I was in a small workgroup, the kind of group that in Lacanian jargon is known as a ‘cartel’, and our focus was upon what a group, what a ‘cartel’ was for Lacan. One of the texts we read was Lacan's only theoretical account of groups in which he describes the predicament of three prisoners, each of whom has to puzzle over whether the warden has placed a white or black disc on their backs. The prisoners have to reason out how they have been marked from what they see other two prisoners wearing, and how they see the other two respond to the disc they cannot see on their own back. Someone in our little group argued that there might be some connection between the concluding moment when each prisoner declares ‘I am white’ and the ‘othering’ of blacks that constitutes everyday racism in Western culture. No, surely not. That connection would be tendentious, but then again…

A woman at Manchester Piccadilly station was handing out life insurance advertisements; I dodged briskly around and behind her and through to the platforms, but not too quick to notice the movement of her arm, which had been thrusting leaflets at the passengers passing on the other side, waver for a moment as an orthodox Jewish man went by.