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The concept of "performativity" has risen to prominence throughout the humanities. The rise of financial derivatives reflects the power of the performative sign in the economic sphere. As recent debates about gender identity show, the concept of performativity is also profoundly influential on people's personal lives. Although the autonomous power of representation has been studied in disciplines ranging from economics to poetics, however, it has not yet been evaluated in ethical terms. This book supplies that deficiency, providing an ethical critique of performative representation as it is manifested in semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, poetics, theology and economics. It constructs a moral criticism of the performative sign in two ways: first, by identifying its rise to power as a single phenomenon manifested in various different areas; and second, by locating efficacious representation in its historical context, thus connecting it to idolatry, magic, usury and similar performative signs. The book concludes by suggesting that earlier ethical critiques of efficacious representation might be revived in our own postmodern era.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Part I: Conceptual and Analytic Frameworks -- Chapter 2 Federalism in the Era of Aboriginal Self-Government -- Chapter 3 Government Obligations, Aboriginal Peoples and Section 91(24) -- Chapter 4 Fiscal Arrangements for Aboriginal Self-Government -- Part II: Existing Federal and Provincial Responsibilities -- Chapter 5 High Politics is Not Enough: Policies and Programs for Aboriginal Peoples in Alberta and Ontario -- Chapter 6 Federal and Provincial Responsibilities for the Cree, Naskapi and Inuit Under the James Bay and Northern Quebec, and Northeastern Quebec Agreements -- Chapter 7 Federal and Provincial Responsibility in the Metis Settlements of Alberta -- Chapter 8 Federal/Provincial Responsibility and the Sechelt -- Part III: Challenges and Conclusions -- Chapter 9 Respective Roles and Responsibilities of Federal and Provincial Governments Regarding the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada -- Chapter 10 Conclusion -- The Contributors.

This book examines the ways in which usury was perceived and portrayed as it rose to popularity in Renaissance England, taking into account the works of key literary figures of this period, including Milton and Shakespeare.

The great inflation of the 1920s had a dramatic effect on Anglophone literary modernism. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway all recognized that financial signs had come unmoored from any objective reference, and their work explores the literary implications of representation's newly autonomous, performative power. Pound blamed the economic and cultural crisis on 'usury.' Following Aristotle, he conceived of usury as the unnatural reproduction of autonomous representation, and thus as the antithesis of natural sexual and semiotic fertility. He particularly deplored the historical role played by Samuel Loyd, the Victorian head of Lloyds Bank, who had cunningly manipulated the gold standard in order to give control of the economy to 'usurers.' In his financial journalism for Lloyds Bank Monthly, Eliot used the gold standard as an economic logos in order to facilitate usury. Pound saw that Eliot's theory of the 'objective correlative' was incompatible with the referential model of representation assumed by the gold standard.

Despite substantial evidence to the contrary, claims that the increasing emphasis on performance‐based contracts and other changes in tenure arrangements for Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and other senior executives will inevitably lead to 'politicisation' of the public sector persist. Those claims were particularly shrill during discussions of the new Commonwealth Public Services Bill in 1997 and have resurfaced in more recent commentaries. This paper argues that the claims have not been substantiated after more than a decade of experience in other jurisdictions; and that, in fact, the relationship between governments and their senior employees is more robust and honest, and therefore more appropriate to the times, than the critics would have us believe. While the argument is based on the Northern Territory experience, its application in other jurisdictions is also addressed.

Rather than taking Louise Thornthwaite and Robyn Hollander (AJPA June 1998) to task, I need to chide them gently for failing to acknowledge two other jurisdictions in Australia – the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. Had they canvassed the Northern Territory's experience, they may well have concluded that there are in fact three models of public sector wage determination, not two. They may have also concluded that the Northern Territory's rather unique adaptation of the federal system under the Workplace Relations Act represents something more than an approach dictated by its relatively small size and that it arguably represents the best of both the other models. May I suggest that Thornthwaite and Hollander, or others, could usefully explore the question as to whether the approaches adopted by the various jurisdictions have produced worthwhile results for both employers and employees.