Whereas currently, German-Polish relations are marked by irritations, the previous phase of politics and discourse from 1990 leading up to the EU-accession of Poland was marked by an increasing stress on Europe in both countries. This was connected with changing practices of cross-border cooperation as well as a change in academic border studies. Transgression as a Rule argues that resulting from this, cross-border cooperation has become a rule. The actors negotiate new, contradictory spaces for their actions: supported by the state but partly uncomfortable with it, drawing on the powerful discourse of cooperation and trying to escape from it. Their practices can also inform the practices of border studies.

In Dante and the Sense of Transgression, William Franke combines literary-critical analysis with philosophical and theological reflection to cast new light on Dante's poetic vision. Conversely, Dante's medieval masterpiece becomes our guide to rethinking some of the most pressing issues of contemporary theory. Beyond suggestive archetypes like Adam and Ulysses that hint at an obsession with transgression beneath Dante's overt suppression of it, there is another and a prior sense in which transgression emerges as Dante's essential and ultimate gesture. His work as a poet culminates in the Paradiso in a transcendence of language towards a purely ineffable, mystical experience beyond verbal expression. Yet Dante conveys this experience, nevertheless, in and through language and specifically through the transgression of language, violating its normally representational and referential functions. Paradiso's dramatic sky-scapes and unparalleled textual performances stage a deconstruction of the sign that is analyzed philosophically in the light of Blanchot, Levinas, Derrida, Barthes, and Bataille, as transgressing and transfiguring the very sense of sense.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.

Transgression suggests operating beyond accepted norms andradically reinterpreting practice by pushing at the boundaries ofboth what architecture is, and what it could or even should be. Thecurrent economic crisis and accompanying political/social unresthas exacerbated the difficulty into which architecture has longbeen sliding: challenged by other professions and a culture ofconservatism, architecture is in danger of losing its prized statusas one of the pre-eminent visual arts. Transgression opens up newpossibilities for practice. It highlights the positive impact thatworking on the architectural periphery can make on the mainstream,as transgressive practices have the potential to reinvent andreposition the architectural profession: whether they aresubverting notions of progress; questioning roles and mechanisms ofproduction; aligning with political activism; pioneering urbaninterventions; advocating informal or incomplete development;actively destabilising environments or breaking barriers of taste.In this new dispersed and expanded field of operation, the balanceof architectural endeavour is shifted from object to process, fromservice to speculation, and from formal to informal in a way thatprovides both critical and political impetus to proactively affectchange. Contributors: Can Altay, Edward Denison and Guangyu Ren, KimDovey, Chris Jenks, David Littlefield, Silvia Loeffler, AlistairParvin, Louis Rice, Patrik Schumacher and Robin Wilson Featured architects: atelier d’architectureautogérée, Lina Bo Bardi, Construire/La Machine, EXYZT,Didier Faustino/Bureau des Mésarchitectures, Lacaton &Vassal, N55, Catie Newell/*Alibi Studio, Wang Shu, Superflex andBernard Tschumi

Transgression and Its Limits is a long overdue collection that reads the complex relationship between artistic transgressions and the limits of law and the subject. In mid-twentieth century theoretical understandings of transgressive culture, it is the existence of the limit that guarantees the possibility and success of the transgression. While the limit calls for obedience, it also tempts with the possibility of violation. To breach the limits of the acceptable is to simultaneously define them. However, this classical understanding of transgression may no longer apply under the conditions of post-modernity, late-capitalism, and the simulated or empty transgressions that this period of the simulacra encourages. Context becomes paramount in reading the myriad forms of transgression that encompass politics, aesthetics and the ethics of the obscene; while a range of theoretical perspectives are employed in order to elucidate the economies at work underneath the seemingly transgressive act. The essays selected include explorations of transgression in cinema, photography, art, law, music, philosophy, technology, and both classical and contemporary literature and drama. Professor Fred Botting’s (co-author of Bataille and The Tarantinian Ethics) analysis of transgression from Bataille, to Baudrillard and Ballard compliments the collection’s concerns about the status of transgression. Aside from fourteen critical essays on topics such as early-modern drama, George Bataille, J. G. Ballard, the female necrophilic, “torture-porn” cinema, and the art of Robert Mapplethorpe and Salvador Dali, there is also a new discussion of transgression between novelist Iain Banks and Professor Roderick Watson (Emeritus at the University of Stirling). With its focus on the paradoxical nature of the impulse to transgress, as well at its wide-ranging historical and artistic concerns, Transgression and Its Limits is a landmark book in a rapidly developing scholarly field.

Transgression is truly a key idea for our time. Society is created by constraint and boundaries, but as our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty and flux we find it more and more difficult to determine where those boundaries lie. In this fast moving study, Chris Jenks ranges widely over the history of ideas, the major theorists, and the significant moments in the formation of the idea of transgression. He looks at the definition of the social and its boundaries by Durkheim, Douglas and Freud, at the German tradition of Hegel and Nietzsche and the increasing preoccupation with transgression itself in Baudelaire, Bataille and Foucault. The second half of the book looks at transgression in action in the East End myth of the Kray twins, in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, the spectacle of the Situationists and Bakhtin's analysis of carnival. Finally Jenks extends his treatment of transgression to its own extremity.

Social coexistence is made possible and regulated by norms. Which actions are labeled and sanctioned as transgressions of norms is the result of social negotiation processes. Transgression and norm deviance can both stabilize and undermine the existing norm system. The contributions to this anthology aim to provide some impulses on the relationship between norm and deviance in ancient societies by means of selected case studies from the Greek classical period to the Roman imperial period and to investigate the role of transgressive acts for the dynamics of social systems. In 8 contributions, among others on the cult of Artemis, on the tragedian Agathon, on Cicero, Lucan and Tacitus, the topic is treated in a model-like manner.

Contributors from a range of disciplines explore boundary-crossing in videogames, examining both transgressive game content and transgressive player actions. Video gameplay can include transgressive play practices in which players act in ways meant to annoy, punish, or harass other players. Videogames themselves can include transgressive or upsetting content, including excessive violence. Such boundary-crossing in videogames belies the general idea that play and games are fun and non-serious, with little consequence outside the world of the game. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines explore transgression in video games, examining both game content and player actions. The contributors consider the concept of transgression in games and play, drawing on discourses in sociology, philosophy, media studies, and game studies; offer case studies of transgressive play, considering, among other things, how gameplay practices can be at once playful and violations of social etiquette; investigate players' emotional responses to game content and play practices; examine the aesthetics of transgression, focusing on the ways that game design can be used for transgressive purposes; and discuss transgressive gameplay in a societal context. By emphasizing actual player experience, the book offers a contextual understanding of content and practices usually framed as simply problematic. Contributors Fraser Allison, Kristian A. Bjørkelo, Kelly Boudreau, Marcus Carter, Mia Consalvo, Rhys Jones, Kristine Jørgensen, Faltin Karlsen, Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Alan Meades, Torill Elvira Mortensen, Víctor Navarro-Remesal, Holger Pötzsch, John R. Sageng, Tanja Sihvonen, Jaakko Stenros, Ragnhild Tronstad, Hanna Wirman