Volume 6: Pleasure (2020)

Litterae Mentis, Vol. 6

 A digital version of the volume is available here.

Volume 6 of Litterae Mentis explores ideas around the theme of pleasure. What kinds of pleasure punctuate our lives? How does pleasure dictate our encounters with the other? The contributors to this volume explore this vast theme through original artwork and academic articles.
 
Foreword, Dr Declan Wiffen
Dr Declan Wiffen is a Lecturer in Critical Theory and Contemporary Literature at the University of Kent. His current projects include editing the fifth edition of Litmus, a magazine exploring the interaction between poetry and science; an article provisionally titled ‘Conspiring with Sea Kale: Derek Jarman’s unnatural pedagogy’ which explores critical plant studies, queer ecologies and staying with the trouble of the environmental crisis; a collaborative essay on masculinity, literature and pedagogy for a collection called The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies edited by Hilary Emmet and Christopher Lloyd.

Original artwork, Ayesha Chouglay

Collective Pleasure as Unpleasure: The Peer Pressure of Laughter in a Theatrical Comedy Audience | Salamis Aysegul Sentug

Salamis Aysegul Sentug is an award-winning writer from Cyprus. She holds master degrees in Philosophy and in Philosophy of Art and Literature. Her academic background spans the fields of performance philosophy, philosophy of art, aesthetics and philosophy of literature. Parallel to her academic publications, she has published poetry and short stories in various magazines. She won a short story award and has been translated to other languages. She is currently doing her PhD at the University of Kent on Contemporary Novel.

Cigarettes, Masturbation, or Self-Castration: A Single Man’s Search for an Anxiolytic to the Absence of Pleasure in Michel Houellebecq’s Extension du domaine de la lutte (1994) | Rachel Lehmann

Rachel Lehmann is a comparative literature PhD student at the University of Kent researching discourses of exhaustion in German and French medical and literary texts of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century period. She graduated from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) with a B.A. in English, and from the University of York with an MA in British Romantic Literature.

The Algorithm of Pleasure: An Exploration of Human-AI Relationships in Contemporary British and American Cinema | Paulina Borkowska

Paulina Borkowska is a recent Postcolonial Studies MA graduate, following her Contemporary Culture BA degree. Her interests include posthumanism, AI and cultural studies within literature, film, and gaming. Outside of literary studies, she is interested in the cultural aspect of conspiracy theories, YouTube culture and science fiction and horror across all mediums. In her free time, she records her podcast about film and explores a newfound interest in XIX-century literature.

Editorial board:

• Aaron Pugh
• Ayesha Chouglay
• Khadija Menouar-Fouatih
• Lydia Ayame Hiraide
• Saniya Rohida
• Sophie Thompson
• Veronica Niero