Journal articles: 'Sly Dunbar' – Grafiati (2024)

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Author: Grafiati

Published: 10 December 2022

Last updated: 29 January 2023

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1

Sahn, Sarah. "Crunch: The Shy Dinosaur by Cirocco Dunlap." Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 71, no.8 (2018): 333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/bcc.2018.0253.

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Bridget Harris Tsemo. "The Politics of Self-Identity in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods." Southern Literary Journal 41, no.2 (2009): 21–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/slj.0.0042.

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Rahmawati, Indra, Bagus Uda Palgunadi, Lailia Dwi Kusuma Wardhani, and Ni Made Dewi Lestari. "PEMANFAATAN EKSTRAK BUNGA KECOMBRANG (Etlingera elatior jack R.M.sm) SEBAGAI LARVASIDA NYAMUK (Culex quinquifasciatus Say)." VITEK : Bidang Kedokteran Hewan 10 (November10, 2020): 44–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.30742/jv.v10i0.45.

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This study aims to determine the effectiveness of kecombrang flower extract (Etlingera elatior jack R.M.sm) on the death of Culex quenquefasciatus Say larvae. Experimental animals used were Culex quenquefasciatus Say larvae, amounting to 625 tails. The design used was a randomized complete design with 5 treatments and 5 replications. The five treatments consisted of two test groups, namely the treatment group consisting of concentrations of 5%, 10%, 15%, and the control group consisting of positive control namely abate and negative control namely aquades. Observation of mosquito larvae death was done every 2 hours for 12 hours. The data obtained were analyzed using the one-way ANOVA test and continued with the Duncan test. Based on the results of the one way ANOVA calculation the value of sig.0.00 <0.05 means that there are significant differences between treatments. Duncan test results on the treatment of 10% and 15% kecombrang flower extract have the ability as a larvicide high and equal to positive control (abate). Based on the results of the study it was concluded that the extract of kecombrang flower (Etlingera elatior jack R.M.sm) had the ability to larvae against the Culex quenquefasciatus Say mosquito.

4

ENTWISTLE, ALICE. "Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan: A World of Contradiction." Journal of American Studies 32, no.2 (August 1998): 263–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875898005891.

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Robert Creeley's long and productive writing life has resolutely witnessed personal rather than public change. Notoriously self-absorbed, his reticent poetry is fiercely individual in style and solipsistic in outlook. Like the poet, a man of few words, wryly humorous and intelligently self-contained, Creeley's poems seem determined “to say as little as possible as often as possible.” Yet the tightly crafted economy of this poetic idiom masks a curious amplitude which is easy to overlook. The tension between the persistent “circularities” in Creeley's work, his concern with the dualistic energies of contradiction and paradox, and the brevity with which such concerns are typically addressed, is worth noting, especially in the light of Creeley's abiding friendship with fellow poet, Robert Duncan, of whom Creeley once remarked:I've always felt very close to him as a writer, although our modes of writing must seem to readers quite apart. I tend to write very sparely, and Robert has a lovely, relaxed and generous kind of movement. But…[he] showed me kinds of content that I hadn't previously recognized.

5

Gatejel, Luminita. "“Entwickelter Sozialismus” in Osteuropa. Arbeit, Konsum und Öffentlichkeit. Ed. Nada Boškovska , Angelika Strobel , and Daniel Ursprung . Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 2016. 268 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Photographs. Tables. €49.90, paper." Slavic Review 76, no.2 (2017): 511–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/slr.2017.98.

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Sigit, Miarsono, Indra Rahmawati, Adhitya Yoppy Ro Candra, and Fikri Bhirawidha Prasetyo. "Pengaruh pemberian ekstrak daun lidah buaya (aloevera) terhadap mortalitas larva nyamuk (Culex quinquefasciatus say)." VITEK : Bidang Kedokteran Hewan 12, no.1 (April16, 2022): 5–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.30742/jv.v12i1.96.

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Tujuan dilakukannya penelitian ini yaitu untuk mengetahui dampak larvasida dari daun lidah buaya (Aloe vera) terhadap mortalitas nyamuk (Culex quinquefasciatus say). Sampel yang digunakan dalam penelitian merupakan larva nyamuk Culex quinquefasciatus say sebanyak 625 ekor yang didapatkan dari Laboratorium Entomologi Tropical Disease Diagnostik Center (TDDC), kampus C UNAIR. Kelompok perlakuan terdiri dari P01 sebagai kontrol negatif larva nyamuk diberikan aquades, kelompok P02 kontrol positif larva nyamuk diberi perlakuan dengan bubuk abate, kelompok P1 larva nyamuk diberi perlakuan ekstrak daun lidah buaya 10%, kelompok P2 larva nyamuk diberi perlakuan 15% ekstrak daun lidah buaya dan kelompok P3 larva nyamuk diberi perlakuan ekstrak daun lidah buaya 20%, pengamatan mortalitas larva dilakukan setiap 2 jam dalam dua belas jam pada waktu satu hari. Data mortalitas larva nyamuk yang didapatkan dianalisis dengan spss ANOVA dan dilanjutkan dengan uji Duncan. Hasil yang didapatkan pada jam ke 6 merupakan hasil yang sangat efektif terhadap tingkat mortalitas dengan nilai rata-rata pada kelompok perlakuan 1 sebesar 16 ± 1.58, kelompok perlakuan 2 sebesar 20.80 ± 0.83, kelompok perlakuan 3 sebesar 23 ± 0.70.

7

Medeiros, Almir de Souza, Oswaldo José da Cruz, and Monica Ammon Fernandez. "Esquistossomose mansônica e distribuição dos moluscos límnicos em criadouros naturais no Município de Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil." Cadernos de Saúde Pública 18, no.5 (October 2002): 1463–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0102-311x2002000500039.

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A distribuição dos moluscos límnicos presentes em Niterói, Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, bem como dos casos de esquistossomose relatados no período de 1995 a 2000, são apresentados. Foram pesquisadas todas as coleções hídricas favoráveis à ocorrência de moluscos límnicos, sendo encontradas as seguintes espécies: Antillorbis nordestensis (Lucena, 1954), Biomphalaria straminea (Dunker, 1848), Biomphalaria tenagophila (Orbigny, 1835), Drepanotrema anatinum (Orbigny, 1835), Lymnaea columella Say, 1817, Melanoides tuberculatus (Müller, 1774), Physa cubensis Pfeiffer, 1839, Physa marmorata Guilding, 1828 e Pomacea sordida (Swainson, 1823). Foram examinados 3.691 moluscos hospedeiros de Schistosoma mansoni Sambon, 1907 pela exposição à luz artificial e esmagamento e, embora negativos para este parasito, eliminaram outros tipos cercarianos.

8

Henderson,SarahL. "Assisting Reform in Post-Communist Ukraine 2000–2012: The Illusion of Donors and the Disillusion of Beneficiaries. By Duncan Leitch . Soviet and Post-Soviet Polities and Society. Stuttgart, Germany: ibidem-Verlag, 2016. 250 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Tables. $39.00, paper." Slavic Review 76, no.4 (2017): 1105–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/slr.2017.308.

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9

Vaz, Jorge Faria, Ezio Mantegazza, Horacio Manuel Santana Teles, Santa Poppe Silva Leite, and Lucia Vieira Camargo Morais. "Levantamento planorbídico do Estado de São Paulo (Brasil): 4ª Região Administrativa." Revista de Saúde Pública 21, no.5 (October 1987): 371–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0034-89101987000500003.

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A fim de conhecer a distribuição dos hospedeiros intermediários de S. mansoni no Estado de São Paulo (Brasil), a Superintendência de Controle de Endemias (SUCEN) procedeu a amplo inquérito malacológico em todos os municípios paulistas que teve a duração de 4 anos. As pesquisas realizadas na 4ª Região Administrativa que tem sede em Sorocaba e que constituem o objeto do presente relato, mostraram que Biomphalaria tenagophila (d'Orbigny, 1835) ocorre em 26 dos 59 municípios nela compreendidos. Biomphalaria glabrata (Say, 1818) é encontrada em 9 municípios e Biomphalaria straminea (Dunker, 1848), em 2. Vários casos de esquistossomose em migrantes já foram observados na área estudada. B. tenagophila parece estar implicada na cadeia natural de transmissão de S. mansoni em Itu e em São Roque, municípios em que foram descobertos os dois únicos casos da doença, até agora considerados como autóctones em toda a região.

10

Ballian, Dalibor, and Mirzeta,MemiševićHodžić. "Varijabilnost hrasta lužnjaka (Quercus robur L.) u bosanskohercegovačkom testu provenijencija." Šumarski list 146, no.1-2 (February28, 2022): 41–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.31298/sl.146.1-2.4.

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U testu provenijencija hrasta lužnjaka (Quercus robur L.) u Bosni i Hercegovini koji je osnovan 2009. godine istraživana je varijabilnost visina biljaka i promjera vrata korijena na biljkama iz 27 provenijencija. Osim toga, analizirane su i korelacije između visina stabala i promjera vrata korijena s morfološkim svojstvima listova iz prirodnih populacija. Sjeme za osnivanje testova provenijencija, kao i listovi koji su korišteni u morfometrijskoj analizi, sakupljeni su u istim populacijama. Provedenim istraživanjima utvrđene su statistički značajne razlike za svojstvo visine i promjera vrata korijena. Varijabilnost je potvrđena i Duncan-ovim testom, i to na način da su biljke s obzirom na svojstvo visina grupirane u 11 skupina te s obzirom na svojstvo promjer vrata korijena u četiri skupine. Klasterskom analizom nije utvrđeno grupiranje populacija s obzirom na geografske i ekološke udaljenosti populacija. Korelacijskom analizom potvrđena je statistički značajna povezanost između visine biljaka i promjera vrata korijena te između morfoloških svojstava listova i visine biljaka i promjera vrata korijena. Dobiveni rezultati upućuju na to da se na temelju određenih morfoloških svojstava može provoditi selekcija provenijencija u mlađim fazama razvoja.

11

Clement,C., H.SawyerHogg, and T.Wells. "Eight PopII Cepheids Recently Identified in Globular Clusters." International Astronomical Union Colloquium 82 (1985): 262–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0252921100109479.

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The University of Toronto 24-inch telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington has beerused for the study of variables in four southern globular clusters: NGC 6273=1119, NGC 6284, NGC 6293 and NGC 6333-M9.The first three of these clusters lie about 2° from one another in the sky at southern declinations ranging from about 24.5° to 26.5°. They were investigated by one of us (Sawyer 1943) using photographs obtained at the Steward Observatory in Arizona in 1939. A number of variables were discovered, but even with additional David Dunlap plates, it was not possible to determine any periods because of the large southern declinations. At Las Campanas (latitude 29°S), they pass close to the zenith and therefore the periods are more readily determined. From our Las Campanas data, we have found that there are four Cepheids in NGC 6273, two in NGC 6284 and one in NGC 6293.

12

Asante, Molefi Kete. "The Remarkable Curvature of the Mind of Abdias do Nascimento." Journal of Black Studies 52, no.6 (April15, 2021): 577–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00219347211008918.

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Nascimento transcended the country of his birth and established himself in the minds and hearts of Africans everywhere as a combatant against racism and classism. Abdias do Nascimento was to Brazil what Langston Hughes and Katherine Dunham were to African Americans, a phenomenon of cultural energy that lifted his people to the highest dimensions of art in defiance of a designed degradation of blackness. Abdias grew up as a rebel spirit, as he would often say, in the tradition of his mother, who had called out abusive behavior toward blacks, in a brazenly racist country that had exploited the indigenous and African people for centuries. Thus, he was to become a Malcolm X, Du Bois, and Paul Robeson in the Brazilian context. Combining artistic skill, militant resistance, world knowledge, historical understanding, and an adventurous nature, his active mind did not rest in one field but in several art forms and research areas. He found his first love in the practice of African art and spirituality while creating the Black Experimental Theatre in Rio de Janeiro in the l940s.

13

Memišević Hodžić, Mirzeta, and Dalibor Ballian. "Istraživanja raznolikosti morfoloških svojstava hrasta lužnjaka (Quercus robur L.) u pokusu provenijencija Žepče, Bosna i Hercegovina." Šumarski list 140, no.5-6 (June30, 2016): 239–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.31298/sl.140.5-6.3.

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Prirodne populacije hrasta lužnjaka (Quercus robur L.) u Bosni i Hercegovini su male i rascjepkane. Razlikuju se od onih koje se nalaze u svom optimumu u srednjoj Europi, svojom specifičnom genetskom strukturom, te imaju važnu ulogu u očuvanju raznolikosti hrasta lužnjaka u Europi. Cilj ovog istraživanja je odrediti varijabilnost populacija hrasta lužnjaka u Bosni i Hercegovini. U testu provenijencija u rasadniku Žepče, u proljeće 2012., 2013. i 2014. godine provedeno je mjerenje visina biljaka i promjera vrata korijena. Izmjerene su sve preživjele biljke u svih 28 provenijencija. Najmanju prosječnu visinu biljaka 2012. godine imala je provenijencija Miljevina, 38,8 cm, a najveću Jelah 74,3 cm. U 2013. godini, najmanju prosječnu visinu imala je provenijencija Stojčevac, 61,3 cm, dok provenijencija Jelah ostaje provenijencija sa najvećom prosječnom visinom, 108,4 cm. Provenijencija Miljevina i dalje ima prosječnu visinu vrlo nisku, 63,0 cm. U 2014. godini najmanju prosječnu visinu zadržava provenijencija Stojčevac, 90,8 cm a najveću provenijencija Jelah, 152,1 cm. Najmanji srednji promjer vrata korijena za 2012. godinu imala je provenijencija Vinac, 11,3 mm, a najveći provenijencija Jelah, 16,2 mm. Najmanji srednji promjer vrata korijena za 2013. godinu imala je provenijencija Stojčevac, 17,9 mm, a najveći provenijencija Jelah, 23,8 mm. Provenijencija Vinac se pomakla za sedamnaest mjesta s prosječnim promjerom vrata korijena 19,9 mm. Najmanji srednji promjer vrata korijena za 2014. godinu zadržala je provenijencija Stojčevac, s vrijednošću 23,7 mm, dok najveći promjer korijenovog vrata ima provenijencija Jelah, 34,7 mm. Analiza varijance pokazala je statistički značajne razlike između populacija po svim ispitivanim svojstvima, što je potvrdio i Duncan test.

14

Gernet, Marcos De Vasconcellos, Carlos Eduardo Belz, Rafael Antunes Baggio, Carlos João Birckolz, Elizângela Da Veiga Santos, Luiz Ricardo Lopes de Simone, Daniel Abatte, and Rafael Metri. "Nassarius foveolatus (Gastropoda, Nassariidae), a new record of an exotic species in Brazil." Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia 59 (October31, 2019): e20195955. http://dx.doi.org/10.11606/1807-0205/2019.59.55.

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Exotic species are those that occur in an area beyond their natural limit and they are considered invasive when they cause harm to the economy, environment, or human health. In coastal environments, ballast water and inlays on the hull and other parts of vessels are the main ways of introducing invasive aquatic alien species. Nassarius foveolatus (Dunker, 1847) is native from the Central and East Indian Ocean to the East China Sea. The first specimens (empty shells) of N. foveolatus were collected manually on November 11, 2017 on the Rocio footbridge, located in the Paranaguá Estuarine Complex, on the coast of the State of Paraná, southern Brazil. Posteriorly, live specimens were collected in other localities of this bay. It is already possible to infer that the specimens of N. foveolatus occur together with the native specimens of N. vibex (Say, 1822), having the same niche. As previously only N. vibex existed in that place, at least a displacement of this native species has been occurred. However, certainly future ecological studies may confirm this displacement and additional consequences to the local ecosystem, as nassariids can be predators and scavengers. Control procedures should be also greatly implemented.

15

Costa,MartaJuliaF.S., Carlos Eduardo Grault, and UlissesE.C.Confalonieri. "Comparative study of the fecundity and fertility of Biomphalaria glabrata (Say, 1818) and Biomphalaria straminea (Dunker, 1848) in a laboratory through self-fertilization and cross-fertilization." Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo 46, no.3 (June 2004): 157–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0036-46652004000300007.

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The aim of this study was to compare the fecundity and fertility of B. glabrata and B. straminea by cross- and self-fertilization. To attain this objective, laboratory-raised strains of B. glabrata and B. straminea were used. The former originated from natural breeding grounds in the municipality Paulista, state of Pernambuco, Brazil. The latter originated from irrigation ditches in the municipality of Petrolândia, in the same state. Snail populations of B. glabrata and B. straminea were maintained for 240 days in laboratory. Their fecundity was evaluated by noting the number of egg-masses, eggs and eggs per mass. Their fertility was evaluated by the number of viable eggs and the hatching rate. B. straminea was markedly more fecund than B. glabrata through cross- and self-fertilization, namely: greater egg-mass; higher egg production and more eggs per mass. Regarding fertility, there seemed to be no preferential period for occlusion to occur or a trend in the rhythm of producing viable eggs.

16

Teles, Horacio Manuel Santana. "Distribuição geográfica das espécies dos caramujos transmissores de Schistosoma mansoni no Estado de São Paulo." Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical 38, no.5 (October 2005): 426–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0037-86822005000500013.

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Os conhecimentos sobre a distribuição geográfica das espécies dos caramujos transmissores de Schistosoma mansoni são importantes para o controle e vigilância epidemiológica da esquistossomose mansônica. O estudo da situação no Estado de São Paulo, Brasil, demandou o exame dos caramujos de 8.771 lotes com amostras do gênero Biomphalaria, preservados em coleção de moluscos da Superintendência de Controle de Endemias. Os exames revelaram espécies dos caramujos transmissores da endemia em 3.712 lotes com 108.244 exemplares. As proporções foram de 225 (6%) lotes de Biomphalaria glabrata (Say, 1818), 3.402 (91,7%) de Biomphalaria tenagophila (d'Orbigny, 1835) e 85 (2,3%) de Biomphalaria straminea (Dunker, 1848), cada espécie respectivamente com 8.002 (7,4%), 88.068 (81,4%) e 12.174 (11,2%) exemplares. A distribuição geográfica de B. glabrata e B. tenagophila apresenta criadouros muito agregados. No caso de B. tenagophila, a maior compactação de criadouros coincide em regiões com elevados níveis de urbanização, muito conurbadas e poluídas. Já B. straminea, encontrada em criadouros das áreas de drenagem de todas as bacias hidrográficas, mostra uma disseminação mais rarefeita. Presume-se que devido às maiores facilidades do contato parasita/hospedeiros, os agregados de criadouros de B. glabrata e B. tenagophila sejam propícios à preservação das áreas endêmicas de S. mansoni em São Paulo.

17

CHEUNG, GARY. "Stability of the harm avoidance personality trait in late-life depression." International Psychogeriatrics 19, no.4 (April16, 2007): 778–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1041610207005194.

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Harm avoidance is one of the four temperament dimensions in Cloninger's psychobiological model of personality (Cloninger et al., 1993). In this model, personality is conceptualized as having four temperament dimensions (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence) and three character dimensions (self-directedness, cooperativeness, self-transcendence). Individuals high in harm avoidance (HA) tend to be described as “worrying and pessimistic; fearful and doubtful; shy; and fatigable.” Those with low HA scores are “relaxed and optimistic; bold and confident; outgoing; and vigorous.” HA was initially proposed as a personality trait that is independent of the state of depression. However, other reports have found HA to be positively correlated with the severity of depression (Hansenne et al., 1999; Hirano et al., 2002). Repeated within-subject measures have been used to explore the stability of HA in major depression. However, conflicting results are reported in the literature and research in HA is largely with adults (Chien and Dunner, 1996; Marijnissen et al., 2002). The aim of this study is to investigate whether the personality trait of HA is stable over a 12-month period in a group of older people with a history of depression. This is a first report on the stability of HA in an exclusive elderly sample.

18

Leavy, Brian. "Customer-centered innovation: improving the odds for success." Strategy & Leadership 45, no.2 (March20, 2017): 3–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/sl-02-2017-0016.

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Purpose This masterclass examines how customer-centric marketing, using new perspectives developed by Clayton Christensen and others, can guide new product and service innovation. Christensen’s Jobs Theory revolves around the observation that “customers don’t buy products or services,” but rather “pull them into their lives to make progress” in some way that is particularly valuable to them.” Design/methodology/approach Two recent books are discussed in detail– Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice (2016), by Christensen and co-authors Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan and Sense & Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously (2017) by design and innovation experts, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden Findings In coming to view innovation through the lens of Jobs Theory, what you see is not so much the customer at the center of the innovation universe, but “the customer’s Job to Be Done,”which “may seem like a small distinction, but, in reality, “it changes everything.” Practical Implications Identifying a well-defined Job to Be Done offers a kind of innovation blueprint which is different’ from the traditional marketing concept of “needs” because of the ‘much higher degree of specificity required to identify precisely what it is you are trying to solve for in particular use-case contexts. Originality/value When applied astutely, the concept of “Job to Be Done”can improve a company’s track record at new product or service introduction. For the first time it gives managers and other corporate leaders a guidebook for making innovation initiatives more likely to be successful.

19

Thiengo,SilvanaC., SoniaB.Santos, and MonicaA.Fernandez. "Malacofauna límnica da área de influência do lago da usina hidrelétrica de Serra da Mesa, Goiás, Brasil.: I. Estudo qualitativo." Revista Brasileira de Zoologia 22, no.4 (December 2005): 867–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0101-81752005000400010.

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A esquistossomose é uma importante doença endêmica associada a mudanças ambientais causadas por grandes projetos econômicos, tais como a construção de usinas hidrelétricas. A dificuldade de se prever o surgimento de focos de esquistossomose associados com estes empreendimentos e a existência de condições peculiares em cada tipo de projeto requerem estudos em cada uma dessas áreas, de forma a serem implementadas medidas preventivas adequadas. O número crescente de barragens no país é preocupante pois, além de criarem condições propícias ao desenvolvimento dos moluscos vetores, aumentam a população local e o turismo. Nessas áreas, a Organização Mundial de Saúde e a Fundação Nacional de Saúde recomendam ações preventivas contra a instalação de focos de esquistossomose, dentre elas, o monitoramento das populações de moluscos. Neste trabalho são apresentados dados obtidos por nossa equipe na área da Usina Hidrelétrica de Serra da Mesa (UHSM), Goiás, onde levantamentos qualitativos e quantitativos da malacofauna límnica foram realizados de 1997 a 2004, com o principal objetivo de investigar a ocorrência e a distribuição das espécies de interesse médico e veterinário. Vinte e oito espécies, pertencentes a nove diferentes famílias foram encontradas. Além de documentar novas ocorrências no Estado, é também apresentada a distribuição de duas espécies de importância médica, Biomphalaria straminea (Dunker, 1848) e Lymnaea columella Say, 1817, bem como de duas espécies exóticas, Corbicula fluminea (Müller, 1774) e Melanoides tuberculatus (Müller, 1774).

20

Bagnall,RogerS. "The effects of plague: model and evidence." Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002): 114–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1047759400013866.

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In the foregoing article, W. Scheidel builds on earlier work, most notably that of R. P. Duncan-Jones in JRA 9, to offer a model for the predicted effects of the Antonine plague and to argue that the model fits the evidence from Roman Egypt reasonably well within the limits of the quantity and quality of the latter. In his second footnote, he encourages critical response, suggesting that it “may either corroborate or undermine my interpretation.” The following pages are intended as a contribution to that discussion, but with lesser ambitions than either corroborating or undermining the model as a whole. They offer some of both, in fact, but more in the direction of undermining it.There are three reasons for not claiming too much at this point and not offering any general conclusion (as I do not). The first is that I do not have any fixed views on the degree to which the plague was the prime mover behind the changes visible in late 2nd- and 3rd-c. Egypt. In the absence of any concerted attempt to formulate and test other hypotheses about the engines of social and economic change, it is hard to say if the degree of fit of evidence to model is impressive or not. The most obvious counter-candidate is the increased municipalization of Egypt during just this period, especially from A.D. 200 onward. It would be useful to generate a model of economic change from this force and see if it is equally capable of accounting for the evidence.

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Trimaily, Devita, Nofrizal Nofrizal, and Esy Maryanti. "Efektivitas Penggunaan Tawas dan Tanah Lempung pada Pengolahan Air Gambut Menjadi Air Bersih." Dinamika Lingkungan Indonesia 4, no.1 (January12, 2017): 39. http://dx.doi.org/10.31258/dli.4.1.p.39-52.

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Need for clean water is a very important issue and still can not be resolved, especially in the peatlands. Clean water is used for everyday purposes must comply with the requirements of water quality in accordance with the Minister of Health Decree No. 416 / Menkes / per / 1990 on the conditions and water quality control. Peat water which is a source of raw water is very abundant, whereas in the processing of peat water into clean water using a coagulant has been no literature to say exactly how many doses of coagulant used, so this research is very important to do. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of the use of alum, clay and a combination of both on peat water treatment. This research method using a completely randomized design-RAL (Completely Randomized Design) with two factors, alum and clay and performed repeat three times with water media processing tool is simple. Test parameters are pH, color, 6 valence chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), sulfate (SO), chloride (Cl), organic substances as KMnO4 (ZO), and hardness (CaCO3). Analysis of the data used in this study is the determination of the effectiveness of the coagulant, ANOVA test (F test) and Duncan Multiple (Duncan's Multiple Range Test). The results showed that the most effective coagulant addition is the clay of 2 g / l in combination with alum to 200 mg / l, where the combination of this coagulant obtain a pH level of 6.53 mg / l, 113.67 PtCo color, 6 valence chromium (Cr) 0,017 mg / l, manganese (Mn) 1.07 mg / l, iron (Fe) 0.39 mg / l, sulfate (SO) 108.31 mg / l, chloride (Cl) 36.56 mg / l, substance organic as KMnO4 (ZO) 90.01 mg / l, and hardness (CaCO3) 53.38 mg / l. Effectiveness and clay alum as a coagulant for peat water treatment discussed in more detail in this paper.

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Hewson, Claire. "Picture booksThe Mouse Who Wasn't Scared By Petr Horacek Walker Books ISBN: 9781406374575 Cost: £9.99 hardcoverA Lion is a Lion By Polly Dunbar Walker Books ISBN: 978-1406371536 Cost: £9.22 hardcoverFluffywuffy By Simon Puttock and Matt Robertson Frances Lincoln Children's Books ISBN: 978-1786030948 Cost: £6.99Time to Go with Ted By Sophy Henn Bloomsbury ISBN: 978- 1408880876 Cost: £6.99 hardcoverEric Makes a Splash By Emily MacKenzie Bloomsbury ISBN: 978- 1408882962 Cost: £6.99I Say Ooh, You Say Aah By John Kane Templar Books ISBN: 978-1783708727 Cost: £6.99." Practical Pre-School 2018, no.206 (March2, 2018): 24–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.12968/prps.2018.206.24.

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Koller, Veronika, and Marlene Miglbauer. "What Drives the Right-Wing Populist Vote? Topics, Motivations and Representations in an Online Vox Pop with Voters for the Alternative für Deutschland." Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 67, no.3 (September25, 2019): 283–306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2019-0024.

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Abstract In a recent study (Miglbauer, Marlene and Veronika Koller (2019). “‘The British People have Spoken’: Voter Motivations and Identities in Vox Pops on the British EU Referendum.” Veronika Koller, Susanne Kopf and Marlene Miglbauer, eds. Discourses of Brexit. Abingdon: Routledge, 86–103.), we investigated vox pops (short for ‘vox populi,’ i.e. ‘voice of the people’) with self-declared Leave voters in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum. The study presented here complements this research with a comparative perspective, exploring the motivations expressed by voters for the German right-wing populist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland). On the day of the 2017 general election, the German news website Zeit online (ZON) invited its readers to say why they voted AfD. Although the AfD voter profile and the ZON readership profile are noticeably different, the question elicited 468 replies numbering a total of around 59,000 words, which we compiled into a corpus. Working with corpus analysis software AntConc 3.4.1w, we first prised out topics and motivations by analysing this collection of online vox pops for word frequencies as well as collocates and concordances for selected lexical units, before manually grouping the different lexemes into ten topics. In a second step, we manually analysed the data for social actor representation (van Leeuwen, Theo (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) and appraisal (Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White (2005). Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.). The results of the analysis show that next to previously documented motivations for right-wing populist votes – e.g. in-group bias and rejection of the Other as morally deficient (Heinisch, Reinhard (2008). “Austria: The Structure and Agency of Austrian Populism.” Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, eds. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 67–83.) –, the group of AfD voters represented in the written vox pop have specific additional reasons, namely a focus on German chancellor Merkel as an ‘anti-hero’ and a belief of being victimised by the media. An additional, unexpected finding was that a number of posters to the dedicated comment forum explicitly distance themselves from perceived stereotypes of right-wing populist voters. Our findings therefore also problematise previously identified characteristics of right-wing populist discourse as anti-elitist and anti-intellectual (Wodak, Ruth (2015b). The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Los Angeles: SAGE.) and call into question the support from workers, and associated fears of wage pressure and competition for welfare benefits, as one of the main factors in the success of right-wing populism (Oesch, Daniel (2008). “Explaining Workers’ Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland.” International Political Science Review 29.3, 349–373.).

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Lawrence,A. "New Millimetre Measurements and the Radio to X-ray Continua of Active Galactic Nuclei." Symposium - International Astronomical Union 134 (1989): 393–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0074180900141439.

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I am one of a large team studying an X-ray flux limited sample of 35 AGN, at radio (Unger et al 1987 MNRAS 228 521), IR (Ward et al 1987 ApJ 315 74 and Carleton et al 1987 ApJ 318 595), optical-UV (Boisson et al in preparation), and X-ray (Turner PhD thesis, Leicester) wavelengths. A gap in the data which we have just started to fill is the millimetre region. (Lawrence, Ward, Elvis, Robson, Smith, Duncan, and Rowan-Robinson). In Jan/Feb 1988 we made measurements of twelve objects at 800 and 1100 micron, using the ROE/QMC bolometer, UKT14, on the new UK/Dutch/Canadian facility on Mauna Kea, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, reaching 1 sigma sensitivity of ∼15–20 mJy, an order of magnitude improvement over previous data. The four radio loud objects measured were easily detected, as expected. These all have a strong blazar component, showing smooth but curved spectra over many decades, possibly log-Gaussian in form (Landau et al 1986 ApJ 308 78), or alternatively explicable by a small number of power-law components (Robson et al 1988 MNRAS in press). In any case, other evidence points to non-thermal radiation by a relativistically moving feature (high polarization, strong variability, superluminal motion). Eight radio quiet objects were measured, and upper limits only found, except for a possible four sigma detection of N2992. In all cases, the mm limits are far below the 100 micron IRAS fluxes. In four of the nearest objects, this is not too surprising, as fluxes are rising steeply throughout 12 to 100 micron, a sign that the IRAS data is dominated by cool interstellar dust emission (“cirrus”) from the discs of the parent galaxies. However we can also say that any postulated power law component of spectral index ∼1 dominating the near-IR, must become self-absorbed around ∼200 micron if the mm limits are not to be exceeded. Four rather more interesting objects are shown in Fig. 1. Again, any underlying power-law component must be self-absorbed by ∼100 micron, but is not clear that such a power-law is needed. N5506 and IC4329A have falling optical energy distributions, and large H α/Hβ ratios; on the other hand, the IR continuum lies well above the X-ray level, so there is good argument for absorption and re-radiation by dust. N4151, while flat through the near-IR-optical, has a large hump centred at ∼25 micron. Particularly important here are further new measurements by Engargiola et al (1987, ApJ in press),and Edelson et al (1988, preprint) which show the energy distribution to be falling so steeply from 155 to 438 micron that self-absorbed synchrotron is ruled out in this region. In fact, the whole energy distribution from mm to UV can be modelled without a power law at all, as shown in Fig 2. This uses a starburst component (from Rowan-Robinson and Crawford 1988, MNRAS in press), hot dust represented by three greybodies at 200K, 500K, and 1000K, starlight from a nuclear cusp, and a blackbody at 30,000K. Even MKN590, which at first sight looks like a power-law, can be modelled by similar components (Fig. 3).

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BRANDÃO, Luiz Henrique Mendes, and Jesiel Soares SILVA. "TRANSFORMAÇÕES LEXICO-SEMÂNTICAS CORRELATAS À INFLUÊNCIA DA INTERNET." Trama 16, no.37 (February27, 2020): 4–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.48075/rt.v16i37.23604.

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Neste trabalho, objetivou-se analisar as transformações ocorridas no uso da linguagem por parte de seus usuários tendo como base o período correspondente ao início dos anos 90, momento histórico em que a internet ainda não havia sido popularizada no mundo, em comparação ao ano de 2017, período marcado pelo amplo acesso à internet, principalmente nos países mais desenvolvidos. Para tal, realizou-se uma investigação tendo como base o COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) com o intuito de se verificar, através da associação de palavras com seus colocados, como alguns termos eram utilizados antes da popularização da internet e após o mesmo fenômeno. Através da análise estatística dos insumos, foi possível identificar que certos termos da língua (neste caso da língua inglesa) passaram a ser utilizados mais frequentemente para expressar algo relacionado à tecnologia, tendo sido os sentidos anteriores rebaixados, nesta transformação semântica, a uma frequência menor ou muito menor de uso após a realidade do acesso amplo à internet, o que representa uma transformação léxico-semântica propiciada por um fenômeno de alcance global que influencia a vida das pessoas de modo a ressignificar o uso que fazem do mundo e consequentemente a metalinguagem que utilizam nas trocas que realizam com o mesmo.REFERÊNCIASBENSON, M., BENSON, E., ILSON, R. (orgs.)The BBI dictionary of english word combinations. Amsterdã/Filadélfia: John Benjamins, 1986.BIBER, D. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988Davies, Mark. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 600 million words, 1990-present, 2008. Disponível em: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/. Acesso em: 19 fev. 2020.CASTELLVI, Maria Teresa CABRÉ. La clasificación de neologismos. Alfa, São Paulo, 50 (2): 229-250, 2006DAVIES, Mark. The Corpus of Contemporary American English as the first reliable monitor corpus of English. Literary and Linguistic Computing, Brigham, v. 25, n. 4, 2010. Disponível em: https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-abstract/25/4/447/997323?redirectedFrom=fulltext. Acesso em: 21 ago. 2019.FRANCIS, W. N.; KUCERA, H. Frequency analysis of English usage: lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982DAVIES, Mark; KIM, Jong-Bok. Historical shifts with the INTO-CAUSATIVE construction in American English. The Gruyter mouton, [S.L.], v. 57, n. 1, 2019. Disponível em: http://web.khu.ac.kr/~jongbok/research/2019/2019-ahci-into-historical-shift-linguistics.pdf Acesso em 21 ago. 2019DICIONÁRIO PRIBERAM DA LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA. Desenvolvido por Lello editores, Porto, 1996 e 1999. Licensiado à Priberam em 2008. Disponível em: https://dicionario.priberam.org/sobre.aspx Acesso em 21 ago. 2019KJELLMER, G. A. A dictionary of English collocations: based on the Brown Corpus, v. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994KREMELBERG, David. Practical statistic: a quick and easy guide to IBM ℗ SPSS ℗ Statistics, STATA, and other statistical software. Sage: Los Angeles, 2011.MC ENERY, Tony, et al. Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2019), 39, 74–92MODIS, Theodore. The end of the internet rush. Technological Forecasting Social Change, Lugano, v. 72, n. 8, 2005. Disponível em: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162505000843 Acesso em: 21 ago. 2019OLIVEIRA, Lúcia Pacheco de. Linguística de corpus: Teoria, interfaces e aplicações. Matraga, Rio de janeiro, v. 16, n. 24, 2009. Disponível em: https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/matraga/article/view/27796. Acesso em: 21 ago. 2019PARTINGTON, A. Patterns and meanings: using corpora for english language research and teaching. Amsterdã/Filadélfia: John Benjamnins, 1998ROBINSON, Mary; DUNCAN, Daniel (2019) Holistic Approaches to Syntactic Variation: Wh-all Questions in English. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: v. 25, n. 1 , 2019. Disponível em: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol25/iss1/23/. Acesso em: 21 ago. 2019SANCHEZ, A. Definición e historia de los corpos. In: SANCHEZ, A. et al. (orgs.). CUMBRE: corpus linguístico de español contemporaneo. Madri: SGEL, 1995, p. 7-24.BERBER SARDINHA. T. Linguística de Corpus. Barueri, SP: Manole, 2004.SINCLAIR, J. McH. Beginning the study of lexis. In: BAZELL, C. E. In memory of R. Firth. Londres: Longman, 1966, p. 410-430.SVARTVIK, Jan. Corpora are becoming mainstream. In: THOMAS, J. and SHORT, M. (orgs). Using corpora for language research. London and New York: Longman,1996. p 3-13.Recebido em 16-11-2019 | Aceito em 12-02-2020

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Demirhan, Osman. "Genotoxic Effects of Radiofrequency-Electromagnetic Fields." Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Sciences 1, no.1 (June19, 2021): 9–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.55124/jtes.v1i1.50.

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Genotoxic Effects of Radiofrequency-Electromagnetic Fields. IntroductionRadiation is energy emission in the form of electromagnetic waves emitted from the solar system and natural resources on earth. The currents produced by the elementary particles formed by the electric current create the magnetic field. Earth's surface is under the influence of the geomagnetic field emanating from the sun. However, the outer liquid also has a magnetic field created as a result of heat transfer in the core. Therefore, all living organisms on earth live under the influence of electromagnetic fields (EMF). Today, besides these natural energy resources, rapidly developing technological developments provide most of the convenience in our lives and expose people to artificial electromagnetic fields. However, man's magnetic field is also under the influence of other natural and artificial magnetic fields around him. In particular, by ionizing radiation, which carries enough energy to break down the genetic material, die cells as a result of DNA damaging, and other diseases, especially cancer, can develop as a result of tissue damage. Electromagnetic Fields in Our LivesToday, apart from natural geomagnetic fields, radiation is emitted from many technological devices. The spectrum of these fields includes many different types of radiation, from subatomic radiation such as gamma and X-rays to radio waves, depending on their wavelengths. Though, as a result of the rapid increase of technological growth, the duration and amount of exposure to EMF is also steadily increasing. On the other hand, wireless gadgets such as computers, smartphones and medical radiological devices have become a necessity for humans. Almost everyone is exposed to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from cell phone and base station antennas or other sources. Thus, the damage caused by the radiation to the environment affects living organisms even many kilometres away unlimitedly. All organisms in the world live under the influence of these negative environmental changes and a large part of the world population is exposed to radiofrequency (RF) radiation for a long time in their daily lives. So, though we are not aware of it, our organs and tissues are constantly exposed to radiation. Therefore, radiation adversely affects human, animal and plant health and disrupts the environment and ecological balance. An example of negative effects, radiation can cause genetic changes in the body (Figure 1). Radiation is divided into ionizing and non-ionizing. Ionizing radiations cause electron loss or gain in an atom or group of atoms in the medium they pass through. Thus, positively or negatively charged ions are formed. High energy X, gamma, ultraviolet and some visible rays in the ionized region of the electromagnetic spectrum can be counted. Since gamma rays, X rays and ultraviolet rays can ionize the molecules in living things more, they can easily disrupt the chemical structure of tissues, cells and DNA molecules in living organisms. Therefore, they can be very dangerous and deadly to living things. The energy of the waves in the non-ionizing region of the electromagnetic spectrum is low and the energy levels are insufficient for the ionization of molecules. Electricity, radio and TV waves, microwaves, and infrared rays are not ionizing because they have low energy. Waves emitted from electronic devices (cell phones, computers, microwave ovens, etc.) are absorbed by the human and animal body. The amount of energy absorbed by the unit biological tissue mass per unit time is called the specific absorption rate (SAR), and its unit is W/kg. Risks of Electromagnetic Fields on Living ThingsDepending on the structure of the tissues and organs, the radiation must reach a certain threshold dose for the effect to occur. Radiation levels below the threshold dose are not effective. Depending on the structure of the tissues and organs, the radiation must reach a certain threshold dose. The effects of small doses of waves are negligible. However, the clinical effects of waves above a certain threshold may increase. High dose waves can cause cell death in tissues. Damages in the cell may increase the risk of cancer and hereditary damage after a while, and somatic effects in people exposed to radiation may cause cancer to appear years later. There is much research on the effects of RF fields. In vitro and in vivo studies on rats, plants and different tissues of humans; suggests that the RF fields are not genotoxic and the fact that harmful effect is due to the heat effect. The contradictory results on this issue have brought about discussions. Therefore, there are still concerns about the potential adverse effects of RFR on human health. A good understanding of the biological effects of RF radiation will protect against potential damages. Due to these uncertainties, with the electromagnetic field project of the World Health Organization, experimental and modelling studies on the biological effects of RF radiation have been accelerated. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer decided that RF-EMR waves could be potentially carcinogenic to humans (2). Considering that almost everyone, including young children, uses mobile phones in addition to other technological devices, the danger of electromagnetic waves has increased social interest. Genotoxic Effects of EMFIn addition to stimulating apoptosis and changes in ion channels, RF-EMF waves also have a potential effect on genetic material. The radiation absorbed by organisms causes the ionization of target molecules. In particular, biological damage may occur as a result of stimulation/ionization of atoms and disruption of molecular structures while ionizing radiation passes through tissue. As a result of ionization in the cell, electron increases and free electrons cause damage, especially in macromolecules and DNA. Free electrons move directly or indirectly. Free electrons directly affect the phosphodiester or H-bonds of DNA. As a result, the phosphodiester bonds of DNA in the cell are broken, single or double-stranded breakages and chemical toxins increase. DNA double-strand breaks are the most relevant biologic damage induced by ionizing radiation (3,4). There are no cells that are resistant to radiation. The nucleus of the cell and especially the chromosomes in dividing cells are very sensitive to radiation. One of the most important effects of radiation on the cell is to suppress cell growth. In particular, growth is impaired in cells exposed to radiation during cell division (mitosis). Consequently, cells with a high division rate are more sensitive to radiation. DNA damage in somatic cells can lead to cancer development or cell death. Cell death can occur as a result of breaking down DNA because ionizing radiation has enough energy to break down the cell's genetic material. Thus, tissues are damaged and cancer development may be triggered. DNA damage caused by radiation in cells is repaired by metabolic repair processes. If the breaks in DNA as a result of DNA damage caused by radiation in cells are not too large, they can be repaired by metabolic repair processes. Still, errors may occur during this repair. Chromosomes containing different genetic codes and information may also occur. In the cell, the released electrons interact with water molecules, indirectly causing the water to be reactively divided into two parts. Free radicals carry an electron that is not electrically shared in their orbits. Free radicals can cause genetic damage in DNA such as nucleotide changes, double and single-strand breaks. Radiation can cause chromosomes to break, stick together and rearrange. All these changes can lead to mutations or even further, the death of the cell. However, in addition to ionizing radiation, extracellular genotoxic chemicals and intracellular oxidative metabolic residues can also create stress in cells during DNA replication and cell division. Damage may occur during DNA replication under such environmental stress conditions. To date, conflicting results have been reported regarding the genotoxic effects of RF-EMF waves on genetic material. It has been reported that the energy of low EM fields is not sufficient to break the chemical bonds of DNA, but the increase in exposure time is effective on the formation of oxygen radicals and the disruptions in the DNA repair process. The absorption of microwaves can cause significant local warming in cells. For example, an increase in temperature has been observed in cells in culture media exposed to waves of high SAR levels. However, there is evidence that reactive oxygen species are formed in cells indirectly and experimentally exposed to RF-EMF waves. Free oxygen radicals can create nucleotide entries in DNA as well as bind cellular components to DNA bases (5). The frequency of polymorphisms observed in DNA repair mechanism genes in children with acute leukaemia living close to high energy lines reveals the effect of this energy on the repair process. Significant evidence has been reported that genotoxic effects occur in various cell types when exposed to RF-EMF waves (6-10). Here, it has been reported that cells exposed to RF-EMF waves (1.800 MHz, SAR 2 W/kg) cause oxidative damage in mitochondrial DNA, DNA breaks in neurons and DNA breaks in amniotic cells (6,10). Similarly, the damage has been reported in lymphocytes exposed to various RF-EMF waves (8). However, exposure to RF-EMF waves is known to cause chromosome imbalance, changes in gene expression, and gene mutations. Such deleterious genetic effects have also been reported in neurons, blood lymphocytes, sperm, red blood cells, epithelial cells, hematopoietic tissue, lung cells, and bone marrow (1,11,12). It has been found that exposure to RF-EMF radiation also increases chromosome numerical aberrations (6,13). It has also been reported that increased chromosome separation in mouse oocytes exposed to EM and increased DNA fragmentation and apoptosis in fly egg cells (14,15). However, increased DNA breaks have been reported in the blastomeres of embryos of pregnant mice exposed to a frequency of 50 Hz, and a decrease in the number of blastocysts has been reported (16). Genetic damages to sex cells can lead to persistent genetic diseases in subsequent generations. Today, X-ray devices used for medical diagnosis have become one of the largest sources of radiation. These radiological procedures used for diagnosis constitute an important part of ionizing radiation. During these processes, the human body is visibly or invisibly affected by X-rays. As a matter of fact, X-rays have effects of disrupting the structure and biochemical activities of DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes that are vital in the organism (17). Many studies on this subject have revealed that radiation has suppressive and mutational effects on DNA synthesis. These effects can cause serious damage to the cell as well as DNA and chromosome damage. In a recent study, chromosome damage was investigated in patients with X-ray angiography and personnel working in radiological procedures (18). Our findings showed that the beams used in interventional radiological procedures caused chromosomal damage and the rate of chromosomal abnormalities (CAs) increased significantly in patients after the procedure and this damage increased with the amount of radiation dose. Therefore, the radiation dose to be given to the patient should be chosen carefully. Besides, our findings showed that the frequency of CA is significantly higher in personnel working in radiological procedures. This reveals that interventional cardiologists are exposed to high radiation exposure. For this reason, we can say that the personnel working in radiological procedures (physician, health technician and nurse) are very likely to get diseases after years because they are exposed to low doses but long-term X-rays. Therefore, both the potential risks and safety of exposure to medical radiological devices must be continuously monitored. Furthermore, the fact that chromatid and chromosome breaks are very common among structural CAs in our findings suggests that they may be the cause of malignancy. Because, there are many cancer genes, tumour suppressor genes, enzyme genes involved in DNA repair and important genes or candidate genes responsible forapoptosis on these chromosomes. All this information shows that patients are more susceptible to DNA damage and inappropriate radiological examinations should be avoided. Therefore, X-ray and other diagnostic imaging techniques should not be applied unless necessary, and physicians and patients should be more careful in this regard. It has been reported that RF-EMR waves emitted from wireless communication device mobile phones have a genotoxic effect on human and mammalian cells (6,19). In a recent study; The effects of 900 and 1800 MHz cell phone frequencies on human chromosomes were investigated in amniotic cell cultures (6). Here, it has been reported that chromosome packing delays, damage and breaks occur in amniotic cells exposed to 900 and 1800 MHz every day at 3, 6 and 12 hours for twelve days. However, it was found that the frequency of 1800 MHz caused more CAs than 900 MHz, and the amount of damage increased with increasing usage time. These results confirm that GSM-like RF-EMR causes direct genotoxic effects in human in vitro cultures and has adverse effects on human chromosomes, and these effects increase in parallel with exposure time. This shows us that the mobile phone carries a risk for human health and these genetic damages can cause cancer. Therefore, necessary precautions should be taken for these harmful effects of mobile phones. Among these measures, the periods of mobile phone use should be kept short, especially the exposure of developing children and infants to mobile phones should be prevented, and avoiding excessive use of mobile phones may be one of the precautions against cancer. However, in order to evaluate it in more detail, the effects of mobile phones with environmental mutagens and/or carcinogens should be considered in subsequent researches. ConclusionToday, in parallel with the increasing technological developments, the demand of the society for electronic devices and phones and the frequency ranges of electronic devices are constantly increasing. Waves emitted from electronic devices are absorbed by human and animal bodies. Especially, the use of phones by contact with our body and the increase in usage time affects not only adults but also young children. Therefore, there is increasing concern in society about the negative biological effects of EM waves emitted from phones and other electronic devices. Results from all studies show that RF-EMF waves may be carcinogenic due to their genotoxic effect. Because cancer is a disease that occurs as a result of genetic damage. Considering these negative and harmful effects, regulations following international standards regarding the use of electronic devices should be made and society should be made aware of the risks.References Kim JH.; Lee K.; Kim HG.; Kim KB.; Kim HR. Possible Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure on Central Nerve System. Biomol Ther. 2019, 27(3), 265-275. Baan R.; Grosse Y.; Lauby-Secretan B.; et al. WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group. Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. Lancet Oncol. 2011, 12, 624–626. Berrington De Gonzalez A.; Darby S. Risk of cancer from diagnostic X-rays: estimates for the UK and 14 other countries. Lancet. 2004, 363, 345-351. Löbrich M.; Jeggo PA.The impact of a negligent G2/M checkpoint on genomic instability and cancer induction. Nat Rev Cancer. 2007, 861–869. M Valko.; M Izakovic.; M Mazur.; CJ Rhodes.; J Telser. Role of oxygen radicals in DNA damage and cancer incidence. Cell. Biochem. 2004, 266, 37–56. Uslu N.; Demirhan O.; Emre M.; Seydaoğlu G. The chromosomal effects of GSM-like electromagnetic radiation exposure on human fetal cells. Biomed Res Clin Prac. 2019, 4, 1-6. Lee S.; Johnson D.; Dunbar K Dong H.; Ge X.; Kim YC.; Wing C.; Jayathilaka N.; Emmanuel N.; Zhou CQ.; Gerber HL.; Tseng CC.; Wang SM. 2.45 GHz radiofrequency fields alter gene expression in cultured human cells. FEBS Lett. 2005, 579, 4829-4836. Phillips JL.; Singh NP.; Lai, H. Electromagnetic fields and DNA damage. Pathophysiology. 2009, 16, 79-88. Ruediger HW. Genotoxic effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. Pathophysiology. 2009, 16, 89-102. Xu S.; Zhou Z.; Zhang L.; Yu Z.; Zhang W.; Wang Y.; Wang X.; Li M.; Chen Y.; Chen C.; He M.; Zhang G.; Zhong M. Exposure to 1800 MHz radiofrequency radiation induces oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA in primary cultured neurons. Brain Res. 2010, 1311, 189-196. Demsia G.; Vlastos D.; Matthopoulos DP. Effect of 910-MHz electromagnetic field on rat bone marrow. 2004, 2, 48-54. Zhao TY.; Zou SP.; Knapp PE. Exposure to cell phone radiation up-regulates apoptosis genes in primary cultures of neurons and astrocytes. Lett. 2007, 412, 34-38. Mashevich M.; Folkman D.; Kesar A.; Barbul A.; Korenstein R.; Jerby E.; Avivi L. Exposure of human peripheral blood lymphocytes to electromagnetic fields associated with cellular phones leads to chromosomal instability. Bioelectromagnetics. 2003, 24, 82-90. Panagopoulos DJ.; Chavdoula ED.; Nezis IP.; Margaritis LH. Cell death induced by GSM 900-MHz and DCS 1800-MHz mobile telephony radiation. Mutat Res. 2007, 626(1–2), 69–78. Sagioglou NE.; Manta AK.; Giannarakis IK.; Skouroliakou AS.; Margaritis LH. Apoptotic cell death during Drosophila oogenesis is differentially increased by electromagnetic radiation depending on modulation, intensity and duration of exposure. Electromagn Biol Med. 2015, 1-14. Borhani N.; Rajaei F.; Salehi Z.; Javadi A. Analysis of DNA fragmentation in mouse embryos exposed to an extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field. Electromagn Biol Med. 2011, 30(4), 246–252. Rowley R.; Phillips EN.; Schroeder AL. 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Hussain Mian, Abrar. "Isolation And Characterization Of Biosurfactant Producing Bacteria From Different Environmental Soil Samples." Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Sciences 1, no.1 (November2, 2021): 36–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.55124/jtes.v1i1.133.

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Biosurfactants are natural substances produced by several bacterial and fungal organisms that are amphiphilic and are extracellular (a part of the cell membrane). Biosurfactants can reduce the stress between solids and liquids on the surface and at the end. Biosurfactants have several properties, i.e. they are stable, less harmful, as well as readily degradable, and extremely eco-friendly. Biosurfactants also have a wide range of industrial uses because they are a versatile category of chemical substances. The principal justification for conducting such research was the isolation of possible biosurfactants containing bacteria. Sampling was performed for the isolation of bacteria producing biosurfactants from different oil-polluted sites That is to say, experiment for emulsification, test for oil spreading, test for drop collapse, and measure for hemolysis. The capability to produce biosurfactants was seen in 22 different isolates from polluted sites B1, B2, and B3. Through different biochemical tests and Gram staining, it was identified that isolated bacterial strains are Pseudomonas spp and that is Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The procedure used as characterizing biosurfactants was the TLC plate’s procedure, by using TLC plates process yellow dots emerged after spraying on silica gel plates with an throne and ninhydrin reagents. These yellow spots confirmed the presence and production of rhamnolipid in the biosurfactant. Hence, it was concluded that identified strains in the study can be helpful in the heavy metals, pesticides, and hydrocarbons bio-degradation and bioremediation. These may also be used as biological control agents to protect plants from various pathogens, resulting in improved crop yields. Introduction Biosurfactants are natural substances produced by several bacterial and fungal organisms that are amphiphilic and are extracellular (a part of the cell membrane) (Chen et al., 2007; Ghayyomiet al., 2012). Main purpose of the bio-surfactantsgeneration or production is a consequence of financial availability (Van Dyke et al., 1993 It is reported that almost 50 percent of the world's surfactants are used because of the need for cleaning agents as well as the rate of growth grows every day (Deleu and Paquot, 2004). Appropriate use of bio-surfactants will control environmental emissions what these are the most dangerous, constantly rising gradually and disrupting the routine maintenance of life every day. Awareness campaign initiatives have been introduced and also increase for environmental laws, various innovative approaches need to be implemented and even the issue of pollution focused entirely. Developing appropriate advanced technologies to help clear up chemicals and toxins from the ecosystem, like hydrocarbons (both inorganic and organic). Studies on biosurfactants are being launched by scholars and researchers with significant health issues like adverse environmental effects, air contamination, environmental change, and waste management (Makkar and Cameotra, 2002 Biosurfactants contribute to expanded demand for such microbial products as alternatives to chemical surfactants (Benatet al., 2000). Microbes seem to have the capability to degrade contaminants, but their biodegradation is limited leading to hydrophobicity, low solubility in water, and inadequate bioavailability, of such pollutants (Patil, et al., 2012). GhayyomiJazeh, Mishraet. al (2001) those bacteria that produce biosurfactants were isolated from the site of petroleum spills and afterward, 160 strains and as well as 59 strains were able to produce biosurfactants have shown better performance in a test for hemolysis of blood, and 45 strains with positive findings within oil spread experiment were applied in the laboratory to isolate and segregate the media cultured Banat process (Rahman et al., 2002) These were observed and researched that biosurfactants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa spp are most likely to disrupt the bonding of hydrocarbons like nonadecane, octa, Hexa, and hepta, in marine Water contaminated with oil spills up To approximately 47%, 53%, 73% and 60%(Abrar et al., 2020). Current study concluded that the isolated strain having the ability to degrade hydrocarbon as well as the ability to degrade the heavy metal. The strain also can protect the plant from various diseases. The present research found that the isolated strain is capable of degrading hydrocarbon while also being capable of degrading the heavy metal. As well as the strain does have the capability to defend plants from different diseases. Material And Methods Area of Study The investigation was conducted at HazaraUniversity(HU) Microbiology Laboratory, MansehraPakistan. Assemblage of Samples Thehomestay area of the city Mansehra Pakistan which is named as a township, where oil spills arose, oil spills soil samples were obtained as well as sampling from various Mansehra automobile workshops were also done. Sterilized bags of polythene were being used to collect samples of the soil, after thatthe sample was taken towards the Hazara University (HU) Mansehra Microbiology Laboratory to examine and extract bacterial strains that could develop biosurfactants. The soil temperature at the time of sample selection was around 30 ° C. The pH was also verified by Galvano science companies at the time of selection by pH meter, and the pH being reported was 7. Preparation of Media 15 x 100 mm Petri dishes were being used to prepare the media. Agar plates were thoroughly cleaned with water from the tap and then carefully covered in aluminum foil following cleaning then placed within autoclave at 121°C for about 15 min at 15 psi for sterilization. The nutrient agar which contains 0.5% NaCl, 0.3% beef extract, 0.5% peptone, and 1.5% agar, in 500 ml of distilled water, 14 g of the nutrient agar media (Merck) were dissolved. The nutrient level used mainly for the production of non-fastidious species. Nutrient agar is widely known as it's capable of growing a variety of bacteria types and provides nutrients required for the growth of bacteria. Upon sufficient dissolution of such nutrient agar in distilled water, these were then sterilized by autoclaving for 15 min at 15 psi in the autoclave and held at 121 °C Upon autoclaving, pouring of the media was done in laminar flow hood, and then packed and placed for yet more use in a fridge at 4°C. 2.4 Preparation of serial dilution The bacteria are isolated using the serial dilution process. During this process, 10 test tubes were taken and distilled water (9ml) was added in each tube. After that tubes were put for 15 minutes in the autoclave machine at 121°C. After that 1gm of a crude oil sample from the soil was added in a test tube containing distilled water. Further, 1 ml of the solution was taken from the first test tube and poured to the adjoining tubes for the preparation dilution as under . Afterward, 10μl of the solution was pipetted from both the dilution of and shifted for spread culture techniques, then incubated the plates at 37°C for 48hrs. Biosurfactants extraction Firstly, in nutrient broth solution theculture of bacteria was added and inoculated with oil, the bacterial colony was then incubated at the temperature of 25°C in a shaking incubator just for 7 days. Incubation after seven days of trembling. Thebacterial Crop was then taken and centrifuged at 5000rpm at temperature 4°C for 20minutes. Following centrifugation, the supernatant was collected and then mixed in the equivalent amount in Methanol: Chloroform. White sediment was then retained and collected for further use . Bacterial Colonies Isolation 1 g of the soil polluted with oil was diluted serially up to 106 dilutions.10 μl of 104 and 106 dilutions for spread culture were transferred to the MSM agar plates and nutrient agar. The plates were then incubated at 37°C for 48hrs. Twenty-two morphologically separate colonies were separated for further specific examination just after the incubation and processed by using the technique of streak plate. Screening of Isolates’ Biosurfactants Behavior To check the activity of biosurfactants produced by the bacterial species the following methods of screening were done. Hemolytic Activity of Biosurfactants for Erythrocytes Blood agar containing 5% of blood was prepared as after the fresh isolates were added and inoculated on blood agar plates, then the plates were taken and placed in the incubator at temperature 37°C for 48hrs (Rashediet al., 2005). Thereafter the observation of clear zone in the colonies indicated the existence of bacterial species that produce biosurfactants. This experiment was undertaken to control the ability of isolated bacteria to induce blood agar hemolysis. Three forms of hemolysis usually involve; alpha, beta, and hemolysis of the gamma. The agar underneath the species is dark greenish, then it is Alpha, the yellowish color produced in beta hemolysis and gamma hemolysis does not affect the bacterial sppwhichadded on the plates (Anandaraj and Thivakaran, 2010). Bio-surfactant identification with process of CTAB MSM (Mineral salt agar medium) with (2%) of glucose serving both as carbon source, (0.5 mg / ml) acetyl-tri-methyl-ammonium-bromide (CTAB), and methylene blue (MB: 0.2 mg/ml) are used to detect anionic bio-surfactants (Satpute et al., 2008). For this method, thirty microliters (30μl) of cell-free supernatant were added to each of the wells of the methylene blue agar plate that comprises of borer (4 mm in diameter). after that, the incubation of the plates was done for 48-72 hrs at 37°C. Just after incubation in each of the wells, a dark blue halo zone was being used to show the successful anionic bio-surfactant production. Table 1: Composition of MSM Media S. No Ingredients Amount (gm/L) I Potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KH2PO4) II Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4) III Iron Sulfate (FeSO4) IV Sodium Nitrate (NaNO3) V Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) VI Ammonium Sulfate (NH4)2SO4 Technique for Spreading of Oil A sufficient number of isolated bacteria were inoculated into a solution of 100ml nutrient broth. Over 3 days, the culture was incubated at 37 ° C in a rotating shaker incubator (150 rpm). After that biosurfactants synthesis was checked in culture suspensions (Priya and Usharani, 2009; Anandaraj and Thivakaran, 2010). For this process, thirty milliliters (30ml) of distilled water was added in a Petri dish. In the middle of the distilled water, 1 milliliter (1ml) of diesel oil was added, and then a centrifuged twenty microliter (20μl) culture was introduced to the middle of a plate, which was isolated from oil spilled soil or local oily groundwater. The species producing the bio-surfactant displace the hydrocarbons and disperse it even in the water. Then it was calculated and analyzed within 1 mint (Ali et al., 2013). Technique for Drop collapse In this process, 96-wellsformed in each of the plates of nutrient agar. Afterwards, all the 96-wells of microliter plates was then filled withmineral oil of about 2ml. Then stabilized the plate at 37oC for 1 hour, after which the oil surface was filled with 5μl of supernatant culture. Therefore, the drop shape was taken to be observed on the oil surface after 1min. The drop which was collapsed, generated by the supernatant culture which is used to signify positive(+ive) outcome and the drops which stayed the same and displayed no changeindicates negative(-ive) outcome. And was taking distilled water as a control(Plaza et al., 2006). Emulsification index The emulsification index was calculated, as stated by the process followed by Cooper and Goldenberg (1981) In this process, 2 ml of kerosene oil was taken and inserted in each of the test tubes to the same amount of cell-free supernatant, and then hom*ogenized for 2 min in a vortex at high speed and allowed for 24 hours to stand. The emulsification steadiness was then determined after the 24 hours, and the emulsification value was estimated by measuring the emulsified layer height by the total liquid layer height, then multiplied by 100. Quantification for the Dry weight of Biosurfactants The bacterial colony was inserted and inoculated in the nutrient broth medium, followed by oil and centrifuged at 5000rpm and after that, the supernatant was clutched and treated with chloroform and methanol and mixed. The white colored deposits were taken and used for the furtherprocess of dry weight. Afterwards, took the clean Petri plate and determined the empty plate weight. Next, the sediment was poured onto Petri plates. Now, for the drying process the hot air oven was used and set the 100ºC of temperature for 30minutes and the plates were put in the oven. After the drying process, the plates were weighted again. The dry weight was calculated for the biosurfactants using the formula which described below: Selected strains Identification and their characterization Instead, various basic biochemical methods were used to identify the isolated bacterial strains. Various biochemical tests, such as Gram staining, Oxidase test, Urease test.Catalase test, Methyl red test, Motility test, Indole test, Starch hydrolysis, Citrate test, Spore staining, Gelatin hydrolysis. Then afterwards, for the preliminary characterization of the biosurfactant, the thin layer chromatography process was used. Physical characterization of the strains selected Gram staining First, on the slide, using the wire loop the bacterial pure culture was taken, and smear was prepared on the slide, and then a drop of purified water was applied. Then, the sterile loop or needle was correctly mixed the bacterial colony and purified water, then mixed up until it is somewhat turbid. Then, spirit lamp was used to fixed the bacterial smear on slide and cooled to room temperature. With this glass slide was loaded with solution of crystal violet and stood for 1minute anddistilled water was applied on slide. Meanwhile the slide was submerged for 1 minute with the iodine solution, and then flushed and rinsed with water. Therefore, decolorizer of about 1 to 2 drops(5 percent acetone and 95 percent alcohol) were added to the slide’s smear and stand for 30seconds, and then treated with water. After then slide was rinsed with safranin for 60seconds, and then treated with water anddry in air. Microscopic analysis was done with 100x objective lenses using emersion oil on smear. Cell morphology The isolates of the bacterial cell were gram stained on slides and then the slides were observed under the light microscope, showing the shape and color of the cells. Biochemical characterization of the selected strains Catalase test Aim of this study is to identify, evaluate and examine that, whether or not the microbes are capable of producing catalase enzymes, while catalase is a protective enzyme, i.e. catalase has the potential to protect against the lethal chemicals known as (H2O2). In this study a bacterial culture that was clarified overnight was used. This culture has been smeared on a glass slide, and 3 percent hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has been applied and observed on smear. Effects have been observed for bubble formation. Citrate test This study was performed to check the amount or ingest the citrate as the carbon and energy supply for growth and metabolism. Medium containing bromothymol blue and sodium citrate as pH indicator, bacterial was introduced. Ammonium chloride is also present in this medium used as a nitrogen source. Results were noted with variations of color from green to blue. Urease test The capability of urease enzyme for degrading urea was calculated in this bacterial capacity test. Bacterial culture was taken and inoculated for 48 hours at 37 ° C in urease broth, and then color was observed. Methyl red test Through using the process known as mixed acid fermentation which is used to evaluate the bacteria's acid production. The bacterial culture was taken and introduced in the broth of MR-VP and then incubated for 3days at a temperature of 37°C. Two (2) to three (3) drops of Methyl red were added in the broth medium after the incubation period. The change in broth color was observed for final results after a few seconds. Indole test Through using the process to assess the bacteria 's capability to crash indole from tryptophane molecules. After the 24 hours of incubated, taken the fresh inoculum of bacteria and then inserted into the tryptone medium, 24 hours of incubation of about 30oC, 2ml of the tryptone broth medium was added into a sterile test tube. Kovac's reagent was taken to be added (few drops) in sterile test tube and stimulated for a few minutes, and variations of color were detected. Gelatin test It is the approach assess to figure out the use of enzymes known as gelatins from bacterial organisms that precipitate the gelatin. Fresh inoculum of bacteria was taken after 24 hours, and inserted into the media of gelatin agar. This was incubated for around 24 hours, so the temperature did not exceed 30 ° C. Media was observed after incubation time. Starch hydrolysis Several of the micro-organisms that use the starch as a carbon energysource. Therefore, this method has been used to assess whether or not bacteria may use starch as a source of carbon. The bacterial fresh inoculum was spread on the petri starch agar plates, and after that the plate was incubated for 24 hours andmaintained the temperature at 30 to 35 ° C, then gradually applying the supplements of iodine to the plates to flow the change, and then examining the plates. Preliminary characterization of the strains selected Experimental characterization of the bio-surfactant was performed by using the process of TLC (Anandaraj et al., 2010). On a silica gel plate, crude portion of the rudimentary bio-surfactant was separated using Methanol: Chloroform: water (CH3OH: CHCl3: H2O) in the ratio of as an eluent with a different color producing reagents. Ninhydrin reagent (0.5 g ninhydrin in 100ml anhydrous acetone) was used to find bio-surfactant lipopeptide as red spots and anthrone reagent (1 g anthrone in 5ml sulfuric acid combined with 95ml ethanol) as yellow spots to identify rhamnolipid bio-surfactant (Yin et al., 2008). Results and Discussion Isolation of bacteria At first, twenty-two (22) strains from a polluted soil sample were isolated from nutrient agar media.Mixed culture provided by these colonies, so they were taken and smeared on the plates of nutrient agar and then fresh inoculum was collected and stored at temperature of 4oC for the further analysis. Bio-surfactants (surface-active compounds)are formed by a variety of amphiphilic bacterial and fungal organisms that are extracellular (a part of the cellular membrane) (Chen et al., 2007). Screening of Isolated strains for biosurfactant producing colonies Different experiments were carried out to identify, isolate and screen bacteria that are capable of generating bio-surfactants and that is Oil spreading technique(OST), blood hemolysis test(BHT), CTAB test, Emulsification operation. There were twenty-two distinct isolates observed in the current research. And the B1, B2 and B3culture were taken and selected from the twenty-two (22) strains isolated from the polluted spot, which were found to produce biosurfactant. And the oil spreading technique showed promising results for these strains. And strain B2 showed a greater displacement of oil and this is 4 mm. Oil spreading method is quick and often easy to handle, and this technique requires no particular equipment, only a very small amount of sample is used. This approach can be applied when the production and quantity of biosurfactant is small (Plaza et al., 2006) and (Youssef et al., 2004) Only bacterial cultures have been allocated and screened for bacterial species that can generate or use biosurfactants. Just three (3) strainsamong them presented the best results.Those 3 strain,s (B1, B2 and B3) were selected as an additional analysis. Blood hemolysis test On the petri plates of blood agar, the . Isolated bacteriaof B1, B2 and B3 were taken andstreak at the temperature about 37°C for 48 hours. Strain B1 demonstrated β (Beta) hemolysis after the incubation cycle and B2 and B3strains demonstrated γ (Gamma) hemolysis. The B1 strain had an emulsification index of about 74 percent and that was very high as compared to 70 percent for B2 and about 53 percent for B3 respectively. Around the same time, B1 strain showed β (Beta) hemolysis and γ (Gamma) hemolysis was shown bystrains B2 and B3 on the platesof bloodagar. The β hemolysisshowed by the strain B1 in the blood agar test, and the strain B2 and B3 showed γ (Gamma) hemolysis. It is determined that 20 percent strains that are the bestproducer of rhamnolipid have not fully lysed the blood, because the ability of the producer strains capacity not be responsible for the hemolytic activity. According to many researchers, who have shown that this is not such an effective tool for biosurfactant detection due to many bioproducts that may also induce red blood cell lysis, that is not so sufficient to be the surface-active molecule (Youssef et al., 2004). (Rashedi and others, 2005). Table2 Blood Hemolysis Test CTAB agar plate test This test confirms the anionic biosurfactants development. After plate incubation at a temperature of 37 ° C for 72 hours, dark blue hollow zone was existedaround each of the B1 strains wells, which clearly indicated the positive (+ive) development of anionic Biofactant. In addition, the B1 and B2 strains showed positive (+ I ve) results and, in the CTAB analysis, the B3 strain was found to be negative (-ive). The growing microorganisms when secreted the anionic biosurfactants on the plates of CTAB (cetyl-tri-methyl-ammonium-bromide) and methylene blue, then as a result the dark blue-purple insoluble ion pairs formed on the plates. The halo zone around each of the colonies was developed that can recognize rhamnolipid production and that was dark blue in colour, and could correlate with production of rhamnolipid (Siegmund et al., 1991). As indicated in (Fig1) Fig1: B1 positive on CTAB agar plate Oil Spreading Technique The oil was displaced by B1, B2and B3 strains in this test strain and showed a zone that was so clear. The bacterial strains capable of developing biosurfactant were tested and separated from the sample of soil which was oil spilled and brought from the District of Mansehra, Pakistan and from automobile workshops of Mansehra. As shown in (Fig.2). Fig.2: Results of Oil Spreading by B1, B2 and B3Table 3;.Test for oil spreads Bacterial culture Formation of zone (mm) Readings B,1 B,2 B,3 Drop-collapse technique During this process the drop shape was observed at the oil surface. As seen in Fig 3, the collapsed drop was provided by the supernatant culture B1 , B2 and B3.. Emulsification index Emulsification stability was measured with the use of kerosene oilin this test, and then observed the results. Since this emulsification index was calculated by dividing the height of the emulsion layer by the total height of the liquid layer and then multiplying by 100, as shown in the formulation below. Emulsification index Emulsification stability was measured with the use of kerosene oilin this test, and then observed the results. Since this emulsification index was calculated by dividing the height of the emulsion layer by the total height of the liquid layer and then multiplying by 100, as shown in the formulation below. Fig 3: Result of Drop-collapse test Table 4: The activity of Biosurfactant emulsification Dry weight of bio-surfactants In this examination, white-colored sediment was collected. Then measured the weight of the sterile Petri plate which was empty in the first step. Then, the sediment was poured into plates. The plates were taken and weighted after 30 minutes of drying on a hot air oven, following the process of drying. The weight of biosurfactants (dry weight) was measured using the following formulations: Fig 4: Dry weight of biosurfactants Table: 5: Dry weight of the biosurfactants Bacterial Culture Weight of the plate (g) biosurfactant in The plate after drying (g) Dry weight of Biosurfactant (g) B,1 B,2 B,3 Identification of selected strains and their characterization Gram staining For structural applications, and stroke analysis gram staining method was used.(Fig.5) shows findings from the process of gram staining. Fig 5: Microscopic view of Gram staining Biochemical identification of bacterial strains and their characterization Specific biochemical studies were performed to identify the species for further recognition and characterization. The bio-surfactant producing microorganism was found to be Pseudomonas aeruginosa after conducting various characterizations and the biochemical tests(Eric Deziel et al., 1996), Which can be used to further analyze and study the industrial development of the biosurfactant. Rhamnolipid is also isolated and produced from the Pseudomonas aeruginosa species on the silica gel plate (Rashedi et al., 2005), a form of biosurfactants highly recommended for processes of bioremediation. All the findings collected from biochemical testing were labeled as Berge 's Manual and it revealed that the protected microorganism was (Pseudomonas aeruginosa). Results of biochemical test were tabulated in (Table.5) Table 6: Bacterial strain identification Tests B1 B2 B3 Gram staining Negative Negative Negative Oxidases Positive e Positive Positive Catalase Positive Positive Positive Indole Positive Negative Negative Citrate Positive Negative Negative Urease Negative Positive Negative Nitrate Positive Positive Positive Motility Positive Positive Positive Gelatin hydrolysis Positive Negative Negative Lactose Negative Positive Positive Methyl red Negative Positive Positive Voges Proskauer Negative Negative Negative Fig 6: Results of biochemical tests(A) Methyl red and Voges Proskauer tests (b) catalase tests (c) oxidase tests (d) indole tests (e) citrate tests (g) lactose tests (h) urease tests Preliminary bacterial strain’s characterization The plates showed yellow dots, when sprayed with anthrone reagent. It indicated the existence of biosurfactants of rhamnolipid in the organism on the plate of TLC as seen in theFig.7 Fig 7: Biosurfactant characterization by TLC Conclusion Biosurfactant development is exciting and perceptible across industries to clean up oil waste and pollutants, particularly in the ecosystem.Compared with chemical surfactants, the biosurfactants are less harmful. It plays an important role in defining the advantages and the importance of industrial applications. Therefore, it is not possible to disregard the growing role and importance of biosurfactants in environmental sustainability.Biosurfactant formulations which can be used for bacterial, fungal, and viral organisms as growth inhibitors. Such biosurfactant inhibition properties can make them components that are applicable to Numerous illnesses that are used as medicinal agents. Therefore it was decided that the described strain could be used as a potential source for heavy metal bioremediation pesticide and hydrocarbon polluted sites. And also used as shielding the plant from different pathogens, contributing to improved crop yields. There is no doubt that the biosurfactants are a multifunctional, advanced, versatile, long-lasting and updated type not only for the twenty-first century but beyond. Conflict of interest The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest and the paper presents their own work which does not been infringe any third-party rights, especially authorship of any part of the article is an original contribution, not published before and not being under consideration for publication elsewhere. References Ali, S.R.; Chowdhury, B.R.; Mondal, P. and Rajak, S. “Screening and characterization of biosurfactants producing microorganism from natural environment (Whey spilled soil)”. Nat. Sci. Res. 2013, 3(13), 34–64. 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"Corrigenda for vol. 77, Pages 1185-1197." Journal of Applied Physiology 78, no.3 (March1, 1995): 1209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jappl.1995.78.3.-r1209.

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Pages 1185–1197: S. Kano, C.J. Lanteri, A.W. Duncan, and P.D. Sly. “Influence of nonlinearities on estimates of respiratory mechanics using multilinear regression analysis.” Page 1187, Equations 4,5 and 6 and related information in the surrounding paragraphs were not printed correctly. The Respiratory mechanics section should read as follows: Respiratory mechanics. To evaluate the effect of nonlinearities on estimates of respiratory mechanics and to estimate overdistension using MLR analysis, respiratory mechanics were calculated with three different models: fitting the equation of motion of an LSCM (Eq.3), a VDSCM (Eq.4), and a FDSCM (Eq.5) expressed, respectively, as follows

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Giusti, Elena. "Did Somebody Say Augustan Totalitarianism? Duncan Kennedy’s ‘Reflections,’ Hannah Arendt’s Origins, and the Continental Divide over Virgil’s Aeneid." Dictynna, no.13 (December20, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.4000/dictynna.1282.

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Miguens, Sofia. "AS CONSEQUÊNCIAS DE ESQUECER AUSTIN." Prometheus - Journal of Philosophy, no.33 (June5, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.52052/issn.2176-5960.pro.v12i33.13806.

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J.L. Austin claimed: “When we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in what situations, we are looking again not merely at words (or “meanings”, whatever they may be) but also at the realities we use words to talk about”. In this article I will examine the way Michael Williams (Williams, 2018, 2019) follows Austin’s lead in recent exchanges with another epistemologist, Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard, 2016), in order to spell out some (bad) consequences of forgetting Austin when one is a contextualist. One main goal of the article is to identify different conceptions of context underlying varieties of epistemic contextualism.

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Leiwakabessy, Fredy. "The Effect of Method and Ripening Duration on the Content of β-Carotene of Fe’i Banana (Musa troglodytarum L.)." International Journal of Applied Biology 2, no.1 (July28, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.20956/ijab.v2i1.4020.

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Research was conducted to determine the effect of the method and duration of ripening on the content of β-carotene of Fe’i banana, as well as determine the method and duration of ripening is effective in maintaining the nutritional value of Fe’i Banana. Through laboratory experimental with randomized complete design consisting of 19 groups of treatments and three repetitions, the data obtained were analyzed using statistical tests ANOVA and continued with Duncan test. Results of the analysis showed that method ofripening statistically significant difference (p <0,05) on the content of β-carotene in the banana sticks sky. Long ripening length statistically significant difference (p <0, 05) on the content of β-carotene in the Fe’i Banana. Grilled ripening method is more effective against β-carotene content in the Fe’i Banana and takes1 0 minutes of ripening length more effectively on the content of β-carotene on a Fe’i Banana.

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Miranda, Guilherme Silva, João Gustavo Mendes Rodrigues, Maria Gabriela Sampaio Lira, Ranielly Araújo Nogueira, Gleycka Cristine Carvalho Gomes, Bruno Silva Miranda, Andréa De Araújo, and Nêuton Silva-Souza. "Moluscos límnicos como hospedeiros de trematódeos digenéticos de uma região metropolitana da ilha do Maranhão, Brasil." Scientia Plena 12, no.9 (September27, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.14808/sci.plena.2016.091004.

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Este estudo se trata do primeiro levantamento malacológico de água doce e de larvas de trematódeos associadas, sem restrição, somente às espécies transmissoras da esquistossomose na região metropolitana da ilha do Maranhão. Dessa forma, objetivou-se caracterizar a diversidade de moluscos límnicos e de sua helmintofauna em ambientes com aspectos ecológicos variados. Os espécimes de gastrópodes foram coletados mensalmente no município de São Luís (MA), entre o período de novembro de 2014 a junho de 2015, em quatro pontos de coleta (P1 – lêntico e impactado, P2- lótico e impactado, P3 – lótico e alterado, P4 – lótico e conservado). Para cada local foram registrados o pH e Oxigênio Dissolvido, além de análise de Coliformes Totais e Escherichia coli. Foi coletado um total de 4112 moluscos límnicos, classificados como se segue: Biomphalaria glabrata Say, 1818 (62,86%), B. straminea Dunker, 1848 (24,71%), Pomacea sp. Perry, 1810 (7,91%), Physa sp. Draparnaud, 1801 (3,41%) e Drepanotrema sp. Crosse & Fischer, 1880 (1,11%). Destes, B. glabrata apresentou-se positivo para cercárias de Schistosoma mansoni e exemplares de Physa sp. e Pomacea sp. estavam infectados com xifidiocercárias. Houve correlação positiva e significativa em relação à pluviometria e a quantidade de moluscos (p<0,05). A maior abundância de espécimes foi registrada em áreas impactadas, bem como maior grau de parasitismo. A ocorrência de xifidiocercária representa o primeiro relato para a região metropolitana da ilha do Maranhão.

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Nijhawan, Amita. "Mindy Calling: Size, Beauty, Race in The Mindy Project." M/C Journal 18, no.3 (June3, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.938.

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When characters in the Fox Television sitcom The Mindy Project call Mindy Lahiri fat, Mindy sees it as a case of misidentification. She reminds the character that she is a “petite Asian woman,” that she has large, beautiful breasts, that she has nothing in common with fat people, and the terms “chubbster” and “BBW – Big Beautiful Woman” are offensive and do not apply to her. Mindy spends some of each episode on her love for food and more food, and her hatred of fitness regimes, while repeatedly falling for meticulously fit men. She dates, has a string of failed relationships, adventurous sexual techniques, a Bridget Jones-scale search for perfect love, and yet admits to shame in showing her naked body to lovers. Her contradictory feelings about food and body image mirror our own confusions, and reveal the fear and fascination we feel for fat in our fat-obsessed culture. I argue that by creating herself as sexy, successful, popular, sporadically confident and insecure, Mindy works against stigmas that attach both to big women – women who are considered big in comparison to the societal size-zero ideal – and women who have historically been seen as belonging to “primitive” or colonized cultures, and therefore she disrupts the conflation of thinness to civilization. In this article, I look at the performance of fat and ethnic identity on American television, and examine the bodily mechanisms through which Mindy disrupts these. I argue that Mindy uses issues of fat and body image to disrupt stereotypical iterations of race. In the first part of the paper, I look at the construction of South Asian femininity in American pop culture, to set up the discussion of fat, gender and race as interrelated performative categories. Race, Gender, Performativity As Judith Butler says of gender, “performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names” (Bodies, 2). Bodies produce and perform their gender through repeating and imitating norms of clothing, body movement, choices in gesture, action, mannerism, as well as gender roles. They do so in such a way that the discourses and histories that are embedded in them start to seem natural; they are seen to be the truth, instead of as actions that have a history. These choices do not just reflect or reveal gender, but rather produce and create it. Nadine Ehlers takes performativity into the realm of race. Ehlers says that “racial performativity always works within and through the modalities of gender and sexuality, and vice versa, and these categories are constituted through one another” (65). In this sense, neither race nor gender are produced or iterated without also producing their interrelationship. They are in fact produced through this interrelationship. So, for example, when studying the performativity of black bodies, you would need to specify whether you are looking at black femininity or masculinity. And on the other hand, when studying gender, it is important to specify gender where? And when? You couldn’t simply pry open the link between race and gender and expect to successfully theorize either on its own. Mindy’s performance of femininity, including her questions about body image and weight, her attractive though odd clothing choices, her search for love, these are all bound to her iteration of race. She often explains her body through defining herself as Asian. Yet, I suggest in a seeming contradiction that her othering of herself as a big woman (relative to normative body size for women in American film and television) who breaks chairs when she sits on them and is insecure about her body, keeps the audience from othering her because of race. Her weight, clumsiness, failures in love, her heartbreaks all make her a “normal” woman. They make her easy to identify with. They suggest that she is just a woman, an American woman, instead of othering her as a South Asian woman, or a woman from a “primitive”, colonized or minority culture.Being South Asian on American Television Mindy Lahiri (played by writer, producer and actor Mindy Kaling) is a successful American obstetrician/gynaecologist, who works in a successful practice in New York. She breaks stereotypes of South Asian women that are repeated in American television and film. Opposite to the stereotype of the traditional, dutiful South Asian who agrees to an arranged marriage, and has little to say for him or herself beyond academic achievement that is generally seen in American and British media, Mindy sleeps with as many men as she can possibly fit into a calendar year, is funny, self-deprecating, and has little interest in religion, tradition or family, and is obsessed with popular culture. The stereotypical characteristics of South Asians in the popular British media, listed by Anne Ciecko (69), include passive, law-abiding, following traditional gender roles and traditions, living in the “pathologized” Asian family, struggling to find self-definitions that incorporate their placement as both belonging to and separate from British culture. Similarly, South Asian actors on American television often play vaguely-comic doctors and lawyers, seemingly with no personal life or sexual desire. They are simply South Asians, with no further defining personality traits or quirks. It is as if being South Asian overrides any other character trait. They are rarely in lead roles, and Mindy is certainly the first South Asian-American woman to have her own sitcom, in which she plays the lead. What do South Asians on American television look and sound like? In her study on performativity of race and gender, Ehlers looks at various constructions of black femininity, and suggests that black femininity is often constructed in the media in terms of promiscuity and aggression (83), and, I would add, the image of the mama with the big heart and even bigger bosom. Contrary to black femininity, South Asian femininity in American media is often repressed, serious, concerned with work and achievement or alternatively with menial roles, with little in terms of a personal or sexual life. As Shilpa S. Dave says in her book on South Asians in American television, most South Asians that appear in American television are shown as immigrants with accents (8). That is what makes them recognizably different and other, more so even than any visual identification. It is much more common to see immigrants of Chinese or Korean descent in American television as people with American accents, as people who are not first generation immigrants. South Asians, on the other hand, almost always have South Asian accents. There are exceptions to this rule, however, the exceptions are othered and/or made more mainstream using various mechanisms. Neela in ER (played by Parminder Nagra) and Cece in New Girl (played by Hannah Simone) are examples of this. In both instances the characters are part of either an ensemble cast, or in a supporting role. Neela is a step removed from American and South Asian femininity, in that she is British, with a British accent – she is othered, but this othering makes her more mainstream than the marking that takes place with a South Asian accent. The British accent and a tragic marriage, I would say, allow her to have a personal and sexual life, beyond work. Cece goes through an arranged marriage scenario, full with saris and a South Asian wedding that is the more recognized and acceptable narrative for South Asian women in American media. The characters are made more acceptable and recognizable through these mechanisms. Bhoomi K. Thakore, in an article on the representation of South Asians in American television, briefly explains that after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality act, highly-educated South Asians could immigrate to the United States, either to get further education, or as highly skilled workers (149) – a phenomenon often called “brain-drain.” In addition, says Thakore, family members of these educated South Asians immigrated to the States as well, and these were people that were less educated and worked often in convenience stores and motels. Thakore suggests that immigrants to the United States experience a segmented assimilation, meaning that not all immigrants (first and second generation) will assimilate to the same extent or in the same way. I would say from my own experience that the degree to which immigrants can assimilate into American society often depends on not only financial prospects or education, but also attractiveness, skin tone, accent, English-speaking ability, interests and knowledge of American popular culture, interest in an American way of life and American social customs, and so on. Until recently, I would say that South Asian characters in American television shows have tended to represent either first-generation immigrants with South Asian accents and an inability or lack of desire to assimilate fully into American society, or second-generation immigrants whose personal and sexual lives are never part of the narrative. Examples of the former include South Asians who play nameless doctors and cops in American television. Kal Penn’s character Lawrence Kutner in the television series House is an example of the latter. Kutner, one of the doctors on Dr. House’s team, did not have a South Asian accent. However, he also had no personal narrative. All doctors on House came with their relationship troubles and baggage, their emotional turmoil, their sexual and romantic ups and downs – all but Kutner, whose suicide in the show (when he left it to join the Obama administration) is framed around the question – do we ever really know the people we see every day? Yet, we do know the other doctors on House. But we never know anything about Kutner’s private life. His character is all about academic knowledge and career achievement. This is the stereotype of the South Asian character in American television. Yet, Mindy, with her American accent, sees herself as American, doesn’t obsess about race or skin colour, and has no signs of a poor-me narrative in the way she presents herself. She does not seem to have any diasporic longings or group belongings. Mindy doesn’t ignore race on the show. In fact, she deploys it strategically. She describes herself as Asian on more than one occasion, often to explain her size, her breasts and femininity, and in one episode she goes to a party because she expects to see black sportsmen there, and she explains, “It’s a scientific fact that black men love South Asian girls.” Her production of her femininity is inextricably bound up with race. However, Mindy avoids marking herself as a racial minority by making her quest for love and her confusions about body image something all women can identify with. But she goes further in that she does not place herself in a diaspora community, she does not speak in a South Asian accent, she doesn’t hide her personal life or the contours of her body, and she doesn’t harp on parents who want her to get married. By not using the usual stereotypes of South Asians and Asians on American television, while at the same time acknowledging race, I suggest that she makes herself a citizen of the alleged “melting pot” as the melting pot should be, a hybrid space for hybrid identities. Mindy constructs herself as an American woman, and suggests that being a racial minority is simply part of the experience of being American. I am not suggesting that this reflects the reality of experience for many women in the USA who belong to ethnic minorities. I am suggesting that Mindy is creating a possible or potential reality, in which neither size nor being a racial minority are causes for shame. In a scene in the second season, a police officer chastises Mindy for prescribing birth control to his young daughter. He charges out of her office, and she follows him in to the street. She is wearing a version of her usual gear – a check-pinafore, belted over a printed shirt – her shoulders curved forward, arms folded, in the characteristic posture of the big-breasted, curvy woman. She screams at the officer for his outdated views on birth-control. He questions if she even has kids, suggesting that she knows nothing about raising them. She says, “How dare you? Do I look like a woman who’s had kids? I have the hips of an eleven-year-old boy.” She then informs him that she wolfed down a steak sandwich at lunch, has misgivings about the outfit she is wearing, and says that she is not a sex-crazed lunatic. He charges her for public female hysteria. She screams after him as he drives off, “Everyone see this!” She holds up the citation. “It’s for walking, while being a person of colour.” She manages in the space of a two-minute clip to deploy race, size and femininity, without shame or apology, and with humour. It is interesting to note that, contrary to her persona on the show, in interviews in the media, Kaling suggests that she is not that concerned with the question of weight. She says that though she would like to lose fifteen pounds, she is not hung up on this quest. On the other hand, she suggests that she considers herself a role model for minority women. In fact, in real life she makes the question of race as something more important to her than weight – which is opposite to the way she treats the two issues in her television show. I suggest that in real life, Kaling projects herself as a feminist, as someone not so concerned about size and weight, an intelligent woman who is concerned about race. On the show, however, she plays an everywoman, for whom weight is a much bigger deal than race. Neither persona is necessarily real or assumed – rather, they both reveal the complexities by which race, gender and body size constitute each other, and become cruxes for identification and misidentification. Is It Civilized to Be Fat? When Mindy and her colleague Danny Castellano get together in the second season of the show, you find yourself wondering how on earth they are going to sustain this sitcom, without an on-again/off-again romance, or one that takes about five years to start. When Danny does not want to go public with the relationship, Mindy asks him if he is ashamed of her. Imagine one of the Friends or Sex in the City women asking this question to see just how astonishing it is for a successful, attractive woman to ask a man if he is ashamed to be seen with her. She doesn’t say is it because of my weight, yet the question hangs in the air. When Danny does break up with her, again Mindy feels all the self-disgust of a woman rejected for no clear reason. As Amy Erdman Farrell suggests in her book on fat in American culture and television, fat people are not expected to find love or success. They are expected to be self-deprecating. They are supposed to expect rejection and failure. She says that not only do fat people bear a physical but also a character stigma, in that not only are they considered visually unappealing, but this comes with the idea that they have uncontrolled desires and urges (7-10). Kaling suggests through her cleverly-woven writing that it is because of her body image that Mindy feels self-loathing when Danny breaks up with her. She manages again to make her character an everywoman. Not a fat South Asian woman, but simply an American woman who feels all the shame that seems to go with weight and body image in American culture. However, this assumed connection of fat with immorality and laziness goes a step further. Farrell goes on to say that fat denigration and ethnic discrimination are linked, that popularity and the right to belong and be a citizen are based both on body size and ethnicity. Says Farrell, “our culture assigns many meanings to fatness beyond the actual physical trait – that a person is gluttonous, or filling a deeply disturbed psychological need, or is irresponsible and unable to control primitive urges” (6) – psychological traits that have historically been used to describe people in colonized cultures. Farrell provides an intriguing analysis of Oprah Winfrey and her public ups and downs with weight. She suggests that Winfrey’s public obsession with her own weight, and her struggles with it, are an attempt to be an “everywoman”, to be someone all and not only black women can identify with. Says Farrell, “in order to deracinate herself, to prove that ‘anyone’ can make it, Winfrey must lose weight. Otherwise, the weight of all that fat will always, de facto, mark her as a ‘black woman’, with all the accompanying connotations of inferior, primitive, bodily and out of control” (126). She goes on to say that, “Since the end of the 19th century, fatness has … served as a potent signifier of the line between the primitive and the civilized, feminine and masculine, ethnicity and whiteness, poverty and wealth, hom*osexuality and heterosexuality, past and future” (126). This suggests that Winfrey’s public confrontations with the question of weight help the women in the audience identify with her as a woman, rather than as a black woman. In a volume on fat studies, Farrell explains that health professionals have further demarcated lines between “civilization and primitive cultures, whiteness and blackness, sexual restraint and sexual promiscuity, beauty and ugliness, progress and the past” (260). She suggests that fat is not just part of discourses on health and beauty, but also intelligence, enterprise, work ethics, as well as race, ethnicity, sexuality and class. These connections are of course repeated in media representations, across media genres and platforms. In women’s magazines, an imperative towards weightloss comes hand-in-hand with the search for love, a woman’s ability to satisfy a man’s as well as her own desires, and with success in glamorous jobs. Sitcom couples on American television often feature men who are ineffectual but funny slobs, married to determined, fit women who are mainly homemakers, and in fact, responsible for the proper functioning of the family, and consequentially, society. In general, bigger women in American and British media are on a quest both for love and weight loss, and the implication is that deep-seated insecurities are connected to both weight gain, as well as failures in love, and that only a resolution of these insecurities will lead to weight loss, which will further lead to success in love. Films such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Bridget Jones’s Diary are examples of this prevailing narrative. Thakore investigates the changing image of South Asians on American television, suggesting that South Asians are represented more and more frequently, and in increasingly more central roles. However, Thakore suggests that, “all women of colour deal with hegemonic skin tone ideologies in their racial/ethnic communities, with lighter skin tone and Caucasian facial features considered more appealing and attractive … . As media producers favour casting women who are attractive, so too do the same media producers favour casting women of colour who are attractive in terms of their proximity to White physical characteristics” (153). Similarly, Lee and Vaught suggest that in American popular culture, “both White women and women of colour are represented as reflecting a White ideal or aesthetic. These women conform to a body ideal that reflects White middle class ideals: exceedingly thin, long, flowing hair, and voluptuous” (458). She goes on to say that Asian American women would need to take on a White middle class standing and a simultaneous White notion of the exotic in order to assimilate. For Mindy, then, fat allows her to be an everywoman, but also allows her to adopt her own otherness as a South Asian, and make it her own. This trend shows some signs of changing, however, and I expect that women like Lena Dunham in the HBO comedy Girls and Mindy Kaling are leading the march towards productions of diverse femininities that are at the same time iterated as attractive and desirable. On The Hollywood Reporter, when asked about the more ludicrous questions or comments she faces on social media, Kaling puts on a male voice and says, “You’re ugly and fat, it’s so refreshing to watch!” and “We’re used to skinny people, and you’re so ugly, we love it!” On David Letterman, she mentions having dark skin, and says that lazy beach holidays don’t work for her because she doesn’t understand the trend for tanning, and she can’t really relax. Mindy’s confusions about her weight and body image make her a woman for everyone – not just for South Asian women. Whereas Kaling’s concern over the question of race – and her relative lack of concern over weight – make her a feminist, a professional writer, a woman with a conscience. These personas interweave. They question both normative performances of gender and race, and question the historical conflation of size and minority identity with shame and immorality. Butler suggests that gender is “the repeated stylisation of the body” (Gender, 33). She argues that gender roles can be challenged through a “subversive reiteration” of gender (Gender, 32). In this way, women like Dunham and Kaling, through their deployment of diverse female bodies and femininities, can disrupt the normative iteration of gender and race. Their production of femininity in bodies that are attractive (just not normatively so) has more than just an impact on how we look at fat. They bring to us women that are flawed, assertive, insecure, confident, contradictory, talented, creative, that make difficult choices in love and work, and that don’t make an obsession with weight or even race their markers of self worth.References Bridget Jones’s Diary. Dir. Sharon Maguire. Miramax and Universal Pictures, 2001. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge, 1993. Ciecko, Anne. “Representing the Spaces of Diaspora in Contemporary British Films by Women Directors.” Cinema Journal 38.3 (Spring 1999): 67-90. Dave, Shilpa S. Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television. U of Illinois, 2013. Ehlers, Nadine. Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. ER. Warner Bros. Television. NBC, 1994-2009. Farrell, Amy. “‘The White Man’s Burden’”: Female Sexuality, Tourist Postcards, and the Place of the Fat Woman in Early 20th-Century U.S. Culture.” In Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (eds.), The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Friends. Warner Bros. Television. NBC, 1994-2004. Girls. HBO Entertainment and Apatow Productions. HBO, 2012-present. House. Universal Television. Fox, 2004-2012. Lee, Stacey J., and Sabina Vaught. “‘You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin’: Popular and Consumer Culture and the Americanization of Asian American Girls and Young Women.” The Journal of Negro Education 72.4 (2003): 457-466. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Dir. Joel Zwick. Playtone, 2002. New Girl. 20th Century Fox. Fox, 2011-present. Nicholson, Rebecca. “Mindy Kaling: ‘I Wasn’t Considered Attractive or Funny Enough to Play Myself.’” The Observer 1 June 2014. ‹http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/01/mindy-kaling-project›. Sex in the City. Warner Bros. Television and HBO Original Programming. HBO, 1998-2004. Strauss, Elissa. “Why Mindy Kaling – Not Lena Dunham – Is the Body Positive Icon of the Moment.” The Week 22 April 2014. ‹http://theweek.com/article/index/260126/why-mindy-kaling-mdash-not-lena-dunham-mdash-is-the-body-positive-icon-of-the-moment›. Thakore, Bhoomi K. “Must-See TV: South Asian Characterizations in American Popular Media.” Sociology Compass 8.2 (2014): 149-156. The Mindy Project. Universal Television, 3 Arts Entertainment, Kaling International. Fox, 2012-present. Ugly Betty. ABC Studios. ABC, 2006-2010. YouTube. “Mindy Kaling on David Letterman.” 29 April 2013. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8K1ye2gnJw›. YouTube. “Mindy on Being Called Fat and Ugly on Social Media.” The Hollywood Reporter 14 June 2014. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ockt-BeMOWk›. YouTube. “Chris Messina: ‘I Think Mindy Kaling’s Beautiful.’” HuffPost Live 24 April 2014. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HtCjGNERKQ›.

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Hackett,LisaJ. "Addressing Rage: The Fast Fashion Revolt." M/C Journal 22, no.1 (March13, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1496.

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Wearing clothing from the past is all the rage now. Different styles and aesthetics of vintage and historical clothing, original or appropriated, are popular with fashion wearers and home sewers. Social media is rich with images of anachronistic clothing and the major pattern companies have a large range of historical sewing patterns available. Butterick McCall, for example, have a Making History range of patterns for sewers of clothing from a range of historical periods up to the 1950s. The 1950s styled fashion is particularly popular with pattern producers. Yet little research exists that explains why anachronistic clothing is all the rage. Drawing on 28 interviews conducted by the author with women who wear/make 1950s styles clothing and a survey of 229 people who wear/make historical clothing, this article outlines four key reasons that help explain the popularity of wearing/making anachronistic clothing: It argues that there exists rage against four ‘fast fashion’ practices: environmental disregard, labour breaches, poor quality, and poor fit. Ethical consumption practices such as home sewing quality clothes that fit, seeks to ameliorate this rage. That much of what is being made is anachronistic speaks to past sewing techniques that were ethical and produced quality fitting garments rather than fashion today that doesn’t fit, is of poor quality, and it unethical in its production. Fig. 1: Craftivist Collective Rage: Protesting Fast FashionRage against Fast Fashion Rage against fast fashion is not new. Controversies over Disney and Nike’s use of child labour in the 1990s, the anti-fur campaigns of the 1980s, the widespread condemnation of factory conditions in Bangladesh in the wake of the 2016 Rana Plaza collapse and Tess Holiday’s Eff Your Beauty Standards campaign, are evidence of this. Fast fashion is “cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments … at breakneck speed” (Rauturier). It is produced cheaply in short turnarounds, manufactured offshore by slave labour, with the industry hiding these exploitative practices behind, and in, complex supply chains. The clothing is made from poor quality material, meaning it doesn’t last, and the material is not environmentally sustainable. Because of this fast fashion is generally not recycled and ends up as waste in landfills. This for Rauturier is what fast fashion is: “cheap, low quality materials, where clothes degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away”. The fast fashion industry engages in two discrete forms of obsolescence; planned and perceived. Planned obsolescence is where clothes are designed to have a short life-span, thus coercing the consumer into buying a replacement item sooner than intended. Claims that clothes now last only a few washes before falling apart are common in the media (Dunbar). This is due to conscious manufacturing techniques that reduce the lifespan of the clothes including using mixed fibres, poor-quality interfacing, and using polyester threads, to name a few. Perceived obsolescence is where the consumer believes an otherwise functioning item of clothing to no longer to be valued. This is borne out in the idea that an item is deemed to be “in vogue” or “in fashion” and its value to the consumer is thus embedded in that quality. Once it falls out of fashion is deemed worthless. Laver’s “fashion cycle” elucidated this idea over eighty years ago. Since the 1980s the fashion industry has sped up, moving from the traditional twice annual fashion seasons to the fast fashion system of constantly manufacturing new styles, sometimes weekly. The technologies that have allowed the rapid manufacturing of fast fashion mean that the clothes are cheaper and more readily available. The average price of clothing has dropped accordingly. An item that cost US$100 in 1993 only cost US$59.10 in 2013, a drop of 41 per cent (Perry, Chart). The average person in 2014 bought 60 per cent more clothing that they did in 2000. Fast fashion is generally unsaleable in the second-hand market, due to its volume and poor design and manufacture. Green notes that many charity clothing stores bin a large percentage of the fast fashion items they receive. Environmental Rage Consumers are increasingly expressing rage about the environmental impact of fast fashion. The production of different textiles places different stresses on the environment. Cotton, for example, accounts for one third of the fibres found in all textiles, yet it requires high levels of water. A single cotton shirt needs 2,700 litres of water alone, the equivalent to “what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years” (Drew & Yehounme). Synthetics don’t represent an environmentally friendly alternative. While they may need less water, they are more carbon-intensive and polyester has twice the carbon footprint of cotton (Drew & Yehounme). Criticisms of fast fashion also include “water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste”. Textile dyeing is the “second largest polluter of clean water globally.” The inclusion of chemical in the manufacturing of textiles is “disruptive to hormones and carcinogenic” (Perry, Cost). Naomi Klein’s exposure of the past problems of fast fashion, and revelations such as these, inform why consumers are enraged by the fast fashion system. The State of Fashion 2019 Report found many of the issues Klein interrogated remain of concern to consumers. Consumers continue to feel enraged at the industry’s disregard for the environment (Shaw et al.) any many are seeking alternative sources of sustainable fashion. For some consumers, the ethical dilemmas are overcome by purchasing second-hand or recycled clothing, or participate in Clothing Exchanges. Another alternative to ameliorating the rage is to stop buying new clothes and to make and wear their own clothes. A recent article in The Guardian, “’Don’t Feed the Monster!’ The People Who Have Stopped Buying New Clothes” highlights the “growing movement” of people seeking to make a “personal change” in response to the ethical dilemmas fast fashion poses to the environment. While political groups like Fashion of Tomorrow argue for collective legislative changes to ensure environmental sustainability in the industry, consumers are also finding their own individual ways of ameliorating their rage against fast fashion. Over recent decades Australians have consistently shown concern over environmental issues. A 2016 national survey found that 63 per cent of Australians considered themselves to be environmentalists and this is echoed in the ABC’s War on Waste programme which examined attitudes to and effects of clothing waste in Australia. In my interviews with women wearing 1950s style clothing, almost 65 per cent indicated a distinct dissatisfaction with mainstream fashion and frustration particularly with pernicious ‘fast fashion’. One participant offered, “seeing the War on Waste and all the fast fashion … I really like if I can get it second hand … you know I feel like I am helping a little bit” [Gabrielle]. Traid, a network of UK charity clothes shops diverts 3 000 tonnes of clothes from landfill to the second-hand market annually, reported for 2017-18 a 30 per cent increase in its second-hand clothes sales (Coccoza). The Internet has helped expand the second-hand clothing market. Two participants offered these insights: “I am completely addicted to the Review Buy Swap and Sell Page” [Anna] and “Instagram is huge for girls like us to communicate and get ideas” [Ashleigh]. Slave Rage The history of fashion is replete with examples of exploitation of workers. From the seamstresses of France in the eighteenth century who had to turn to prostitution to supplement their meagre wages (Jones 16) to the twenty-first century sweatshop workers earning less than a living wage in developing nations, poor work conditions have plagued the industry. For Karl Marx fashion represented a contradiction within capitalism where labour was exploited to create a mass-produced item. He lambasted the fashion industry and its “murderous caprices”, and despite his dream that the invention of the sewing machine would alleviate the stress placed on garment workers, technology has only served to intensify its demands on its poor workers (Sullivan 36-37). The 2013 Rena Plaza factory disaster shows just how far some sections of the industry are willing to go in their race to the bottom.In the absence of enforceable, global fair-trade initiatives, it is hard for consumers to purchase goods that reflect their ethos (Shaw et al. 428). While there is much more focus on better labour practices in the fashion industry, as the Baptist World Aid Australia’s annual Ethical Fashion Report shows, consumers are still critical of the industry and its labour practices.A significant number of participants in my research indicated that they actively sought to purchase products that were produced free from worker exploitation. For some participants, the purchasing of second-hand clothing allowed them to circumnavigate the fast fashion system. For others, mid-century reproduction fashion was sourced from markets with strong labour laws and “ethically made” without the use of sweat shop labour” [Emma]. Alternatively, another participant rejected buying new vintage fashion and instead purchased originally made fashion, in this case clothing made 50 to 60 years ago. This was one was of ensuring “some poor … person has [not] had to work really hard for very little money … [while the] shop is gaining all the profits” [Melissa]. Quality Rage Planned obsolescence in fashion has existed at least since the 1940s when Dupont ensured their nylon stockings were thin enough to ladder to ensure repeat custom (Meynen). Since then manufacturers have deliberately used poor techniques and poor material – blended fabrics, unfinished seams, unfixed dyes, for example – to ensure that clothes fail quickly. A 2015 UK Barnardo’s survey found clothes were worn an average of just seven times, which is not surprising given that clothes can last as little as two washes before being worn out (Dunbar). Extreme planned obsolescence in concert with perceived obsolescence can lead to clothes being discarded before their short lifespan had expired. The War on Waste interviewed young women who wore clothes sometimes only once before discarding them.Not all women are concerned with keeping up to date with fashion, instead wanting to create their own identify though clothes and are therefore looking for durability in their clothes. Many of the women interviewed for this research were aware of the declining quality of clothes, often referring to those made before the fast fashion era as evidence of quality clothing. For many in this study, manufacturing of classically styled clothing was of higher concern than mimicking the latest fashion trend. Some indicated their “disgust” at the poor quality of fast fashion [Gabrielle]. Others has specific outrage at the cost of poorly made fast fashion: “I don’t like spending a lot of money on clothing that I know may not necessarily be well made” [Skye] and “I got sick of dresses just being see through … you know, seeing my bras under things” [Becky]. For another: “I don’t like the whole mass-produced thing. I don’t think that they are particularly well made … Sometimes they are made with a tiny waist but big boobs, there’s no seams on them, they’re just overlocked together …” [Vicky]. For other participants in this research fast fashion produced items were considered inferior to original items. One put it is this way: “[On using vintage wares] If something broke, you fixed it. You didn’t throw it away and go down to [the shop] and buy a new one ... You look at stuff from these days … you could buy a handbag today and you are like “is this going to be here in two years? Or is it going to fall apart in my hands?” … there’s that strength and durability that I do like” [Ashleigh]. For another, “vintage reproduction stuff is so well made, it’s not like fast fashion, like Vivien of Holloway and Pin Up Girl Clothing, their pieces last forever, they don’t fall apart after five washes like fast fashion” [Emma]. The following encapsulates the rage felt in response to fast fashion. I think a lot of people are wearing true vintage clothing more often as a kind of backlash to the whole fast fashion scene … you could walk into any shop and you could see a lot of clothing that is very, very cheap, but it’s also very cheaply made. You are going to wear it and it’s going to fall apart in six months and that is not something that I want to invest in. [Melissa]Fit RageFit is a multi-faceted issue that affects consumers in several ways: body size; body shape; and height. Body size refers to the actual physical size of the body, whether one is underweight, slim, average, muscular or fat. Fast fashion body size labelling reflects what the industry considers to be of ‘normal sizes’, ranging from a size 8 through to a size 16 (Hackett & Rall). Body shape is a separate, if not entirely discrete issue. Women differ widely in the ratios between their hips, bust and waist. Body shape distribution varies widely within populations, for example, the ‘Size USA’ study identified 11 different female body shapes with wide variations between populations (Lee et al.). Even this doesn’t consider bodies with physical disabilities. Clothing is designed to fit women of ‘average’ height, thus bodies that are taller or shorter are often excluded from fast fashion (Valtonen). Even though Australian sizing practices are based on erroneous historical data (Hackett and Rall; Kennedy), the fast fashion system continues to manufacture for average body shapes and average body heights, to the exclusion of others. Discrimination through clothing sizes represents one way in which social norms are reinforced. Garments for larger women are generally regarded as less fashionable (Peters 48). Enraged consumers label some of the offerings ‘fat sacks’, ‘tents’ and ‘camouflage wear’ (Colls 591-592). Further, plus size is often more expensive and having been ‘sized up’ from smaller sizes, the result is poor fit. Larger body’s therefore have less autonomy in fashioning their identity (Peters 45). Size restrictions can lead to consumers having to choose between going without a desired item or wearing a size too small for them as no larger alternative is available (Laitala et al. 33-34).The ideology behind the thin aesthetic is that it is framed as aspirational (Barry) and thus consumers are motivated to purchase clothes based upon a desire to fit in with this beauty ideal. This is a false dichotomy (Halliwell and Dittmar 105; Bian and Wang). For participants in this research rage at fashion fashions persistance in producing for ‘average’ sized women was clearly evident. For a plus-size participant: “I don’t suit modern stuff. I’m a bigger girl and that’s not what style is these days. And so, I find it just doesn’t work for me” [Ashleigh]. For non-plus participants, sizing rage was also evident: I’m just like a praying mantis, a long string bean. I’m slim, tall … I do have the body shape … that fast fashion catered for, and I can still dress in fast fashion, but I think the idea that so many women feel excluded by that kind of fashion, I just want to distance myself from it. So, so many women have struggles in the change rooms in shopping centres because things don’t fit them nicely. [Emma] For this participant reproduction fashion wasn’t vanity sized. That is, a dress from the 1950s had the body measurements on the label rather than a number reflecting an arbitrary and erroneous sizing system. Some noted their disregard for standardised sizing systems used exclusively for fast fashion: “I have very non-standard measurements … I don’t buy dresses for that reason … My bust and my waist and my hips don’t fit a standard. You know I can’t go “ooh that’s a 12, that’s an 18”. You know, I don’t believe in standard sizing basically” [Skye]. Variations of sizing by brands adds to the frustration of fashion consumers: “if someone says 'I’m a size 16' that means absolutely nothing. If you go between brands … [shop A] XXL to a [shop B] to a [shop C] XXL to a [shop D] XXL, you know … they’re not the same. They won’t fit the same, they don’t have the same fit” [Skye]. These women recognise that their body shape, size and/or height is not catered for by fast fashion. This frees them to look for alternatives beyond the product offerings of the mainstream fashion industry. Although the rage against aspects of fast fashion discussed here – environmental, labour, quality and fit – is not seeing people in the streets protesting, people are actively choosing to find alternatives to the problem of sourcing clothes that fit their ethos. ReferencesABC Television. "Coffee Cups and Fast Fashion." War on Waste. 30 May 2017. Barnardo's. "Once Worn, Thrice Shy – British Women’s Wardrobe Habits Exposed!" 11 June 2015. 1 Mar. 2019 <http://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/press_releases.htm?ref=105244http://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/press_releases.htm?ref=105244>.Barry, Ben. "Selling Whose Dream? A Taxonomy of Aspiration in Fashion Imagery." Fashion, Style & Popular Culture 1.2 (2014): 175-92.Cocozza, Paula. “‘Don’t Feed The Monster!’ The People Who Have Stopped Buying New Clothes”. The Guardian 19 Feb. 2019. 20 Feb. 2019 <http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/feb/19/dont-feed-monster-the-people-who-have-stopped-buying-new-clothes#comment-126048716>.Colls, Rachel. "‘Looking Alright, Feeling Alright’: Emotions, Sizing and the Geographies of Women's Experiences of Clothing Consumption." Social & Cultural Geography 5.4 (2004): 583-96.Drew, Deborah, and Genevieve Yehounme. "The Apparel Industry’s Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics." World Resources Institute July 2005. 24 Feb. 2018 <http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics>.Dunbar, Polly. "How Your Clothes Are Designed to Fall Apart: From Dodgy Stitching to Cheap Fabrics, Today's Fashions Are Made Not to Last – So You Have to Buy More." Daily Mail 18 Aug. 2016. 25 Feb. 2018 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3746186/Are-clothes-fall-apart-dodgy-stitching-cheap-fabrics-today-s-fashions-designed-not-buy-more.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3746186/Are-clothes-fall-apart-dodgy-stitching-cheap-fabrics-today-s-fashions-designed-not-buy-more.html>.Hackett, Lisa J., and Denise N. Rall. "The Size of the Problem with the Problem of Sizing: How Clothing Measurement Systems Have Misrepresented Women’s Bodies from the 1920s – Today." Clothing Cultures 5.2 (2018): 263-83.Kennedy, Kate. "What Size Am I? Decoding Women's Clothing Standards." Fashion Theory 13.4 (2009): 511-30.Klein, Naomi. No Logo, No Space, No Choice, No Jobs: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. London: Flamingo, 2000.Laitala, Kirsi, Ingun Grimstad Klepp, and Benedict Hauge. "Materialised Ideals Sizes and Beauty." Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 3 (2011): 19-41.Laver, James. Taste and Fashion. London: George G. Harrap, 1937.Lee, Jeong Yim, Cynthia L. Istook, Yun Ja Nam, Sun Mi Pak. "Comparison of Body Shape between USA and Korean Women." International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology 19.5 (2007): 374-91.Perry, Mark J. "Chart of the Day: The CPI for Clothing Has Fallen by 3.3% over the Last 20 Years, while Overall Prices Increased by 63.5%." AEIdeas 12 Oct. 2013. 4 Jan. 2019 <http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/>. Perry, Patsy. “The Environmental Cost of Fast Fashion.” Independent 8 Jan. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/environment-costs-fast-fashion-pollution-waste-sustainability-a8139386.html>.Peters, Lauren Downing. "You Are What You Wear: How Plus-Size Fashion Figures in Fat Identity Formation." Fashion Theory 18.1 (2014): 45-71.Rauturier, Solene. “What Is Fast Fashion?” 1 Aug. 2010. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/>.Shaw, Deirdre, Gillian Hogg, Edward Shui, and Elaine Wilson. "Fashion Victim: The Impact of Fair Trade Concerns on Clothing Choice." Journal of Strategic Marketing 14.4 (2006): 427-40.Sullivan, Anthony. "Karl Marx: Fashion and Capitalism." Thinking through Fashion. Eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016. 28-45. Valtonen, Anu. "Height Matters: Practicing Consumer Agency, Gender, and Body Politics." Consumption Markets & Culture 16.2 (2013): 196-221.

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Abrahamsson, Sebastian. "Between Motion and Rest: Encountering Bodies in/on Display." M/C Journal 12, no.1 (January19, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.109.

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Abstract:

The German anatomist and artist Gunther von Hagens’s exhibition Body Worlds has toured Europe, Asia and the US several times, provoking both interest and dismay, fascination and disgust. This “original exhibition of real human bodies” features whole cadavers as well as specific body parts and it is organized thematically around specific bodily functions such as the respiratory system, blood circulation, skeletal materials and brain and nervous system. In each segment of the exhibition these themes are illustrated using parts of the body, presented in glass cases that are associated with each function. Next to these cases are the full body cadavers—the so-called “plastinates”. The Body Worlds exhibition is all about perception-in-motion: it is about circumnavigating bodies, stopping in front of a plastinate and in-corporating it, leaning over an arm or reaching towards a face, pointing towards a discrete blood vessel, drawing an abstract line between two organs. Experiencing here is above all a matter of reaching-towards and incorporeally touching bodies (Manning, Politics of Touch). These bodies are dead, still, motionless, “frozen in time between death and decay” (von Hagens, Body Worlds). Dead and still eerily animate, just as the surface of a freeze-frame photograph would seem to capture spatially a movement in its unfolding becoming, plastinates do not simply appear as dead matter used to represent vitality, but rather [...] as persons who managed to survive together with their bodies. What “inner quality” makes them appear alive? In what way is someone present, when what is conserved is not opinions (in writing), actions (in stories) or voice (on tape) but the body? (Hirschauer 41—42) Through the corporeal transformation—the plastination process—that these bodies have gone through, and the designed space of the exhibition—a space that makes possible both innovative and restrictive movements—these seemingly dead bodies come alive. There is a movement within these bodies, a movement that resonates with-in the exhibition space and mobilises visitors.Two ways of thinking movement in relation to stillness come out of this. The first one is concerned with the ordering and designing of space by means of visual cues, things or texts. This relates to stillness and slowness as suggestive, imposed and enforced upon bodies so that the possibilities of movement are reduced due to the way an environment is designed. Think for example of the way that an escalator moulds movements and speeds, or how signs such as “No walking on the grass” suggest a given pattern of walking. The second one is concerned with how movement is linked up with and implies continuous change. If a body’s movement and exaltation is reduced or slowed down, does the body then become immobile and still? Take ice, water and steam: these states give expression to three different attributes or conditions of what is considered to be one and the same chemical body. But in the transformation from one to the other, there is also an incorporeal transformation related to the possibilities of movement and change—between motion and rest—of what a body can do (Deleuze, Spinoza).Slowing Down Ever since the first exhibition Body Worlds has been under attack from critics, ethicists, journalists and religious groups, who claim that the public exhibition of dead bodies should, for various reasons, be banned. In 2004, in response to such criticism, the Californian Science Centre commissioned an ethical review of the exhibition before taking the decision on whether and how to host Body Worlds. One of the more interesting points in this review was the proposition that “the exhibition is powerful, and guests need time to acclimate themselves” (6). As a consequence, it was suggested that the Science Center arrange an entrance that would “slow people down and foster a reverential and respectful mood” (5). The exhibition space was to be organized in such a way that skeletons, historical contexts and images would be placed in the beginning of the exhibition, the whole body plastinates should only be introduced later in the exhibition. Before my first visit to the exhibition, I wasn’t sure how I would react when confronted with these dead bodies. To be perfectly honest, the moments before entering, I panicked. Crossing the asphalt between the Manchester Museum of Science and the exhibition hall, I felt dizzy; heart pounding in my chest and a sensation of nausea spreading throughout my body. Ascending a staircase that would take me to the entrance, located on the third floor in the exhibition hall, I thought I had detected an odour—rotten flesh or foul meat mixed with chemicals. Upon entering I was greeted by a young man to whom I presented my ticket. Without knowing in advance that this first room had been structured in such a way as to “slow people down”, I immediately felt relieved as I realized that the previously detected smell must have been psychosomatic: the room was perfectly odourless and the atmosphere was calm and tempered. Dimmed lights and pointed spotlights filled the space with an inviting and warm ambience. Images and texts on death and anatomical art were spread over the walls and in the back corners of the room two skeletons had been placed. Two glass cases containing bones and tendons had been placed in the middle of the room and next to these a case with a whole body, positioned upright in ‘anatomically correct’ position with arms, hands and legs down. There was nothing gruesome or spectacular about this room; I had visited anatomical collections, such as that of the Hunterian Museum in London or Medical Museion in Copenhagen, which in comparison far surpassed the alleged gruesomeness and voyeurism. And so I realized that the room had effectively slowed me down as my initial state of exaltation had been altered and stalled by the relative familiarity of images, texts and bare bones, all presented in a tempered and respectful way.Visitors are slowed down, but they are not still. There is no degree zero of movement, only different relations of speeds and slowness. Here I think it is useful to think of movement and change as it is expressed in Henri Bergson’s writings on temporality. Bergson frequently argued that the problem of Western metaphysics had been to spatialise movement, as in the famous example with Zeno’s arrow that—given that we think of movement as spatial—never reaches the tree towards which it has been shot. Bergson however did not refute the importance and practical dimensions of thinking through immobility; rather, immobility is the “prerequisite for our action” (Creative Mind 120). The problem occurs when we think away movement on behalf of that which we think of as still or immobile.We need immobility, and the more we succeed in imagining movement as coinciding with the immobilities of the points of space through which it passes, the better we think we understand it. To tell the truth, there never is real immobility, if we understand by that an absence of movement. Movement is reality itself (Bergson, Creative Mind 119).This notion of movement as primary, and immobility as secondary, gives expression to the proposition that immobility, solids and stillness are not given but have to be achieved. This can be done in several ways: external forces that act upon a body and transform it, as when water crystallizes into ice; certain therapeutic practices—yoga or relaxation exercises—that focus and concentrate attention and perception; spatial and architectural designs such as museums, art galleries or churches that induce and invoke certain moods and slow people down. Obviously there are other kinds of situations when bodies become excited and start moving more rapidly. Such situations could be, to name a few, when water starts to boil; when people use drugs like nicotine or caffeine in order to heighten alertness; or when bodies occupy spaces where movement is amplified by means of increased sensual stimuli, for example in the extreme conditions that characterize a natural catastrophe or a war.Speeding Up After the Body Worlds visitor had been slowed down and acclimatised in and through the first room, the full body plastinates were introduced. These bodies laid bare muscles, tissues, nerves, brain, heart, kidneys, and lungs. Some of these were “exploded views” of the body—in these, the body and its parts have been separated and drawn out from the position that they occupy in the living body, in some cases resulting in two discrete plastinates—e.g. one skeleton and one muscle-plastinate—that come from the same anatomical body. Congruent with the renaissance anatomical art of Vesalius, all plastinates are positioned in lifelike poses (Benthien, Skin). Some are placed inside a protective glass case while others are either standing, lying on the ground or hanging from the ceiling.As the exhibition unfolds, the plastinates themselves wipe away the calmness and stillness intended with the spatial design. Whereas a skeleton seems mute and dumb these plastinates come alive as visitors circle and navigate between them. Most visitors would merely point and whisper, some would reach towards and lean over a plastinate. Others however noticed that jumping up and down created a resonating effect in the plastinates so that a plastinate’s hand, leg or arm moved. At times the rooms were literally filled with hordes of excited and energized school children. Then the exhibition space was overtaken with laughter, loud voices, running feet, comments about the gruesome von Hagens and repeated remarks on the plastinates’ genitalia. The former mood of respectfulness and reverence has been replaced by the fascinating and idiosyncratic presence of animated and still, plastinated bodies. Animated and still? So what is a plastinate?Movement and Form Through plastination, the body undergoes a radical and irreversible transformation which turns the organic body into an “inorganic organism”, a hybrid of plastic and flesh (Hirschauer 36). Before this happens however the living body has to face another phase of transition by which it turns into a dead cadaver. From the point of view of an individual body that lives, breathes and evolves, this transformation implies turning into a decomposing and rotting piece of flesh, tissue and bones. Any corpse will sooner or later turn into something else, ashes, dust or earth. This process can be slowed down using various techniques and chemicals such as mummification or formaldehyde, but this will merely slow down the process of decomposition, and not terminate it.The plastination technique is rather different in several respects. Firstly the specimen is soaked in acetone and the liquids in the corpse—water and fat—are displaced. This displacement prepares the specimen for the next step in the process which is the forced vacuum impregnation. Here the specimen is placed in a polymer mixture with silicone rubber or epoxy resin. This process is undertaken in vacuum which allows for the plastic to enter each and every cell of the specimen, thus replacing the acetone (von Hagens, Body Worlds). Later on, when this transformation has finished, the specimen is modelled according to a concept, a “gestalt plastinate”, such as “the runner”, “the badminton player” or “the skin man”. The concept expresses a dynamic and life-like pose—referred to as the gestalt—that exceeds the individual parts of which it is formed. This would suggest that form is in itself immobility and that perception is what is needed to make form mobile; as gestalt the plastinated body is spatially immobilised, yet it gives birth to a body that comes alive in perception-movement. Once again I think that Bergson could help us to think through this relation, a relation that is conceived here as a difference between form-as-stillness and formation-as-movement:Life is an evolution. We concentrate a period of this evolution in a stable view which we call a form, and, when the change has become considerable enough to overcome the fortunate inertia of our perception, we say that the body has changed its form. But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form; form is only a snapshot view of a transition (Bergson, Creative Evolution 328, emphasis in original).In other words there is a form that is relative to human perception, but there is “underneath” this form nothing but a continuous formation or becoming as Bergson would have it. For our purposes the formation of the gestalt plastinate is an achievement that makes perceptible the possibility of divergent or co-existent durations; the plastinate belongs to a temporal rhythm that even though it coincides with ours is not identical to it.Movement and Trans-formation So what kind of a strange entity is it that emerges out of this transformation, through which organic materials are partly replaced with plastic? Compared with a living body or a mourned cadaver, it is first and foremost an entity that no longer is subject to the continuous evolution of time. In this sense the plastinate is similar to cryogenetical bodies (Doyle, Wetwares), or to Ötzi the ice man (Spindler, Man in the ice)—bodies that resist the temporal logic according to which things are in constant motion. The processes of composition and decomposition that every living organism undergoes at every instant have been radically interrupted.However, plastinates are not forever fixed, motionless and eternally enduring objects. As Walter points out, plastinated cadavers are expected to “remain stable” for approximately 4000 years (606). Thus, the plastinate has become solidified and stabilized according to a different pattern of duration than that of the decaying human body. There is a tension here between permanence and change, between bodies that endure and a body that decomposes. Maybe as when summer, which is full of life and energy, turns into winter, which is still and seemingly without life. It reminds us of Nietzsche's Zarathustra and the winter doctrine: When the water is spanned by planks, when bridges and railings leap over the river, verily those are believed who say, “everything is in flux. . .” But when the winter comes . . . , then verily, not only the blockheads say, “Does not everything stand still?” “At bottom everything stands still.”—that is truly a winter doctrine (Bennett and Connolly 150). So we encounter the paradox of how to accommodate motion within stillness and stillness within motion: if everything is in continuous movement, how can there be stillness and regularity (and vice versa)? An interesting example of such temporal interruption is described by Giorgio Agamben who invokes an example with a tick that was kept alive, in a state of hibernation, for 18 years without nourishment (47). During those years this tick had ceased to exist in time, it existed only in extended space. There are of course differences between the tick and von Hagens’s plastinates—one difference being that the plastinates are not only dead but also plastic and inorganic—but the analogy points us to the idea of producing the conditions of possibility for eternal, timeless (and, by implication, motionless) bodies. If movement and change are thought of as spatial, as in Zeno’s paradox, here they have become temporal: movement happens in and because of time and not in space. The technique of plastination and the plastinates themselves emerge as processes of a-temporalisation and re-spatialisation of the body. The body is displaced—pulled out of time and history—and becomes a Cartesian body located entirely in the coordinates of extended space. As Ian Hacking suggests, plastinates are “Cartesian, extended, occupying space. Plastinated organs and corpses are odourless: like the Cartesian body, they can be seen but not smelt” (15).Interestingly, Body Worlds purports to show the inner workings of the human body. However, what visitors experience is not the working but the being. They do not see what the body does, its activities over time; rather, they see what it is, in space. Conversely, von Hagens wishes to “make us aware of our physical nature, our nature within us” (Kuppers 127), but the nature that we become aware of is not the messy, smelly and fluid nature of bodily interiors. Rather we encounter the still nature of Zarathustra’s winter landscape, a landscape in which the passage of time has come to a halt. As Walter concludes “the Body Worlds experience is primarily visual, spatial, static and odourless” (619).Still in Constant MotionAnd yet...Body Worlds moves us. If not for the fact that these plastinates and their creator strike us as gruesome, horrific and controversial, then because these bodies that we encounter touch us and we them. The sensation of movement, in and through the exhibition, is about this tension between being struck, touched or moved by a body that is radically foreign and yet strangely familiar to us. The resonant and reverberating movement that connects us with it is expressed through that (in)ability to accommodate motion in stillness, and stillness in motion. For whereas the plastinates are immobilised in space, they move in time and in experience. As Nigel Thrift puts it The body is in constant motion. Even at rest, the body is never still. As bodies move they trace out a path from one location to another. These paths constantly intersect with those of others in a complex web of biographies. These others are not just human bodies but also all other objects that can be described as trajectories in time-space: animals, machines, trees, dwellings, and so on (Thrift 8).This understanding of the body as being in constant motion stretches beyond the idea of a body that literally moves in physical space; it stresses the processual intertwining of subjects and objects through space-times that are enduring and evolving. The paradoxical nature of the relation between bodies in motion and bodies at rest is obviously far from exhausted through the brief exemplification that I have tried to provide here. Therefore I must end here and let someone else, better suited for this task, explain what it is that I wish to have said. We are hardly conscious of anything metaphorical when we say of one picture or of a story that it is dead, and of another that it has life. To explain just what we mean when we say this, is not easy. Yet the consciousness that one thing is limp, that another one has the heavy inertness of inanimate things, while another seems to move from within arises spontaneously. There must be something in the object that instigates it (Dewey 182). References Agamben, Giorgio. The Open. Trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2004.Bennett, Jane, and William Connolly. “Contesting Nature/Culture.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002) 148-163.Benthien, Claudia. Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World. Trans. Thomas Dunlap. New York: Columbia U P, 2002. California Science Center. “Summary of Ethical Review.” 10 Jan. 2009.Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind. Trans. Mabelle Andison. Mineola: Dover, 2007. –––. Creative Evolution. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights, 1988.Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee, 2005.Doyle, Richard. Wetwares. Minnesota: Minnesota U P, 2003.Hacking, Ian. “The Cartesian Body.” Biosocieties 1 (2006) 13-15.Hirschauer, Stefan. “Animated Corpses: Communicating with Post Mortals in an Anatomical Exhibition.” Body & Society 12.4 (2006) 25-52.Kuppers, Petra. “Visions of Anatomy: Exhibitions and Dense Bodies.” differences 15.3 (2004) 123-156.Manning, Erin. Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty. Minnesota: Minnesota UP, 2007. Spindler, Konrad. The Man in the Ice. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994.Thrift, Nigel. Spatial Formations. London: Sage, 1996.Von Hagens, Gunther, and Angelina Whalley. Body Worlds: The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. Heidelberg: Institute for Plastination, 2008.Walter, Tony. “Plastination for Display: A New Way to Dispose of the Dead.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10.3 (2004) 603-627.

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Matthews, Nicole. "Creating Visible Children?" M/C Journal 11, no.3 (July2, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.51.

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I want to argue here that the use of terms like “disabled” has very concrete and practical consequences; such language choices are significant and constitutive, not simply the abstract subject of a theoretical debate or a “politically correct” storm in a teacup. In this paper I want to examine some significant moments of conflict over and resistance to definitions of “disability” in an arts project, “In the Picture”, run by one of the UK’s largest disability charities, Scope. In the words of its webpages, this project “aims to encourage publishers, illustrators and writers to embrace diversity - so that disabled children are included alongside others in illustrations and story lines in books for young readers” (http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/aboutus.htm). It sought to raise awareness of “ableism” in the book world and through its webpage, offer practical advice and examples of how to include disabled children in illustrated children’s books. From 2005 to 2007, I tracked the progress of the project’s Stories strand, which sought to generate exemplary inclusive narratives by drawing on the experiences of disabled people and families of disabled children. My research drew on participant observation and interviews, but also creative audience research — a process where, in the words of David Gauntlett, “participants are asked to create media or artistic artefacts themselves.” Consequently, when I’m talking here about definitions of “disability’, I am discussing not just the ways people talk about what the word “disabled” might mean, but also the ways in which such identities might appear in images. These definitions made a real difference to those participating in various parts of the project and the types of inclusive stories they produced. Scope has been subject to substantial critique from the disability movement in the past (Benjamin; Carvel; Shakespeare, "Sweet Charity"). “In the Picture” was part of an attempt to resituate the charity as a campaigning organization (Benjamin; O’Hara), with the campaign’s new slogan “Time to get Equal” appearing prominently at the top of each page of the project’s website. As a consequence the project espoused the social model of disability, with its shift in focus from individual peoples’ bodily differences, towards the exclusionary and unequal society that systematically makes those differences meaningful. This shift in focus generates, some have argued, a performative account of disability as an identity (Sandhal; Breivik). It’s not simply that non-normative embodiment or impairment can be (and often is) acquired later in life, meaning that non-disabled people are perhaps best referred to as TABs — the “temporarily able bodied” (Duncan, Goggin and Newell). More significantly, what counts as a “disabled person” is constituted in particular social, physical and economic environments. Changing that environment can, in essence, create a disabled person, or make a person cease to be dis-abled. I will argue that, within the “In the Picture” project, this radically constructionist vision of disablement often rubbed against more conventional understandings of the term “disabled people”. In the US, the term “people with disabilities” is favoured as a label, because of its “people first” emphasis, as well as its identification of an oppressed minority group (Haller, Dorries and Rahn, 63; Shakespeare, Disability Rights). In contrast, those espousing the social model of disability in the UK tend to use the phrase “disabled people”. This latter term can flag the fact that disability is not something emanating from individuals’ bodily differences, but a social process by which inaccessible environments disable particular people (Oliver, Politics). From this point of view the phrase “people with disabilities” might appear to ascribe the disability to the individual rather than the society — it suggests that it is the people who “have” the disability, not the society which disables. As Helen Meekosha has pointed out, Australian disability studies draws on both US civil rights languages and the social model as understood in the UK. While I’ve chosen to adopt the British turn of phrase here, the broader concept from an Australian point of view, is that the use of particular sets of languages is no simple key to the perspectives adopted by individual speakers. My observations suggest that the key phrase used in the project — “ disabled people” — is one that, we might say, “passes”. To someone informed by the social model it clearly highlights a disabling society. However, it is a phrase that can be used without obvious miscommunication to talk to people who have not been exposed to the social model. Someone who subscribes to a view of “disability” as impairment, as a medical condition belonging to an individual, might readily use the term “disabled people”. The potentially radical implications of this phrase are in some ways hidden, unlike rival terms like “differently abled”, which might be greeted with mockery in some quarters (eg. Purvis; Parris). This “passing” phrase did important work for the “In the Picture” project. As many disability activists have pointed out, “charity” and “concern” for disabled people is a widely espoused value, playing a range of important psychic roles in an ableist society (eg. Longmore; Hevey). All the more evocative is a call to support disabled children, a favoured object of the kinds of telethons and other charitable events which Longmore discusses. In the words of Rosemarie Garland Thomson, the sentimentality often used in charity advertising featuring children “contains disability’s threat in the sympathetic, helpless child for whom the viewer is empowered to act” (Garland Thomson, 63). In calling for publishers to produce picture books which included disabled children, the project had invested in this broad appeal — who could argue against such an agenda? The project has been successful, for example, in recruiting support from many well known children’s authors and illustrators, including Quentin Blake and Dame Jackie Wilson. The phrase “disabled children”, I would argue, smoothed the way for such successes by enabling the project to graft progressive ideas —about the need for adequate representation of a marginalized group — onto existing conceptions of an imagined recipient needing help from an already constituted group of willing givers. So what were the implications of using the phrase “disabled children” for the way the project unfolded? The capacity of this phrase to refer to both a social model account of disability and more conventional understandings had an impact on the recruitment of participants for writing workshops. Participants were solicited via a range of routes. Some were contacted through the charity’s integrated pre-school and the networks of the social workers working beside it. The workshops were also advertised via a local radio show, through events run by the charity for families of disabled people, through a notice in the Disabled Parents site, and announcements on the local disability arts e- newsletter. I am interested in the way that those who heard about the workshops might have been hailed by —or resisted the lure of — those labels “disabled person” or “parent of a disabled child” or at least the meaning of those labels when used by a large disability charity. For example, despite a workshop appearing on the programme of Northwest Disability Arts’ Deaf and Disability Arts Festival, no Deaf participants became involved in the writing workshops. Some politicised Deaf communities frame their identities as an oppressed linguistic minority of sign language users, rather than as disabled people (Corker; Ladd). As such, I would suggest that they are not hailed by the call to “disabled people” with which the project was framed, despite the real absence of children’s books drawing on Deaf culture and its rich tradition of visual communication (Saunders; Conlon and Napier). Most of those who attended were (non-disabled) parents or grandparents of disabled children, rather than disabled people, a fact critiqued by some participants. It’s only possible to speculate about the reasons for this imbalance. Was it the reputation of this charity or charities in general (see Shakespeare, "Sweet Charity") amongst politicised disabled people that discouraged attendance? A shared perspective with those within the British disabled peoples’ movement who emphasise the overwhelming importance of material changes in employment, education, transport rather than change in the realm of “attitudes” (eg Oliver, Politics)? Or was it the association of disabled people undertaking creative activities with a patronising therapeutic agenda (eg Hevey, 26)? The “pulling power” of a term even favoured by the British disability movement, it seems, might be heavily dependent on who was using it. Nonetheless, this term did clearly speak to some people. In conversation it emerged that most of those who attended the workshops either had young family members who were disabled or were imbricated in educational and social welfare networks that identified them as “disabled” — for example, by having access to Disability Living Allowance. While most of the disabled children in participants’ families were in mainstream education, most also had an educational “statement” enabling them to access extra resources, or were a part of early intervention programmes. These social and educational institutions had thus already hailed them as “families of disabled children” and as such they recognised themselves in the project’s invitation. Here we can see the social and institutional shaping of what counts as “disabled children” in action. One participant who came via an unusual route into the workshops provides an interesting reflection of the impact of an address to “disabled people”. This man had heard about the workshop because the local charity he ran had offices adjacent to the venue of one of the workshops. He started talking to the workshop facilitator, and as he said in an interview, became interested because “well … she mentioned that it was about disabilities and I’m interested in people’s disabilities – I want to improve conditions for them obviously”. I probed him about the relationship between his interest and his own experiences as a person with dyslexia. While he taught himself to read in his thirties, he described his reading difficulties as having ongoing impacts on his working life. He responded: first of all it wasn’t because I have dyslexia, it was because I’m interested in improving people’s lives in general. So, I mean particularly people who are disabled need more care than most of us don’t they? …. and I’d always help whenever I can, you know what I mean. And then thinking that I had a disability myself! The dramatic double-take at the end of this comment points to the way this respondent positions himself throughout as outside of the category of “disabled”. This self- identification points towards the stigma often attached to the category “disabled”. It also indicates the way in which this category is, at least in part, socially organised, such that people can be in various circ*mstances located both inside and outside it. In this writer’s account “people who are disabled” are “them” needing “more care than most of us”. Here, rather than identifying as a disabled person, imagined as a recipient of support, he draws upon the powerful discourses of charity in a way that positions him giving to and supporting others. The project appealed to him as a charity worker and as a campaigner, and indeed a number of other participants (both “disabled” and “non-disabled”) framed themselves in this way, looking to use their writing as a fundraising tool, for example, or as a means of promoting more effective inclusive education. The permeability of the category of “disabled” presented some challenges in the attempt to solicit “disabled peoples’” voices within the project. This was evident when completed stories came to be illustrated by design, illustration and multimedia students at four British universities: Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Wolverhampton, the University of Teeside and the North East Wales Institute. Students attending an initial briefing on the project completed a questionnaire which included an item asking whether they considered themselves to be disabled. While around eight of the eighty respondents answered “yes” to this question, the answers of these students and some others were by no means clear cut. A number of students identified themselves as dyslexic, but contested the idea that this diagnosis meant that they were disabled. One respondent commented along similar lines: “My boyfriend was very upset that the university considers him to be disabled because he is dyslexic”. How can we make sense of these responses? We could note again that the identity of “disabled” is highly stigmatised. Many disabled students believe that they are seen as lazy, demanding excessive resources, or even in the case of some students with non- visible impairments, lying (Kleege; Olney and Brockman). So we could view such responses as identity management work. From this point of view, an indicator of the success of the project in shifting some of the stigma attached to the label of “disabled” might be the fact that at least one of the students participants “came out” as dyslexic to her tutors in the course of her participation in the project. The pattern of answers on questionnaire returns suggests that particular teaching strategies and administrative languages shape how students imagine and describe themselves. Liverpool John Moores University, one of the four art schools participating in the project, had a high profile programme seeking to make dyslexic students aware of the technical and writing support available to them if they could present appropriate medical certification (Lowy). Questionnaires from LJMU included the largest number of respondents identifying themselves as both disabled and dyslexic, and featured no comment on any mismatch between these labels. In the interests of obtaining appropriate academic support and drawing on a view of dyslexia not as a deficit but as a learning style offering significant advantages, it might be argued, students with dyslexia at this institution had been taught to recognise themselves through the label “disabled”. This acknowledgement that people sharing some similar experiences might describe themselves in very different ways depending on their context suggests another way of interpreting some students’ equivocal relationship to labels like “dyslexia” and “disabled”. The university as an environment demanding the production of very formal styles of writing and rapid assimilation of a high volume of written texts, is one where particular learning strategies of people with dyslexia come to be disabling. In many peoples’ day to day lives – and perhaps particularly in the day to day lives of visual artists – less conventional ways of processing written information simply may not be disabling. As such, students’ responses might be seen less as resistance to a stigmatised identity and more an acknowledgement of the contingent nature of disablement. Or perhaps we might understand these student responses as a complex mix of both of these perspectives. Disability studies has pointed to the coexistence of contradictory discourses around disability within popular culture (eg, Garland-Thomson; Haller, Dorries and Rahn). Similarly, the friezes, interactive games, animations, illustrated books and stand-alone images which came out of this arts project sometimes incorporate rival conceptions of disability side by side. A number of narratives, for example, include pairs of characters, one of which embodies conventional narratives of disability (for example, being diagnostically labelled or ‘cured’), while the other articulates alternative accounts (celebrating diversity and enabling environments). Both students and staff reported that participation in the project prompted critical thinking about accessible design and inclusive representation. Some commented in interviews that their work on the project had changed their professional practice in ways they thought might have longer term impact on the visual arts. However, it is clear that in student work, just as in the project itself, alternative conceptions of what “disability” might mean were at play, even as reframing such conceptions are explicitly the aim of the enterprise. Such contradictions point towards the difficulties of easily labelling individual stories or indeed the wider project “progressive” or otherwise. Some illustrated narratives and animations created by students were understood by the project management to embody the definitions of “disabled children” within the project’s ten principles. This work was mounted on the website to serve as exemplars for the publishing industry (http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/stories.htm). Such decisions were not unreflective, however. There was a good deal of discussion by students and project management about how to make “disabled children” visible without labelling or pathologising. For example, one of the project’s principles is that “images of disabled children should be used casually or incidentally, so that disabled children are portrayed playing and doing things alongside their non- disabled peers” (see also Bookmark). Illustrator Jane Ray commented wryly in an article on the website on her experience of including disabled characters in a such a casual way in her published work that no-one notices it! (Ray). As I’ve discussed in more detail elsewhere (Matthews, forthcoming), the social model, espoused by the project, with its primary focus on barriers to equality rather than individual impaired bodies, presented some challenges to such aims. While both fairytales and, increasingly, contemporary books for young people, do sometimes engage with violence, marginalisation and social conflict (Saunders), there is a powerful imperative to avoid such themes in books for very young children. In trying to re-narrativise disabled children outside conventional paradigms of “bravery overcoming adversity”, the project may have also pushed writers and illustrators away from engaging with barriers to equality. The project manager commented in an interview: “probably in the purest form the social model would show in stories the barriers facing disabled children, whereas we want to show what barriers have been knocked down and turn it round into a more positive thing”. While a handful of the 23 stories emerging from the writing workshops included narratives around bullying and or barriers to equal access, many of the stories chose to envisage more utopian, integrated environments. If it is barriers to inequality that, at least in part, create “disabled people”, then how is it possible to identify disabled children with little reference to such barriers? The shorthand used by many student illustrators, and frequently too in the “images for inspiration” part of the project’s website, has been the inclusion of enabling technologies. A white cane, a wheelchair or assistive and augmentative communication technologies can be included in an image without making a “special” point of these technologies in the written text. The downside to this shorthand, however, is the way that the presence of these technologies can serve to naturalise the category of “disabled children”. Rather than being seen as a group identity constituted by shared experiences of discrimination and exclusion, the use of such “clues” to which characters “are disabled” might suggest that disabled people are a known group, independent of particular social and environmental settings. Using this arts project as a case study, I have traced here some of the ways people are recognised or recognise themselves as “disabled”. I’ve also suggested that within this project other conceptions of what “disabled” might mean existed in the shadows of the social constructionist account to which it declared its allegiances. Given the critiques of the social model which have emerged within disability studies over the last fifteen years (e.g. Crowe; Shakespeare, Disability Rights), this need not be a damning observation. The manager of this arts project, along with writer Mike Oliver ("If I Had"), has suggested that the social model might be used strategically as a means of social transformation rather than a complete account of disabled peoples’ lives. However, my analysis here has suggested that we can not only imagine different ways that “disabled people” might be conceptualised in the future. Rather we can see significant consequences of the different ways that the label “disabled” is mobilised here and now. Its inclusion and exclusions, what it makes it easy to say or difficult to imagine needs careful thinking through. References Benjamin, Alison. “Going Undercover.” The Guardian, Society, April 2004: 8. Bookmark. Quentin Blake Award Project Report: Making Exclusion a Thing of the Past. The Roald Dahl Foundation, 2006. Breivik, Jan Kare. “Deaf Identities: Visible Culture, Hidden Dilemmas and Scattered Belonging.” In H.G. Sicakkan and Y.G. Lithman, eds. What Happens When a Society Is Diverse: Exploring Multidimensional Identities. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. 75-104. Carvel, John. “Demonstrators Rattle Scope.” The Guardian, Society section, 6 Oct. 2004: 4. Conlon, Caroline, and Jemina Napier. “Developing Auslan Educational Resources: A Process of Effective Translation of Children’s Books.” Deaf Worlds 20.2. (2004): 141-161. Corker, Mairian. Deaf and Disabled or Deafness Disabled. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998. Crow, Liz. “Including All of Our Lives: Renewing the Social Model of Disability.” In Jenny Morris, ed. Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability. Women’s Press, 1996. 206-227. Davis, John, and Nick Watson. “Countering Stereotypes of Disability: Disabled Children and Resistance.” In Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare, eds. Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. London: Continuum, 2002. 159-174. Duncan, Kath, Gerard Goggin, and Christopher Newell. “Don’t Talk about Me… like I’m Not Here: Disability in Australian National Cinema.” Metro Magazine 146-147 (2005): 152-159. Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography.” In Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Bruggemann, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: MLAA, 2002. 56-75. Gauntlett, David. “Using Creative Visual Research Methods to Understand Media Audiences.” MedienPädagogik 4.1 (2005). Haller, Beth, Bruce Dorries, and Jessica Rahn. “Media Labeling versus the US Disability Community Identity: A Study of Shifting Cultural Language.” In Disability & Society 21.1 (2006): 61-75. Hevey, David. The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery. London: Routledge, 1992. Kleege, Georgia. “Disabled Students Come Out: Questions without Answers.” In Sharon Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggeman, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002. 308-316. Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2003. Longmore, Paul. “Conspicuous Contribution and American Cultural Dilemma: Telethon Rituals of Cleansing and Renewal.” In David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, eds. The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. 134-158. Lowy, Adrienne. “Dyslexia: A Different Approach to Learning?” JMU Learning and Teaching Press 2.2 (2002). Matthews, Nicole. “Contesting Representations of Disabled Children in Picture Books: Visibility, the Body and the Social Model of Disability.” Children’s Geographies (forthcoming). Meekosha, Helen. “Drifting Down the Gulf Stream: Navigating the Cultures of Disability Studies.” Disability & Society 19.7 (2004): 720-733. O’Hara, Mary. “Closure Motion.” The Guardian, Society section, 30 March 2005: 10. Oliver, Mike. The politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan, 1990. ———. “If I Had a Hammer: The Social Model in Action.” In John Swain, Sally French, Colin Barnes, and Carol Thomas, eds. Disabling Barriers – Enabling Environments. London: Sage, 2002. 7-12. Olney, Marjorie F., and Karin F. Brockelman. "Out of the Disability Closet: Strategic Use of Perception Management by Select University Students with Disabilities." Disability & Society 18.1 (2003): 35-50. Parris, Matthew. “Choose Your Words Carefully If You Want to Be Misunderstood.” The Times 10 July 2004. Purves, Libby. “Handicap, What Handicap?” The Times 9 Aug. 2003. Ray, Jane. “An Illustrator’s View: Still Invisible.” In the Picture. < http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/au_illustrateview.htm >.Sandhal, Carrie. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9.1-2 (2003): 25-56. Saunders, Kathy. Happy Ever Afters: A Storybook Guide to Teaching Children about Disability. London: Trenton Books, 2000. Shakespeare, Tom. “Sweet Charity?” 2 May 2003. Ouch! < (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/charity.shtml >. Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge, 2006.

37

Costello, Moya. "Reading the Senses: Writing about Food and Wine." M/C Journal 16, no.3 (June22, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.651.

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"verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice" (Barrett 1)IntroductionMany of us share in an obsessive collecting of cookbooks and recipes. Torn or cut from newspapers and magazines, recipes sit swelling scrapbooks with bloated, unfilled desire. They’re non-hybrid seeds, peas under the mattress, an endless cycle of reproduction. Desire and narrative are folded into each other in our drive, as humans, to create meaning. But what holds us to narrative is good writing. And what can also drive desire is image—literal as well as metaphorical—the visceral pleasure of the gaze, or looking and viewing the sensually aesthetic and the work of the imagination. Creative WritingCooking, winemaking, and food and wine writing can all be considered art. For example, James Halliday (31), the eminent Australian wine critic, posed the question “Is winemaking an art?,” answering: “Most would say so” (31). Cookbooks are stories within stories, narratives that are both factual and imagined, everyday and fantastic—created by both writer and reader from where, along with its historical, cultural and publishing context, a text gets its meaning. Creative writing, in broad terms of genre, is either fiction (imagined, made-up) or creative nonfiction (true, factual). Genre comes from the human taxonomic impulse to create order from chaos through cataloguing and classification. In what might seem overwhelming infinite variety, we establish categories and within them formulas and conventions. But genres are not necessarily stable or clear-cut, and variation in a genre can contribute to its de/trans/formation (Curti 33). Creative nonfiction includes life writing (auto/biography) and food writing among other subgenres (although these subgenres can also be part of fiction). Cookbooks sit within the creative nonfiction genre. More clearly, dietary or nutrition manuals are nonfiction, technical rather than creative. Recipe writing specifically is perhaps less an art and more a technical exercise; generally it’s nonfiction, or between that and creative nonfiction. (One guide to writing recipes is Ostmann and Baker.) Creative writing is built upon approximately five, more or less, fundamentals of practice: point of view or focalisation or who narrates, structure (plot or story, and theme), characterisation, heightened or descriptive language, setting, and dialogue (not in any order of importance). (There are many handbooks on creative writing, that will take a writer through these fundamentals.) Style or voice derives from what a writer writes about (their recurring themes), and how they write about it (their vocabulary choice, particular use of imagery, rhythm, syntax etc.). Traditionally, as a reader, and writer, you are either a plot person or character person, but you can also be interested primarily in ideas or language, and in the popular or literary.Cookbooks as Creative NonfictionCookbooks often have a sense of their author’s persona or subjectivity as a character—that is, their proclivities, lives and thus ideology, and historical, social and cultural place and time. Memoir, a slice of the author–chef/cook’s autobiography, is often explicitly part of the cookbook, or implicit in the nature of the recipes, and the para-textual material which includes the book’s presentation and publishing context, and the writer’s biographical note and acknowledgements. And in relation to the latter, here's Australian wine educator Colin Corney telling us, in his biographical note, about his nascent passion for wine: “I returned home […] stony broke. So the next day I took a job as a bottleshop assistant at Moore Park Cellars […] to tide me over—I stayed three years!” (xi). In this context, character and place, in the broadest sense, are inevitably evoked. So in conjunction with this para-textual material, recipe ingredients and instructions, visual images and the book’s production values combine to become the components for authoring a fictive narrative of self, space and time—fictive, because writing inevitably, in a broad or conceptual sense, fictionalises everything, since it can only re-present through language and only from a particular point of view.The CookbooksTo talk about the art of cookbooks, I make a judgmental (from a creative-writer's point of view) case study of four cookbooks: Lyndey Milan and Colin Corney’s Balance: Matching Food and Wine, Sean Moran’s Let It Simmer (this is the first edition; the second is titled Let It Simmer: From Bush to Beach and Onto Your Plate), Kate Lamont’s Wine and Food, and Greg Duncan Powell’s Rump and a Rough Red (this is the second edition; the first was The Pig, the Olive & the Squid: Food & Wine from Humble Beginnings) I discuss reading, writing, imaging, and designing, which, together, form the nexus for interpreting these cookbooks in particular. The choice of these books was only relatively random, influenced by my desire to see how Australia, a major wine-producing country, was faring with discussion of wine and food choices; by the presence of discursive text beyond technical presentation of recipes, and of photographs and purposefully artful design; and by familiarity with names, restaurants and/or publishers. Reading Moran's cookbook is a model of good writing in its use of selective and specific detail directed towards a particular theme. The theme is further created or reinforced in the mix of narrative, language use, images and design. His writing has authenticity: a sense of an original, distinct voice.Moran’s aphoristic title could imply many things, but, in reading the cookbook, you realise it resonates with a mindfulness that ripples throughout his writing. The aphorism, with its laidback casualness (legendary Australian), is affectively in sync with the chef’s approach. Jacques Derrida said of the aphorism that it produces “an echo of really curious, indelible power” (67).Moran’s aim for his recipes is that they be about “honest, home-style cooking” and bringing “out a little bit of the professional chef in the home cook”, and they are “guidelines” available for “sparkle” and seduction from interpretation (4). The book lives out this persona and personal proclivities. Moran’s storytellings are specifically and solely highlighted in the Contents section which structures the book via broad categories (for example, "Grains" featuring "The dance of the paella" and "Heaven" featuring "A trifle coming on" for example). In comparison, Powell uses "The Lemon", for example, as well as "The Sheep". The first level of Contents in Lamont’s book is done by broad wine styles: sparkling, light white, robust white and so on, and the second level is the recipe list in each of these sections. Lamont’s "For me, matching food and wine comes down to flavour" (xiii) is not as dramatic or expressive as Powell’s "Wine: the forgotten condiment." Although food is first in Milan and Corney’s book’s subtitle, their first content is wine, then matching food with colour and specific grape, from Sauvignon Blanc to Barbera and more. Powell claims that the third of his rules (the idea of rules is playful but not comedic) for choosing the best wine per se is to combine region with grape variety. He covers a more detailed and diversified range of grape varieties than Lamont, systematically discussing them first-up. Where Lamont names wine styles, Powell points out where wine styles are best represented in Australian states and regions in a longish list (titled “13 of the best Australian grape and region combos”). Lamont only occasionally does this. Powell discusses the minor alternative white, Arneis, and major alternative reds such as Barbera and Nebbiolo (Allen 81, 85). This engaging detail engenders a committed reader. Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo are as alternative as Lamont gets. In contrast to Moran's laidbackness, Lamont emphasises professionalism: "My greatest pleasure as a chef is knowing that guests have enjoyed the entire food and wine experience […] That means I have done my job" (xiii). Her reminders of the obvious are, nevertheless, noteworthy: "Thankfully we have moved on from white wine/white meat and red wine/red meat" (xiv). She then addresses the alterations in flavour caused by "method of cooking" and "combination of ingredients", with examples. One such is poached chicken and mango crying "out for a vibrant, zesty Riesling" (xiii): but where from, I ask? Roast chicken with herbs and garlic would favour "red wine with silky tannin" and "chocolatey flavours" (xiii): again, I ask, where from? Powell claims "a different evolution" for his book "to the average cookbook" (7). In recipes that have "a wine focus", there are no "pretty […] little salads, or lavish […] cakes" but "brown" albeit tasty food that will not require ingredients from "poncy inner-city providores", be easy to cook, and go with a cheap, budget-based wine (7). While this identity-setting is empathetic for a Powell clone, and I am envious of his skill with verbiage, he doesn’t deliver dreaming or desire. Milan and Corney do their best job in an eye-catching, informative exemplar list of food and wine matches: "Red duck curry and Barossa Valley Shiraz" for example (7), and in wine "At-a-glance" tables, telling us, for example, that the best Australian regions for Chardonnay are Margaret River and the Adelaide Hills (53). WritingThe "Introduction" to Moran’s cookbook is a slice of memoir, a portrait of a chef as a young man: the coming into being of passion, skill, and professionalism. And the introduction to the introduction is most memorable, being a loving description of his frugal Australian childhood dinners: creations of his mother’s use of manufactured, canned, and bottled substitutes-for-the-real, including Gravox and Dessert Whip (1). From his travel-based international culinary education in handmade, agrarian food, he describes "a head of buffalo mozzarella stuffed with ricotta and studded with white truffles" as "sheer beauty", "ambrosial flavour" and "edible white 'terrazzo'." The consonants b, s, t, d, and r are picked up and repeated, as are the vowels e, a, and o. Notice, too, the comparison of classic Italian food to an equally classic Italian artefact. Later, in an interactive text, questions are posed: "Who could now imagine life without this peppery salad green?" (23). Moran uses the expected action verbs of peel, mince, toss, etc.: "A bucket of tiny clams needs a good tumble under the running tap" (92). But he also uses the unexpected hug, nab, snuggle, waltz, "wave of garlic" and "raining rice." Milan and Corney display a metaphoric-language play too: the bubbles of a sparkling wine matching red meat become "the little red broom […] sweep[ing] away the […] cloying richness" (114). In contrast, Lamont’s cookbook can seem flat, lacking distinctiveness. But with a title like Wine and Food, perhaps you are not expecting much more than information, plain directness. Moran delivers recipes as reproducible with ease and care. An image of a restaurant blackboard menu with the word "chook" forestalls intimidation. Good quality, basic ingredients and knowledge of their source and season carry weight. The message is that food and drink are due respect, and that cooking is neither a stressful, grandiose nor competitive activity. While both Moran and Lamont have recipes for Duck Liver Pâté—with the exception that Lamont’s is (disturbingly, for this cook) "Parfait", Moran also has Lentil Patties, a granola, and a number of breads. Lamont has Brioche (but, granted, without the yeast, seeming much easier to make). Powell’s Plateless Pork is "mud pies for grown-ups", and you are asked to cook a "vat" of sauce. This communal meal is "a great way to spread communicable diseases", but "fun." But his passionately delivered historical information mixed with the laconic attitude of a larrikin (legendary Australian again) transform him into a sage, a step up from the monastery (Powell is photographed in dress-up friar’s habit). Again, the obvious is noteworthy in Milan and Corney’s statement that Rosé "possesses qualities of both red and white wines" (116). "On a hot summery afternoon, sitting in the sun overlooking the view … what could be better?" (116). The interactive questioning also feeds in useful information: "there is a huge range of styles" for Rosé so "[g]rape variety is usually a good guide", and "increasingly we are seeing […] even […] Chambourcin" (116). Rosé is set next to a Bouillabaisse recipe, and, empathetically, Milan and Corney acknowledge that the traditional fish soup "can be intimidating" (116). Succinctly incorporated into the recipes are simple greyscale graphs of grape "Flavour Profiles" delineating the strength on the front and back palate and tongue (103).Imaging and DesigningThe cover of Moran’s cookbook in its first edition reproduces the colours of 1930–1940's beach towels, umbrellas or sunshades in matt stripes of blue, yellow, red, and green (Australian beaches traditionally have a grass verge; and, I am told (Costello), these were the colours of his restaurant Panoroma’s original upholstery). A second edition has the same back cover but a generic front cover shifting from the location of his restaurant to the food in a new subtitle: "From Bush to Beach and onto Your Plate". The front endpapers are Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach where Panoroma restaurant is embedded on the lower wall of an old building of flats, ubiquitous in Bondi, like a halved avocado, or a small shallow elliptic cave in one of the sandstone cliff-faces. The cookbook’s back endpapers are his bush-shack country. Surfaces, cooking equipment, table linen, crockery, cutlery and glassware are not ostentatious, but simple and subdued, in the colours and textures of nature/culture: ivory, bone, ecru, and cream; and linen, wire, wood, and cardboard. The mundane, such as a colander, is highlighted: humbleness elevated, hands at work, cooking as an embodied activity. Moran is photographed throughout engaged in cooking, quietly fetching in his slim, clean-cut, short-haired, altar-boyish good-looks, dressed casually in plain bone apron, t-shirt (most often plain white), and jeans. While some recipes are traditionally constructed, with the headnote, the list of ingredients and the discursive instructions for cooking, on occasion this is done by a double-page spread of continuous prose, inviting you into the story-telling. The typeface of Simmer varies to include a hand-written lookalike. The book also has a varied layout. Notes and small images sit on selected pages, as often as not at an asymmetric angle, with faux tape, as if stuck there as an afterthought—but an excited and enthusiastic afterthought—and to signal that what is informally known is as valuable as professional knowledge/skill and the tried, tested, and formally presented.Lamont’s publishers have laid out recipe instructions on the right-hand side (traditional English-language Western reading is top down, left to right). But when the recipe requires more than one item to be cooked, there is no repeated title; the spacing and line-up are not necessarily clear; and some immediate, albeit temporary, confusion occurs. Her recipes, alongside images of classic fine dining, carry the implication of chefing rather than cooking. She is photographed as a professional, with a chef’s familiar striped apron, and if she is not wearing a chef’s jacket, tunic or shirt, her staff are. The food is beautiful to look at and imagine, but tackling it in the home kitchen becomes a secondary thought. The left-hand section divider pages are meant to signal the wines, with the appropriate colour, and repetitive pattern of circles; but I understood this belatedly, mistaking them for retro wallpaper bemusedly. On the other hand, Powell’s bog-in-don’t-wait everyday heartiness of a communal stewed dinner at a medieval inn (Peasy Lamb looks exactly like this) may be overcooked, and, without sensuousness, uninviting. Images in Lamont’s book tend toward the predictable and anonymous (broad sweep of grape-vined landscape; large groups of people with eating and drinking utensils). The Lamont family run a vineyard, and up-market restaurants, one photographed on Perth’s river dockside. But Sean's Panoroma has a specificity about it; it hasn’t lost its local flavour in the mix with the global. (Admittedly, Moran’s bush "shack", the origin of much Panoroma produce and the destination of Panoroma compost, looks architect-designed.) Powell’s book, given "rump" and "rough" in the title, stridently plays down glitz (large type size, minimum spacing, rustic surface imagery, full-page portraits of a chicken, rump, and cabbage etc). While not over-glam, the photography in Balance may at first appear unsubtle. Images fill whole pages. But their beautifully coloured and intriguing shapes—the yellow lime of a white-wine bottle base or a sparkling wine cork beneath its cage—shift them into hyperreality. White wine in a glass becomes the edge of a desert lake; an open fig, the jaws of an alien; the flesh of a lemon after squeezing, a sea anemone. The minimal number of images is a judicious choice. ConclusionReading can be immersive, but it can also hover critically at a meta level, especially if the writer foregrounds process. A conversation starts in this exchange, the reader imagining for themselves the worlds written about. Writers read as writers, to acquire a sense of what good writing is, who writing colleagues are, where writing is being published, and, comparably, to learn to judge their own writing. Writing is produced from a combination of passion and the discipline of everyday work. To be a writer in the world is to observe and remember/record, to be conscious of aiming to see the narrative potential in an array of experiences, events, and images, or, to put it another way, "to develop the habit of art" (Jolley 20). Photography makes significant whatever is photographed. The image is immobile in a literal sense but, because of its referential nature, evocative. Design, too, is about communication through aesthetics as a sensuous visual code for ideas or concepts. (There is a large amount of scholarship on the workings of image combined with text. Roland Barthes is a place to begin, particularly about photography. There are also textbooks dealing with visual literacy or culture, only one example being Shirato and Webb.) It is reasonable to think about why there is so much interest in food in this moment. Food has become folded into celebrity culture, but, naturally, obviously, food is about our security and survival, physically and emotionally. Given that our planet is under threat from global warming which is also driving climate change, and we are facing peak oil, and alternative forms of energy are still not taken seriously in a widespread manner, then food production is under threat. Food supply and production are also linked to the growing gap between poverty and wealth, and the movement of whole populations: food is about being at home. Creativity is associated with mastery of a discipline, openness to new experiences, and persistence and courage, among other things. We read, write, photograph, and design to argue and critique, to use the imagination, to shape and transform, to transmit ideas, to celebrate living and to live more fully.References Allen, Max. The Future Makers: Australian Wines for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2010. Barratt, Virginia. “verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice.” Assignment, ENG10022 Writing from the Edge. Lismore: Southern Cross U, 2009. [lower case in the title is the author's proclivity, and subsequently published in Carson and Dettori. Eds. Banquet: A Feast of New Writing and Arts by Queer Women]Costello, Patricia. Personal conversation. 31 May 2012. Curti, Lidia. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. UK: Macmillan, 1998.Derrida, Jacques. "Fifty-Two Aphorisms for a Foreword." Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume. Eds. Andreas Apadakis, Catherine Cook, and Andrew Benjamin. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.Halliday, James. “An Artist’s Spirit.” The Weekend Australian: The Weekend Australian Magazine 13-14 Feb. (2010): 31.Jolley, Elizabeth. Central Mischief. Ringwood: Viking/Penguin 1992. Lamont, Kate. Wine and Food. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Milan, Lyndey, and Corney, Colin. Balance: Matching Food and Wine: What Works and Why. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2005. Moran, Sean. Let It Simmer. Camberwell: Lantern/Penguin, 2006. Ostmann, Barbara Gibbs, and Jane L. Baker. The Recipe Writer's Handbook. Canada: John Wiley, 2001.Powell, Greg Duncan. Rump and a Rough Red. Millers Point: Murdoch, 2010. Shirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004.

38

Pace, John. "The Yes Men." M/C Journal 6, no.3 (June1, 2003). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2190.

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In a light-speed economy of communication, the only thing that moves faster than information is imagination. And in a time when, more than ever before, information is the currency of global politics, economics, conflict, and conquest what better way to critique and crinkle the global-social than to combine the two - information and imagination - into an hilarious mockery of, and a brief incursion into the vistas of the globalitarian order. This is precisely the reflexive and rhetorical pot-pourri that the group 'the Yes Men' (www.theyesmen.org) have formed. Beginning in 2000, the Yes Men describe themselves as a "network of impostors". Basically, the Yes Men (no they're not all men) fool organisations into believing they are representatives of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and in-turn receive, and accept, invitations to speak (as WTO representatives) at conferences, meetings, seminars, and all manner and locale of corporate pow-wows. At these meetings, the Yes Men deliver their own very special brand of WTO public address. Let's walk through a hypothetical situation. Ashley is organising a conference for a multinational adult entertainment company, at which the management might discuss ways in which it could cut costs from its dild* manufacturing sector by moving production to Indonesia where labour is cheap and tax non-existent (for some), rubber is in abundance, and where the workers hands are slender enough so as to make even the "slimline-tickler" range appear gushingly large in annual report photographs. Ashley decides that a presentation from Supachai Panitchpakdi - head of the WTO body - on the virtues of unrestrained capitalism would be a great way to start the conference, and to build esprit de corps among participants - to summon some good vibrations, if you will. So Ashley jumps on the net. After the obligatory four hours of trying to close the myriad p*rn site pop-ups that plague internet users of the adult entertainment industry, Ashley comes across the WTO site - or at least what looks like the WTO site - and, via the email link, goes about inviting Supachai Panitchpakdi to speak at the conference. What Ashley doesn't realise is that the site is a mirror site of the actual WTO site. This is not, however, grounds for Ashley's termination because it is only after careful and timely scrutiny that you can tell the difference - and in a hypercapitalist economy who has got time to carefully scrutinize? You see, the Yes Men own the domain name www.gatt.org (GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]being the former, not so formalised and globally sanctioned incarnation of the WTO), so in the higgledy-piggeldy cross-referencing infosphere of the internet, and its economy of keywords, unsuspecting WTO fans often find themselves perusing the Yes Men site. The Yes Men are sirens in both senses of the word. They raise alarm to rampant corporatism; and they sing the tunes of corporatism to lure their victims – they signal and seduce. The Yes Men are pull marketers, as opposed to the push tactics of logo based activism, and this is what takes them beyond logoism and its focus on the brand bullies. During the few years the Yes Men have been operating their ingenious rhetorical realignment of the WTO, they have pulled off some of the most golden moments in tactical media’s short history. In May 2002, after accepting an email invitation from conference organisers, the Yes Men hit an accountancy conference in Sydney. In his keynote speech, yes man Andy Bichlbaum announced that as of that day the WTO had decided to "effect a cessation of all operations, to be accomplished over a period of four months, culminating in September". He announced that "the WTO will reintegrate as a new trade body whose charter will be to ensure that trade benefits the poor" (ref). The shocking news hit a surprisingly receptive audience and even sparked debate in the floor of the Canadian Parliament where questions were asked by MP John Duncan about "what impact this will have on our appeals on lumber, agriculture, and other ongoing trade disputes". The Certified Practicing Accountants (CPA) Australia reported that [t]he changes come in response to recent studies which indicate strongly that the current free trade rules and policies have increased poverty, pollution, and inequality, and have eroded democratic principles, with a disproportionatly large negative effect on the poorest countries (CPA: 2002) In another Yes Men assault, this time at a Finnish textiles conference, yes man Hank Hardy Unruh gave a speech (in stead of the then WTO head Mike Moore) arguing that the U.S. civil war (in which slavery became illegal) was a useless waste of time because the system of imported labour (slavery) has been supplanted now by a system of remote labour (sweatshops)- instead of bringing the "labour" to the dild*s via ships from Africa, now we can take the dild*s to the "labour", or more precisely, the idea of a dild* - or in biblical terms - take the mount'em to Mohammed, Mhemmet, or Ming. Unruh meandered through his speech to the usual complicit audience, happy to accept his bold assertions in the coma-like stride of a conference delegate, that is, until he ripped off his business suit (with help from an accomplice) to reveal a full-body golden leotard replete with a giant golden phallus which he proceeded to inflate with the aid of a small gas canister. He went on to describe to the audience that the suit, dubbed "the management leisure suit", was a new innovation in the remote labour control field. He informed the textiles delegates that located in the end of the phallus was a small video interface through which one could view workers in the Third World and administer, by remote control, electric shocks to those employees not working hard enough. Apparently after the speech only one objection was forwarded and that was from a woman who complained that the phallus device was not appropriate because not only men can oppress workers in the third world. It is from the complicity of their audiences that the Yes Men derive their most virulent critique. They point out that the "aim is to get people to think more seriously about the sort of bullsh*t they are prepared to swallow, if and when the information comes from a suitably respected authority. By appearing, for example, in the name of the WTO, one could even make out a case for justifying homicide, irrespective of the target audience's training and intellect" (Yes men) Unruh says. And this is the real statement that the Yes Men make, their real-life, real-time theatre hollows-out the signifer of the WTO and injects its own signified to highlight the predominant role of language - rhetoric - in the globalising of the ideas of neo-liberalism. In speaking sh*t and having people, nay, experts, swallow it comfortably, the Yes Men punctuate that globalisation is as much a movement of ideas across societies as it is a movement of things through societies. It is a movement of ideals - a movement of meanings. Organisations like the WTO propagate these meanings, and propagandise a situation where there is no alternative to initiatives like free trade and the top-down, repressive regime espoused buy neoliberal triumphalists. The Yes Men highlight that the seemingly immutable and inevitable charge of neoliberalism, is in fact simply the dominance of a single way of structuring social life - one dictated by the market. Through their unique brand of semiotic puppetry, the Yes Men show that the project of unelected treaty organisations like the WTO and their push toward the globalisation of neoliberalism is not inevitable, it is not a fait accompli, but rather, that their claims of an inexorable movement toward a neo-liberal capitalism are simply more rhetorical than real. By using the spin and speak of the WTO to suggest ideas like forcing the world's poor to recycle hamburgers to cure world hunger, the Yes Men demonstrate that the power of the WTO lies on the tip of their tongue, and their ability to convince people the world over of the unquestionable legitimacy of that tongue-tip teetering power. But it is that same power that has threatened the future of the Yes Men. In November 2001, the owners of the gatt.org website received a call from the host of its webpage, Verio. The WTO had contacted Verio and asked them to shut down the gatt.org site for copyright violations. But the Yes Men came up with their own response - they developed software that is freely available and which allows the user to mirror any site on the internet easily. Called "Reamweaver", the software allows the user to instantly "funhouse-mirror" anyone's website, copying the real-time "look and feel" but letting the user change any words, images, etc. that they choose. The thought of anyone being able to mimic any site on the internet is perhaps a little scary - especially in terms of e-commerce - imagine that "lizard-tongue belly button tickler" never arriving! Or thinking you had invited a bunch of swingers over to your house via a swingers website, only to find that you'd been duped by a rogue gang of fifteen tax accountants who had come to your house to give you a lecture on the issues associated with the inclusion of pro-forma information in preliminary announcements in East Europe 1955-1958. But seriously, I'm yet to critique the work of the Yes Men. Their brand of protest has come under fire most predictably from the WTO, and least surprisingly from their duped victims. But, really, in an era where the neo-liberal conservative right dominate the high-end operations of sociality, I am reticent to say a bad word about the Yes Men's light, creative, and refreshing style of dissent. I can hear the "free speech" cry coming from those who'd charge the Yes Men with denying their victims the right to freely express their ideas - and I suppose they are correct. But can supra-national institutions like the WTO and their ilk really complain about the Yes Men’s infringement on their rights to a fair communicative playing field when daily they ride rough-shod over the rights of people and the people-defined "rights" of all else with which we share this planet? This is a hazardous junction for the dissent of the Yes Men because it is a point at which personal actions collide head-on with social ethics. The Yes Men’s brand of dissent is a form of direct action, and like direct action, the emphasis is on putting physical bodies between the oppressor and the oppressed – in this case between the subaltern and the supra-national. The Yes Men put their bodies between and within bodies – they penetrate the veneer of the brand to crawl around inside and mess with the mind of the host company body. Messing with anybody’s body is going to be bothersome. But while corporations enjoy the “rights” of embodied citizens, they are spared from the consequences citizens must endure. Take Worldcom’s fraudulent accounting (the biggest in US history) for instance, surely such a monumental deception necessitates more than a USD500 million fine. When will “capital punishment” be introduced to apply to corporations? As in “killing off” the corporation and all its articles of association? Such inconsistencies in the citizenry praxis of corporations paint a pedestrian crossing at the junction where “body” activism meets the ethic (right?) of unequivocal free-speech for all – and when we factor-in crippling policies like structural adjustment, the ethically hazardous junction becomes shadowed by a glorious pedestrian overpass! Where logocentric activism literally concentrates on the apparel – the branded surface - the focus of groups like the Yes Men is on the body beneath – both corporate and corporeal. But are the tactics of the Yes Men enough? Does this step beyond logocentric focused activism wade into the territory of substantive change? Of course the answer is a resounding no. The Yes Men are culture jammers - and culture jamming exists in the realm of ephemera. It asks a question, for a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of struggle, and then fades away. Fetishising the tactics of the Yes Men risks steering dissent into a form of entertainment - much like the entertainmentised politics it opposes. What the Yes Men do is creative and skilful, but it does not express the depth of commitment displayed by those activists working tirelessly on myriad - less-glamorous - campaigns such as the free West Papua movement, and other broader issues of social activism like indigenous rights. If politics is entertainment, then the politics of the Yes Men celebrates the actor while ignoring the hard work of the production team. But having said that, I believe the Yes Men serve an important function in the complex mechanics of dissent. They are but one tactic - they cannot be expected to work with history, they exist in the moment, a transitory trance of reason. And provided the Yes Men continue to use their staged opportunities as platforms to suggest BETTER IDEAS, while also acknowledging the depth and complexity of the subject matter with which they deal, then their brand of protest is valid and effective. The Yes Men ride the cusp of a new style of contemporary social protest, and the more people who likewise use imagination to counter the globalitarian regime and its commodity logic, the better. Through intelligent satire and deft use of communication technologies, the Yes Men lay bare the internal illogic (in terms of human and ecological wellbeing) of the fetishistic charge to cut costs at all costs. Thank-Gatt for the Yes Men, the chastisers of the global eco-social pimps. Works Cited CPA. (2002). World Trade Organisation to Redefine Charter. http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html Yes Men: http://theyesmen.org/ * And thanks to Phil Graham for the “capital punishment” idea. Links http://theyesmen.org/ http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html http://www.gatt.org http://www.theyesmen.org/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Pace, John. "The Yes Men" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/05-yesmen.php>. APA Style Pace, J. (2003, Jun 19). The Yes Men. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/05-yesmen.php>

39

Tyler, Imogen. "Chav Scum." M/C Journal 9, no.5 (November1, 2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2671.

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In the last three years a new filthy vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav”, and its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for white working class subjects. An entire slang vocabulary has emerged around chav. Acronyms, such as “Council Housed and Vile” have sprung up to explain the term. Folk etymologies and some scholarly sources suggest that the term chav might derive from a distortion of a Romany word for a child, while others suggests it is a derivative of the term charver, long used in the North East of England to describe the disenfranchised white poor (see Nayak). In current parlance, the term chav is aligned “with stereotypical notions of lower-class” and is above all “a term of intense class-based abhorrence” (Haywood and Yar 16). Routinely demonized within news media, television comedy programmes, and internet sites (such as the chavscum) the level of disgust mobilized by the figure of the chav is suggestive of a heightened class antagonism that marks a new episode of class struggle in Britain. Social class is often represented through highly caricatured figures—the toff, the chav—figures that are referred to in highly emotive terms. One of the ways in which social class is emotionally mediated is through repeated expressions of disgust at the habits and behaviour of those deemed to belong to a lower social class. An everyday definition of disgust would be: an emotion experienced and expressed as a sickening feeling of revulsion, loathing, or nausea. The physicality of disgust reactions means that the communication of disgust draws heavily on metaphors of sensation. As William Miller notes, disgust “needs images of bad taste, foul smells, creepy touchings, ugly sights, bodily secretions and excretions to articulate the judgments it asserts” (218). Our disgust reactions are often revealing of wider social power relations. As Sara Ahmed notes: When thinking about how bodies become objects of disgust, we can see that disgust is crucial to power relations. … Disgust at “that which is below” functions to maintain the power relations between above and below, through which “aboveness” and “belowness” become properties of particular bodies, objects and spaces (89). Ahmed’s account of the connection between disgust and power relations echoes Beverly Skeggs’ influential account of “class making”. As Skeggs suggests, class as a concept, and as a process of classification and social positioning, is not pre-given but is always in production and is continually re-figured (3). Social class virtually disappeared as a central site of analysis within cultural and media studies in the late 1980s, a disappearance that was mirrored by a similar retreat from the taxonomy of class within wider social and political discourse (Skeggs 45). This is not to say that class distinctions, however we measure them, have been eroded or are in decline. On the contrary, class disappeared as a central site of analysis at precisely the same time that “economic polarization” reached “unparalleled depths” in Britain (ibid.). As the term “working class” has been incrementally emptied of meaning, teaching and researching issues of class inequality is now often seen as “paranoid” and felt to be embarrassing and shameful (see Sayer). (Roland Barthes uses the concept of ‘ex-nomination’ to explain how (and why) social class is emptied of meaning in this way. According to Barthes, this process is one of the central mechanisms through which dominant classes naturalise their values.) In the last two decades academics from working class backgrounds and, perhaps most perversely, those who work within disciplines that were founded upon research on class, have increasingly experienced their own class origins as a “filthy secret”. If social class “directly articulated” and as “the object of analysis, has largely disappeared” (Skeggs 46) within the academy and within wider social and political discourses, portrayals of class differences have nevertheless persisted within popular media. In particular, the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media, primarily television comedy, reality-genre television, Internet forums and newspapers, has made class differences and antagonisms explicitly visible in contemporary Britain. Class-based discrimination and open snobbery is made socially acceptable through claims that this vicious name-calling has a ‘satirical’ function. Laughing at something is “an act of expulsion” that closely resembles the rejecting movement of disgust reactions (Menninghaus 11). In the case of laughter at those of a lower class, laughter is boundary-forming; it creates a distance between “them” and “us”, and asserts moral judgments and a higher class position. Laughter at chavs is a way of managing and authorizing class disgust, contempt, and anxiety. Popular media can be effective means of communicating class disgust and in so doing, work to produce ‘class communities’ in material, political and affective senses. In the online vocabulary of chav hate, we can further discern the ways in which class disgust is performed in ways that are community-forming. The web site, urbandictionary.com is an online slang dictionary that functions as an unofficial online authority on English language slang. Urbandictionary.com is modelled on an internet forum in which (unregistered) users post definitions of new or existing slang terms, which are then reviewed by volunteer editors. Users vote on definitions by clicking a thumb up or thumb down icon and posts are then ranked according to the votes they have accrued. Urbandictionary currently hosts 300,000 definitions of slang terms and is ranked as one of the 2000 highest web traffic sites in the world. There were 368 definitions of the term chav posted on the site at the time of writing and I have extracted below a small number of indicative phrases taken from some of the most highly ranked posts. all chavs are filth chavs …. the cancer of the United Kingdom filthy, disgusting, dirty, loud, ugly, stupid arseholes that threaten, fight, cause trouble, impregnate 14 year olds, ask for money, ask for fa*gs, ….steal your phones, wear crap sports wear, drink cheap cider and generally spread their hate. A social underclass par excellence. The absolute dregs of modern civilization The only good chav is dead one. The only thing better than that is a mass grave full of dead chavs and a 24 hour work crew making way for more… This disgust speech generates a set of effects, which adhere to and produce the filthy figure and qualities of chav. The dictionary format is significant here because, like the accompanying veneer of irony, it grants a strange authority to the dehumanising bigotry of the posts. Urbandictionary illustrates how class disgust is actively made through repetition. Through the repetition of disgust reactions, the negative properties attributed to chav make this figure materialize as representative of a group who embodies those disgusting qualities – a group who are “lower than human or civil life” (Ahmed 97). As users add to and build the definition of “the chav” within the urban dictionary site, they interact with one another and a conversational environment emerges. The voting system works on this site as a form of peer authorization that encourages users to invoke more and more intense and affective disgust reactions. As Ngai suggests, disgust involves an expectation of concurrence, and disgust reactions seek “to include or draw others into its exclusion of its object, enabling a strange kind of sociability” (336). This sociability has a particular specificity within online communities in which anonymity gives community members license to express their disgust in extreme and virulent ways. The interactivity of these internet forums, and the real and illusory immediacy they transmit, makes online forums intensely affective communal spaces/places within which disgust reactions can be rapidly shared and accrued. As the web becomes more “writable”, through the development and dissemination of shared annotation software, web users are moving from consuming content to creating it ‘in the form of discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, and other collaborative and conversational media” (Golder 2). Within new media spaces such as urbandictionary, we are not only viewers but active users who can go into, enter and affect representational spaces and places. In the case of chavs, users can not only read about them, but have the power to produce the chav as a knowable figure. The chav thread on urbandictionary and similar chav hate forums work to constitute materially the exaggerated excessive corporeality of the chav figure. These are spaces/places in which class disgust is actively generated – class live. With each new post, there is an accruement of disgust. Each post breathes life into the squalid and thrillingly affective imaginary body of the filthy chav. Class disgust is intimately tied to issues of racial difference. These figures constitute an unclean “sullied urban “underclass”“, “forever placed at the borders of whiteness as the socially excluded, the economically redundant” (Nayak 82, 102-3). Whilst the term chav is a term of abuse directed almost exclusively towards the white poor, chavs are not invisible normative whites, but rather hypervisible “filthy whites”. In a way that bears striking similarities to US white trash figure, and the Australian figure of the Bogan, the chav figure foregrounds a dirty whiteness – a whiteness contaminated with poverty. This borderline whiteness is evidenced through claims that chavs appropriate black American popular culture through their clothing, music, and forms of speech, and have geographical, familial and sexual intimacy with working class blacks and Asians. This intimacy is represented by the areas in which chavs live and their illegitimate mixed race children as well as, more complexly, by their filthy white racism. Metaphors of disease, invasion and excessive breeding that are often invoked within white racist responses to immigrants and ethnic minorities are mobilized by the white middle-class in order to differentiate their “respectable whiteness” from the whiteness of the lower class chavs (see Nayak 84). The process of making white lower class identity filthy is an attempt to differentiate between respectable and non-respectable forms of whiteness (and an attempt to abject the white poor from spheres of white privilege). Disgust reactions work not only to give meaning to the figure of the chav but, more complicatedly, constitute a category of being – chav being. So whilst the figures of the chav and chavette have a virtual existence within newspapers, Internet forums and television shows, the chav nevertheless takes symbolic shape in ways that have felt material and physical effects upon those interpellated as “chav”. We can think here of the way in which” signs of chavness”, such as the wearing of certain items or brands of clothing have been increasingly used to police access to public spaces, such as nightclubs and shopping centres since 2003. The figure of the chav becomes a body imbued with negative affect. This affect travels, it circulates and leaks out into public space and shapes everyday perceptual practices. The social policing of chavs foregrounds the disturbing ease with which imagined “emotional qualities slide into corporeal qualities” (Ngai 573). Chav disgust is felt and lived. Experiencing the frisson of acting like a chav has become a major leisure occupation in Britain where middle class students now regularly hold “chav nites”, in which they dress up as chavs and chavettes. These students dress as chavs, carry plastic bags from the cut-price food superstores, drink cider and listen to ‘chav music’, in order to enjoy the affect of being an imaginary chav. In April 2006 the front page of The Sun featured Prince William dressed up as a chav with the headline, “Future Bling of England”, The story details how the future king: “joined in the fun as his platoon donned chav-themed fancy dress to mark the completion of their first term” at Sandhurst military academy. William, we were told, “went to a lot of trouble thinking up what to wear” (white baseball cap, sweatshirt, two gold chains), and was challenged to “put on a chavvy accent and stop speaking like a royal”. These examples of ironic class–passing represent a new era of ‘slumming it’ that recalls the 19th century Victorian slummers, who descended on the East End of London in their many thousands, in pursuit of abject encounters – touristic tastes of the illicit pleasures associated with the immoral, urban poor. This new chav ‘slumming it’ makes no pretence at any moral imperative, it doesn’t pretend to be sociological, there is no “field work”, no ethnography, no gathering of knowledge about the poor, no charity, no reaching out to touch, and no liberal guilt, there is nothing but ‘filthy pleasure’. The cumulative effect of disgust at chavs is the blocking of the disenfranchised white poor from view; they are rendered invisible and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, chav has become an increasingly complex identity category and some of those interpellated as filthy chavs have now reclaimed the term as an affirmative sub-cultural identity. This trans-coding of chav is visible within popular music acts, such as white teenage rapper Lady Sovereign and the acclaimed pop icon and urban poet Mike Skinner (who releases records as The Streets). Journalist Julie Burchill has repeatedly attempted both to defend, and claim for herself, a chav identity and in 2005, the tabloid newspaper The Sun, a propagator of chav hate, ran a ‘Proud to be Chav’ campaign. Nevertheless, this ‘chav pride’ is deceptive, for like the US term ‘white trash’ – now widely adopted within celebrity culture – this ‘pride’ works as an enabling identity category only for those who have acquired enough cultural capital and social mobility to ‘rise above the filth’. Since the publication in English of Julia Kristeva’s Power’s of Horror: An Essay on Abjection in 1982, an entire theoretical paradigm has emerged that celebrates the ‘transgressive’ potential of encounters with filth. Such theoretical ‘abject encounters’ are rarely subversive but are on the contrary an increasingly normative and problematic feature of a media and cultural studies devoid of political direction. Instead of assuming that confrontations with ‘filth’ are ‘necessarily subversive and disruptive’ we need to rethink abjection as a violent exclusionary social force. As Miller notes, ‘disgust does not so much solve the dilemma of social powerlessness as diagnose it powerfully’ (353). Theoretical accounts of media and culture that invoke ‘the transformative potential of filth’ too often marginalize the real dirty politics of inequality. References Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP and New York: Routledge, 2004. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972 [1949]. Birchill, Julie. “Yeah But, No But, Why I’m Proud to Be a Chav.” The Times 18 Feb. 2005. Chav Scum. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.chavscum.co.uk>. Golder, Scott. “Webbed Footnotes: Collaborative Annotation on the Web.” MA Thesis 2003. 31 Oct. 2006 http://web.media.mit.edu/~golder/projects/webbedfootnotes/ golder-thesis-2005.pdf>. Hayward, Keith, and Majid Yar. “The ‘Chav’ Phenomenon: Consumption, Media and the Construction of a New Underclass.” Crime, Media, Culture 2.1 (2006): 9-28. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Larcombe, Duncan. “Future Bling of England.” The Sun 10 April 2006. Menninghaus, Winfried. Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation. Trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. State University of New York Press, 2003. Miller, William. The Anatomy of Disgust. Harvard UP, 1998. Nayak, Anoop. Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings: Literature, Affect, and Ideology. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 2005. “Proud to be Chav.” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.thesun.co.uk>. Sayer, Andrew. “What Are You Worth? Why Class Is an Embarrassing Subject.” Sociological Research Online 7.3 (2002). 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/7/3/sayer.html>. Skeggs, Beverly. Class, Self and Culture. London. Routledge, 2005. Urbandictionary. “Chav.” 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chav>. Wray, Matt, and Annalee Newitz, eds. White Trash: Race and Class in America. London: Routledge, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Tyler, Imogen. "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php>. APA Style Tyler, I. (Nov. 2006) "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php>.

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Littaye, Alexandra. "The Boxing Ring: Embodying Knowledge through Being Hit in the Face." M/C Journal 19, no.1 (April6, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1068.

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Abstract:

Boxing is a purely masculine activity and it inhabits a purely masculine world. […] Boxing is for men, and it is about men, and is men. (Joyce Carol Oates) IntroductionWriting about boxing is an intimate, private, and unusual activity. Although a decade has passed since I first “stepped into the ring” (sparring or fighting), I have not engaged with boxing in academic terms. I undertook a doctoral degree from 2012 to 2016, during which I competed and won amateur titles in three different countries. Boxing, in a sense, shadowed my research. My fieldwork, researching heritage foods networks, brought me to various locales, situating my body in reference to participants and academics as well as my textual analysis. My daily interactions and reflections in the boxing gym, though, were marginalised to give priority to my doctorate. In a mirrored journey to Wacquant’s “carnal ethnography of the skilled body” (Habitus 87), I boxed as a hobby. It was a means to escape my life as a doctoral student, my thesis, and the library. Research belonged to the realm of academia; boxing, to the realm of the physical. In this paper, I seek to implode this self-imposed distinction.Practising the “noble art,” as boxing is commonly called, profoundly altered not only my body but also my way of seeing the world, myself, and others. I explore these themes through an autoethnographic account of my experience in the ring. Focusing on sparring, rather than competing, I explore conceptualisations of my face as a material, as well as part of my body, and also as a surface for violence and apprenticeship. Reflecting upon a decade of sparring, the analysis presented in this paper is grounded in the phenomenological tradition whereby knowledge is not an abstract notion that exists over and above felt experience: it is sensed and embodied through practice.I delve into the narratives of my personal “social logic of a bodily craft” of boxing (Wacquant, Habitus 85). More specifically, I reflect upon my experiences of getting hit in the face by men in the ring, and the acclimatisation required, evolving from feelings of intrusion, betrayal, and physical pain to habit, and at times, excitement. As a surface for punching, my face became both material and immaterial. It was a tool that had to be tuned to varying degrees of pain to inform me of my performance as well as my opponent’s. Simultaneously, it was a surface that was abstracted and side-lined in order to put myself purposefully in harm’s way as one does when stepping into the ring. Through reflecting on my face, I consider how the sport offered new embodied experiences through which I became keenly aware of my body as a delineated target for—as well as the source of—violence. In particular, my body boundaries were profoundly reconfigured in the ring: sparring partners demonstrated their respect by hitting me, validating both my body and my skill as a boxer. In this manner, I discuss the spatiality of the ring as eliciting transitions of felt and abstracted pain as well as shaping my self-image as a re-gendered boxer in the ring and out. Throughout my account, I briefly engage with Wacquant’s discussion of “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99) and his claims that boxing is the epitome of masculine valour. In the final section, I conclude with deliberations upon the new bodily awareness(es) I gained through the sport, and the re-materiality I experienced as a strong woman.Methodological and Conceptual FrameworksThe analysis in this paper is based on the hybrid narrative of ethnography and autobiography: autoethnography. In the words of Tami Spry, autoethnography is “a self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self and others in social context” (710). As such, I take stock in hindsight (Bruner; Denzin) of the evolution of my thoughts on boxing, my stance as a boxer, and the ways the ring has affected my sense of self and my body.Unlike Wacquant's “carnal ethnography” (Habitus 83) whose involvement with boxing was foregrounded in an academic context where he wrote detailed field-notes and conducted participant observation, my involvement was deliberately non-academic until I began to write this paper. Based on hindsight, the data collected through this autoethnography are value-inflected in ways that differ from other modes of data collection. But I have sought to recreate a dialectic between perceptual experience and cultural practices and patterns, in a manner aligned with Csordas’s paradigm of embodiment. My method is to “retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture” (Ellis et al. 276) of boxing. These epiphanies, as sensed and embodied knowledge, were not solely conceptual moments but also physical realisations that my body performed, such as understanding—and executing—a well-timed slip to the side to avoid a punch.Focusing on my embodied experiences in the ring and out, I have sought to uncover “somatic modes of attention:” the “culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of others” (Csordas 138). The aim of this engagement is to convey my self-representation as a boxer in the ring, which emerged in part through the inter-subjectivity of interacting with other boxers whilst prioritising representations of my face. As such, my personal narrative is enmeshed with insights gleaned during embodied epiphanies I had in the ring, interweaving storytelling with theory.I have chosen to use the conventions of storytelling (Ellis and Ellingson) to explore the defining moments that shaped the image I hold of myself as a boxer. My personal narrative—where I view myself as the phenomenon—seeks “to produce aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience” (Ellis et al. 287) whilst striving to remain accessible to a broader audience than within academia (Bochner). Personal narratives offer an understanding of the “self or aspect of a life as it intersects with a cultural context, connect to other participants as co-researchers, and invite readers to enter the author's world and to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives” (Ellis 14; see also Ellis et al. 289).As the focus of my narrative is my face, I used my body, in Longhurst et al.’s words, as the “primary tool through which all interactions and emotions filter in accessing subjects and their geographies” (208). As “the foundation of the entire pugilistic regimen”, the body is the site of an intimate self-awareness, of the “body-sense” (Heiskanen 26). Taking my body as the starting point of my analysis, my conceptual framework is heavily informed by Thrift’s non-representational theory, enabling me to inquire into the “skills and knowledges [people] get from being embodied beings” (127), and specifically, embodied boxers. The analysis presented here is thus based on an “epistemic reflexivity” (Wacquant, Habitus 89) and responds to what Wacquant coins the “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99): a set of acquired dispositions of the boxer. Bourdieu believes that people are social agents who actively construct social reality through “categories of perception, appreciation and action” (30). The boxing habitus needs to be grasped with one’s body: it intermingles “cognitive categories, bodily skills and desires which together define the competence and appetence specific to the boxer” (Wacquant, Habitus 87). Through this habitus, I construct an image of myself not only as a boxer, but also as a re-gendered being, directly critiquing Wacquant’s arguments of the “pugilist” as fundamentally male.Resistance to Female BoxingMischa Merz’s manuscript on her boxing experience is the most accurate narrative I have yet read on female boxing, as a visceral as well as incorporeal experience, which led Merz to question and reconsider her own identity. When Merz published her manuscript in 2000, six years before I put the gloves on, the boxing world was still resisting the presence of women in the ring. In the UK, licenses for boxing were refused to women until 1998, and in New South Wales, Australia, it was illegal for women to compete until December 2008. It was not until 2012 that female boxing became internationally recognised as a sport in its own right. During the London Olympics, after a sulphurous debate on whether women should be made to box in skirts to “differentiate” them from men, women were finally allowed to compete in three weight categories, compared to ten for men.When I first started training in 2006 at the age of 21, I was unaware of the long list of determined and courageous women who had carved their way—and facilitated mine—into the ring, fighting for their right to practise a sport considered men’s exclusive domain. By the time I started learning the “sweet science” (another popular term used for boxing), my presence was accepted, albeit still unusual. My university had decreed boxing a violent sport that could not be allowed on campus. As a result, I only started boxing when I obtained a driving licence, and could attend training sessions off-campus. My desire to box had been sparked five years before, when I viewed Girlfight, a film depicting a young woman’s journey into the ring. Until then, I had never imagined a woman could box, let alone be inspirational in the use of her strength, aggression, and violence; to be strong was, for me, to be manly—which, as a woman, translated as monstrous or a perversion. I suddenly recognised in boxing a possibility to rid myself of the burden of what I saw as my bulk, and transform my body into a graceful pugilist—a fighter.First Sparring SessionTwo months after I had first thrown a punch in my coach’s pad—the gear coaches wear to protect their hands when a boxer is punching them to train—I was allowed into the ring to spar. Building up to this moment, I had anticipated and dreaded my first steps in the ring as the test of my skill and worthiness as a boxer. This moment would show my physical conditioning: whether I had trained and dieted correctly, if I was strong or resilient enough to fight. More crucially, it would lay bare my personality, the strength of my character, the extent of my willpower and belief in myself: it would reveal, in boxing terminology, if I had “heart.” Needless to say I had fantasised often about this moment. It was my initiation into the art of being punched and I hoped I would prove myself a hardened individual, capable of withstanding pain without flinching or retreating.The memory of the first punch to my face—my nose, to be exact—remains clear and vivid. My sparring partner was my coach, a retired boxer who hit me repeatedly in the head during the entirety of my first round. Getting hit in the face for the first time is a profound moment of rupture. Until then, my face had been a bodily surface reserved for affective gestures by individuals of trust: kisses of greeting on the cheeks or caresses from lovers. Only once had I been slapped, in an act of aggression that had left me paralysed with shock and feeling violated. Now in the ring, being punched in the face by a man I trusted, vastly more experienced and stronger than I, provoked a violent reaction of indignation and betrayal. Feelings of deceit, physical intrusion, and confusion overwhelmed me; pain was an entirely secondary concern. I had, without realising, assumed my coach would “go easy” on me, softening his punches and giving me time to react adequately to his attacks as we had practised on the pads. A couple of endless minutes later, I stepped out of the ring, breathless and staring at the floor to hide my tears of humiliation and overwhelming frustration.It is a common experience amongst novices, when first stepping into the ring, to forget everything they have been taught: footwork, defence, combinations, chin down, guard up … etc. They often freeze, as I did, with the first physical contact. Suddenly and concretely, with the immediacy of pain, they become aware of the extent of the danger they have purposely placed themselves in. The disturbance I felt was matched in part by my belief that I was essentially a coward. In an act condemned by the boxing community, I had turned my face away from punches: I tried to escape the ring instead of dominating it. Merz succinctly describes this experience in the boxing realm: “aspects of my character were frequently tossed in my face for assessment. I saw gaping holes in my tenacity, my resilience, my courage, my athleticism” (49). That night, I felt an unfamiliar sting as I took my jumper off, noticing a slight yet painful bruise on the bridge of my nose. It reminded me of my inadequacy and, I believed at the time, a fundamental failure of character: I lacked heart.My Face: A Tool for Sensing and Ignoring PainTo get as accustomed as a punching bag to repeated hits without flinching I had to mould my face into a mask of impassivity, revealing little to my opponent. My face also became a calibrated tool to measure my opponent’s skill, strength, and intent through the levels of pain it would experience. If an opponent repeatedly targeted my nose, I knew the sparring session was not a “friendly encounter.” Most often though, we would nod at each other in acknowledgement of the other’s successful “contact,” such as when their punches hurt my body. The ring is the only space I know and inhabit where the display of physical violence can be interpreted as a “friendly gesture” (Merz 12).Boxers, like most athletes, are carefully attuned to measuring the degrees of pain they undergo during a fight and training, whilst accomplishing the paradoxical feat—when they are hit—of setting aside that pain lest it be a distraction. In other words, boxers’ bodies are both material and immaterial: they are sites for accessing sensory information, notably pain levels, as well as tools that—at times detrimentally—have learned to abstract pain in the effort to ignore physical limitations, impediments or fatigue. Boxers with “heart,” I believe, are those who inhabit this duality of material and immaterial bodies.I have systematically been questioned whether I fear bruising or scarring my face. It would seem illogical to many that a woman would voluntarily engage in an activity that could blemish her appearance. Beyond this concern lies the issue, as Merz puts it, that “physical prowess and femininity seem to be so fundamentally incompatible” (476). My face used to be solely a source of concern as a medium of beautification and the platform from which I believed the world judged my degree of attractiveness. It also served as a marker of distinction: those I trusted intimately could touch my face, others could not. Throughout my training, my face evolved and also became an instrument that I conditioned and used strategically in the ring. The bruises I received attested to my readiness to exchange punches, a mark of valour I came to relish more than looking “nice.”Boxing has taught me how to feel my body in new ways. I no longer inhabit an “absent body” (Leder). I intimately know the border between my skin and the world, aware of exactly how far my body extends into that world and how much “punishment” (getting hit) it can withstand: boxing—which Oates (26) observed as a spectator rather than boxer—“is an act of consummate self-determination—the constant re-establishment of the parameters of one’s being.” A strong initial allure of boxing was the strict discipline it gave to my eating habits, an anchor—and at times, a torture—for someone who suffered from decade-long eating disorders. Although boxing plagued me with the need to “make weight”—to fight in a designated weight category—I no longer sought to be as petite as I could manage. As a female boxer, I was reminded of my gender, and my “unusual” body, as I am uncommonly big, strong, and heavy compared to most female fighters. I still find it difficult to find women to spar with, let alone fight. Unlike in the world outside the gym, though, my size is something I continuously learn to value as an advantage in the ring, a tool for affirmation, and significantly, a means of acceptance by, and equality with, men.The Ring: A Place of Re-GenderingAs sparring became routine, I had an epiphany: what I had taken as an act of betrayal from my coach was actually one of respect. Opponents who threw “honest” (painful) punches esteemed me as a boxer. I have, to this day, very rarely sparred with women. I often get told that I punch “like a guy,” an ability with which I have sought to impress coaches and boxers alike. As such, I am usually partnered with men who believe, as they have told me, that hitting a “girl”—and even worse, hitting a girl in the face—is simply unacceptable. Many have admitted that they fear hurting me, though some have quickly wanted to after a couple of exchanges. I have found that their views of “acceptable” violence seem unchanged after a session, as I believe they have come to view me as a boxer first and as a woman second.It would be disingenuous to omit that boxing attracted me as much for the novelty status I have gained within and outside of it. I have often walked a thin line between revelling in the sense of belonging that boxing provides me—anchored in a feeling that gender no longer matters—and the acute sense of feeling special because I am a woman performing as a man in what is still considered a man’s world. I have wavered between feeling as though I am shrugging off the very notion of gender in the ring, to deeply reconsidering what my gender means to me and the world, embracing a more fluid and performative understanding of gender than I had before (Messner; Young).In a way, my sense of self is shaped conflictingly by the ways in which boxers behave towards me in the ring, and how others see me outside of the boxing gym. As de Bruin and de Haan suggest, my body, in its active dimension, is open to the other and grounds inter-subjectivity. This inter-subjectivity of embodiment—how other bodies constitute my own sensory and perceptual experience of being-in-the-world—remains ambivalent. It has led me to feel at times genderless—or rather, beyond gender—in the ring and, because of this feeling, I simultaneously question and continuously re-explore more vividly what can be understood as “female masculinity” (Halberstam). As training progressed, I increasingly felt that:If women are going to fight, we have to be reminded, at every chance available, time and again, that they are still feminine or capable, at least, of wearing the costume of femininity, being hobbled by high heels and constrained by tight dresses. All female athletes in a way are burdened with having to re-iterate this same public narrative. (Merz)As I learned to box, I also learned to delineate myself alongside the ring: as I questioned notions of gender inside, I consequently sought to reaffirm a specific and static idea of gender through overt femininity outside the ring, as other female athletes have also been seen to do (Duncan). During my first years of training, I was the only woman at the gyms I trained in. I believed I had to erase any physical reminders of femininity: my sport clothes were loose fitting, my hair short, and I never wore jewellery or make-up. I wanted to be seen as a boxer, not a woman: my physical attractiveness was, for once, irrelevant. Ironically, I could not conceive of myself as a woman in the ring, and did not believe I could be seen as a woman in the ring. Outside the gym, I increasingly sought to reassert a stereotypical feminine appearance, taking pleasure in subverting another set of beliefs. People are usually hesitant to visualise a woman in a skirt, without a broken nose, as a competitive fighter with a mouth guard and headgear. As Wacquant succinctly put it, “I led a sort of Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde existence” (Habitus 86), which crystallised when one of my coaches failed to recognise me on three occasions outside the gym, in my “normal” clothes.I have now come to resent profoundly the marginal, sensationalised status that being a boxer denotes for a woman. This is premised on particular social norms surrounding gender, which dictate that if a woman boxes, she is not “your usual” woman. I have striven to re-gender my experience, especially in light of the recent explosion of interest in female boxing, where new norms are being established. As I have trained around the world, including in Cuba, France, and the USA, and competed in the UK, Mexico, and Belgium, I have valued the tacit connection between those who practice the “noble art.” Boxing fashions a particular habitus (Bourdieu), the “pugilistic habitus” (Wacquant, Body 12). Stepping into the ring, and being able to handle getting hit in the face, constitutes a common language that boxers around the world, male and female, understand, value, and share; a language that transcends the tacit everyday embodiments of gender and class. Boxing is habitually said to give access to an upward mobility (Wacquant, Habitus; Heiskanen). In my case, as a white, educated, middle-class woman, boxing has given me access to cross-class associations: I have trained alongside men who had been shot in Coventry, were jobless in Cuba, or dealt with drug gangs in Mexico. The ring is an equalising space, where social, gender—and in my experience, ethnic—divides can be smoothed down to leave the pugilistic valour, the property of boxing excellence, as the main metric of appreciation.The freedom I have found in the ring is one that has allowed my gendered identity to be thought of in new and creative ways that invite continuous revision. I have discovered myself not solely through the prism of a gendered lens, but as an emotive athlete, and as a person desperate to be accepted despite—or because of—her physical strength. I find myself returning to Merz’s eloquence: “boxing cannot help but make you question who you really are. You cannot hide from yourself in a boxing ring. It might seem a crazy path to self-knowledge, but to me it has been the most rich, rewarding, and perhaps, the only true one” (111). Using Wacquant’s own words to disprove his theory that boxing is fundamentally a virile activity that reaffirms specific notions of masculinity, to become a boxer is to “efface the distinction between the physical and the spiritual [...] to defy the border between reason and passion” (Body 20). In my view, it is to implode the oppositional definitions that have kept males inside the ring and females, out. The ring, in ways unrivalled elsewhere, has shown me that I am not reducible, as the world has at times convinced me, to my strength or my gender. I can, and indeed do, coalesce and transcend both.ConclusionAfter having pondered the significance of the ring to my life, I now begin to understand Merz’s journey as “so much more than a mere dalliance on the dark side of masculine culture” (21). When I box, I am always boxing against myself. The ring is the ultimate space of revelation, where one is starkly confronted with one’s own weaknesses and fears. As a naked mirror, the ring is also a place for redemption, where one can overcome flaws, and uncover facets of who one is. Having spent almost as much time at university as I have boxing, it was in the ring that I learned that “thinking otherwise entails being otherwise, relating to oneself, one’s body, and ambient beings in a new way” (Sharp 749). Through the “boxing habitus,” I have simultaneously developed a boxer’s body and habits as well as integrated new notions of gender. As an exercise in re-gendering, sparring has led me to reflect more purposefully on the multiplicity of meanings that gender can espouse, and on the possibilities of negotiating the world as both strong and female. Practising the “noble art” has given me new tools with which to carve out, within the structures of the society I inhabit, liberating possibilities of being a pugilistic woman. However, I have yet to determine if women have fashioned a space within the ring for themselves, or if they still need to reaffirm a gendered identity in the eyes of others to earn the right to get hit in the face.References Bochner, Arthur P. “It’s about Time: Narrative and the Divided Self.” Qualitative Inquiry 3.4 (1997): 418–438.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1990.Bruner, Jerome. “The Autobiographical Process.” The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Ed. Robert Folkenflik. Vol. 6. Stanford UP, 1993. 38–56.Csordas, Thomas. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993): 135–156.De Bruin, Leon, and Sanneke de Haan. “Enactivism and Social Cognition: In Search of the Whole Story.” Cognitive Semiotics 4.1 (2009): 225–50.Denzin, Norman K. Interpretive Biography. London: Sage, 1989.Duncan, Margaret C. “Gender Warriors in Sport: Women and the Media.” Handbook of Sports and Media. Eds. Arthur A. Raney and Jennings Bryant. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 231–252.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung (2011): 273–90.Ellis, Carolyn, and Laura Ellingson. “Qualitative Methods.” Encyclopedia of Sociology. Eds. Edgar F. Borgatta and Rhonda JV Montgomery. Macmillan Library Reference, 2000. 2287–96.Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.Heiskanen, Benita. The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring. Vol. 13. Routledge, 2012.Girlfight. Dir. Karyn Kusama. Screen Gems, 2000.Leder, Drew. The Absent Body. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Longhurst, Robyn, Elsie Ho, and Lynda Johnston. “Using ‘the Body’ as an Instrument of Research: Kimch’i and Pavlova.” Area 40.2 (2008): 208–17.Messner, Michael. Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. New York: SUNY Press, 2010.Merz, Mischa. Bruising: A Boxer’s Story. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2000.Oates, Joyce Carol. On Boxing. Garden City, New York: Harper Collins, 1987.Sharp, Hasana. “The Force of Ideas in Spinoza.” Political Theory 35.6 (2007): 732–55.Spry, Tami. “Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis.” Qualitative Inquiry 7.6 (2001): 706–32.Thrift, Nigel. “The Still Point: Resistance, Expressive Embodiment and Dance.” Geographies of Resistance (1997): 124–51.Wacquant, Loïc. Body & Soul. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.———. “Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 8.1 (2011): 81–92.Young, Iris Marion. Throwing like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1990.

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Sheu,ChingshunJ. "Forced Excursion: Walking as Disability in Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed." M/C Journal 21, no.4 (October15, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1403.

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Introduction: Conceptualizing DisabilityThe two most prominent models for understanding disability are the medical model and the social model (“Disability”). The medical model locates disability in the person and emphasises the possibility of a cure, reinforcing the idea that disability is the fault of the disabled person, their body, their genes, and/or their upbringing. The social model, formulated as a response to the medical model, presents disability as a failure of the surrounding environment to accommodate differently abled bodies and minds. Closely linked to identity politics, the social model argues that disability is not a defect to be fixed but a source of human experience and identity, and that to disregard the needs of people with disability is to discriminate against them by being “ableist.”Both models have limitations. On the one hand, simply being a person with disability or having any other minority identity/-ies does not by itself lead to exclusion and discrimination (Nocella 18); an element of social valuation must be present that goes beyond a mere numbers game. On the other hand, merely focusing on the social aspect neglects “the realities of sickness, suffering, and pain” that many people with disability experience (Mollow 196) and that cannot be substantially alleviated by any degree of social change. The body is irreducible to discourse and representation (Siebers 749). Disability exists only at the confluence of differently abled minds and bodies and unaccommodating social and physical environs. How a body “fits” (my word) its environment is the focus of the “ecosomatic paradigm” (Cella 574-75); one example is how the drastically different environment of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) reorients the coordinates of ability and impairment (Cella 582–84). I want to examine a novel that, conversely, features a change not in environment but in body.Alien LegsTim Farnsworth, the protagonist of Joshua Ferris’s second novel, The Unnamed (2010), is a high-powered New York lawyer who develops a condition that causes him to walk spontaneously without control over direction or duration. Tim suffers four periods of “walking,” during which his body could without warning stand up and walk at any time up to the point of exhaustion; each period grows increasingly longer with more frequent walks, until the fourth one ends in Tim’s death. As his wife, Jane, understands it, these forced excursions are “a hijacking of some obscure order of the body, the frightened soul inside the runaway train of mindless matter” (24). The direction is not random, for his legs follow roads and traffic lights. When Tim is exhausted, his legs abruptly stop, ceding control back to his conscious will, whence Tim usually calls Jane and then sleeps like a baby wherever he stops. She picks him up at all hours of the day and night.Contemporary critics note shades of Beckett in both the premise and title of the novel (“Young”; Adams), connections confirmed by Ferris (“Involuntary”); Ron Charles mentions the Poe story “The Man of the Crowd” (1845), but it seems only the compulsion to walk is similar. Ferris says he “was interested in writing about disease” (“Involuntary”), and disability is at the core of the novel; Tim more than once thinks bitterly to himself that the smug person without disability in front of him will one day fall ill and die, alluding to the universality of disability. His condition is detrimental to his work and life, and Stuart Murray explores how this reveals the ableist assumptions behind the idea of “productivity” in a post-industrial economy. In one humorous episode, Tim arrives unexpectedly (but volitionally) at a courtroom and has just finished requesting permission to join the proceedings when his legs take him out of the courtroom again; he barely has time to shout over his shoulder, “on second thought, Your Honor” (Ferris Unnamed 103). However, Murray does not discuss what is unique about Tim’s disability: it revolves around walking, the paradigmatic act of ability in popular culture, as connoted in the phrase “to stand up and walk.” This makes it difficult to understand Tim’s predicament solely in terms of either the medical or social model. He is able-bodied—in fact, we might say he is “over-able”—leading one doctor to label his condition “benign idiopathic perambulation” (41; my emphasis); yet the lack of agency in his walking precludes it from becoming a “pedestrian speech act” (de Certeau 98), walking that imbues space with semiotic value. It is difficult to imagine what changes society could make to neutralize Tim’s disability.The novel explores both avenues. At first, Tim adheres to the medical model protocol of seeking a diagnosis to facilitate treatment. He goes to every and any (pseudo)expert in search of “the One Guy” who can diagnose and, possibly, cure him (53), but none can; a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine documents psychiatrists and neurologists, finding nothing, kicking the can between them, “from the mind to body back to the mind” (101). Tim is driven to seek a diagnosis because, under the medical model, a diagnosis facilitates understanding, by others and by oneself. As the Farnsworths experience many times, it is surpassingly difficult to explain to others that one has a disease with no diagnosis or even name. Without a name, the disease may as well not exist, and even their daughter, Becka, doubts Tim at first. Only Jane is able to empathize with him based on her own experience of menopause, incomprehensible to men, gesturing towards the influence of sex on medical hermeneutics (Mollow 188–92). As the last hope of a diagnosis comes up empty, Tim shifts his mentality, attempting to understand his condition through an idiosyncratic idiom: experiencing “brain fog”, feeling “mentally unsticky”, and having “jangly” nerves, “hyperslogged” muscles, a “floaty” left side, and “bunched up” breathing—these, to him, are “the most precise descriptions” of his physical and mental state (126). “Name” something, “revealing nature’s mystery”, and one can “triumph over it”, he thinks at one point (212). But he is never able to eschew the drive toward understanding via naming, and his “deep metaphysical ache” (Burn 45) takes the form of a lament at misfortune, a genre traceable to the Book of Job.Short of crafting a life for Tim in which his family, friends, and work are meaningfully present yet detached enough in scheduling and physical space to accommodate his needs, the social model is insufficient to make sense of, let alone neutralize, his disability. Nonetheless, there are certain aspects of his experience that can be improved with social adjustments. Tim often ends his walks by sleeping wherever he stops, and he would benefit from sensitivity training for police officers and other authority figures; out of all the authority figures who he encounters, only one shows consideration for his safety, comfort, and mental well-being prior to addressing the illegality of his behaviour. And making the general public more aware of “modes of not knowing, unknowing, and failing to know”, in the words of Jack Halberstam (qtd. in McRuer and Johnson 152), would alleviate the plight not just of Tim but of all sufferers of undiagnosed diseases and people with (rare forms of) disability.After Tim leaves home and starts walking cross-country, he has to learn to deal with his disability without any support system. The solution he hits upon illustrates the ecosomatic paradigm: he buys camping gear and treats his walking as an endless hike. Neither “curing” his body nor asking accommodation of society, Tim’s tools mediate a fit between body and environs, and it more or less works. For Tim the involuntary nomad, “everywhere was a wilderness” (Ferris Unnamed 247).The Otherness of the BodyProblems arise when Tim tries to fight his legs. After despairing of a diagnosis, he internalises the struggle against the “somatic noncompliance” of his body (Mollow 197) and refers to it as “the other” (207). One through-line of the novel is a (failed) attempt to overcome cartesian duality (Reiffenrath). Tim divides his experiences along cartesian lines and actively tries to enhance while short-circuiting the body. He recites case law and tries to take up birdwatching to maintain his mind, but his body constantly stymies him, drawing his attention to its own needs. He keeps himself ill-clothed and -fed and spurns needed medical attention, only to find—on the brink of death—that his body has brought him to a hospital, and that he stops walking until he is cured and discharged. Tim’s early impression that his body has “a mind of its own” (44), a situation comparable to the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886; Ludwigs 123–24), is borne out when it starts to silently speak to him, monosyllabically at first (“Food!” (207)), then progressing to simple sentences (“Leg is hurting” (213)) and sarcasm (“Deficiency of copper causes anemia, just so you know” (216)) before arriving at full-blown taunting:The other was the interrogator and he the muttering subject […].Q: Are you aware that you can be made to forget words, if certain neurons are suppressed from firing?A: Certain what?Q: And that by suppressing the firing of others, you can be made to forget what words mean entirely? Like the word Jane, for instance.A: Which?Q: And do you know that if I do this—[inaudible]A: Oof!Q: —you will flatline? And if I do this—[inaudible]A: Aaa, aaa…Q: —you will cease flatlining? (223–24; emphases and interpolations in original except for bracketed ellipsis)His Jobean lament turns literal, with his mind on God’s side and his body, “the other”, on the Devil’s in a battle for his eternal soul (Burn 46). Ironically, this “God talk” (Ferris Unnamed 248) finally gets Tim diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he receives medication that silences his body, if not stilling his legs. But when he is not medicated, his body can dominate his mind with multiple-page monologues.Not long after Tim’s mind and body reach a truce thanks to the camping gear and medication, Tim receives word on the west coast that Jane, in New York, has terminal cancer; he resolves to fight his end-of-walk “narcoleptic episodes” (12) to return to her—on foot. His body is not pleased, and it slowly falls apart as Tim fights it eastward cross-country. By the time he is hospitalized “ten miles as the crow flies from his final destination”, his ailments include “conjunctivitis”, “leg cramps”, “myositis”, “kidney failure”, “chafing and blisters”, “shingles”, “back pain”, “bug bites, ticks, fleas and lice”, “sun blisters”, “heatstroke and dehydration”, “rhabdomyolysis”, “excess [blood] potassium”, “splintering [leg] bones”, “burning tongue”, “[ballooning] heels”, “osteal complications”, “acute respiratory distress syndrome”, “excess fluid [in] his peritoneal cavity”, “brain swelling”, and a coma (278–80)—not including the fingers and toes lost to frostbite during an earlier period of walking. Nevertheless, he recovers and reunites with Jane, maintaining a holding pattern by returning to Jane’s hospital bedside after each walk.Jane recovers; the urgency having dissipated, Tim goes back on the road, confident that “he had proven long ago that there was no circ*mstance under which he could not walk if he put his mind to it” (303). A victory for mind over body? Not quite. The ending, Tim’s death scene, planned by Ferris from the beginning (Ferris “Tracking”), manages to grant victory to both mind and body without uniting them: his mind keeps working after physical death, but its last thought is of a “delicious […] cup of water” (310). Mind and body are two, but indivisible.Cartesian duality has relevance for other significant characters. The chain-smoking Detective Roy, assigned the case Tim is defending, later appears with oxygen tank in tow due to emphysema, yet he cannot quit smoking. What might have been a mere shortcut for characterization here carries physical consequences: the oxygen tank limits Roy’s movement and, one supposes, his investigative ability. After Jane recovers, Tim visits Frank Novovian, the security guard at his old law firm, and finds he has “gone fat [...] His retiring slouch behind the security post said there was no going back”; recognising Tim, Frank “lifted an inch off [his] chair, righting his jellied form, which immediately settled back into place” (297; my emphases). Frank’s physical state reflects the state of his career: settled. The mind-body antagonism is even more stark among Tim’s lawyer colleagues. Lev Wittig cannot become sexually aroused unless there is a “rare and extremely venomous snak[e]” in the room with no lights (145)—in direct contrast to his being a corporate tax specialist and the “dullest person you will ever meet” (141). And Mike Kronish famously once billed a twenty-seven-hour workday by crossing multiple time zones, but his apparent victory of mind over matter is undercut by his other notable achievement, being such a workaholic that his grown kids call him “Uncle Daddy” (148).Jane offers a more vexed case. While serving as Tim’s primary caretaker, she dreads the prospect of sacrificing the rest of her life for him. The pressures of the consciously maintaining her wedding vows directly affects her body. Besides succumbing to and recovering from alcoholism, she is twice tempted by the sexuality of other men; the second time, Tim calls her at the moment of truth to tell her the walking has returned, but instead of offering to pick him up, she says to him, “Come home” (195). As she later admits, asking him to do the impossible is a form of abandonment, and though causality is merely implied, Tim decides a day later not to return. Cartesian duality is similarly blurred in Jane’s fight against cancer. Prior to developing cancer, it is the pretence for Tim’s frequent office absences; she develops cancer; she fights it into remission not by relying on the clinical trial she undergoes, but because Tim’s impossible return inspires her; its remission removes the sense of urgency keeping Tim around, and he leaves; and he later learns that she dies from its recurrence. In multiple senses, Jane’s physical challenges are inextricable from her marriage commitment. Tim’s peripatetic condition affects both of them in hom*ologous ways, gesturing towards the importance of disability studies for understanding the experience both of people with disability and of their caretakers.Becka copes with cartesian duality in the form of her obesity, and the way she does so sets an example for Tim. She gains weight during adolescence, around the time Tim starts walking uncontrollably, and despite her efforts she never loses weight. At first moody and depressed, she later channels her emotions into music, eventually going on tour. After one of her concerts, she tells Tim she has accepted her body, calling it “my one go-around,” freeing her from having to “hate yourself till the bitter end” (262) to instead enjoy her life and music. The idea of acceptance stays with Tim; whereas in previous episodes of walking he ignored the outside world—another example of reconceptualizing walking in the mode of disability—he pays attention to his surroundings on his journey back to New York, which is filled with descriptions of various geographical, meteorological, biological, and sociological phenomena, all while his body slowly breaks down. By the time he leaves home forever, he has acquired the habit of constant observation and the ability to enjoy things moment by moment. “Beauty, surprisingly, was everywhere” (279), he thinks. Invoking the figure of the flâneur, which Ferris had in mind when writing the novel (Ferris “Involuntary”), Peter Ferry argues that “becoming a 21st century incarnation of the flâneur gives Tim a greater sense of selfhood, a belief in the significance of his own existence within the increasingly chaotic and disorientating urban environment” (59). I concur, with two caveats: the chaotic and disorienting environment is not merely urban; and, contrary to Ferry’s claim that this regained selfhood is in contrast to “disintegrating” “conventional understandings of masculinity” (57), it instead incorporates Tim’s new identity as a person with disability.Conclusion: The Experience of DisabilityMore than specific insights into living with disability, the most important contribution of The Unnamed to disability studies is its exploration of the pure experience of disability. Ferris says, “I wanted to strip down this character to the very barest essentials and see what happens when sickness can’t go away and it can’t be answered by all [sic] of the medical technology that the country has at its disposal” (“Tracking”); by making Tim a wealthy lawyer with a caring family—removing common complicating socioeconomic factors of disability—and giving him an unprecedented impairment—removing all medical support and social services—Ferris depicts disability per se, illuminating the importance of disability studies for all people with(out) disability. After undergoing variegated experiences of pure disability, Tim “maintained a sound mind until the end. He was vigilant about periodic checkups and disciplined with his medication. He took care of himself as best he could, eating well however possible, sleeping when his body required it, […] and he persevered in this manner of living until his death” (Ferris Unnamed 306). This is an ideal relation to maintain between mind, body, and environment, irrespective of (dis)ability.ReferencesAdams, Tim. “The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris.” Fiction. Observer, 21 Feb. 2010: n. pag. 19 Sep. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/21/the-unnamed-joshua-ferris>.Burn, Stephen J. “Mapping the Syndrome Novel.” Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction: The Syndrome Syndrome. Eds. T.J. Lustig and James Peaco*ck. New York: Routledge, 2013. 35-52.Cella, Matthew J.C. “The Ecosomatic Paradigm in Literature: Merging Disability Studies and Ecocriticism.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 20.3 (2013): 574–96.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. 1980. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.Charles, Ron. “Book World Review of Joshua Ferris’s ‘The Unnamed.’” Books. Washington Post 20 Jan. 2010: n. pag. 19 Sep. 2018 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011903945.html>.“Disability.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia 17 Sep. 2018. 19 Sep. 2018 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability>.Ferris, Joshua. “Involuntary Walking; the Joshua Ferris Interview.” ReadRollShow. Created by David Weich. Sheepscot Creative, 2010. Vimeo, 9 Mar. 2010. 18 Sep. 2018 <https://www.vimeo.com/10026925>. [My transcript.]———. “Tracking a Man’s Life, in Endless Footsteps.” Interview by Melissa Block. All Things Considered, NPR, 15 Feb. 2010. 18 Sep. 2018 <https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=123650332>.———. The Unnamed: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2010.Ferry, Peter. “Reading Manhattan, Reading Masculinity: Reintroducing the Flâneur with E.B. White’s Here Is New York and Joshua Ferris’ The Unnamed.” Culture, Society & Masculinities 3.1 (2011): 49–61.Ludwigs, Marina. “Walking as a Metaphor for Narrativity.” Studia Neophilologica 87.1 (Suppl. 1) (2015): 116–28.McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, 2006.McRuer, Robert, and Merri Lisa Johnson. “Proliferating Cripistemologies: A Virtual Roundtable.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8.2 (2014): 149–69.Mollow, Anna. “Criphystemologies: What Disability Theory Needs to Know about Hysteria.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8.2 (2014): 185–201.Murray, Stuart. “Reading Disability in a Time of Posthuman Work: Speed and Embodiment in Joshua Ferris’ The Unnamed and Michael Faber’s Under the Skin.” Disability Studies Quarterly 37.4 (2017). 20 May 2018 <http://dsq–sds.org/article/view/6104/4823/>.Nocella, Anthony J., II. “Defining Eco–Ability: Social Justice and the Intersectionality of Disability, Nonhuman Animals, and Ecology.” Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco–Ability Movement. Eds. Anthony J. Nocella II, Judy K.C. Bentley, and Janet M. Duncan. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 3–21.Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Man of the Crowd.” 1845. PoeStories.com. 18 Sep. 2018 <https://poestories.com/read/manofthecrowd>.Reiffenrath, Tanja. “Mind over Matter? Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed as Counternarrative.” [sic] – a journal of literature, culture and literary translation 5.1 (2014). 20 May 2018 <https://www.sic–journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=305/>.Siebers, Tobin. “Disability in Theory: From Social Constructionism to the New Realism of the Body.” American Literary History 13.4 (2001): 737–54.“The Young and the Restless.” Review of The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. Books and Arts. Economist, 28 Jan. 2010: n. pag. 19 Sep. 2018 <https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2010/01/28/the-young-and-the-restless>.

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Baird, Barbara. "Before the Bride Really Wore Pink." M/C Journal 15, no.6 (November28, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.584.

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Introduction For some time now there has been a strong critical framework that identifies a significant shift in the politics of hom*osexuality in the Anglo-oriented West over the last fifteen to twenty years. In this article I draw on this framework to describe the current moment in the Australian cultural politics of hom*osexuality. I focus on the issue of same-sex marriage as a key indicator of the currently emerging era. I then turn to two Australian texts about marriage that were produced in “the period before” this time, with the aim of recovering what has been partially lost from current formations of GLBT politics and from available memories of the past. Critical Histories Lisa Duggan’s term “the new hom*onormativity” is the frame that has gained widest currency among writers who point to the incorporation of certain versions of hom*osexuality into the neo-liberal (U.S.) mainstream. She identifies a sexual politics that “does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (50). More recently, writing of the period inaugurated by the so-called “war on terror” and following Duggan, Jasbir Puar has introduced the term “hom*onationalism” to refer to “a collusion between hom*osexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves” (39). Damien Riggs adds the claims of Indigenous peoples in ongoing colonial contexts to the ground from which contemporary GLBT political claims can be critiqued. He concludes that while “queer people” will need to continue to struggle for rights, it is likely that cultural intelligibility “as a subject of the nation” will be extended only to those “who are established through the language of the nation (i.e., one that is founded upon the denial of colonial violence)” (97). Most writers who follow these kinds of critical analyses refer to the discursive place of hom*osexual couples and families, specifically marriage. For Duggan it was the increasing focus on “full gay access to marriage and military service” that defined hom*onormativity (50). Puar allows for a diversity of meanings of same-sex marriage, but claims that for many it is “a demand for reinstatement of white privileges and rights—rights of property and inheritance in particular” (29; see also Riggs 66–70). Of course not all authors locate the political focus on same-sex marriage and its effects as a conservative affair. British scholar Jeffrey Weeks stresses what “we” have gained and celebrates the rise of the discourse of human rights in relation to sexuality. “The very ordinariness of recognized same-sex unions in a culture which until recently cast hom*osexuality into secret corners and dark whispers is surely the most extraordinary achievement of all” (198), he writes. Australian historian Graham Willett takes a similar approach in his assessment of recent Australian history. Noting the near achievement of “the legal equality agenda for gay people” (“hom*os” 187), he notes that “the gay and lesbian movement went on reshaping Australian values and culture and society through the Howard years” (193). In his account it did this in spite of, and untainted by, the dominance of Howard's values and programs. The Howard period was “littered with episodes of insult and discrimination … [as the] government tried to stem the tide of gay, lesbian and transgender rights that had been flowing so strongly since 1969”, Willett writes (188). My own analysis of the Howard years acknowledges the significant progress made in law reform relating to same-sex couples and lesbian and gay parents but draws attention to its mutual constitution with the dominance of the white, patriarchal, neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies which dominated social and political life (2013 forthcoming). I argue that the costs of reform, fought for predominantly by white and middle class lesbians and gay men deploying hom*onormative discourses, included the creation of new identities—single lesbians and gays whose identity did not fit mainstream notions, non-monogamous couples and bad mothers—which were positioned on the illegitimate side of the newly enfranchised. Further the success of the reforms marginalised critical perspectives that are, for many, necessary tools for survival in socially conservative neoliberal times. Same-Sex Marriage in Australia The focus on same-sex marriage in the Australian context was initiated in April 2004 by then Prime Minister Howard. An election was looming and two same-sex couples were seeking recognition of their Canadian marriages through the courts. With little warning, Howard announced that he would amend the Federal Marriage Act to specify that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman. His amendment also prevented the recognition of same-sex marriages undertaken overseas. Legislation was rushed through the parliament in August of that year. In response, Australian Marriage Equality was formed in 2004 and remains at the centre of the GLBT movement. Since that time political rallies in support of marriage equality have been held regularly and the issue has become the key vehicle through which gay politics is understood. Australians across the board increasingly support same-sex marriage (over 60% in 2012) and a growing majority of gay and lesbian people would marry if they could (54% in 2010) (AME). Carol Johnson et al. note that while there are some critiques, most GLBT people see marriage “as a major equality issue” (Johnson, Maddison and Partridge 37). The degree to which Howard’s move changed the terrain of GLBT politics cannot be underestimated. The idea and practice of (non-legal) hom*osexual marriage in Australia is not new. And some individuals, publicly and privately, were calling for legal marriage for same-sex couples before 2004 (e.g. Baird, “Kerryn and Jackie”). But before 2004 legal marriage did not inspire great interest among GLBT people nor have great support among them. Only weeks before Howard’s announcement, Victorian legal academic and co-convenor of the Victorian Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby Miranda Stewart concluded an article about same-sex relationship law reform in Victoria with a call to “begin the debate about gay marriage” (80, emphasis added). She noted that the growing number of Australian couples married overseas would influence thinking about marriage in Australia. She also asked “do we really want to be part of that ‘old edifice’ of marriage?” (80). Late in 2003 the co-convenors of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby declared that “many members of our community are not interested in marriage” and argued that there were more pressing, and more practical, issues for the Lobby to be focused on (Cerise and McGrory 5). In 2001 Jenni Millbank and Wayne Morgan, two leading legal academics and activists in the arena of same-sex relationship politics in Australia, wrote that “The notion of ‘same-sex marriage’ is quite alien to Australia” (Millbank and Morgan, 295). They pointed to the then legal recognition of heterosexual de facto relationships as the specific context in Australia, which meant that marriage was not viewed as "paradigmatic" (296). In 1998 a community consultation conducted by the Equal Opportunity Commission in Victoria found that “legalising marriage for same-sex couples did not enjoy broad based support from either the community at large or the gay and lesbian community” (Stewart 76). Alongside this general lack of interest in marriage, from the early-mid 1990s gay and lesbian rights groups in each state and territory began to think about, if not campaign for, law reform to give same-sex couples the same entitlements as heterosexual de facto couples. The eventual campaigns differed from state to state, and included moments of high profile public activity, but were in the main low key affairs that met with broadly sympathetic responses from state and territory ALP governments (Millbank). The previous reforms in every state that accorded heterosexual de facto couples near equality with married couples meant that gay and lesbian couples in Australia could gain most of the privileges available to heterosexual couples without having to encroach on the sacred territory (and federal domain) of marriage. In 2004 when Howard announced his marriage bill only South Australia had not reformed its law. Notwithstanding these reforms, there were matters relating to lesbian and gay parenting that remained in need of reform in nearly every jurisdiction. Further, Howard’s aggressive move in 2004 had been preceded by his dogged refusal to consider any federal legislation to remove discrimination. But in 2008 the new Rudd government enacted legislation to remove all discrimination against same-sex couples in federal law, with marriage and (ironically) the lack of anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds of sexuality the exceptions, and at the time of writing most states have made or will soon implement the reforms that give full lesbian and gay parenting rights. In his comprehensive account of gay politics from the 1950s onwards, published in 2000, Graham Willett does not mention marriage at all, and deals with the moves to recognise same-sex relationships in one sixteen line paragraph (Living 249). Willett’s book concludes with the decriminalisation of sex between men across every state of Australia. It was written just as the demand for relationship reform was becoming the central issue of GLBT politics. In this sense, the book marks the end of one era of hom*osexual politics and the beginning of the next which, after 2004, became organised around the desire for marriage. This understanding of the recent gay past has become common sense. In a recent article in the Adelaide gay paper blaze a young male journalist wrote of the time since the early 1970s that “the gay rights movement has shifted from the issue of decriminalising hom*osexuality nationwide to now lobbying for full equal rights for gay people” (Dunkin 3). While this (reductive and male-focused) characterisation is not the only one possible, I simply note that this view of past and future progress has wide currency. The shift of attention in this period to the demand for marriage is an intensification and narrowing of political focus in a period of almost universal turn by state and federal governments to neoliberalism and an uneven turn to neo-conservatism, directions which have detrimental effects on the lives of many people already marginalised by discourses of sexuality, race, class, gender, migration status, (dis)ability and so on. While the shift to the focus on marriage from 2004 might be understood as the logical final step in gaining equal status for gay and lesbian relationships (albeit one with little enthusiasm from the GLBT political communities before 2004), the initiation of this shift by Prime Minister Howard, with little preparatory debate in the LGBT political communities, meant that the issue emerged onto the Australian political agenda in terms defined by the (neo)conservative side of politics. Further, it is an example of identity politics which, as Lisa Duggan has observed in the US case, is “increasingly divorced from any critique of global capitalism” and settles for “a stripped-down equality, paradoxically imagined as compatible with persistent overall inequality” (xx). Brides before Marriage In the last part of this article I turn to two texts produced early in 1994—an activist document and an ephemeral performance during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. If we point only to the end of the era of (de)criminalisation, then the year 1997, when the last state, Tasmania, decriminalised male hom*osex, marks the shift from one era of the regulation of hom*osexuality to another. But 1994 bore the seeds of the new era too. Of course attempts to identify a single year as the border between one era and the next are rhetorical devices. But some significant events in 1994 make it a year of note. The Australian films Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and The Sum of Us were both released in 1994, marking particular Australian contributions to the growing presence of gay and lesbian characters in Western popular culture (e.g. Hamer and Budge). 1994 was the UN International Year of the Family (IYF) and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras chose the theme “We are Family” and published endorsem*nt from both Prime Minister Keating and the federal opposition leader John Hewson in their program. In 1994 the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to pass legislation that recognised the rights and entitlements of same-sex couples, albeit in a very limited and preliminary form (Millbank 29). The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby's (GLRL) 1994 discussion paper, The Bride Wore Pink, can be pinpointed as the formal start to community-based activism for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. It was a revision of an earlier version that had been the basis for discussion among (largely inner Sydney) gay and lesbian communities where there had been lively debate and dissent (Zetlein, Lesbian Bodies 48–57). The 1994 version recommended that the NSW government amend the existing definition of de facto in various pieces of legislation to include lesbian and gay relationships and close non-cohabiting interdependent relationships as well. This was judged to be politically feasible. In 1999 NSW became the first state to implement wide ranging reforms of this nature although these were narrower than called for by the GLRL, “including lesser number of Acts amended and narrower application and definition of the non-couple category” (Millbank 10). My concern here is not with the politics that preceded or followed the 1994 version of The Bride, but with the document itself. Notwithstanding its status for some as a document of limited political vision, The Bride bore clear traces of the feminist and liberationist thinking, the experiences of the AIDS crisis in Sydney, and the disagreements about relationships within lesbian and gay communities that characterised the milieu from which it emerged. Marriage was clearly rejected, for reasons of political impossibility but also in light of a list of criticisms of its implication in patriarchal hierarchies of relationship value (31–2). Feminist analysis of relationships was apparent throughout the consideration of pros and cons of different legislative options. Conflict and differences of opinion were evident. So was humour. The proliferation of lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies was listed as both a pro and a con of marriage. On the one hand "just think about the prezzies” (31); on the other, “what will you wear” (32). As well as recommending change to the definition of de facto, The Bride recommended the allocation of state funds to consider “the appropriateness or otherwise of bestowing entitlements on the basis of relationships,” “the focusing on monogamy, exclusivity and blood relations” and the need for broader definitions of “relationships” in state legislation (3). In a gesture towards a political agenda beyond narrowly defined lesbian and gay interests, The Bride also recommended that “the lesbian and gay community join together with other groups to lobby for the removal of the cohabitation rule in the Social Security Act 1991” (federal legislation) (34). This measure would mean that the payment of benefits and pensions would not be judged in the basis of a person’s relationship status. While these radical recommendations may not have been energetically pursued by the GLRL, their presence in The Bride records their currency at the time. The other text I wish to excavate from 1994 is the “flotilla of lesbian brides” in the 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. These lesbians later appeared in the April 1994 issue of Sydney lesbian magazine Lesbians on the Loose, and they have a public afterlife in a photo by Sydney photographer C Moore Hardy held in the City of Sydney archives (City of Sydney). The group of between a dozen and twenty lesbians (it is hard to tell from the photos) was dressed in waist-to-ankle tulle skirts, white bras and white top hats. Many wore black boots. Unshaven underarm hair is clearly visible. Many wore long necklaces around their necks and the magazine photo makes clear that one bride has a black whip tucked into the band of her skirt. In an article about lesbians and legal recognition of their relationships published in 1995, Sarah Zetlein referred to the brides as “chicks in white satin” (“Chicks”). This chick was a figure that refused the binary distinction between being inside and outside the law, which Zetlein argued characterised thinking about the then emerging possibilities of the legal recognition of lesbian (and gay) relationships. Zetlein wrote that “the chick in white satin”: Represents a politics which moves beyond the concerns of one’s own identity and demands for inclusion to exclusion to a radical reconceptualisation of social relations. She de(con)structs and (re) constructs. … The chick in white satin’s resistance often lies in her exposure and manipulation of her regulation. It is not so much a matter of saying ‘no’ to marriage outright, or arguing only for a ‘piecemeal’ approach to legal relationship regulation, or lobbying for de facto inclusion as was recommended by The Bride Wore Pink, but perverting the understanding of what these legally-sanctioned sexual, social and economic relationships mean, hence undermining their shaky straight foundations.(“Chicks” 56–57) Looking back to 1994 from a time nearly twenty years later when (straight) lesbian brides are celebrated by GLBT culture, incorporated into the mainstream and constitute a market al.ready anticipated by “the wedding industrial complex” (Ingraham), the “flotilla of lesbian brides” can be read as a prescient queer negotiation of their time. It would be a mistake to read the brides only in terms of a nascent interest in legally endorsed same-sex marriage. In my own limited experience, some lesbians have always had a thing for dressing up in wedding garb—as brides or bridesmaids. The lesbian brides marching group gave expression to this desire in queer ways. The brides were not paired into couples. Zetlein writes that “the chick in white satin … [has] a veritable posse of her girlfriends with her (and they are all the brides)” (“Chicks” 63, original emphasis). Their costumes were recognisably bridal but also recognisably parodic and subverting; white but hardly innocent; the tulle and bras were feminine but the top hats were accessories conventionally worn by the groom and his men; the underarm hair a sign of feminist body politics. The whip signalled the lesbian underground sexual culture that flourished in Sydney in the early 1990s (O’Sullivan). The black boots were both lesbian street fashion and sensible shoes for marching! Conclusion It would be incorrect to say that GLBT politics and lesbian and gay couples who desire legal marriage in post-2004 Australia bear no trace of the history of ambivalence, critique and parody of marriage and weddings that have come before. The multiple voices in the 2011 collection of “Australian perspectives on same-sex marriage” (Marsh) put the lie to this claim. But in a climate where our radical pasts are repeatedly forgotten and lesbian and gay couples increasingly desire legal marriage, the political argument is hell-bent on inclusion in the mainstream. There seems to be little interest in a dance around the margins of inclusion/exclusion. I add my voice to the concern with the near exclusive focus on marriage and the terms on which it is sought. It is not a liberationist politics to which I have returned in recalling The Bride Wore Pink and the lesbian brides of the 1994 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, but rather an attention to the differences in the diverse collective histories of non-heterosexual politics. The examples I elaborate are hardly cases of radical difference. But even these instances might remind us that “we” have never been on a single road to equality: there may be incommensurable differences between “us” as much as commonalities. They also remind that desires for inclusion and recognition by the state should be leavened with a strong dose of laughter as well as with critical political analysis. References Australian Marriage Equality (AME). “Public Opinion Nationally.” 22 Oct. 2012. ‹http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/wp/who-supports-equality/a-majority-of-australians-support-marriage-equality/›. Baird, Barbara. “The Politics of hom*osexuality in Howard's Australia.” Acts of Love and Lust: Sexuality in Australia from 1945-2010. Eds. Lisa Featherstone, Rebecca Jennings and Robert Reynolds. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013 (forthcoming). —. “‘Kerryn and Jackie’: Thinking Historically about Lesbian Marriages.” Australian Historical Studies 126 (2005): 253–271. Butler, Judith. “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?” Differences 13.1 (2002): 14–44. Cerise, Somali, and Rob McGrory. “Why Marriage Is Not a Priority.” Sydney Star Observer 28 Aug. 2003: 5. City of Sydney Archives [061\061352] (C. Moore Hardy Collection). ‹http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org//image/40440?zoom_highlight=c+moore+hardy›. Duggan Lisa. The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Dunkin, Alex. “Hunter to Speak at Dr Duncan Memorial.” blaze 290 (August 2012): 3. Hamer, Diane, and Belinda Budege, Eds. The Good Bad And The Gorgeous: Popular Culture's Romance With Lesbianism. London: Pandora, 1994. Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Johnson, Carol, and Sarah Maddison, and Emma Partridge. “Australia: Parties, Federalism and Rights Agendas.” The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State. Ed. Manon Tremblay, David Paternotte and Carol Johnson. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. 27–42. Lesbian and Gay Legal Rights Service. The Bride Wore Pink, 2nd ed. Sydney: GLRL, 1994. Marsh, Victor, ed. Speak Now: Australian Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage. Melbourne: Clouds of Mgaellan, 2011. Millbank Jenni, “Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law—Part one: Couples.” Federal Law Review 34 (2006): 1–44Millbank, Jenni, and Wayne Morgan. “Let Them Eat Cake and Ice Cream: Wanting Something ‘More’ from the Relationship Recognition Menu.” Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships: A Study of National, European and International Law. Ed. Robert Wintermute and Mads Andenaes. Portland: Hart Publishing, 2001. 295–316. O'Sullivan Kimberley. “Dangerous Desire: Lesbianism as Sex or Politics.” Ed. Jill Julius Matthews. Sex in Public: Australian Sexual Cultures Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997. 120–23. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: hom*onationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007 Stewart, Miranda, “It’s a Queer Thing: Campaigning for Equality and Social Justice for Lesbians and Gay Men”. Alternative Law Journal 29.2 (April 2004): 75–80. Walker, Kristen. “The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in Australia.” The International Journal of Human Rights 11.1–2 (2007): 109–130. Weeks, Jeffrey. The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life. Abindgdon: Routledge, 2007. Willett, Graham. Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Willett, Graham. “Howard and the hom*os.” Social Movement Studies 9.2 (2010): 187–199. Zetlein, Sarah. Lesbian Bodies Before the Law: Intimate Relations and Regulatory Fictions. Honours Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1994. —. “Lesbian Bodies before the Law: Chicks in White Satin.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 5 (1995): 48–63.

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Bond, Sue. "The Secret Adoptee's Cookbook." M/C Journal 16, no.3 (June22, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.665.

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There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisem*nts (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisem*nt for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisem*nts throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale & Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. & A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.

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