bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
‘Would you like to meet a ghost?’: Repetition and spectral posthumanism in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo
Authors: Lovasz Adam 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film, Kairo (Pulse), is an enigmatic piece of cinema. Even its genre cannot be neatly delineated. Part horror film, part art-house cinema, part social commentary, Kairo has a quality all of its own. While some commentators have identified the particular style of directing peculiar to the ‘other’ Kurosawa, even finding this mode of directing to be compatible with auteur modes of filmmaking, I seek to capture the singularity of the film’s content. In spite of the fact that Kurosawa as a director is notably repetitious in his choice of themes, the circumstance of repetition, as Gilles Deleuze reminds us in his 1969 book, Difference and Repetition, does not preclude the singular, evental nature of any and all such repetitions. Here I understand the phrase ‘repetition’ in the Deleuzian sense of the term, denoting a pure ‘difference without a concept’. Repetition is difference as it actualizes itself in the world. According to the Deleuzian view, underneath laws and generalities there may be found countless layers of singularities, processes and becomings that cannot be easily accessed. Obscurity, as I hope to show through numerous examples from Kairo’s screenplay, seems to be a pervasive phenomenon in Kurosawa’s apocalyptic vision of cybernetic society. Instead of connecting human beings with one another, information and communication technologies come to serve as conduits for spectral presences that produce new forms of disappearance. Productivity, far from being opposed to absence, is transformed during the course of the film into the virally proliferating production of nothing. For Deleuze, signs become deadly when they strike ‘with full force’. When the absolutely other strikes into the very heart of our Being, our very existence is endangered by machineries of abyssal replication. Every single character in Kairo is alienated from themselves and one another. The only vital, functioning form of community is, perversely, the realm of the dead, mediated by the transgressive power of cybernetic networks. As Valerie Wee has pointed out, the sense of lost community and the decline of tradition seems to be a salient theme of Kurosawa’s Kairo, as opposed to its rather more shallow 2006 American remake. Registering the circumstance of cultural decline and societal extinction, a very real phenomenon in early twenty-first-century Japan, should not be equated, however, with some form of nostalgic pining for a bygone era. Rather, I propose that we view Kairo as a deeply philosophical meditation on the posthuman condition, and the immanent possibilities of haunting repetitions lying beyond representation.
Writing democracy: An end of author ‘turn’?: From ‘fake news’ to ‘fake democratization'
Authors: Sadiki Larbi 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This article problematizes questions of ontology and epistemology in the context of the study of norm-making primarily within academia (with special reference to democratization) and secondarily within media. It showcases this via description of an ongoing QNRF-funded project on democratic learning in seven Muslim countries. Through these examples, it pitches the discussion to elaborate the utility of concepts and ideas drawn from post-structuralism, namely, those having to do with discourse, identity and norms being unstable. It refers to Barthes’s notion of ‘the death of the author’ and Derrida’s ideas about the indeterminacy of linguistic forms, and the chain of signs and signifiers used to record representations and interpretations of shifting realities. This offers a welcome escape from rationalist methods, suggesting that in social constructivism and discourse analysis democratization studies would benefit from a firmer grip on understandings of norm-making via the study of speech acts and discourse. This is presented as a ‘middle ground’ that balances structure and agency with respect to the ‘chain’ of journeys in the travel of democracy.
Civic resilience during conflict: Syria’s local councils
Authors: Saleh Layla 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
With the ‘return of the state’ in Syria, Assad’s ‘resilience’ is a puzzle increasingly broached in both media and academic discourses. This article seeks to turn such an approach on its head, examining the resilience not of the state, but of bottom-up Syrian popular mobilization and organization. Persistent if changing Syrian civic modes and practices are thus mediated by conflict, but also part and parcel of ongoing resistance against the authoritarian state. A survey of Syrians’ ‘revolutionary’ media landscape reveals a set of shifting emphases. Appeals soliciting global support for an uprising seeking freedom and dignity give way to lamentations over disappointed yet tenacious Syrian aspirations. The article then explores Syrian ‘democratic learning’ through a mini-case study of opposition-controlled local councils. Drawing on original interview data, it argues that these councils exhibit ‘civic resilience’ as they navigate and adopt international norms discourses to protest and resist not just Assad but also international actors, and gradually take up democratic processes including elections. Despite uncertainty with respect to its institutional dividends in Syria, ‘democratic learning’ is a promising, understudied area for further exploration in the bloody politics of the country’s uprising.
Elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A source of democratic learning and moderation
Authors: Ghobadzadeh Naser 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Elections held under Iran’s ruling clergy have always been manipulated and have hardly been free and fair. A simple reference to Iran’s current political situation attests to the fact that these elections have not proven to be a force for democratization of the political system. However, this article suggests that the very existence of electoral procedures in the Islamic Republic effectively split the Islamists, giving their left-wing faction a new chance of survival in Iran’s political milieu. This by extension resulted in behavioural and ideological moderation, and in the formation of a new version of political Islam that accommodates democratic norms within an Islamic framework. Exploring the politico-religious transformation of Iran’s reformist Islamists, this article argues that the inclusion-moderation hypothesis could be effectively utilized to trace and explicate their politico-religious trajectory. Furthermore, the semi-competitive nature of elections in Iran has on more than one occasion generated uncertainty. Not only has this outcome taken the regime to the brink, but it has also opened up spaces in which citizens occasionally, if not permanently, entertain democratic learning. Based on interviews with 80 political activists in Iran, this article argues that the electoral politics has seeded democratic norms in the minds of the believers.
Malaysia’s breakthrough election: Dynamics of democratic learning and coalition building
Authors: Rahim Lily Zubaidah 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Malaysia’s Pakatan Haparan coalition unexpectedly defeated the Barisan National (National Front) coalition government in the May 2018 general election. This electoral breakthrough defied the predictions of seasoned political observers and leading opinion polls, bucked international trends in the direction of authoritarian resilience and political backsliding and overcame the advantages of gerrymandering, malapportionment and entrenched incumbency. The article attempts to make sense of Pakatan Harapan’s startling electoral feat by employing frameworks which centre on elections as a mode of democratic transition and democratic learning. Malaysia’s 2018 electoral breakthrough is placed within the context of earlier competitive elections and the struggle of Pakatan Harapan coalition and democratic civil society to maintain cohesion – between, during and after election campaigns. Also considered are the role of ‘recycled elites’ and civil society in reshaping electoral contests through the processes of democratic learning, narrative construction and the reformulation of nation-building paradigms.
Harakat Mujtama’ al-Silm: Democratic learning in Algeria
Authors: Bouandel Youcef 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
The article compares and contrasts the discourses and contexts of democracy in Algeria since the electoral processes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The aim is to understand how rapidly changing acceptance of democratic norms is managed in media interaction and more formal academic expressions, linking this to new political and religious cultures that accepts democracy. This discussion provides opportunities for the study of moderate political Islam. Thus, the article looks at empirical evidence from Algeria’s Movement for Society and Peace’s (MSP) new forms of interpreting democracy and practicing it within this Islamist party that has had MPs in the National Assembly since the cessation of civil war in the late 1990s. The article argues that Algeria’s moderate Islamists appear to have undergone important transformations at the level of ideas and practices, specifically with respect to civic values. In so doing, this Islamist party has attempted to widen its political appeal to voters, through ideas that view democracy and Islam as compatible.
Media and learning democracy: The face of emerging political activism in Egypt
Authors: Moussa Mohammed 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Popular protests erupted in Egypt at the start of the second decade of the twentyfirst century, inspired by similar uprisings in the Arab world. The formation of political parties following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak allowed a variety of Islamist actors to enter the political field with relative ease. Youth activists and groups employed bottom-up activism in a process that Larbi Sadiki has described to be ‘democratic learning’. In this article, I will explore the process through which Egyptian political actors, from an Islamist background, learnt democracy in a local context. Democracy is understood here in a decentred fashion: it is not necessarily tied to the institutional structures of the modern state. I shall examine Hizb al-Tayyar al-Masry (Egyptian Current Party) between 2011 and 2013 supplemented by other displays of democratic collective agency in the examples of Hizb Misr al-Qawiyya (Strong Egyptian Party) and al-Thawra Mustamirra (The Revolution Continues) alliance. I will explore how the forms of media practices deployed by activists were a key component of a broader revolutionary strategy of civic mobilization. An emerging generation of political activism based on inclusiveness and participation was evident in media practices at the grassroots and party-political levels.
‘She is, after all, a woman’: Uncovering gender bias in the Tunisian women candidates’ radio interviews
Authors: Othman Raoudha Ben 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Tunisia’s parity law promises the empowerment of women politicians and a greater chance for them to play a direct and significant role in Tunisia’s second republic. Testing for ‘democratic learning’ at work in Tunisia’s expanding media space, an analysis of media coverage of women candidates in the last municipal elections indicates that lingering sexism towards women candidates is deep and alive. The examination of 32 interviews of women candidates during the 2018 municipal election campaign reveals the covert bias that affects images of women candidates. The analysis indicates that there was a considerable amount of negative coverage of women candidates and that such coverage aims to cast doubt not only on women’s suitability for office. Further, the analysis suggests a determination by the political elite to retain political knowledge in small circles and not disclose it to open discussion. This study also finds that covert gender bias is buried under an avalanche of polarized discourse – Islamists vs. secularists – that journalists through their gatekeeping roles not only use but also reinforce. Tunisia’s media is not playing a leading role in the country’s ongoing processes of democratic learning.
Film reviews
Authors: Urban Maria Bonaria , Tabanelli Roberta 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Pagine Nascoste, Sabrina Varani (2017), Italy: Audiovisual Archive of the Worker and Democrat Movement (AAMOD) and B&B Film, in collaboration with Istituto Luce Cinecittà
Ghetto PSA, Rossella Schillaci (2016), Italy: AzulFilm, Unafilm, Film Commission Turin and Italian Minister of Culture-MigrArti
At the margins of Rome, at the margins of the world: The Hawks and the Sparrows and Sacro GRA as peripatetic analyses of capitalist society
Authors: Sartoni Eleonora 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This article examines the depiction of Rome’s periphery in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e Uccellini (The Hawks and the Sparrows) (1966) and in Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA (2013) by focusing on the types of shots, montage and the role of sound. In both films, the directors’ cinematic use of specific, local non-places offers the possibility to reflect not only on the margins of the Italian capital, but also on the global effects of consumerism and capitalism. Marc Augé’s theory informs the analysis of the process of homogenization that non-places and international architecture activate in the Italian territory and beyond. Moreover, this article both investigates the crisis of national identity in the postcolonial era and proposes an alternative way of dwelling in the world (as proposed by Rosi’s film) that touches upon ecocriticism, Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis and Pasolini’s ‘cinema of poetry’.
Reframing Japanese animation’s success in the late 1970s: UFO Robo Grendizer at the origin of the first anime boom in Italy and France
Authors: Pellitteri Marco 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
In most contributions on the history of Japanese animation overseas, the main focus is on the success of the series or movies; on fans and their practices; on piracy; etc. At times, however, researchers ought to use different frameworks. It is here that the analysis of creative industries can step in. Here a concrete case is reconstructed. In 1978, the animated series UFO Robo Grendizer (1975–77, Tōei Dōga) was broadcast in Italy and France. Its success led to a great amount of merchandising, media coverage and a public debate. Its impact paved the way for hundreds more anime series. The article discusses the role of the traders involved in the transactions between Tōei Dōga and European producers. It will be demonstrated how a few intuitional individuals took their chances in a, back then, growing and competitive television market, and placed a show that ignited a cultural and commercial boom.
‘I’m blind, not deaf!’: Hegemonic soundscapes and resistant hearing in Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Inferno
Authors: Pollard Damien 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This article demonstrates that the soundscapes of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980) represent key battlegrounds upon which dominant, hegemonic forces face challenge from those who have learned to adopt insurgent modes of hearing. This article adopts a methodology of attending foremost to the diegetic soundscapes that Argento constructs: the soundscapes that are ostensibly audible to the characters within the diegesis. This methodology avoids the critical tendency within studies of Argento to fixate on his films’ visual or musical elements and reveals such soundscapes to be fundamental to the flows of power and resistance operative in each film. In Suspiria, the conflict between a hegemonic soundscape and a character’s rebellious hearing unfolds in a fairy tale microcosm, but in Inferno Argento expands the scope and the stakes of this tension, re-staging it in the historically and politically specific setting of a globalized, neo-liberal New York City.
Italiani Made in China: Defining Italianness in second-generation Chinese-Italians
Authors: Giuliani Chiara 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
In June 2015, the Italian TV channel Real Time launched a new programme titled Italiani Made in China, which follows the one-month journey to China of six young Chinese-Italians to familiarize with Chinese culture and meet relatives and friends. This article analyses the ways in which this experience is framed for an Italian audience, the selection of the cast and the extent to which Italiani Made in China contributes to the discourse on the presence of the Chinese community in Italy and more broadly on the presence of second generations. The discussion in this article also draws on Twitter, focusing in particular on how the channel’s official account used this medium to shape the reception of the programme. Through the analysis of this TV show, the article examines how elements of ‘Italianness’, or lack thereof, are used to understand and sometimes justify the complex relationship between Italians and Italy’s Chinese community in which the youngest generations of Chinese-Italians play a pivotal role.
‘Now she wanna lick my plum’: Azealia Banks and the undoing of antiblackness
Authors: Burton Justin Adams 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
In the first verse of Azealia Banks’s 2011 ‘212’, the singer tells us of a ‘she’ who wants to lick her ‘plum’. Banks commits to the encounter, announcing, ‘I guess that cunt gettin eaten’, then chanting the line over and over. After a few iterations, though, a filter sweep slowly swallows her voice, leaving the listener to fill in the rest of the chant’s vocals. Here, I consider this moment as a sonic ‘undoing’ of Banks’s vocals that results in her voice crossing over into listeners’ bodies. I contextualize this sonic undoing in terms of Karen Barad’s theory of ‘agential cuts’, which separate otherwise entangled matter, then filter this through Sylvia Wynter’s work on rebellion, which she defines as an undoing of the negation of ‘Black peoples in slave and postslave eras’. Listening alongside Wynter and Katherine McKittrick, I argue that Banks’s sonic undoing is also a rebellious performance of queer Black affirmation.
Diverging voices together: An interview with Sara Clethero
Authors: Bonenfant Yvon , Clethero Sara 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This interview explores the experience of artistic director and music facilitator Sara Clethero within her engagement with voicings by persons with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). For 25 years, alongside the integrated singing practice of her teaching ensemble OperaMint she has facilitated singing groups for service users with ASD in residential contexts. Together, we explore the ways she feels that the kinds of singing practices she discovers alongside the service users are both unique and yet capable of engaging with musicality on similar terms to neuro-typical singers. We reflect on the particular qualities of this vocal ensemble and its social and vocalic implications.
From-ness: The identity of the practitioner in the laboratory
Authors: Erçin Nazlıhan Eda 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
This voicing is a self-reflexive response to the following questions which I often find myself pondering: Where is identity located within an intercultural laboratory of performance research? How does one circumnavigate the stereotype in encounters with culturally familiar material? As a performer/researcher of auto-ethnographic performance with a training practice in psycho-physical theatre, I find myself being challenged by specific source materials such as songs, images or texts which are associated with specific identity categories. This piece traces that challenge across my work by meditating on songs as identity-associated multisensory cultural material. One particular song, ‘Şişeler’, which I extensively worked with in the context of Judaica Project, leads my discussion.
‘No I don’t like where you come from, it’s just a satellite of London’: High Wycombe, the Sex Pistols and the punk transformation
Authors: James Martin 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
The journey from proto-punk to punk occurred at high speed in many of London’s satellite towns. Among these, the town of High Wycombe in the home counties offers a narrative that can trace an involvement in the earliest stages of that journey as a result of performances by leading British punk group the Sex Pistols. This article explores three Sex Pistols-related events that are used to map three clear phases of the proto-punk to punk transformation. The first wave notes the blurred lines in the fluid symbiotic relationships between proto-punk in London and its satellite towns. Drawing on Crossley, I note that London’s networked punk ‘music world’ was reliant on both cultural commuters and activities in the provinces. I propose a further, fluid notion of transivity that shows the relationship between local and ‘commuter’ punks is needed. The second wave shows the damaging aspect to High Wycombe’s punk identity as, due to its close proximity to London, many if its key actors would move to the capital as soon as they were able to. They escaped from the ‘boredom’ of High Wycombe – the commuter town – to go to the ‘excitement’ of cosmopolitan London to live their dreams. The third wave reveals a moment of class and regional cohesion, through which a High Wycombe Punk identity emerges during the summer of 1977. This occurs among the first and second wave participants who remained and the newer school-aged punks. Finally, the article introduces the local punk terrain beyond the timeline under investigation. Here, regional and class difference became played out through violent interactions between Wycombe punks and skins, and punk scenes from other towns. Here we see the assertion of ‘Wycombe Punk’ as a type.
Punk fanzine culture and civil protest among Israeli youth
Authors: Heilbronner Oded 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Punk fanzines in Israel peaked in the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s with the appearance of a few dozen titles. These fanzines were the product of an urban culture that had developed in the suburban central-Israel towns, created by teenagers with a strong attraction to European and American popular culture. The immediate influences on the fanzine culture were punk, which permeated Israel at the time - increasing exposure to western popular culture - and the liberal-civic perceptions that spread among various sectors of Israeli society, primarily among the middle class. Fanzine culture was hence a specific, yet critical, aspect of the ‘cultural revolution’ that prevailed in Israel, characterized by the downfall of the old order of the established bourgeois hegemonies, and the rise of a new cultural order.
DIY in Devon (Exeter and Plymouth)
Authors: Deane Dominic 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Regional cities are usually not widely known for their music scenes and live music spaces. In the historical context of DIY music scenes and youth cultures, communities are bounded by larger metropolitan areas and cities. However, this scene report will analyse a series of thoughts and interviews in discussing some of the important aspects of production in smaller DIY music scenes. This case study focuses on the medium-sized cities of Exeter and Plymouth in Devon, in the southwest of England. In examining some of the cultural identities, challenges and expressions of self-organization from labels, magazines and musicians, it reveals how alternative micro-scenes are forged through DIY practices within smaller communities.