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Victoria was the first State to allow adopted persons unqualified access to their original identity and to provide natural parents and others with conditional access to identifying information. This article examines findings from 1985 to 1988 to examine four assumptions. These are that: few adoptees would want to know about or meet their natural parents and so few would register with the Adoption Information Service; few adoptees would welcome an approach from or on behalf of their natural parents and most would reject such an approach; few relinquishing parents would wish to meet or know about their relinquished child and consequently most would reject an approach by or on behalf of their child; and adoptive parents would not wish to acknowledge the adoptive status of their children by providing information to the natural parent facilitating a meeting between the natural parent and the child. The data suggest that the above assumptions do not reflect the experience or behaviour of adopted persons, natural parents or adoptive parents.

"The Myth of Disaster Myths" published on by Oxford University Press.

This paper contributes a novel way to theorise the power of narratives of nuclear weapons politics through Kenneth Burke's concept of entelechy: the means of stating a things essence through narrating its beginning or end. The paper argues that the Manhattan Project functions narratively in nuclear discourse as an origin myth, so that the repeated telling of atomic creation over time frames the possibilities of nuclear politics today. By linking Burke's work on entelechy with literature on narrative and eschatology, the paper develops a theoretical grounding for understanding the interconnection of the nuclear past, present, and future. The paper supports its argument by conducting a wide-ranging survey of academic and popular accounts of the development of the atomic weapon in the US Manhattan Project. It reveals a dominant narrative across these accounts that contains three core tropes: the nuclear weapon as the inevitable and perfected culmination of humankind's tendency towards violence; the Manhattan Project as a race against time; and the nuclear weapon as a product of a fetishized masculine brilliance.

AbstractThis paper contributes a novel way to theorise the power of narratives of nuclear weapons politics through Kenneth Burke's concept of entelechy: the means of stating a things essence through narrating its beginning or end. The paper argues that the Manhattan Project functions narratively in nuclear discourse as an origin myth, so that the repeated telling of atomic creation over time frames the possibilities of nuclear politics today. By linking Burke's work on entelechy with literature on narrative and eschatology, the paper develops a theoretical grounding for understanding the interconnection of the nuclear past, present, and future. The paper supports its argument by conducting a wide-ranging survey of academic and popular accounts of the development of the atomic weapon in the US Manhattan Project. It reveals a dominant narrative across these accounts that contains three core tropes: the nuclear weapon as the inevitable and perfected culmination of humankind's tendency towards violence; the Manhattan Project as a race against time; and the nuclear weapon as a product of a fetishized masculine brilliance.

The foreign policy narrative of South Africa is strongly grounded in human rights issues, beginning with the transition from a racial segregation regime to a democracy. The worldwide notoriety of the apartheid South Africa case was one factor that overestimated the expectations of the role the country would play in the world after apartheid. Global circumstances also fostered this perception, due to the optimistic scenario of the post-Cold War world order. The release of Nelson Mandela and the collapse of apartheid became the perfect illustration of the victory of liberal ideas, democracy, and human rights. More than 20 years after the victory of Mandela and the first South African democratic elections, the criticism to the country's foreign policy on human rights is eminently informed by those origin myths, and it generates a variety of analytical distortions. The weight of expectations, coupled with the historical background that led the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa, underestimated the traditional tensions of the relationship between sovereignty and human rights. Post-apartheid South Africa presented an iconic image of a new bastion for the defence of human rights in the post-Cold War world. The legacy of the miraculous transition in South Africa, though, seems to have a deeper influence on the role of the country as a mediator in African crises rather than in a liberal-oriented human rights approach. This is more evident in cases where the African agenda clashes with liberal conceptions of human rights, especially due to the politicisation of the international human rights regime.

The article identifies two approaches to determining the linguistic conditions of the emergence and functioning of the myth. The first approach assumes that the myth is a manifestation of unconscious (M. Müller) or conscious (E. Cassirer, R. Barthes) distortion of language. Within this approach it is impossible to escape from myth because the presentation of the facts of the world in language is inescapable, which is always imperfect. These distortions are meant for political influence, as according to the proponents of the conscious mythologizing of language. Philosophy is tasked with resisting such distortions and, consequently, myth creation in general. This approach seems simplified, because the myth is identified here with the linguistic form of its distribution, reduced to the analysis of distortions of language presentation. At the same time, the psychological and epistemological preconditions of the myth, its unique status in the life of communities are lost. Conditions for the development of the second approach arise through the critique of classical rationality by several influential thinkers who undermined the belief in the exclusive ability of discursive language to present the truth (F. Nietzsche, L. Wittgenstein, M. Heidegger). The second approach assumes that the myth emerges and continues to exist due to the inability of the logos to present some important aspects of reality, especially its existential dimension (P. Tillich, H. Blumenberg, L. Hatab, K. Morgan). In this case, myth and logos become alternative and at the same time closely connected linguistic ways of presenting the truth. Logos (the language of science) presents primarily abstract causal connections of essences. At the same time, mythical narratives are better than science at presenting the mysteries of origin and existence, creating a hierarchy of values for communities. ; У статті виокремлено два підходи до визначення лінгвістичних умов появи і функціонування міфу. За першого підходу припускають, що міф є проявом несвідомого (М. Мюллер) або свідомого (Е. Кассирер, Р. Барт) викривлення мови. Міф є неусувним, адже неусувною є мовна презентація фактів світу, яка не буває досконалою. На думку прихильників свідомої міфологізації мови, ці викривлення здійснюються задля політичного впливу. На філософію покладається завдання протистояти такому викривленню, а отже, і міфотворчості загалом. Цей підхід видається спрощеним, оскільки міф тут ототожнюється з лінгвістичною формою його поширення, редукується до аналізу спотворень мовної презентації. При цьому втрачаються психологічні і гносеологічні передумови міфу, його унікальний статус у житті спільнот. Умови для розроблення другого підходу виникають через критику класичної раціональності низкою впливових мислителів, що підважили віру в ексклюзивну здатність дискурсивної мови презентувати істину (Ф. Ніцше, Л. Вітґенштайн, М. Гайдеґґер). Згідно з другим підходом, міф зароджується і продовжує існування через неспроможність логосу презентувати деякі важливі аспекти реальності, передовсім її екзистенційний вимір (П. Тілліх, Г. Блюменберґ, Л. Гатаб, К. Морґан). В такому разі міф і логос стають альтернативними та водночас тісно пов'язаними лінгвістичними способами презентувати істину. Логос (мова науки) презентує передовсім абстрактні каузальні зв'язки сутностей. Водночас міфічні оповіді краще за науку здатні презентувати таємниці походження і існування, створювати ціннісну ієрархію для спільнот.

Résumé Le champ de la réadaptation professionnelles des malades mentaux souffre d'une absence de cadre théorique bien que ses pratiques soient traditionnellement tenues pour appartenir au champ de la psychopathologie du travail, jusqu'à même en constituer le moment inaugural, selon une thèse récente, consacrée aux origines historiques, sociales et scientifiques de la psychopathologie du travail. La mise en discussion du présupposé de cette thèse, concernant le caractère d'improbabilité de la rencontre entre psychiatrie et travail, est l'occasion d'évoquer les rapports entre psychiatrie et travail, à partir d'auteurs « postfoucaldiens » : il est alors possible de montrer que si la réadaptation des malades mentaux continue à se déployer à l'écart de tout savoir préétabli, comme il y a maintenant plus de cinquante ans, c'est parce qu'elle s'alimente à la mission sociale qui l'origine, à travers les rapports sociaux du travail de soin dont fait partie le rapport soignant-soigné.

This thesis focuses on the study of the Irish festival of Bealtaine and a comparison with its English and British equivalent, i.e. May Day. Using a thorough comparative analysis of popular proverbs, sayings and folklore accounts written in the first parts of the 20th century by both Irish-speaking and English-speaking farmers, I successfully proved that the dichotomy between the Irish-speaking and English-speaking parts of the country mirrored a dichotomy in the origins of the May traditions in Ireland –when popular theory held that Bealtaine and May Day were in fact two names connected to the same celebration. The two languages therefore echo the history and culture of the British Isles. ; Nous étudions les diverses représentations de la fête du premier mai, dite fête de Beltaine (ou Bealtaine), en Irlande et en Grande-Bretagne à travers les âges (folklore et culture populaire des XIXe-XXIe siècles, fête du Moyen-Age, origines a priori celtiques) afin de comprendre sa symbolique et ses implications sociales, politico-religieuses et identitaires.

This thesis focuses on the study of the Irish festival of Bealtaine and a comparison with its English and British equivalent, i.e. May Day. Using a thorough comparative analysis of popular proverbs, sayings and folklore accounts written in the first parts of the 20th century by both Irish-speaking and English-speaking farmers, I successfully proved that the dichotomy between the Irish-speaking and English-speaking parts of the country mirrored a dichotomy in the origins of the May traditions in Ireland –when popular theory held that Bealtaine and May Day were in fact two names connected to the same celebration. The two languages therefore echo the history and culture of the British Isles. ; Nous étudions les diverses représentations de la fête du premier mai, dite fête de Beltaine (ou Bealtaine), en Irlande et en Grande-Bretagne à travers les âges (folklore et culture populaire des XIXe-XXIe siècles, fête du Moyen-Age, origines a priori celtiques) afin de comprendre sa symbolique et ses implications sociales, politico-religieuses et identitaires.