch kids gaze out, goggle-eyed.

Disillusioned with the Resurrection, I don’t bother to queue up for the Holy Fountain where visitors have allegedly had visions. Instead, I wander around, staff parking area where a shifty-looking Roman Soldier is taking a cigarette break. I ask him about the stories of heavenly voices and visions in the park.

“Yes, I have heard this too. But I think these people are a little, you know…”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not really a religious guy myself. I used to work at McDonald’s, now I’m here, supervising the Last Supper. The pay is better.”

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SAUDADE A SHORT STORY BY MIRIAL GORDIS

WINNER OF THE ISIS FICTION COMPETITION Illustration by HARRIET BRUCE

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O

ne summer before the end of the world, Clement’s mother packed up her bags and took him away from the house where he had grown up. He was sorry to leave that city on the whitewashed California coast, the blue fog that pooled on the horizon, the lace curtains of his grandmother’s house and the sandcastle toys she kept in the back closet. He wanted to bring his mould but his mother said he wouldn’t need it – they weren’t going to the beach and there wasn’t room in his backpack.

The backpack had planets on it. His grandmother had bought it at the dollar store for one crumpled American bill from the box under her bed. She wanted him to understand the solar system, she said, to understand that they were tiny, inconsequential beings She set up the Milky Way in the living room and watched him move the stars around, here and there, while The View played on the television. His mother sat on the back porch and smoked and watched the ocean.

She was tall and brown and she had a mournful mouth like Salvador Dalí.

She told him he had washed up one day on the beach, where the surf turned green on the sand, wrapped in an Indian blanket. She had shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted into the sun, but as far as she could see, there was only sea and sky and no one else to claim him. So she wrapped him up and took him home with her. er was a commuter, who talked about serial killers the whole way. When he let them off, he suggested they turn around. The world wasn’t safe for a woman without a mission and her gypsy baby. The second driver was a Steinbeck pilgrim, bound for Monterey. He shared a joint with Clement’s mother and dropped them in the dusty cenmiles from the coast. Clement’s mother bought Clement a milkshake and then decided to take a bus.

Later, the house by the sea would become a grainy snapshot behind his eyes. He knew the address but it might as well have been gone forever, the way

that your parents are gone forever if you lose track of them in the supermarket. Once his mother called his grandmother from a payphone in Los Angeles but the quarters ran out before he got a chance to speak. He had wanted to tell her that he had seen a mammoth on Wilshire Boulevard.

In the Miracle Mile, Clement’s mother became a bird woman. She sat in the shadow of the art museum and fed the pigeons bits of hotdog buns and chips that people dropped and scraps of holy poetry all day long. “We all have gifts,” she told Clement one evening. “We just have to not be afraid of where they take us.”

She gave out advice liberally and most of it sounded like a new age Hallmark card. That was how she met the Marquis, late one afternoon, when the orange light circled around her feet and left her face dark. He had just come out of an exhibit about Astro Boy and he was eating a package of rice cakes so absently that he didn’t notice where he was going. When he walked into Clement’s mother, she helped him up graciously and swept the spilt rice cakes into a pile for the pigeons.

“You can’t always look where you’re going,” she said soothingly. “How else could you stumble into your future?”

The Marquis was so impressed by her fortune cookie platitudes and her saffron perfume that he invited her to dinner. He even bought Clement an enormous sundae. Clement understood the implied barter and was disgusted. He picked at it until it melted in the glowing Los Angeles night and the slushy syrup ran down the sides of the glass.

The Marquis wanted to be a leading man. He was tall and stringy and he played the ukulele. He wore rings on his thumbs and he was making a slam poetry project with black and white slides.

On sunny days, he put grease in his hair and went off to look for venues for his slam poetry and his bluesy, throaty soul music. He taught Clement to play the ukulele and then taught him the chords for Back in the USSR because kids these days didn’t know anything about history. The Marquis believed that anime and Marxism and cotton candy

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were going to save the world or maybe there would be an apocalypse and then nothing would matter, anyway. We’re not getting any younger, said Clement’s mother, but the Marquis still bought cans of peas and beans whenever he went to the grocery store.

Los Angeles was a strange and alien beast to Clement. At 13, he stole a bike because it was orange and the lock was broken and he was bored out of his mind. His mother was furious but the Marquis sat him down and talked for hours about the principles of stealing from the rich. He got animated and paced around, waving his hands, his words coming faster and faster. Clement curled up on the couch and tried to sleep through it. He didn’t even really want the orange bike. He wanted the city to fold back onto itself like a popup book, all the high rises and the tening until the horizon stretched out endlessly.

There must have been girls at some point. There is lost love in everyone’s past or at least, the possibility of lost love: evenings that smell like wisteria by in someone else’s sunglasses, eyes that hold yours too long on the street and the larger-than-life bubblegum lips on a billboard, promising a whole different world.

“You were born with old eyes,” his mother told him one vacation. She was on a quest for karma. She had a guidebook for soul seekers and she referred to it at every road sign as they descended into the Mojave Desert. It was outdated, which irritated the Marquis, and the directions were not very accurate.

But the desert was all color, a clash of gold on the burnished blue of the sky, When they stopped, the air was so hot that Clement thought breath would crystalize in it, into steam or the rank odour of memory.

“I was afraid when you were born, because I didn’t know how to take care of you. But then I saw your eyes and I knew you were an old soul and I would never have to worry about you. There’s a Portuguese word for that kind of memory, missing something you had,

maybe in a former life, maybe something you never really had. There’s no English word for it, even though it’s what life is all about: a moment of suffering that you miss before it’s even over.”

She had become spiritual. She exuded radiance like a light in her face. Her platitudes had become suddenly rich, imbued with metaphors and allusions and tremendous longing. Clement did not understand it and it made him uneasy because he sensed correctly that he was losing her. In the yellow interior of their kitchen, she grew slowly into herself. She lit candles everywhere, complaining that it was too dark and then the smell of smoke. Up and around her

it grew, like the protective globe of a light bulb, clasping her feet narrowly and opening into a dome up around her head. It was tough and springy to the touch like a thick sheet of transparent rubber. Clement thought if you cut it, she would have bled.

So he packed up and left, wandering the way he had as a child, sleeping in the sweat of strangers and living on their charity. In the lowlands of Louisiana, he found work in a sleepy bar, and frogs croaked a few blocks away.

He served beer in a trance for nearly six months, breathing Cajun music until he knew all their songs. They were about death, about love betrayed and abandoned, and they were all songs

you had to dance to. That’s the blues, for life here, we’ve got to dance. Haven’t you ever loved anything? You love something because you know it’s going to leave you.

He thought he might have fallen in love with New Orleans, uncomprehending and star-struck, when a storm blew up from the Gulf and deluged the city with water. In the weeks that followed, he sat in the high and dry of the French Quarter, while the city drowned and be the end of the world.

***

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41

Intellectual

RebIRth AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIA KRISTEVA

By DANIELLA SHREIR

I

Illustration by SAGE GOODWIN

In a recent talk on the subject of French intellectuals, Noam Chomsky asserted that “France is an extremely insular culture… everything is in France; nothing is anywhere else”. He noted the particular status accorded to the French intelligentsia: “French intellectuals tend to be media stars. They’re on the front pages of Le Monde…but if you want to be taken seriously, you constantly have to have something new to say.”

Julia Kristeva is one such star. Hers is a name that conjures multiple associations. She has been variously

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literary critic, sociologist, feminist, novelist and linguist. Noam Chomsky Maoist”, and the literary critic Gayatri Spivak of taking a First World approach to Third World culture. Nevertheless, her voice has spanned several decades of intellectual life.

Standing under the departures board at Paddington Station, Kristeva is chaperoned by a man from the French Embassy, holding a sign emblazoned with “KRISTEVA” in black marker.

He has just chauffeured her from the Eurostar in a blacked-out car. As we board the train to Oxford, she is quick to inform us of her itinerary: “I must go to the shop that sells the sweaters with the big gold Oxford crest. And also to the market to buy the Oxford sausage… In France, there is a famous website dedicated to the Oxford sausage. Really! You can go and look for yourself.”

Kristeva arrived in Paris from Bulgaria in 1965, immediately providing innovation in an alien intellectual context. A year after her arrival she coined the term ‘intertextuality’, in an attempt to synthesise the Swiss linguist Saussure’s semiotics. She then proceeded to involve herself heavily in the build-up to May 1968, a month that saw confrontations between the police and students in Paris, bringing workers out on general strike and the government to the brink of collapse.

Later, she lent a solitary female perspective to the radical avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel, whose founders and contributors over the years have included Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Umberto Eco. Their lives, seeming to epitomise a particularly French brand of cultured society, were documented by the country’s newspapers and magazines.

The images still resonate, remaining black and white photographs of the group laughing, drinks in hand, outside a bar on the Left Bank; sepia snaps of them smiling beside monuments celebrating the achievements of Communism during their regimemarshalled pilgrimage to China in

1974, which was the catalyst for the magazine’s subsequent rupture with their Maoist ties.

Most of her former colleagues have long since departed, their ideas often surviving as no more than a few key buzzwords- but Kristeva’s canon is still constantly evolving. She regards the present epoch as “a weak

particularly in the realms of mass

“All women should be composed of each woman. A singular but shareable liberty, which is the key to the liberation of everyone.” communication and social media, where she believes the hegemony of the image has led to the consequent impoverishment of language. Yet, clutching both her BlackBerry and iPhone, it seems that she has forged the required reconciliation.

At the age of 24, Kristeva had already uprooted her life in Bulgaria and reestablished herself at the forefront of the French avant-garde. Does she think her ability to adapt stems from this formative experience? “In a way, yes.” She recalls reading the works of the Russian formalists and some philosophy in Bulgaria, but remaining fairly ignorant of psychoanalysis until

When Kristeva arrived in Paris, she was immediately ushered to Jacques Lacan’s classes by Philippe Sollers (writer and founder of Tel Quel, who later became her husband). This was a surreal experience for the young Kristeva. It was this introduction to psychoanalysis that functioned as a sort of rebirth “into a French infancy”. By the time she was given an Honorary Doctorate acceptance speech had to be translated into Bulgarian by a third party.

These intellectually rooted rebirths - a process that she calls “deconstruction and reconstruction” - are still occurring, albeit on a smaller scale. Kristeva has Reliance, about motherhood, a subject on which she wishes to open a discourse, as she believes it has been ignored and rejected by feminists.

Kristeva is keen to hear about prominent political movements in Oxford, which she sees as symptomatic of an ‘adolescent revolt’. In the past decade, Kristeva has been much concerned with this idea of revolt, discussing the word’s etymological roots and adopting it in reference to subjects as diverse as 9/11 (what she terms ‘political revolt’) and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (‘cultural revolt’).

her move. Her only knowledge of the

She maintains this discourse when we discuss student-led feminism.

“Feminism has this combative philosophy based on revolt, which has become an ideal in which lots of female adolescents have invested...

Of course, both sexes, as adolescents, need to overcome various problems but, with young women’s investment in feminism and their constant seeking to surpass themselves, I think it’s notable that it is young men who are living much more of an existential crisis in this generation. They don’t have the possibility of wagering on an emancipatory ideal.”

Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams which my father hid in the study,” she tells me. “He was an extremely aware and cultivated man. But we never showed it to others as it was considered too bourgeois.”

Given her faith in psychoanalytic theory, it is unsurprising that Kristeva uses it to support this thesis: “recently, psychoanalytical studies have noted that the greatest enterprise for women is on the plane of the acquisition of

“It is young men who are living much more of an existential crisis in this generation. They don’t have the possibility of wagering on an emancipatory ideal.”

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knowledge. Being the greater students,

compelling as a differential aspect between adolescent men and women.”

But this is where an insurmountable problem with the term ‘feminism’ arises for Kristeva: “What could be taken for a positive has its problematic sides. These movements encourage such an absolute level of engagement that a sort of dogmatism is always present. It seems that the goal of the feminist movement is in the liberation which is total for a community... one which can never be conjugated in the singular.”

Kristeva gives FEMEN, a feminist whose “weapons are bare breasts” as an example of a dangerous, “typically adolescent” revolt. “It is an extreme worry that, in trying to destroy the norms, these women destroy themselves in demanding a negative narcissism. A naked body that, by giving itself as a non-believer to the dictator, damages

itself in the process.” Yet Kristeva does not deny the effectiveness of these protests, which she describes as electroshocks: “It’s a provocation which quietly demonstrates how the enemies of women are obsessed by their nudity too and, in this way, it’s a way of unmasking obscurantism.

That’s why we have to defend these women against their imprisonment and condemnation”. Kristeva turns again to her lexicon of deconstruction and reconstruction: “FEMEN protests can be seen as a jolt which invites us to look at alternatives. If not, we’re held in a bind between tyrant and slave that can continue to eternity... The problem of a way out of this bind between norm and revolt and in instead proposing innovative alternatives.”

Is there anything, then, that better “I think we should here remember the great medieval philosopher Duns Scotus, who said that all truth is contained in the demonstrative pronoun ‘this’: that is, liberation and revolt for both this man and for that

woman. So when people ask me if I’m a feminist, I say, no, I am a Scottist.” She laughs. “Of course, this complicates things, but what I mean is that ‘all women’ should be composed of each woman. A singular but shareable liberty, which is the key to the liberation of everyone.”

In the Oxford merchandise shop on Broad Street, Kristeva buys three embroidered crest sweaters and three pairs of jogging bottoms. At the till, she pulls out a photo from her wallet: Kristeva, Sollers and their son, all in Christmas tradition in our household!” she tells me. At the Covered Market, however, the butcher has never heard of the Oxford sausage phenomenon. forth translation and the formation of an increasingly large queue behind us, he changes his mind. “My son will be so happy,” she says. “He told me that I am not welcome back in France without the sausage!”

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OPPENHEIMER A poem by MATT BROOMFIELD

“I

f the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”.

th

“she loved this country and its people and its life.”

“So death doth touch the Resurrection” *

W

45

SOVIET SPIRIT Russia’s GeneRational HanGoveR

Written by ALICE RIVERS

O

ne week my comrade Vladimir, a retired professional trombonist with the Yaroslavl municipal wind band, turned up to rehearsals in a pair of Aviators, despite it being the depths of the Russian winter. When I asked him why, he lifted his shades to show me two swollen

In January 2013, the selling of beer from Russia’s ubiquitous kiosks was outlawed. This was a far-reaching measure, with kiosks having accounted for around 30% of national beer sales. A year on, I am confronted by middle-aged men

Russian gesture for ‘I had a drink’. He told me I should try it

illegally, while others, presumably having been faced with some harassment, hang notices stating ‘we don’t sell beer, and never will!’

Russia is not in denial of its alcohol problem. A recent study published in medical journal The Lancet found, through a prospective study in over 150,000 adults, that ‘‘vodka (or other strong alcoholic drink) is a major cause of death in Russia’’. Consequently, Putin’s government has implemented a crackdown on alcohol in the past few years. We only need to see Putin’s self-promotional photo shoots, depicting him plunging into an icy Siberian river, or riding topless on horseback, to know that he is a man who values a healthy lifestyle and the maintenance of a sterling physique.

The government has also banned alcohol sales between the hours of 11pm and 8am. While this legislation is well intentioned, it risks driving drinking culture underground, as Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign did in 1985. In response to the restrictive laws, Russians simply produced their own homemade vodka - ‘samagon’- creating a thriving black market in alcohol.

thinks are the roots of the culture of alcohol abuse, and

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“Now man’s life is very normal, he is in office or lazy on sofa, he is bored and unmotivated, so he drinks.” its fatal consequences. In her 50s, she knew life on either side of perestroika (the political reformation of the Soviet system during the 1980s), and claims that it all went wrong for the men of

fall of the Soviet Union. Now man’s or lazy on the sofa, he is bored and

represented ‘real’ men as manual labourers, and presented the most industrious workers and miners as labour went hand-in-hand with the notion of virility. In contrast, the modern Russian man feels impotent and unimpressive if he spends his working day in front of a computer.

Therefore, Olga reasons, he drinks, as hard drinking is still the preserve of the

When asked in what way men’s lives There are clearly many holes in this argument; not least that alcoholism men served in the army, participated in sports, and spent time hunting and

a traditional ‘healthy’ masculinity.

The decline of the Soviet Union, says Olga, saw much of this change.

There are now very few opportunities for men to be ‘men’. As industry modernises, and the importance of the military declines, there is less need for manpower. As a result, the nature of work that men undertake conforms less to the traditional Soviet stereotype of masculinity.

Under communism, working men were encouraged to conform to a masculine ideal. Widespread Soviet propaganda

1991. However, it is true the collapse of the Soviet Union saw alcohol consumption spike as Russia bid farewell to Gorbachev and his antialcohol legislation, and welcomed Yeltsin, infamous for appearing drunk in public on several occasions.

There is probably a kernel of truth in Olga’s idea of a ‘lost generation’.

There is a distinct difference between the drinking habits of the young adults generation now in their 50s and 60s.

Albina is my 77-year-old landlady. Her unequivocal worldview is that Soviet Russia was great, today’s Russia is

47

awful, and alcohol and cigarettes are the stuff of the Devil.

However, when my brother visited for morning coffee, Albina insisted

spitting over her shoulder at the mention of alcohol, in Albina’s world it is still a cultural imperative that she serves vodka to a male guest.

On the shallow window ledge of my

Ruski Standard, a half full Baltika, a bottle smashed into fragments on the smell of beer hangs on the breath of a fellow traveller on the trolleybus, or a middle-aged man passes along a street, worse for wear.

The culture of binge drinking, so endemic among British youth, appears to be absent from Russian student

nightlife. Admittance into clubs and ‘face control’, where if women are deemed attractive enough they are let in for free, and men for a fee. Though this is a morally questionable system, the mood inside is quite civilised and you will certainly not be let in if you

at Yaroslavl University, says that while there are of course some students who whole there is an encouraging trend of a lot of young people striving to live a healthy lifestyle who rarely drink.’’

smoke), a motivational page with over The problem in Russia is one of dayto-day dependence on alcohol, often as a coping mechanism for those who have lived through a period of disruptive change. Statistics show the vast majority of people over 45 feel great nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

And yet there are grounds for optimism. The alcohol-induced death rate before the age of 55 has decreased in recent years, from 37% in 2006 to 25% in 2013. And many students appear to have a more measured attitude to drinking. Ksenya, studying

48

that this mindset is largely fuelled by the desire of young people to look well in their studies, to stand them in good stead for the world of work.

come to terms with the loss of its clear socialist ideals. But a new generation, given the chance to live in a connected world with a new set of aspirations, could be less ready to turn to the bottle than their elders.

HIKIKOMORI JAPAN’S LOST GENERATION Written by LIVVI YALLOP Illustrated by EMMA SNASHALL

F

rom the wide-eyed, pastel pink of kawaii ‘cuteness’ to the gothic street style of the harajuku ‘lolitas’, Japan’s head-turning youth subcultures receive global media attention. However, a more disturbing adolescent trend underlies the national obsession with cartoons, cuteness,

out of shakai (society) aged 16 -21, shunning human contact whilst relying and social support. Hikikomori, two-thirds of whom are male, lead a solitary existence indoors and online, room. They can remain in isolation

Sufferers are not psychotic, depressive or agoraphobic. They don’t self-harm or starve themselves. They simply don’t want to leave the house. and kitsch. Hikikomori (ひきこも, literally ‘withdrawn’) is an acute form of social withdrawal currently affecting over 3,600,000 Japanese youths. These modern-day hermits tend to drop

from six months to over ten years.

“I didn’t leave my room, not even to pee,” describes one sufferer. “I did that in bottles.” Just what is happening to Japan’s vanishing youth?

in conjunction with adolescents by Japanese media in 1999, after a spate of youth crimes were linked to rising depression and introverted behaviour.

The phenomenon quickly formalised, with the Japanese Ministry of Health establishing a clinical research group in June 2000 to determine why cases of young adults who refused to come out of their homes were beginning to emerge.

Research directed by leading hikikomori psychiatrist Saito Tamaki was quick to differentiate the disorder from other mental conditions such as depression. diagnosis distinguish hikikomori from individual psychological conditions: sufferers are not psychotic, depressive or agoraphobic. They don’t self-harm or starve themselves. They simply don’t want to leave the house. The condition

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appears to be a localised form of social cultural context in Japan.

Jeffrey Angles, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Language, and Translation Studies and translator of Saito’s canonical Hikikomori: Adolescence without End, explains: “There are people that suffer in similar ways in other countries, but... certain cultural elements exacerbate the problem in Japan. The same children that might end up as hikikomori in Japan are more likely to end up as homeless in Europe or America.”

Online forums such as hikiculture. net allow sufferers to connect over the Internet, and share their stories. An 18-year-old user named ‘afraidofsunlight’ describes their experience: “I wish I wasn’t this way. I don’t want to die knowing that I have not lived. Will I always be like this?” just wanted to take a break but now it seems like I’m avoiding the society.

I even want to avoid my family. The thought of going back to work actually scares me. I’d rather stay at home all day not talking to anyone and just wish people will leave me alone. I’d divert my attention by reading manga and watching anime. Now I’m on the road to otaku-ness...”

There are many theories as to why Japan has fostered this unique social reclusion amongst its youth. Some cite the extreme cultural pressure felt by adolescents to succeed in school.

Others suggest its stringent social traditionalism and archaic samurai notions of honour and respect are intimidating to a younger generation

themselves otaku, a sentiment further the former Prime Minister of Japan himself.

Jeffrey Angles describes the withdrawal of hikikomori sufferers as “an attempt thus avoid some of the back-breaking

Japan’s Ministry of Health have declared hikikomori a cultural crisis. attempting the transition into adulthood. Japan’s notoriously complex behavioural codes are claustrophobic to the point of linguistic entrenchment, with heavy importance placed on ‘keigo’ (respectful language), a graded grammar.

Hikikomori feeds into a wider cultural discourse of ‘otaku’, or obsession, described by the sufferer above. Otaku is used to express the fanatic tendency of Japanese adolescents to follow subcultures such as manga fandoms, or the extreme dressing of urban style tribes, as documented by harajuku style magazine FRUiTS. In 2013, half the participants of a study of nearly 140,000 Japanese people declared

pressures that come with ‘adult’ responsibility.” Indeed, much otaku activity occurs online, through gaming, systems that recreate anything from imaginary pets to fully interactive cyber girlfriends. This digital retreat bears social relationships of otaku youths.

The term ‘dokuo’ (meaning ‘poison man’) was coined to describe single males with an Internet obsession, and sexual compulsions realised entirely through simulated dating technology or the animated pornography known as hentai.

A less extreme connection can be made to Japan’s burgeoning ‘friendship industry.’ Tokyo’s backstreets play

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host to ‘cuddle cafes’, where young men can pay by the hour for a ‘cuddle companion’ to replicate real affection, whilst platonic male escort services – with services strictly limited to conversation – thrive amongst young

“I wish I wasn’t this way. I don’t want to die knowing that I have not lived.”

Japanese businesswomen. It appears that otaku trends, replacing human interaction with digital substitutes, have led to decreased social interaction and withdrawal among the young.

Japan’s Ministry of Health has declared hikikomori a “cultural crisis”. The sheer number of Japan’s vanishing youth could have severe socioeconomic repercussions, playing into the country’s already unstable national demographic. A swiftly ageing population is turning Japan into a ‘grey race’ at a net loss of around 660,000 citizens per year, according to the census. It is predicted that by 2030, one in three people will be over 65. The change is clearly visible in everyday life: adverts for incontinence pads and life insurance jostle for space with car commercials on primetime television.

Japan’s traditional nuclear family model is slowly disappearing, as reproduction fails to keep up.

Preparations have begun for a 2030 ‘reintegration crisis,’ by which point the older generation of parents and parasitical hikikomori behaviour will have passed away. Forum user ‘Crystalline’ describes the struggle for social reintegration: “I was hikikomori for prolonged periods starting about ten years ago, but with breaks in between to return to college, fail at reintegrating myself, then returning to being hikki.” There are multiple hikikomori rehabilitation programmes in existence, but for forum user ‘Angles’ the problem is as much to do with how the condition is perceived, as it is to do with its treatment. “In Japan, many people still have a stigma about getting psychological help,” he says, because psychiatry is “not yet considered part of holistic health.”

The solution must be found in creating a care system that combines psychological treatment with societal reintegration that will recreate what Angles calls “the early years of adjustment” in an immersive environment. New Start, a not-forby Futagami Nouki, is one of these programmes. He treats hikikomori (or ‘social refugees’ as he prefers them to be called) in ‘integrated welfare communities’ modelled on those used in Europe for the mentally ill. New Start runs six residential facilities in

Japan as small village-like communities, aiming to recreate the real world on a small scale, complete with bakeries, shops and restaurants. Nouki describes these centres: “[patients are] not treated as guests, so we put them to work right away, baking bread in the bakery, taking care of the elderly, looking after kids in the daycare centre.”

will go to the daycare centre and try to get away from the children. But to catch this young person who’s trying to escape, they’ll have a play partner all to themselves, so the children chase them down... then, in about two weeks, that kid who was unable to open up to anybody is sitting with the child who chased him down, smiling and feeding him his lunch.”

Nouki concludes: “It’s important to make them realise that [hikikomori], too, are part of society and make it what it is.” Parents, friends, and this simulated version of society must play as much of a role in curing hikikomori as the sufferer themselves. “I want to break out from this chrysalis,” writes one forum user. In order for Japan’s vanishing adolescents to escape from their mental cocoons, the change must come from both within and without.

A survey by the Ministry of Health in 2012 revealed an astonishing 72% of male respondents aged 16 to 19 had no interest in sex or sexual activity.

In Tokyo, the average number of occupants per household had dropped to 1.99 by 2012. Furthermore, Japan has abnormally high suicide rates - 33,000 per year according to the Tokyo Daily. (This trend reaches a morbid peak amongst the trees of the famous Aokigahara ‘suicide forest’, a peaceful national park situated at the base of Mount Fuji where hundreds of people attempt suicide each year). It is unsurprising that the government is concerned for the country’s youth.

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ART

SAGE GOODWIN

Sage is an undergraduate at St Hilda’s. She has studied at Central St Martins and now reads History. She is an illustrator for Cherwell and the Creative Director for ISIS.

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DEPOLITICISING EMPOWERMENT LESSONS FROM THE OCCUPATION OF SOFIA UNIVERSITY

Written by MIRELA IVANOVA Photographs by ELENA BADEVA and YAVOR DUDIN

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A

ll the lights are dimmed, bar those on the stolen road signs and the coloured Christmas lights on the tree, crafted from bottles of beer. The red and yellow glow illuminates the Stella and Staroprammen.

years of Ottoman occupation.

Given the prevailing discontent and disconnection with the Bulgarian state they speak of, an appeal to a naturalistic and atavistic connection with the Bulgarian nation seems as necessary a motivation now as it was then.

It is a wide room with one bed. The smoke of cheap cigarettes mixes

On October 22nd, a group of around

tobacco, handpicked and handcrafted, was lovingly prepared with overtones of honey and vanilla. Or so they tell me.

I cough. The window opens and the night air lets itself in, along with the of an echoing socialist block in the early morning. The building stands somewhere in Bulgaria’s silent capital, New Year calm cricket stridulation, ambulance roars, and the faint echoes of loud music reverberate in the near distance.

Three o’clock, and we are still awake.

Eventually talk turns to the events of two months ago. They all erupt, explode, and collide when asked the simple question – why occupy?

University, Bulgaria’s most prestigious institution of higher education.

Throughout October and November, with students. They lived together, they made signs, organised demonstrations, created art installations, ate, slept, and cleaned, all together.

So why do it? Why occupy?

No-one speaks of politics. Nothing is said about authority, apart from the occasional nod to the ‘ideal’, the seem to have picked up from the Bulgarian freedom movements of the 19th century. This duty is to ‘restore’ Bulgaria; to ‘protect’ it.

It sounds pure, naïve, and passionate.

But essentially it is no more than an appeal to a romanticised notion, which came with the necessary reconstruction of Bulgarian nationalism after 500

entered Lecture Room 272, the biggest theatre in the Philosophy Faculty.

They had no intention of leaving.

The occupation was declared as ‘total’ two days later at a general council. All students were welcome. All doors were locked. By October 28th the number of students permanently residing in the theatre had peaked at 120 or so. Over 200 others came and went.

The University ceased all provision of lectures and classes. Within a week the occupiers were offered support by 140 lecturers, including the University’s Chancellor. Their Facebook group reached 30,000 likes, and similar occupations followed across the country. Some of the nation’s leading poets went to visit the occupation to speak with the students.

demonstrations and demands for the resignation of Bulgaria’s coalition government. This political amalgamation was made up of the remains of the old socialist left, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, an ethic-minority liberation party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and the xenophobic far-right group ATAKA. Formed in May 2013, after the abdication of the previous elected government in February, the coalition faced criticism from those accusing it of failing to stamp out the corruption, youth unemployment, and low wages that are rife throughout Bulgaria.

And yet politics was not the focus for the students I sat with. What the former occupiers spoke of most genuinely was the feeling of being a part of something, of how the emptiness of their seemingly apathetic generation was remedied by this symbolic occupation.

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The transformational power of a cause to a causeless and misguided youth is limitless.

They saw the disruption of education by those most eager to learn as apolitical. The occupation, for the four I spoke to, was a message to the people and by the people, not a message to the politicians. They actively denied political allegiance, and scorned the thought of entering parliament when I raised the possibility.

Karla, and the 1973 occupation of the Athens Polytechnic, where 23 were left dead and over 1500 injured. Both took place on November 17th.

Politics is a dirty word. ‘‘My dad told me when I was little there are two things you can call a man which cannot offend him more – that he’s a liar, and that he is a communist.’’ They giggle. It’s an old joke, perhaps no longer funny, but their laughter seems mechanically engrained.

The screaming, shouting, chanting and singing of the single word ‘QUIT’ was not a demonstration of their discontent to the governing power. It was a demonstration to the lethargic public of how to do ‘discontent’. And in that sense, they did teach lessons.

were warning colleagues and friends to be wary, to be aware, but most of all to act, and not merely to wait.

They started with kindness. Rather than respond to the violent encounters many of their peers had with the Bulgarian police, they made cardboard shields and painted them with front covers from literary greats. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and 19th Century Bulgarian poets marched down the city streets.

On November 17th, International Students’ Day, they painted their t-shirts with pink-dyed splashes of blood and lay ‘dead’ before the Bulgarian them reminding onlookers of the 1939 Nazi attack on the Czech university

They educated the public in protest and solidarity, through pomp and ceremony. And they did not look toward parliament. They were facing

As time gently slipped away, the four spoke of how this sense of unity consumed them. A paradigm of unity, created by the cold university walls, digested them. The world outside was no longer enough. Seeing, and being a part of this movement, you could not stop. You could not turn away.

They left the University in the day sometimes. They went home to shower, but dazed and bewildered returned immediately to feel at home again. These strangers, united by their awareness of the faults of their generation, found inside the cold comfort of comradeship; the comfort of being a part of something larger than them, of something supposedly meaningful.

In reality, perhaps, it was meaningless.

The truth is that the occupiers need the occupation more than it needs them.

They need to live it, to feel it and to experience it with others, in order to

once more attain the long-lost hope of improvement. To be able to speak out knowing that others are listening, and to snap out of apathy and complacency, empowers. This feeling that they are a part of something demonstrates the

But when I spoke with them in January, it was clear the occupation was going nowhere. By Christmas, it had already diminished in size - only Magna, the oldest construction in the Humanities building. On January 14th, the Aula Magna was handed back. The occupation voted for its own end. A short burst of counter-occupation by more extremist protestors followed, and all has now collapsed into messy and scattered groups of individuals, no longer safely tucked under their blanket of unity. Once empowered through participation, they are now thrown back into reality on their own.

But as far as the occupation is dead, the people who were inside it are alive again. The transformational power of a cause to a causeless and misguided youth is limitless.

They speak for hours, relentlessly, talking over one another. Their laughter shakes the shabby window panes. We open the chest, each draw out a mat We lie down.

they go off. The sun begins to rise.

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SOCCER AND SEXUALITY A Weekend With AmericA’s GAy soccer scene

Written by CALLUM MACRAE Photograph by DANIELLA SHREIR

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