bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Basil Bunting’s Regional Modernism
Authors: Alexander Neal
Published: January 2023

This chapter contends that Basil Bunting’s magnum opus, the long poem Briggflatts (1966), has too often been misread as a poem that is elementally ‘rooted’ in the poet’s home region of Northumbria. His regional modernism is characterised both by the imaginative centrality of northern landscapes and cultural paradigms, and by the refraction of such local and regional attachments through a self-consciously international modernist poetics. Bunting’s poem is a deliberately eccentric poetic autobiography that both enacts the expression of a secure regional identity and suspends any such existential anchoring through its formal disjunctions and dense collage of incommensurable places and times. Moreover, at the level of theme and content, Briggflatts is profoundly concerned with experiences of displacement and transience, foregrounding vagrancy as a characteristically modern mode of being-in-the-world.
Other Areas: The Bio-communal and Feminine Utopia of Cornucopia
Authors: Laera Alejandra
Published: January 2023

This chapter presents the artistic collaboration of Lucrecia Martel with the multidisciplinary Icelandic singer Björk in the musical and visual show Cornucopia (2019), by analysing the different stages of its production and contextualising the live performance at the New York scenario. It explores the relation of this retro-futurist utopia, full of sensuous shapes and sounds and a highly sensory staging, with notions such as bio-community, feminine eco-affectivity, and artistic activism. Also, it shows that Martel gives to the show, in tune with her broader conception of the image, a dense look at the body and the slow rhythms of perception that question the ways of seeing and perceiving in the present day. In addition, the chapter discusses this kind of universal utopia in contrast with the politicity of New Argirópolis, Martel’s short film about indigenous Argentinean communities, in which utopian fiction points to transforming social inequality and exclusion.
Realities Made to Order: On The Headless Woman
Authors: Verardi Malena
Published: January 2023

This chapter analyses the resources and procedures used in the narrative of The Headless
Woman, in order to offer an approach to perception and ‘reality’ as instances resulting from construction processes. Through modes of representation of time and space, the organization of transitions between shots, the relationship between the image track and the sound track, among others, the film foregrounds certain features of northern Argentine society (connections between social classes, gender relationships, links between past and present). At the same time, it refers to ways of constructing and perceiving the environment, the surrounding world, that bear on such a society. In this respect, the Lacanian categories – the imaginary-symbolic-real triad, the relationship between real and reality – as well as Slavoj Žižek’s re-readings on the subject, are helpful as a means of questioning how the relationships between subjects and their environment are configured in the film. This chapter therefore analyses the modes in which the narrative refers both to the mechanisms responsible for naturalising a slanted view, and to the effects of such a view on the configuration of ‘reality’.
Phenomenology of Spirits: Off-Screen Horror in Lucrecia Martel’s Films
Authors: Oubiña David
Published: January 2023

This chapter analyses the sophisticated system of disruption embedded within the image in Martel’s work. On many occasions, the filmmaker has expressed her predilection for horror narratives: the horrific is always the sign of a difference that has been repressed and that returns in an uncontrolled and disturbing form. The horror genre lies at the edges of Martel’s films: it is what they could have been, and what they in some ways continue to be. If, in the end, the horrific is what remains beyond the frame (like a threat that is unfulfilled, or ruined, or disenchanted), it is because the filmmaker prefers to focus on the characters’ perplexity when they are confronted to a disruptive event. The camera never ceases to observe them, but it is somehow infected by their confusion. This uncomfortable perspective defines a form of realism that is sometimes negligent, sometimes indolent, and sometimes stirs up trouble.
Introduction
Authors: Pittin-Hedon Marie-Odile , Manfredi Camille , Hames Scott
Published: January 2023

A brief survey of post-devolution contexts and developments, locating the collection within Scottish critical and political developments since 1999.
Erasure And Reinstatement: Gray the Artist, Across Space and Form
Authors: Glass Rodge
Published: January 2023

Rodge Glass’s chapter focuses on Alasdair Gray’s visual practice. Glass argues that in the late twentieth century, unlike his widely celebrated literary output, Gray’s art has consistently suffered erasure of various kinds and has been largely neglected, replaced or destroyed. Using Gray’s murals – now an integral part of today’s Glasgow – as case studies, he then traces how the twenty-first century has seen a radical reinstatement of Gray’s visual practice into the urban and cultural landscape. This has been done through the rediscovery and restoration of murals, a significant amount of recent critical works that focus on Gray’s visual art, and Sorcha Dallas’s successful endeavours to exhibit the artist’s visual practice in Glasgow and beyond, which resulted in him being featured in galleries where previously he had been unwelcome.
Glory And The Significance Of Political Theology
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: January 2023

If God can be said to create the world, through a sovereign gesture of creation ex nihilo, then to let it govern itself such that humanity might mistake itself as the divine sovereign, then what are the political implications of particular theological formulations concerning God? And what remains of a possible divinity beyond such concerns? What of a humanity that does not seek to imitate the sovereign deity?
The Border Between The Human And The Animal
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: January 2023

Agamben enters a discussion regarding the border between animality and humanity through an examination of Heidegger’s thoughts on ‘the open’, or that space that is taken up as the center of anthropogenetic activity. Here, the open, as the rightful site of our poverty of being, helps us to rethink possibility as a fundamental ontological category. We can note that Agamben’s solution to the Heideggerian problem of the ‘anthropogenetic event’ is that we must not add anything to our animality. Indeed, we must not attempt to create any new form at all in order to access our ‘emancipation from the metaphysical definition of the human being’.
Paul And The Messianic Division Of Division
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: January 2023

The presence of dualisms, as well as the possibility of a negative dialectic in Agamben’s work, is analyzed in this chapter through his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans in order to more fully elucidate the ‘division of division itself’ as one of the major concepts at work in his characterizations of a form-of-life lived beyond the law. There is a spiritual power at work within the messianic vocation that undoes the sovereign power aligned with every structure, institution, identity, law and language. This is another form of power that Agamben isolates as the weak messianic force we are called to entertain as a corrective power to established norms. At the same time, Agamben’s reflections on Pauline thought are central to his solution to the anthropological machinery and its incessant division of human life, even the divisions that characterize the existence of the Church as an institution. He will follow Paul in calling for a messianic ‘division of division itself’ that takes every dualism and further divides it in half, and so neutralizing its destructive force.
Form-Of-Life Beyond The Law
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: January 2023

To rethink politics, religion, economics and society today, perhaps even to think a form of the multitude beyond the liberal-democratic tensions we are mired in globally, we will have to consider the form-of-life lived beyond the law. This is Agamben’s central concept, toward which the entire Homo Sacer series is aimed. As he will consistently argue, the form-of-life comes about through a messianic generic power that undoes every sovereign form, meaning that the only form of glory which would be available in an authentic way—another form of glory—would be an anonymous one, not one of celebrity. The form-of-life overcomes the divisions that characterize humanity, its languages and representations, each of which are beholden to historical theological, political and juridical forms.
Kinship after State Building
Authors: Weiner Scott J
Published: January 2023

Describes the nature of kinship salience in Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar based on the evaluative framework outlined in the previous chapter. Drawing on interviews with students, NGO leaders, former members of parliament, and tribal leaders, it assesses the extent to which kinship in Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman governs functions otherwise conducted by the state, and compels behavior by members of kinship groups. The chapter shows that while in Kuwait and Oman, kinship has governing salience, in Oman it has instrumentalized salience. In both cases, kinship is an essential aspect of politics, governance, and public life. The chapter also describes kinship politics in each state in the current era.
Conclusion: Kinship Politics in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Weiner Scott J
Published: January 2023

Highlights the model’s utility beyond the Arab Gulf states with a brief analysis of kinship politics in Somaliland and Iran. In Somaliland competitive resource access drove kinship to governing salience after state formation. In Iran cooperative access drove kinship to instrumentalized salience. The conclusion then highlights the importance of the book’s findings. First, it provides a rigorous political science conception of tribes and connects the construction of kinship identity generally to state-level outcomes. It does so by building upon Chandra’s (2004) well-established model of ethnic identity and extending it to model kinship. Second, it highlights the importance of pre-state conditions and connects them to post-state building outcomes. It does so in an empirically rigorous way, drawing on archival work, locally-produced histories, and interviews. This approach contrasts with earlier work which tends to discuss tribal politics without a given theoretical model (Kostiner and Khoury, 1991), or rigorously examine the politics of Arab Gulf societies but not link these politics directly to state-level outcomes (e.g. Limbert 2010). Ultimately, it shows that members of these societies were not passive actors during colonialism, oil booms, and the subsequent rapid acquisition of state capacity by governments.
Canalisation and Convergence
Authors: Posteraro Tano S.
Published: January 2023

Chapter 6 concludes the analysis of Bergson’s theory of tendency by returning to the case study of evolutionary convergence discussed in Chapter 1. Convergence – the repeated appearance of like traits across divergent lineages – requires a non-random understanding of the evolutionary process. An important part of Bergson’s account of convergence is his use of the image of a canal in his explanation of vision. There is a subterranean line of influence running from Bergson’s use of this image, through the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, and into C. H. Waddington’s embryological theory. The chapter argues that evolution is ‘canalised’ or trended in the direction of convergent traits, such as complex eyes, because it is canalised in the direction of indetermination. Vision is one powerful way that indetermination is maximised, as the sensory presentation of choice to locomoting animals. The chapter concludes by comparing Bergson’s position with the science of deep homology, conservation, and developmental constraint, and demonstrating the affinities between them.
Anabasis in Historiographical and Literary Context
Authors: Brennan Shane
Published: January 2023

This chapter considers historiographical and literary aspects of Xenophon’s Anabasis, with a preliminary section on its contemporary audience. The unresolved question of the book’s nature and categorisation is examined and the argument for a ‘Socratic history’ developed. Turning to literary features, the chapter offers a mini-study of how exemplars shape the narrative and previews the author’s apologetic Tendenz. Four distinct strands of apologia are identified, each of which is explored in the monograph. The final section examines the presence of what might be termed ‘literary apologia’, explained as a demonstrable tendency in Xenophon to present defences against charges in a way that not only exonerates him but clearly points as well to merits in his character, or leadership, or both.
Battling Over The Spirit Of A Nation: Attitudes Towards Alcohol In ‘New Turkey’
Authors: Furman Ivo
Published: January 2023

For most of the twentieth century, Turkey has enjoyed a relatively liberal relationship with alcohol. In keeping with the secular vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish Republic’s venerated founder, the state has decriminalised and even encouraged the consumption and production of alcoholic beverages in a predominantly conservative Muslim society. As a result, drinking has become an accepted social norm amongst Turkish citizens, particularly amongst those pertaining to a secular lifestyle. However, the previous decade has witnessed some dramatic reversals in both social and state attitudes towards alcohol. Ever since the accession to power of the neo-liberal and pious conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in 2002, alcohol has become a deeply divisive, contentious issue in contemporary Turkish society. This chapter expands on the symbolic significance of alcohol in Erdoğan’s ‘New Turkey’.
New Histories For A New Turkey: The First Battle Of Kut (1916) And The Reshaping Of The Ottoman Past
Authors: Onaran Burak
Published: January 2023

‘New Turkey’ has become the label for the AKP’s political vision. But as we might expect of any claim to ‘newness’– that is, of a radical political rupture – this new Turkey is based upon an existing, if remapped, historical foundation. This chapter investigates the connections between ‘New Turkey’ and its imagined Ottoman past. In doing so, it also identifies and analyses the major mechanisms which allow the current ruling elite to reshape history according to the needs of its own political agenda. In recent years, the government has been using all possible means of according a new prominence to the First Battle of Kut in national memory. This battle was a long forgotten victory over the British Army in World War I. In 2018, national public broadcaster TRT launched a historical drama series called Mehmetçik Kûtulamâre which centred around the events of the battle. This chapter treats Mehmetçik Kûtulamâre as a case study for exploring the relationship between politics and truth in ‘New Turkey’. The analysis relies on Myriam Revault-d’Allonnes’ reflections on ‘the age of post-truth’ and François Hartog’s concept of the ‘reign of presentism’.
Writing A Visual History Of Turkey: ‘Glorious History’ In Mainstream Cinema Versus ‘Complicated History’ In Art House Films
Authors: Brileva Diliara
Published: January 2023

Modern Turkish cinema is a space in which different versions of national history coexist. Mainstream cinematography produced during the period of AKP rule is a field for broadcasting Turkey’s ‘glorious history’, both within and beyond the country. In mainstream historical films, neo-Ottomanism is brought to the fore. The heroisation of the Ottoman past is conducted through the depiction of Turkish military glory. At the same time, acute ethno-confessional issues are ignored, and Turkey is represented as a homeland of many peoples. Religious myths are used to support the idea of Turkey as the legal successor to the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate. Conversely, Turkish art house films focus on complicated moments in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey (such as the Greek, Armenian and Kurdish questions). Niche films are a forum for expressing critical attitudes to the ‘traditional’ vision of Turkish history. Overall, this disagreement between Turkey’s creative intelligentsia and the ruling elite over the interpretation of history is part of a wider discourse on cultural hegemony and resistance. This chapter is devoted to exploring the formation of ‘different histories’ of Turkey in modern Turkish cinema.
Conclusion: Politics of Impunity
Authors: Furtado Henrique Tavares
Published: January 2023

The book’s conclusion investigates the troubled years that followed the release of the CNV’s final report. From 2014 to 2018, the atmosphere of hope in Brazil quickly deteriorated. Economic growth was halted by the effects of the global financial crisis and a massive corruption scandal devastated the credibility of the Workers’ Party. Two years after creating a truth commission, Rousseff was impeached for crimes of responsibility, in a controversial process that many denounced as a new coup. Having just taken the first steps towards historical accountability, the country witnessed a virulent explosion of patriarchal militarism, the rise of historical revisionism and the return of old anti-communist tropes. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right leader, torture apologist and devout supporter of the dictatorship with suspected links to local militia groups, was elected president. The conclusion disputes interpretations of the rise of Bolsonarismo as a return of past authoritarianism, allegedly repressed by the delay in the promotion of transitional justice, emphasising the need for a new theory of accountability after mass atrocities. The book ends by discussing how the present Covid-19 crisis requires an urgent rethinking of the meaning and practice of anti-impunity
Introducing Gelopolitics
Authors: Giamario Patrick T.
Published: January 2023

The book opens by making the case for a new approach to studying the relationship between laughter and politics. A series of vignettes illustrates laughter’s role in the present Age of Hilarity. A world replete with laughter renders the traditional political-theoretic question of “what role, if any, should laughter (gelōs) play in the polis?” obsolete and a different, more fundamental question – “how does laughter operate politically?” – more timely than ever. Departing from the dominant liberal and Nietzschean views of laughter as an intrinsically emancipatory experience originating in the human subject, the book proposes a study of gelopolitics – a critical theory of laughter– that attends to laughter as a site of social non-identity that both bolsters and undermines the social order’s structures of power and hierarchy. After previewing the book’s chapters, the Introduction suggests that the ubiquity of laughter today is a function of the multiplicity of political opportunities and risks this moment affords.
Beyond A/Gelasty: Adorno’s Critical Theory of Laughter
Authors: Giamario Patrick T.
Published: January 2023

Chapter Two provides the second analytical tool needed for a critical theory of laughter: an account of the social logic of gelopolitics. Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic philosophy and essays on the culture industry, lighthearted art, Samuel Beckett, and Charlie Chaplin reject subject-centric conceptions of laughter as an emancipatory experience and instead grasp laughter as an eventthat originates in and entrenches forms of power in society. Adorno shows that the fractured, self-contradictory nature of the modern capitalist social order means that gelopolitics is irreducibly split against itself: laughter escapes the terms of existing social life only when it embodies the violence of that life, and it bolsters the social order only by prompting the imagination of alternative forms of social organization. This is the social logic of gelopolitics. The chapter concludes by turning to the controversial laughter produced by Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror film Get Out to demonstrate how an Adorno-inspired critical theory of laughter makes laughter’s political possibilities and dangers thinkable and urgent.
Chapter 7 Merleau-Ponty’s and Nancy’s Engagement with Heidegger
Authors: Morin Marie-Eve
Published: January 2023

Chapter 7 takes up the question of the influence of Heidegger’s thinking on Nancy and on the late Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s own understanding of Being appropriates Heidegger’s notion of Wesenbut understands this Wesenalso as depth and as the Ineinanderof beings. As a result, Merleau-Ponty critiques Heidegger for proposing a direct ontology. Nancy’s own reappropriation of Heidegger’s thinking of Being focuses on his understanding of the withdrawal of Being as something that calls for a guarding or sheltering. While for Merleau-Ponty Heidegger would not escape the alternative between presence and absence because he would still try to express Being directly, for Nancy, Heidegger would fail because for him Being withdraws behind presence and as a result is kept in reserve as a kind of super-presence. In their respective engagement with Heidegger, the author shows, both Merleau-Ponty and Nancy are looking for a principle of non-dialectical difference that allows for the emergence of sense within or right at Being itself.
Chapter 8 Two Ontologies of Sense
Authors: Morin Marie-Eve
Published: January 2023

In this final chapter, the author stages the last encounter between Nancy and Merleau-Ponty, focusing on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the flesh as chiasm. The question at the heart of this chapter concerns the extent to which the flesh can be interpreted as a differential principle. In order to approach this question, the author revisits the phenomenon of self-sensing. Focusing on the doubling or chiasm at the heart of our carnal being, the chapter proposes a reading of reversibility, mirroring and narcissism that emphasises both the ontological complicity and the non-coincidence of incongruent counterparts. In the end, however, and despite the fact that écartas divergence, spread or spacing is essential for sense in both Merleau-Ponty and Nancy, each defends a different conception of this écart: as the place of encroachment and promiscuity or as unpassable limit.
Against Nostalgia: Looking Forward to the Future in the Queen’s Men’s Plays and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine
Authors: Johanson Kristine
Published: January 2023

This chapter examines Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatic influences to contextualize both the presence of nostalgic discourse in the emergent English public theatre and Shakespeare’s own dramatic innovation in how he used that discourse. Literary scholars have not only been increasingly interested in the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and the Queen’s Men’s repertory, but in the troupe itself as providing a foundation for public drama’s expansion at the end of the sixteenth century. This chapter first analyses two history plays adapted by Shakespeare – The Famous Victories of Henrie the Fifth and The True Tragedy of Richard III– before turning to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great and the Queen’s Men’s Selimus. The chapter concludes with a brief analysis of the Queen’s Men’s The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England and Shakespeare’s King John to demonstrate how Shakespeare incorporates this past-resistant model into his own work. These plays use temporal consciousness—an explicit awareness of past, present, and/or future— rhetorically, making that consciousness both ethical and political. These plays all stage a temporal consciousness that highlights the limits of the past and insists on concentrating on the future—that is, the Elizabethan present.
Will Our Time Come? Ann Hui’s Fallen City
Authors: Yiu-Wai Chu
Published: January 2023

A key Hong Kong New Wave filmmaker who continues to be among the leading figures of Hong Kong cinema after four decades, Ann Hui is well known for her humanistic concerns and social awareness. She is also among the most experienced Hong Kong directors to take part in mainland-Hong Kong co-productions. After offering a brief account of her films related to the history of Hong Kong, this chapter looks at Our Time Will Come, a mainland-financed film that reconsidered a less-known chapter in Hong Kong history: the unsung heroes who evacuated Chinese intellectuals from Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation. Lastly, it dwells on the (im)possibility of conveying messages in a main melody film situated in Hong Kong.
Stepping to the Fore: Dante Lam’s Operation Trilogy
Authors: Yiu-Wai Chu
Published: January 2023

Having won his fame with psycho-actioners, Dante Lam also tried forging new ground with the sports-based dramas, but it was main melody crime thriller Operation Mekong that brought him to the fore in the mainland market. His subsequent project, Operation Red Sea, one of the highest-grossing films in China, was a new kind of military-patriotic action film. Thanks to its astronomical budget and the support of the Chinese Navy, Lam managed to devise the most propulsive battle scenes ever allowed on mainland screens. Together with Operation Mekong and Rescue, the Operation trilogy paid contemporary tribute to China’s military power. Based on the trajectory of Lam’s career in Hong Kong, this chapter explores how the Hong Kong director effectively developed this new main melody genre.
Underneath the Shock Waves: The (Un)told Stories of Herman Yau
Authors: Yiu-Wai Chu
Published: January 2023

A director who remains central to the dwindling film industry in Hong Kong, Herman Yau is one of the most efficient, versatile and productive directors in Hong Kong. He has been considered a B-movie expert who has directed some cult horror classics, but more recently, his high-concept crime thrillers amassed huge box-office totals, not only in Hong Kong but also in mainland China. His extraordinary ability to handle different themes, genres and budgets has made him stand out amongst his contemporaries. Moreover, his The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake, a tribute to the Xin Hai Revolution, is a forerunner of main melody projects of Hong Kong directors. This chapter uses Yau to throw light on a flexible model of Hong Kong filmmaking, which has not been widely recognised and awarded.
Introduction
Authors: Kennedy Simon P.
Published: January 2023

This book will address changes over time to Reformed Protestant conceptions of natural law. This exercise is significant because
these changes contributed to the desacralisation of theories of the origins of political life. When early Reformed Protestant figures wrote about natural law, they tended to do so in a way that was reflective of the scholastic and Aristotelian inheritance from medieval theology, philosophy and jurisprudence. God governed the universe, in part through the natural law. Humans were naturally social and political, and therefore human political life was part of God’s creation order. It was a theistic foundation for politics. This changed when the emphasis in theories of natural law shifted from a theistic basis to an anthropocentric basis, with an understanding of the law of nature based upon human self-preservation, rather than on God. At the same time, these thinkers conceived of political existence as an artifice, rather than divinely created.
Who Speaks The Film, In Documentaries? A Thousand And One Voices
Authors: Bal Mieke , Mitchell W. J. T.
Published: January 2023

The question “who speaks?” remains central in narrative theory, because of the implied question of narrative responsibility. Where does a presentation, opinion, or vision come from, who are their target audiences, and what is the “force” in Lyotard's concept of language as the figural, that makes sense? This question is always pertinent, in all cultural texts. Speaking is generally assumed to be a linguistic act, but in film, where an explicit narrative voice is more the exception than the rule, the narrative emerges from different sources; from the figures who appear in the filmic world to begin with. This makes the question more, rather than less relevant. The medium helps us probe the complexities of narration precisely because it cannot be personified in a “voice”. The question is of crucial importance, especially in documentaries where “who speaks?” becomes “whose truth?” The ethical, political and aesthetic commitments to the genre compel makers to do the telling with, rather than about people. Therefore, we cannot ignore the question of the subject or source.
By Way Of Conclusion – For Memory: Dis-Remembered, Mis-Remembered
Authors: Bal Mieke , Mitchell W. J. T.
Published: January 2023

As different from the concept of affect, that of memory fortunately refuses to be dismissed. This is partly due to the enduring importance of memory in thought about culture. Moreover, it harbours the issue of agency. This chapter recalls earlier thoughts about memory as an (active) act, as happening in the present, and as both subjective and collective. And Silverman's formulation of subjectivity as a constellation of memory images, foregrounds the importance of memory for culture. But memory is also liable to error, abuse, and repression. This final chapter considers where acts of memory either remain un-performed, or misfire. As a counterpart to the opening chapter, the book ends by bringing together the different aspects of image-thinking as, specifically, thinking in film. The preposition “in”, here, is analogous to its use in the expression “thinking in a foreign language”. Reasonable Doubt's recasting of a great philosopher (Descartes) as an affect-deprived, emotionally overwrought person is also the only fiction film where the subject is a real historical figure. This facilitates a short rehearsal of the relationship, in film, of documentary and fiction and of history and fiction.
Romance and Sexuality
Authors: Pugsley Peter C.
Published: January 2023

This chapter illustrates how themes related to adolescent sexuality are deftly handled in Japan’s high school films. It shows an aversion to representations of homosexuality on screen unless tempered through romanticised, less explicit themes such as Boys’ Love (yaoi). This chapter also looks at how contemporary forms of mobile communication such as social media platforms are increasingly depicted as essential in establishing and maintaining relations between characters.
Aesthetic Dissent
Authors: Sim Stuart
Published: January 2023

This chapter looks at how the authoritarian attitudes can develop within the world of the arts, ostensibly an area with no overruling authority to it, and considers how these can be resisted. Modernism, for example, became intolerant to traditional forms of artistic expression, and although postmodernism eventually came to insist on the need for a dialogue with the past, it too could be intolerant of styles other than its own. The principles and concerns of both movements are outlined, as well as the ideas of some of its leading theorists, such as T. W. Adorno, Charles Jencks, and Jean-François Lyotard. Overall, the chapter argues that the arts can be an object lesson in how to identify the growth of authoritarianism as well as in how to dissent against it.
Parliament: The Practical Idealist
Authors: Munro Lachlan
Published: January 2023

Graham’s first experience of the lives and working conditions of the miners. His close association with Keir Hardie and their attempts to get working people elected to parliament. Graham’s charging of police lines in Trafalgar Square and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment. Graham’s attempts to get legislation on behalf of the miners through parliament. Graham and Hardie found the first Labour party in Britain. Graham grooms Hardie for leadership. Attacks by the labour establishment and the TUC.
Empire: Imperial Sceptic
Authors: Munro Lachlan
Published: January 2023

Attacks on jingoism and the imperialist abuses of indigenous populations. Attacks on racism, and his republicanism.
Gods: Appointments with the Divine
Authors: Angus Bill
Published: January 2023

The crossroads has since the most ancient times been regarded as a dwelling place for prophets, spirits, and the monsters and gods of many cultures. This chapter discusses how the gods that are encountered there function as the gatekeepers to otherworlds of experience, either beyond death or otherwise somehow beyond life: the miraculous, the sublime, the instant or hard-worked conversion from one state to another, representing the outbound aspirations of an earth-locked race. The paradox of the crossroads, that it simultaneously offers the opposed functions of binding and transformation, might be best expressed in terms of the relationship between the spirits that may be bound there and the metamorphic gods that may be encountered there.
Introduction: The Ways – Transformation, Binding and Presence
Authors: Angus Bill
Published: January 2023

This introductory chapter underlines the physical liminality and the tremulous conceptual centrality of the crossroads to early modern society and its continued relevance to many as a stage upon which both the desires of human aspiration and the fears of mortality have been enacted. It delineates the crossroads’ literary and historical representations, myths, superstitions, traditions, and ritual praxis in early modern Europe and other places and times that the rest of the book will develop, and outlines its theoretical underpinning in the work of Lefebvre, de Certeau and others. The chapter also explores the crossroads’ central paradox, that a parting of ways is always also a confluence of ways, and suggests that this applies also to other related binaries. For instance, a crossroads may be a proverbial common-place, even a liminal non-space, but can simultaneously act as a significant site of exchange between the worlds of the living and the dead. It can also be a potent nexus for seemingly opposed rituals, of both transformative potential and of perpetual spiritual limitation.
Seeing a dragon, not a panda – A realist turn in the EU’s China policy
Authors: Krumbein Frederic
Published: January 2023

The European Union has tried for a long time to socialize China into the rules-based international order, but without much success. As a result, the EU’s China policy has taken a realist turn and adapts to China’s realist and power-centered foreign policy. The EU’s realist turn is analyzed in three major areas of the EU-China relationship: human rights, Taiwan, and trade. In the area of human rights, the EU’s focus has shifted to a global competition with China over the universality of human rights. The EU has also increased support for Taiwan and for maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. In its external trade policy, the EU made first steps to strengthen its economic security and to reduce its dependence on China.
The clinical and immunological basis of early food introduction in food allergy prevention
Authors: Nuyttens L. , De Vlieger L. , Diels M. , Schrijvers R. , Bullens D. M. A.
Published: January 2023

IgE-mediated food allergy has an estimated prevalence of 6%–10% in developed countries. Allergen avoidance has long been the main focus in the prevention of food allergy and late solid food introduction after 6–12 months of age was recommended in high-risk infants. However, the rising prevalence of food allergy despite delayed exposure to allergens and the observations that IgE-mediated sensitization to food products could even occur before the introduction of solid foods resulted in a shift towards early solid food introduction as an attempt to prevent IgE-mediated food allergy. Since then, many trials focused on the clinical outcome of early allergen introduction and overall seem to point to a protective effect on the development of IgE-mediated food allergies. For non-IgE-mediated diseases of food allergy, evidence of early food introduction seems less clear. Moreover, data on the underlying immunological processes in early food introduction is lacking. The goal of this review is to summarize the available data of immunological changes in early food introduction to prevent IgE and non-IgE mediated food allergy.
Fast-Track and Integration-Free Method of Genome Editing by CRISPR/Cas9 in Murine Pluripotent Stem Cells
Authors: Mamun Md Mahfuz Al , Bukhari Ihtisham
Published: January 2023

Graphical Abstract
Ventricular Unloading Using the ImpellaTM Device in Cardiogenic Shock
Authors: Attinger-Toller Adrian , Bossard Matthias , Cioffi Giacomo Maria , Tersalvi Gregorio , Madanchi Mehdi , Bloch Andreas , Kobza Richard , Cuculi Florim
Published: January 2023

Graphical Abstract

Central illustration. Design principles and hemodynamic effects of the Impella™ device. AOP, Aortic pressue; EDP, Enddiastolic pressure; EDV, Enddiastolic volume.
Incidence of adverse cardiovascular events associated with immune checkpoint inhibitors and risk factors for left ventricular dysfunction: A single-center prospective clinical study
Authors: Zhang Chuan , Chen Zhulu , Qin Shu , Zhu Yuxi , Shu Linjie , Zuo Zhong
Published: January 2023

Background

The incidence of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI)-related adverse cardiovascular events (ACEs) may be underestimated, and there are few reports on the incidence and risk factors of ICI-induced left ventricular dysfunction (LVD).

Objectives

This study aimed to investigate the incidence of ACEs caused by ICI, in particular to analyze the incidence and risk factors of LV systolic and diastolic dysfunction.

Materials and methods

A prospective clinical study was performed on patients who received ICI in our hospital from November 2020 to October 2021. They received regular cardiovascular examinations, including echocardiography, ECG, cTnT, and NT-proBNP, etc. The incidence of various ACEs was counted, and the risk factors of LVD were analyzed.

Results

A total of 106 cancer patients treated with ICI were recruited. During the follow-up, 41 patients (38.68%) developed various ECG abnormalities, 39 patients (36.79%) developed LVDD, 9 patients (8.49%) developed CTRCD, and 2 patients (1.89%) developed new pericardial effusion. The patients with elevated cTnT, CK-MB, and NT-proBNP were 10 (9.43%), 8 (7.55%), and 8 (7.5%), respectively. Thirteen of the 52 patients with LVD had hypertension, while 4 of the 54 patients without LVD had hypertension (OR = 4.17, 95% CI: 1.26–13.78; P = 0.019). The baseline LVEF and LVFS of patients with LVD were 61.54 ± 4.15% and 33.78 ± 2.73%, while those of the control group were 64.16 ± 3.68% and 34.95 ± 2.84, respectively (P = 0.003 and P = 0.048). Compared with patients without LVD, patients with LVD had lower e’ (6.99 ± 1.33 cm/s vs. 7.64 ± 1.39 cm/s, P = 0.029) and higher E to e’ ratio (11.89 ± 3.15 cm/s vs. 10.43 ± 2.52, P = 0.024). Multiple regression analysis showed that a history of hypertension (HR = 26.52, 95% CI: 2.479–283.667, P = 0.007) and lower baseline e’ (HR = 0.04, 95% CI: 0.003–0.709, P = 0.028) were risk factors for developing LVD.

Conclusion

Patients treated with ICI may develop multiple ACEs, including acute myocarditis, pericarditis, ECG abnormalities, and elevated cardiac biomarkers. ICI may lead to a high incidence of LVD, and echocardiography is helpful for early detection of LVD. Patients with hypertension or poor LV systolic or diastolic function at baseline were predictors of LVD after ICI treatment.
Practical role of preoperative echocardiography in low-risk non-cardiac surgery
Authors: Kim Eun Kyoung , Choi Hong-Mi , Lee Jong-Hwan , Han Dong Woo , Lee Hye Sun , Choi Eui-Young
Published: January 2023

Background

Due to increased needs to reduce non-fatal as well as fatal cardiac events, preoperative echocardiography remains part of routine clinical practice in many hospitals. Data on the role of preoperative echocardiography in low-risk non-cardiac surgery (NCS) other than ambulatory surgeries do not exist. We aimed to investigate the role of preoperative echocardiography in predicting postoperative adverse cardiovascular events (CVEs) in asymptomatic patients undergoing low-risk NCS.

Methods

The study population was derived from a retrospective cohort of 1,264 patients who underwent elective low-risk surgery at three tertiary hospitals from June 1, 2021, to June 30, 2021. Breast, distal bone, thyroid, and transurethral surgeries were included. Preoperative examination data including electrocardiography, chest radiography, and echocardiography were collected. The primary outcome was a composite of postoperative adverse CVEs including all-cause death, myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular events, newly diagnosed or acutely decompensated heart failure (HF), lethal arrhythmia such as sustained ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation, and new-onset atrial fibrillation within 30 days after the index surgery.

Results

Preoperative echocardiography was performed in 503 patients (39.8%), most frequently in patients with breast surgery (73.5%), followed by transurethral (37.7%), distal bone (21.6%), and thyroid surgeries (11.9%). Abnormal findings were observed in 5.0% of patients with preoperative echocardiography. Postoperative adverse CVEs occurred in 10 (0.79%) patients. Although a history of previous HF was an independent predictor of postoperative CVE occurrence (adjusted odds ratio, aOR: 17.98; 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.21–266.71, P = 0.036), preoperative echocardiography did not significantly predict CVE in multivariate analysis (P = 0.097). However, in patients who underwent preoperative echocardiography, the presence of abnormal echocardiographic findings was independently associated with development of CVE after NCS (aOR: 23.93; 95% CI: 1.2.28–250.76, P = 0.008). In particular, the presence of wall motion abnormality was a strong predictor of postoperative adverse CVE.

Conclusion

In real-world clinical practice, preoperative echocardiography was performed in substantial number of patients with potential cardiac risk even in low-risk NCS, and abnormal findings were independently associated with postoperative CVE. Future studies should identify patients undergoing low-risk NCS for whom preoperative echocardiography would be helpful to predict adverse CVE.
Temporal distribution characteristics of earthquakes in Taiwan, China
Authors: Xu Weijin , Li Xuejing , Gao Mengtan
Published: January 2023

The characteristics of seismic temporal distribution represent an important basis for earthquake prediction and seismic hazard analysis. In this paper, based on the seismic catalogs in Taiwan, and using Poisson (exponential distribution), Gamma, Lognormal, Weibull, and Brownian passage time distributions as target models, we adopt the maximum likelihood method for estimating model parameters. The optimal model for describing the temporal distribution of earthquakes in Taiwan is determined according to the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), K-S test, Chi-square test, and coefficient of determination R2 results. The results show that for moderate-strong earthquakes events (MW < 7.0), the Gamma distribution model can well describe the temporal distribution characteristics of earthquakes, while large earthquakes (MW ≥ 7.0) can be described entirely by exponential distribution. In addition, the temporal correlation between earthquakes is also examined through diffusion entropy analysis. The results show that seismic activity features temporal correlation, and earthquakes with relatively small magnitude (MW < 7) are affected by larger events (MW ≥ 7.0), thus suggesting long-term memory in time. In this study, the probability of the occurrence of a major earthquake in Taiwan is also calculated. The results show that the probability of an MW ≥ 7.0 earthquake in Taiwan in the next 10 years reaches 91.3%. The results may be used to inform the selection of seismic time distribution models and the calculation of seismic activity parameters in earthquake prediction and seismic hazard calculation, and hold scientific significance for understanding the mechanism of earthquake genesis.
Mineralization of organic matter in microbialites and implications for microbialite reservoirs in Member IV of the Leikoupo Formation, Sichuan Basin, China
Authors: Zhong Yuan , Li Kunyu , Zhang Zili , Qiao Yanping , Su Guiping , Zhao Like , Zhang Baoshou , Wang Yunlong , Dou Shuang , Yan Wei , You Jie
Published: January 2023

Microbialites are important reservoirs for oil and gas. The mineralization of organic matter in microbialites during early diagenesis can produce acidic fluids that dissolve carbonate grains, and can also result in an alkaline pore water that precipitates cement. The mineralization of organic matter in microbialites and its effect on microbialite reservoirs have not yet been studied in detail. In this study, quantitative statistical analysis of the two-dimensional spatial occurrence of pores and microbial fabrics, in situ geochemical analysis of specific components (microbial, transitional zone, and fine spar fabrics), and qualitative evaluation of the implications for microbialite reservoirs were undertaken on microbialites from Member IV of the Leikoupo Formation, Sichuan Basin, China. The quantitative statistical analysis shows that pores are spatially associated with microbial fabrics, but porosity has a poor correlation with microbial fabric content. In situ geochemical data indicate that microbialites with different porosities experienced different processes of organic matter mineralization. The processes of organic matter mineralization such as oxidation and nitrate reduction can provide more dissolution micropores than the process related with sulfate reduction, whereas the process of organic matter mineralization related with Fe–Mn oxide reduction results in cementation. Micropores created by organic matter mineralization can act as fluid channels for later dissolution and are important in the development of microbialite reservoirs.
Interannual variation and chemical characterization of major water-soluble inorganic ions in snow across Northwest China
Authors: Zhang Yuxuan , Wang Ninglian , Zhang Bo , Zhang Wei , Shen Baoshou
Published: January 2023

From November 2018 to April 2020, 438 snow samples were collected near two field observation sites in Heihe and Altay, Northwest China, and the pH and major water-soluble inorganic ions (Ca2+, SO42−, Na+, NO3−, Cl−, K+, Mg2+, and NH4+) were analyzed. To identify the source of ions, the enrichment factor method, Pearson correlation analysis, and HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single Practical Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) backward trajectory analysis were employed. The snow was nearly pH neutral, and Ca2+ was the dominant cation present. The anion concentration demonstrated high variability. Affected by geographical location and atmospheric circulation, the concentration of soluble inorganic ions in snow from the Altay region was higher than that in the Heihe region and remote areas at high altitude or high latitude. Compared with 2018/2019, ion concentrations in snow increased in 2019/2020, especially in the Altay region. Moreover, the temporal trend of ion concentrations was stable, indicating that the source and migration path of ions had strong consistency. Our study suggested that terrestrial sources are the main driving factors for the ions observed in snow samples from Northwest China, and some ions are also the result of anthropogenic sources (NH4+, SO42−, and NO3−), marine sources (Cl− and Na+), and salt mine dust (Cl−, Na+, SO42−, and K+).