Journal articles on the topic 'Air-Filled SIW'
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1
Nguyen, Nhu-Huan, Anthony Ghiotto, Tifenn Martin, Anne Vilcot, Ke Wu, and Tan-Phu Vuong. "Fabrication-Tolerant Broadband Air-Filled SIW Isolated Power Dividers/Combiners." IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques 69, no. 1 (January 2021): 603–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tmtt.2020.3031924.
2
Ghiotto, Anthony, Frederic Parment, Tan-Phu Vuong, and Ke Wu. "Millimeter-Wave Air-Filled SIW Antipodal Linearly Tapered Slot Antenna." IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters 16 (2017): 768–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lawp.2016.2602280.
3
Cano, Juan Luis, Angel Mediavilla, and Ana R. Perez. "Full-Band Air-Filled Waveguide-to-Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Direct Transition." IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters 25, no. 2 (February 2015): 79–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lmwc.2014.2372480.
4
Liu, Leping, Qiuyun Fu, Fei Liang, and Shuaijie Zhao. "Dual‐band filter based on air‐filled SIW cavity for 5G application." Microwave and Optical Technology Letters 61, no. 11 (July 12, 2019): 2599–606. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mop.31935.
5
El Gharbi, Mariam, Maurizio Bozzi, Raúl Fernández-García, and Ignacio Gil. "Textile Antenna Sensor in SIW Technology for Liquid Characterization." Sensors 23, no. 18 (September 12, 2023): 7835. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23187835.
Abstract:
This study showcases the creation of an innovative textile antenna sensor that utilizes a resonant cavity for the purpose of liquid characterization. The cavity is based on circular substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. A hole is created in the middle of the structure where a pipe is used to inject the liquid under test. The pipe is covered by a metal sheath to enhance the electromagnetic field’s penetration of the tube, thus increasing the device’s sensitivity. The resonance frequency of the proposed system is altered when the liquid under test is inserted into the sensitive area of the structure. The sensing of the liquid is achieved by the measurement of its dielectric properties via the perturbation of the electric fields in the SIW configuration. The S11 measurement enables the extraction of the electromagnetic properties of the liquid injected into the pipe. Specifically, the dielectric constant of the liquid is determined by observing the resonance frequency shift relative to that of an air-filled pipe. The loss tangent of the liquid is extracted by comparing the variation in the quality factor with that of an air-filled pipe after eliminating the inherent losses of the structure. The proposed SIW antenna sensor demonstrates a high sensitivity of 0.7 GHz/Δεr corresponding to a dielectric constant range from 4 to 72. To the best of our knowledge, this article presents for the first time the ability of a fully textile SIW cavity antenna-based sensor to characterize the dielectric properties of a liquid under test and emphasizes its differentiating features compared to PCB-based designs. The unique attributes of the textile-based antenna stem from its flexibility, conformability, and compatibility with various liquids.
6
Hong, Rentang, Jiaqi Shi, Dongfang Guan, Wenquan Cao, and Zuping Qian. "Wideband and Low-Loss Beam-Scanning Circularly Polarized Antenna Based on Air-Filled SIW." IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters 20, no. 7 (July 2021): 1254–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lawp.2021.3077263.
7
Parment, F., A. Ghiotto, T. ‐P Vuong, J. ‐M Duchamp, and K. Wu. "Ka‐band compact and high‐performance bandpass filter based on multilayer air‐filled SIW." Electronics Letters 53, no. 7 (March 2017): 486–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/el.2016.4399.
8
Nwajana, Augustine O., and Emenike Raymond Obi. "A Review on SIW and Its Applications to Microwave Components." Electronics 11, no. 7 (April 6, 2022): 1160. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/electronics11071160.
Abstract:
Substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) is a modern day (21st century) transmission line that has recently been developed. This technology has introduced new possibilities to the design of efficient circuits and components operating in the radio frequency (RF) and microwave frequency spectrum. Microstrip components are very good for low frequency applications but are ineffective at extreme frequencies, and involve rigorous fabrication concessions in the implementation of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave components. This is due to wavelengths being short at higher frequencies. Waveguide devices, on the other hand, are ideal for higher frequency systems, but are very costly, hard to fabricate, and challenging to integrate with planar components in the neighborhood. SIW connects the gap that existed between conventional air-filled rectangular waveguide and planar transmission line technologies including the microstrip. This study explores the current advancements and new opportunities in SIW implementation of RF and microwave devices including filters, multiplexers (diplexers and triplexers), power dividers/combiners, antennas, and sensors for modern communication systems.
9
Parment, Frederic, Anthony Ghiotto, Tan-Phu Vuong, Jean-Marc Duchamp, and Ke Wu. "Double Dielectric Slab-Loaded Air-Filled SIW Phase Shifters for High-Performance Millimeter-Wave Integration." IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques 64, no. 9 (September 2016): 2833–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tmtt.2016.2590544.
10
Wang, Kuang Da, Wei Hong, and Ke Wu. "Broadband Transition between Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) and Rectangular Waveguide for Millimeter-Wave Applications." Applied Mechanics and Materials 130-134 (October 2011): 1990–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.130-134.1990.
Abstract:
In this paper, a broadband and simple vertical transition between substrate integrated waveguide and standard air-filled rectangular waveguide is design and experimentally verified. From full-wave simulation of the structure, a relative bandwidth of 19.5% in W-band with return loss better than 20dB is reached. Then, five copies of back-to-back connected transitions are fabricated on RT/Duroid 5880 substrate. The experimental results show that the transition pairs have an average of 15% relative bandwidth with return loss better than 12dB and insert loss lower than 1.2dB. To explain the differences between simulated and tested results, an error analysis is presented.
11
Qin, Zhiyuan, Kaixue Ma, Ningning Yan, and Yongqiang Wang. "An FR4-Based Self-Packaged Full Ka-Band Low-Loss 1:4 Power Divider Using SISL to Air-Filled SIW T-Junction." IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology 12, no. 3 (March 2022): 587–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tcpmt.2022.3147765.
12
FU, QIANGANG, HUI XUE, HEJUN LI, KEZHI LI, and XIAOHONG SHI. "MoSi2-IMPROVED SiC COATING TO PROTECT CARBON/CARBON COMPOSITES AGAINST OXIDATION." Surface Review and Letters 14, no. 04 (August 2007): 795–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218625x07010093.
Abstract:
To improve the oxidation protective ability of SiC coating for carbon/carbon ( C / C ) composites, MoSi 2 was introduced in the SiC coating by infiltration technique. XRD and SEM analysis show that the SiC coating obtained by pack cementation is a porous structure with a thickness of about 60–100 μm. After infiltration treatment, MoSi 2 was filled in the holes of the porous SiC -coating, and the as-received coating becomes dense without through-thickness crack. Oxidation test shows that, the weight loss of the SiC -coated C / C is up to 9.23% after 53 h oxidation in air at 1773 K, while the weight loss of the MoSi 2-improved SiC -coated C / C composites is only 0.73% after oxidation for 265 h. The oxidation of C / C composites is primarily due to the formation of the penetration cracks and the holes on the glass layer.
13
Xia, Xinlin, Xue Chen, Xiaolei Li, Liu Bo, and Yafen Han. "Experiment and numerical simulation on transient heat transfer from SiC foam to airflow in a high temperature tube." Thermal Science 22, Suppl. 2 (2018): 597–606. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/tsci171103044x.
Abstract:
In order to understand the high temperature heat transfer behavior of ceramic foam to air-flow, experiment and numerical simulation have been conducted for a tube fully filled with SiC foam under several air-flow velocities. The tested sample of SiC foam is characterized by a porosity of 0.88 and 10 pores per inch, which is heated to 1000?C before the air-flow passes through. The transient temperature variation is recorded and discussed for several inlet air-flow velocities ( 2.9 m/s, 4.3 m/s and 5.8 m/s). Then, a computational model for the transient process is developed to nu- merically investigate the coupled radiative and convective heat transfer, and compared with the experimental data. The results show that the heat transfer reaches steady-state quickly and the time needed is less than 80 second. The transient devia- tion between the predicted and experimental data is less than 25.0%. Besides, it is found that there exists an obvious temperature difference between the fluid and solid phases, the maximum difference occurs at the neighbor region of tube wall and decreases as the inlet velocity increases at the steady-state.
14
Chaalal, Omar, Chandra Mouli R. Madhuranthakam, Husain Al Hashimi, Marouane Chaalal, and Weam S. K. Abudaqqa. "Design and Analysis of a Novel Air Bubble Curtain for Mixing and Aeration in Process Vessels." Processes 11, no. 9 (September 6, 2023): 2669. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pr11092669.
Abstract:
This article focuses on designing and analyzing a new method for mixing in process vessels. We propose using an air bubble curtain to accomplish the desired mixing. The air bubble curtain used in this study is made of an empty pipe with several holes through which air is pumped, which in turn produces a swarm of bubbles that causes pseudo-turbulent mixing in the tank filled with a liquid solution. A uniform distribution of bubbles within the tank was assured by maintaining a see-saw movement of the air bubble curtain. Mixing inside the tank was quantified by measuring the salt concentration in a laboratory model tank (30 cm × 30 cm × 30 cm) and a pilot-scale tank (200 cm × 100 cm × 100 cm). The optimal flow rates of air and the mixing time in both tanks that can achieve complete mixing were obtained from the experimental results. The proposed air bubble curtain can be of potential use in wastewater treatment, biotechnology, and aquaculture where turbulent mixing is required with minimum energy dissipation per unit mass.
15
Hartshorne, Thomas L. "Modernism on Trial: C. Brancusi v. United States (1928)." Journal of American Studies 20, no. 1 (April 1986): 93–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875800016352.
Abstract:
We all know that the revolution in art – or the revolutions in the arts – that resulted in the emergence of what we loosely call “modernism” created a great deal of excitement and controversy. Noise and shouting filled the air. Critics opposed to the new currents saw in them the possibility of the destruction of everything noble in the Western tradition of the arts and perhaps even Western civilization itself. Defenders of the new ways were only slightly less acrimonious, if at all, and between the two there were continuing tumultuous and occasionally bitter arguments.
16
Stupnikova, Yelena, and Ksenia Popova. "Solution of environmental problems in human settlements caused by negative effect of SDW landfills." MATEC Web of Conferences 193 (2018): 02006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201819302006.
Abstract:
Environmental protection in the modern world is becoming one of the top priorities of state. Dynamic development of metropolises causes increase of trash volume in landfills, which in turn leads to pollution of air, soil, ground and surface waters, increases the risk of infection spreading to environment and harms public health. This is why it is needed to design new landfill facilities beforehand, which comply with requirements in place; timely reclamate landfills, when they are filled to design level; perform complex recovery of economic value land used as solid domestic waste landfills, and hand over the plots for further intended use.
17
Yang, Tianyu, Can Ding, Richard W. Ziolkowski, and Y. Jay Guo. "A Controllable Plasmonic Resonance in a SiC-Loaded Single-Polarization Single-Mode Photonic Crystal Fiber Enables Its Application as a Compact LWIR Environmental Sensor." Materials 13, no. 18 (September 4, 2020): 3915. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma13183915.
Abstract:
Near-perfect resonant absorption is attained in a single-polarization single-mode photonic crystal fiber (SPSM PCF) within the long-wave infrared (LWIR) range from 10 to 11 μm. The basic PCF design is a triangular lattice-based cladding of circular air holes and a core region augmented with rectangular slots. A particular set of air holes surrounding the core is partially filled with SiC, which exhibits epsilon near-zero (ENZ) and epsilon negative (ENG) properties within the wavelength range of interest. By tuning the configuration to have the fields of the unwanted fundamental and all higher order modes significantly overlap with the very lossy ENG rings, while the wanted fundamental propagating mode is concentrated in the core, the SPSM outcome is realized. Moreover, a strong plasmonic resonance is attained by adjusting the radii of the resulting cylindrical core-shell structures. The cause of the resonance is carefully investigated and confirmed. The resonance wavelength is shown to finely shift, depending on the relative permittivity of any material introduced into the PCF’s air holes, e.g., by flowing a liquid or gas in them. The potential of this plasmonic-based PCF structure as a very sensitive, short length LWIR spectrometer is demonstrated with an environmental monitoring application.
18
Borghei, Moein, and Mona Ghassemi. "A Finite Element Analysis Model for Partial Discharges in Silicone Gel under a High Slew Rate, High-Frequency Square Wave Voltage in Low-Pressure Conditions." Energies 13, no. 9 (May 1, 2020): 2152. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en13092152.
Abstract:
Wide bandgap (WBG) devices made from materials such as SiC, GaN, Ga2O3 and diamond, which can tolerate higher voltages and currents compared to silicon-based devices, are the most promising approach for reducing the size and weight of power management and conversion systems. Silicone gel, which is the existing commercial option for encapsulation of power modules, is susceptible to partial discharges (PDs). PDs often occur in air-filled cavities located in high electric field regions around the sharp edges of metallization in the gel. This study focuses on the modeling of PD phenomenon in an air filled-cavity in silicone gel for the combination of (1) a fast, high-frequency square wave voltage and (2) low-pressure conditions. The low-pressure condition is common in the aviation industry where pressure can go as low as 4 psi. To integrate the pressure impact into PD model, in the first place, the model parameters are adjusted with the experimental results reported in the literature and in the second place, the dependencies of various PD characteristics such as dielectric constant and inception electric field on pressure are examined. Finally, the reflections of these changes in PD intensity, duration and inception time are investigated. The results imply that the low pressure at high altitudes can considerably affect the PD inception and extinction criterion, also the transient state conditions during PD events. These changes result in the prolongation of PD events and more intense ones. As the PD model is strongly dependent upon the accurate estimation electric field estimation of the system, a finite-element analysis (FEA) model developed in COMSOL Multiphysics linked with MATLAB is employed that numerically calculates the electric field distribution.
19
Kaden, Ute Susanne, Elmar Fuchs, Christian Hecht, Thomas Hein, Holger Rupp, Mathias Scholz, and Christiane Schulz-Zunkel. "Advancement of the Acetylene Inhibition Technique Using Time Series Analysis on Air-Dried Floodplain Soils to Quantify Denitrification Potential." Geosciences 10, no. 11 (October 29, 2020): 431. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10110431.
Abstract:
Denitrification in floodplain soils is one key process that determines the buffering capacity of riparian zones in terms of diffuse nitrate pollution. One widely used approach to measure the denitrification potential is the acetylene inhibition technique that requires fresh soil samples. We conducted experiments with air-dried soils using a time series analysis to determine the optimal rewetting period. Thus, air-dried soil samples from six different floodplain areas in Germany were rewetted for 1 to 13days to 100% water-filled pore space. We analyzed nitrogen accumulated as N2O in the top of anaerobic flasks with and without acetylene by gas chromatography after four hours of incubation. We observed an overall optimal rewetting of at least seven days for complete denitrification. We also saw the strong influence of pH and field capacity on the denitrification product ratio; in soils with pH < 7, we hardly assumed complete denitrification, whereas the treatments with pH > 7 achieved stable values after seven days of rewetting. This advanced method provides the opportunity to carry out campaigns with large soil sample sizes on the landscape scale, as samples can be stored dry until measurements are taken.
20
Heidarian, Javad, and Aziz Hassan. "Improving heat aging and mechanical properties of fluoroelastomer using carbon nanotubes." Polish Journal of Chemical Technology 19, no. 1 (March 28, 2017): 132–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/pjct-2016-0050.
Abstract:
Abstract Carbon nanotube (CNT)-, carbon black (CB)-filled fluoroelastomer (FE) and unfilled-FE compounds were prepared (CNT/FE, CB/FE and FE). The compounds were subjected to heat air aging and characterized by tensile test and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis. Results show that CNT improved tensile properties of FE before and after aging. All samples show stress induced crystallization (SIC) during tension. XRD results show that under all conditions, the crystals were in the form of γ-phase. For both aged and un-aged specimens, the degree of crystallinity (Xc) is low. After tensile stretching, Xc of un-aged specimens increases tremendously, with larger crystal size. Under the same conditions, the order of elongation at break (EL) was FE > CB/FE > CNT/FE. Normal modulus (NM) and tangent modulus (TM) at the same conditions was in the order of CNT/FE > CB/FE > FE. Tensile strength had the order of CNT/FE > CB/FE > FE.
21
Seo, Hyoung-IL, Daejong Kim, and Kee Sung Lee. "Crack Healing in Mullite-Based EBC during Thermal Shock Cycle." Coatings 9, no. 9 (September 17, 2019): 585. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/coatings9090585.
Abstract:
Crack healing phenomena were observed in mullite and mullite + Yb2SiO5 environmental barrier coating (EBC) materials during thermal shock cycles. Air plasma spray coating was used to deposit the EBC materials onto a Si bondcoat on a SiCf/SiC composite substrate. This study reveals that unidirectional vertical cracks (mud cracks) formed after several thermal shock cycles; however, the cracks were stable for 5000 thermal shock cycles at a maximum temperature of 1350 °C. Moreover, the crack densities decreased with an increasing number of thermal shock cycles. After 3000 thermal shock cycles, cracks were healed via melting of a phase containing SiO2 phase, which partially filled the gaps of the cracks and resulted in the precipitation of crystalline Al2O3 in the mullite. Post-indentation tests after thermal shock cycling indicated that the mullite-based EBC maintained its initial mechanical behavior compared to Y2SiO5. The indentation load–displacement tests revealed that, among the materials investigated in the present study, the mullite + Yb2SiO5 EBC demonstrated the best durability during repetitive thermal shocks.
22
McMurray, H. N., A. J. Coleman, G. Williams, Andreas Afseth, and Geoff M. Scamans. "Scanning Kelvin Probe Studies of Cosmetic (Filiform) Corrosion on AA6016." Materials Science Forum 519-521 (July 2006): 679–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/msf.519-521.679.
Abstract:
Scanning Kelvin Probe (SKP) potentiometry is used to systematically investigate the effect of surface abrasion and subsequent heat-treatment on the open-circuit potential in humid air of the AA6016 surface. SKP is also used to follow the kinetics of filiform corrosion and to determine characteristic potentials associated with the electrolyte-filled filiform head and dry filiform tail. It is shown that simply abrading with 180 grit SiC produces a surface potential up to 0.5V lower than the bulk. When the abraded sample is overcoated with a 30 micron layer of PVB (polyvinyl butyral) and exposed to HCl a fast, superficial filiform corrosion (FFC) is observed in which metal loss is limited to the thickness of the surface layer. Filiform head OCP values are similar to that of the surface layer, whereas filiform tail OCP values are similar to the bulk. A mechanism is proposed in which the ultra-fine grain structure of the surface layer produces an anodic activation and the potential difference between the surface layer and the bulk provides and increased thermodynamic driving force for corrosion. For post-abrasion heat treatment temperatures up to 350°C the fast filiform process is followed by a slower, deeper form of FFC.
23
Chabak, Yuliia, Vasily Efremenko, Vadym Zurnadzhy, Viktor Puchý, Ivan Petryshynets, Bohdan Efremenko, Victor Fedun, et al. "Structural and Tribological Studies of “(TiC + WC)/Hardened Steel” PMMC Coating Deposited by Air Pulsed Plasma." Metals 12, no. 2 (January 24, 2022): 218. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/met12020218.
Abstract:
The deposition of a thin (several tens of microns) protective coating in atmospheric conditions is a challenging task for surface engineering. The structural features and tribological properties of a particle-reinforced metal matrix composite coating synthesized on middle-carbon steel by air pulse-plasma treatments were studied in the present work. The 24–31 µm thick coating of “24 vol.% (TiC + WC)/Hardened steel matrix” was produced by 10 plasma pulses generated by an electro-thermal axial plasma accelerator equipped with a consumable cathode of novel design (low-carbon steel tube filled with “TiC/WC + Epoxy resin” mixture). The study included optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD, microhardness measurements, and dry “Ball-on-Plate” testing. The carbides were directly plasma-transferred to the substrate (steel of AISI 4145H grade) from the cathode without substantial melting. The hard (500–1044 HV) coating matrix consisted of 57 vol.% austenite (1.43 wt.% C) and 43 vol.% plate martensite was formed via carbon enrichment of steel from plasma flow. Additionally, a minor amount of oxide phases (TiO2, WO2, WO3) were dispersed in the matrix. As compared to substrate, the coating had a lower coefficient of friction; its volumetric wear was decreased by 4.4 times when sliding against hardened steel ball and by 16 times when sliding against SiC ball.
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al-Sayed, L. E., W. I. Schrank, and B. T. Thach. "Ventilatory sparing strategies and swallowing pattern during bottle feeding in human infants." Journal of Applied Physiology 77, no. 1 (July 1, 1994): 78–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jappl.1994.77.1.78.
Abstract:
During feeding, infants have been found to decrease ventilation in proportion to increasing swallowing frequency, presumably as a consequence of neural inhibition of breathing and airway closure during swallowing. To what extent infants decrease ventilatory compromise during feeding by modifying feeding behavior is unknown. We increased swallowing frequency in infants by facilitating formula flow to study potential ventilatory sparing mechanisms. We studied seven full-term healthy infants 5–12 days of age. Nasal air flow and tidal volume were recorded with a nasal flowmeter. Soft fluid-filled catheters in the oropharynx and bottle recorded swallowing and sucking activity, and volume changes in the bottle were continuously measured. Bottle pressure was increased to facilitate formula flow. Low- and high-pressure trials were then compared. With the change from low to high pressure, consumption rate increased, as did sucking and swallowing frequencies. This change reversed on return to low pressure. Under high-pressure conditions, we saw a decrease in minute ventilation as expected. With onset of high pressure, sucking and swallowing volumes increased, whereas duration of airway closure during swallows remained constant. Therefore, increased formula consumption was associated with reduced ventilation, a predictable consequence of increased swallowing frequency. However, when consumption rate was high, the infant also increased swallowing volume, a tactic that is potentially ventilatory sparing as a lower swallowing frequency is required to achieve the increased consumption rate. As well, when consumption rate is low, the sucking-to-swallowing ratio increases, again potentially conserving ventilation by decreasing swallowing frequency much more than if the sucking-to-swallowing ratio was constant.
25
Enomoto, Hikaru, Yusuke Himata, Mika Fukunishi, Fumisato Ozawa, Tatsuo Horiba, and Morihiro Saito. "Li Pre-Doping of SiO Electrodes Using Li-Naphthalenide Solution for Next-Generation Batteries." ECS Meeting Abstracts MA2022-02, no. 4 (October 9, 2022): 438. http://dx.doi.org/10.1149/ma2022-024438mtgabs.
Abstract:
SiO is regarded to be one of the promising anode materials to replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries (LIB) because of its higher specific capacity than graphite and better cycle stability than Si [1]. However, the large irreversible capacity is a serious problem which consumes charged capacity in vain during initial cycles. Therefore, Li pre-dope to dose Li to SiO beforehand has been proposed. In this study, our previous achievement on Li pre-doping to Si electrodes was much helpful. The highlights of the achievement are as follows [2, 3]. Li-naphthalenide (Li-NTL) was selected as a Li pre-doping agent. Li pre-doped capacity was much dependent on the solvent of Li-NTL solution. 2-methyltetrahydrofuran (MeTHF) delivered the largest pre-doped capacity. Hence, we conducted this study on Li pre-doping to SiO electrodes by referring to the achievement on Si electrodes. SiO electrodes coated on Cu foil consisted of SiO, Ketjen Black, and polyimide binder in the ratio of 80 : 5 : 15 (m/m). Two types of SiO powder with an average particle size of 5 μmφwere used: carbon-coated SiO denoted as C-SiO and bare SiO which were purchased from OSAKA Titanium technologies Co., Ltd. We adopted 0.5 M NTL/MeTHF as a standard pre-doping solution based on our result of Li pre-doping to Si. SiO electrodes were confined in an air-tight cells with the pre-doping solution for 24 h to be pre-doped. The electrodes were taken out of the cells, rinsed in DMC, and used to assemble coin cells with Li counter electrodes, separators and electrolyte solution of 1.0 M LiPF6 / EC + DMC (1:1, v/v) + 10 wt% FEC. All of these processes were conducted in an Ar-filled glove box. Discharge/charge cycle test mode was constant-curent at 0.1 mA cm−2 between 0.02 and 1.5 V at 30 °C. Figure 1 shows charge/discharge performance of C-SiO electrodes with and without Li pre-doping. In Figure 1a, the OCV of the Li pre-doped electrode was as low as 0.2 V, which was much lower than that of the electrode without pre-doping, exceeding 2.0 V, and the charge capacity was nearly missing. However, the discharge capacity was not less than that of the electrode without pre-doping. This result reveals that SiO can be pre-doped effectively by Li-NTL/MeTHF, which is the same as Si. Figure 1b shows dQ/dV analysis results, in which the anodic curves for the with and without pre-doping are nearly identical. However, almost no cathodic curve is observed for the with pre-doping as shown in Figure 1a, while a sharp peak at 0.46 V assigned to formation of L x SiO y is observed for the without pre-doping [4]. A dashed curve inserted in the Figure 1b is the cathodic curve for the second cycle of the with pre-doping to complement the missing first cycle one. This curve shows no peak at 0.46 V and suggests formation of L x SiO y during pre-doping. We further analyzed the pre-doping reaction to elucidate the mechanism based on the result shown above. The detail of the results will be shown and discussed in our presentation. [1] M. N. Obrovac, V. L. Chevrier, Chem. Rev., 114, 11444 (2014). [2] M. Saito et al., Abstracts of PRiME 2020, A02-0410 (2020). [3] M. Saito et al., J. Electrochem. Soc., 166, A5174 (2019). [4] C. P. Grey et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 141, 7014 (2019). Figure 1
26
Van Messem, Laura, Siddhartha Sinha, Ilja Ocket, Heinrich Trischler, Erich Schlaffer, Daniel Schlick, Hendrik Rogier, and Sam Lemey. "Air-filled SIW technology for mass-manufacturable and energy-efficient terahertz systems." Scientific Reports 13, no. 1 (October 4, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-43887-0.
Abstract:
AbstractTo accommodate the ever-growing data requirements in densely populated areas and address the need for high-resolution sensing in diverse next-generation applications, there is a noticeable trend towards utilizing large unallocated frequency bands above 100 GHz. To overcome the harsh propagation conditions, large-scale antenna arrays are crucial and urge the need for cost-effective, mass-manufacturable technologies. A dedicated Any-Layer High Density Interconnect PCB technology for highly efficient wireless D-band (110–170 GHz) systems is proposed. Specifically, the adapted stack accommodates broadband air-filled substrate-integrated-waveguide components for efficient long-range signal distribution and low-loss passives. The viability of the suggested technology platform is demonstrated by designing, fabricating and measuring several essential low-loss air-filled substrate-integrated-waveguide components, such as a dual rectangular filter, with a minimal insertion loss of 0.87 dB and 10 dB-matching within the (132.8–139.2 GHz) frequency band, and an air-filled waveguide with a routing loss of only 0.08 dB/mm and a flat amplitude variation within 0.01 dB/mm over the (115–155 GHz) frequency range. A broadband transition towards stripline, with a limited loss of 1.1 dB, is described to interface these waveguides with compactly integrated chips. A tolerance analysis is included as well as a comparison to the state of the art.
27
García, Raúl, Ángela Coves, Darío Herraiz, Ángel A. San-Blas, and Maurizio Bozzi. "Low-Loss Periodically Air-Filled Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Band-Pass Filters." IEEE Access, 2024, 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/access.2024.3349473.
28
Amirkabiri, Amirmasoud, Dawn Idoko, Greg E. Bridges, and Behzad Kordi. "Contactless Air-Filled Substrate-Integrated Waveguide (CLAF-SIW) Resonator for Wireless Passive Temperature Sensing." IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2022, 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/tmtt.2022.3176897.
29
Paula, Igor Lima de, Laurens Bogaert, Olivier Caytan, Joris Van Kerrebrouck, Arno Moerman, Muhammad Muneeb, Quinten Van den Brande, et al. "Air-Filled SIW Remote Antenna Unit with True Time Delay Optical Beamforming for mmWave-over-Fiber Systems." Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2022, 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/jlt.2022.3187555.
30
Lima de Paula, Igor, Sam Lemey, Dries Bosman, Quinten Van den Brande, Olivier Caytan, Joris Lambrecht, Maarten Cauwe, Guy Torfs, and Hendrik Rogier. "Cost-Effective High-Performance Air-Filled SIW Antenna Array for the Global 5G 26-GHz and 28-GHz Bands." IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, 2021, 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lawp.2020.3044114.
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Li, Daotong, Jiaxin Wang, Linsong Shi, Ying Liu, Kai-Da Xu, Qiang Chen, and Naoki Shinohara. "Self-Packaged mm-Wave Broadband Air-Filled SIW Filtering Power Divider With Sharp Roll-Off Skirt and High In-Band Isolation." IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters, 2024, 1–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lmwt.2024.3382592.
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Patil, S. T., U. S. Kadam, M. S. Mane, D. M. Mahale, and J. S. Dhekale. "Hydroponic Growth Media (Substrate): A Review." International Research Journal of Pure and Applied Chemistry, December 12, 2020, 106–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.9734/irjpac/2020/v21i2330307.
Abstract:
From the reviewed literature, it is observed that scientist’s worked on the various substrate medias used for hydroponic system. They also studied about different combinations of the media and their effect on crop growth. The reviewed literature shows that scientists have studied different organic and inorganic media viz. cocopit, saw dust, rice husk vermiculite, perlite, hydroton, pumice, sand etc. It was also found that these media are not easily, cheaply and locally available for users. Beside this, few scientists studied about physical and chemical properties of media such as particle size, porosity, bulk density, wettability, water holding capacity (WHC), Air filled porosity (AFP), Electrical conductivity, pH of these media. The crop specific suitability of combinations of the different media mixtures were also tested and reported by many scientists. It was revealed from reviewed literature that salinity of media caused linear reduction in the water consumption. The size and shape of particle size distribution are useful for estimating the hydraulic properties of the media The substrate under long cultivation period causes increase of organic matter content and microorganism activity which leads to an increased competition for oxygen in the root environment. The optimal EC levels range from 1.5 to 4.0 dSm-1 according to crop and its sensitivity to different salinity levels. It was also observed that level of growing medium temperature close to that of the surrounding air seems more suitable. The ideal substrate should have a total porosity of over 85 percent. Particles of smaller-sized individual grains have a larger specific surface area.
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"Fractional Substitute of Cement with Egg shell Particles, India." International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering 8, no. 9 (July 10, 2019): 1730–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.35940/ijitee.i8487.078919.
Abstract:
The use of SCM's was done from the out of date Greeks who solidified volcanic powder with water driven lime to make a cementitious mortar. The Greeks passed this learning on to the Romans, who manufactured such structuring marvels as the Roman water channels and the Coliseum, which still stand today. Early SCMs contained typical, immediately open materials, for instance, volcanic red hot flotsam and jetsam. Nowadays, most strong mix contains profitable cementitious material that structures some bit of the cementitious portion. These materials are bigger part reactions from various methodology or customary materials. The noteworthy focal points of SCM is its ability to supersede certain proportion of Portland concrete and still prepared to indicate cementitious property, subsequently decreasing the cost of using Portland bond. Even more starting late, extreme air-pollution controls and rules have conveyed an abundance of present day symptoms that can be used as favorable cementitious materials, for instance, Pozzocrete, Saw buildup blazing remains, Rice husk slag, Egg shell powder, Sugarcane bagasse ash, etc. The usage of such symptoms in strong advancement not simply shields these things from being land-filled at this point moreover improves the properties of bond in the fresh and set states. This paper shows a compact history and review of Egg shell powder in bond with the purpose of displaying the development
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Harris, Alana. "Mobility, Modernity, and Abroad." M/C Journal 19, no. 5 (October 13, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1157.
Abstract:
IntroductionWhat does it mean to be abroad in the modern Australian context? Australia has developed as a country where people increasingly travel both domestically and abroad. Tourism Research Australia reports that 9.6 million resident departures are forecast for 2015-16 and that this will increase to 13.2 million in 2024–25 (Tourism Forecast). This article will identify the development of the Australian culture of travel abroad, the changes that have taken place in Australian society and the conceptual shift of what it means to travel abroad in modern Australia.The traditions of abroad stem from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Grand Tour notion where Europeans and Britons travelled on or to the continent to expand their knowledge and experience. While travel at this time focused on history, culture and science, it was very much the domain of the upper classes (Cooper). The concept of the tourist is often credited with Thomas Cook’s first package tour in 1841, which used railways to facilitate trips for pleasure (Cooper). Other advances at the time popularised the trip abroad. Steamships, expanded rail and road networks all contributed to an age of emerging mobility which saw the development of travel to a multi-dimensional experience open to a great many more people than ever before. This article explores three main waves of influence on the Australian concept of abroad and how each has shifted the experience and meaning of what it is to travel abroad.Australians Abroad The post-war period saw significant changes to Australian society, particularly advances in transport, which shaped the way Australians travelled in the 1950s and 1960s. On the domestic front, Australia began manufacturing Holden cars with Prime Minister Ben Chifley unveiling the first Holden “FX” on 29 November 1948. Such was its success that over 500,000 Holden cars were produced by the end of the next decade (Holden). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the government established a program to standardise railway gauges around the country, making direct travel between Melbourne and Sydney possible for the first time. Australians became more mobile and their enthusiasm for interstate travel flowed on to international transport (Lee).Also, during the 1950s, Australia experienced an influx of migrants from Southern Europe, followed by the Assisted Passage Scheme to attract Britons in the late 1950s and through the 1960s (“The Changing Face of Modern Australia”). With large numbers of new Australians arriving in Australia by ship, these ships could be filled for their return journey to Britain and Europe with Australian tourists. Travel by ship, usually to the “mother country,” took up to two months time, and communication with those “back home” was limited. By the 1960s travelling by ship started to give way to travel by air. The 1950s saw Qantas operate Royal flights for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh for their Australian tour, and in 1956 the airline fleet of 34 propeller drive aircraft carried a record number of passengers to the Melbourne Olympics. On 14 January 1958 Qantas launched the first world service from Melbourne flying the Kangaroo Route (via India) and the Southern Cross Route (via the United States) and before long, there were eight such services operating weekly (Qantas). This developing network of international air services connected Australia to the world in a way it had not been previously (Lee).Such developments in Australian aviation were significant on two fronts. Firstly, air travel was a much faster, easier, and more glamorous means of travel (Bednarek) despite the cost, comfort, safety, and capacity issues. The increase in air travel resulted in a steady decline of international travel by boat. Secondly, air travel abroad offered Australians from all walks of life the opportunity to experience other cultures, ideas, fashions, and fads from abroad. These ideas were fed into a transforming Australian society more quickly than they had been in the past.Social change during the late 1950s and into the 1960s connected Australia more closely to the world. The Royal Tour attracted the attention of the British Empire, and the Melbourne Olympics drew international attention. It was the start of television in Australia (1956) which gave Australians connectivity in a way not experienced previously. Concurrent with these advances, Australian society enjoyed rising standards of living, increased incomes, a rise in private motorcar ownership, along with greater leisure time. Three weeks paid holiday was introduced in NSW in 1958 and long service leave soon followed (Piesse). The confluence of these factors resulted in increased domestic travel and arguably altered the allure of abroad. Australians had the resources to travel in a way that they had not before.The social desire for travel abroad extended to the policy level with the Australian government’s 1975 introduction of the Working Holiday Programme (WHP). With a particular focus on young people, its aim was to foster closer ties and cultural exchange between Australia and partner countries (Department of Immigration and Boarder Protection). With cost and time commitments lessened in the 1960s and bilateral arrangements for the WHP in the 1970s, travel abroad became much more widespread and, at least in part, reduced the tyranny of distance. It is against the backdrop of increasingly connected transport networks, modernised communication, and rapid social change that the foundation for a culture of mobility among Australians was further cemented.Social Interactions AbroadDistance significantly shapes the experience of abroad. Proximity has a long association with the volume and frequency of communication exchange. Libai et al. observed that the geographic, temporal, and social distance may be much more important than individual characteristics in communication exchange. Close proximity fosters interpersonal interaction where discussion of experiences can lead to decision-making and social arrangements whilst travelling. Social interaction abroad has been grounded in similarity, social niceties, a desire to belong to a social group of particular travellers, and the need for information (Harris and Prideaux). At the same time, these interactions also contribute to the individual’s abroad experience. White and White noted, “the role of social interaction in the active construction of self as tourist and the tourist experience draws attention to how tourists self-identify social worlds in which they participate while touring” (43). Similarly, Holloway observed of social interaction that it is “a process of meaning making where individuals and groups shape understandings and attitudes through shared talk within their own communities of critique” (237).The unique combination of social interaction and place forms the experiences one has abroad. Cresswell observed that the geographical location and travellers’ sense of place combine to produce a destination in the tourism context. It is against this backdrop of material and immaterial, mobile and immobile, fixed and fluid intersections where social relations between travellers take place. These points of social meeting, connectivity and interaction are linked by way of networks within the destination or during travel (Mavric and Urry) and contribute to its production of unique experiences abroad.Communicating Abroad Communication whilst abroad, has changed significantly since the turn of the century. The merging of the corporeal and technological domains during travel has impacted the entire experience of travel. Those who travelled to faraway lands by ship in the 1950s were limited to letter writing and the use of telegrams for urgent or special communication. In the space of less than 60 years, the communication landscape could not look more different.Mobile phones, tablets, and laptops are all carried alongside the passport as the necessities of travel. Further, Wi-Fi connectivity at airports, on transport, at accommodation and in public spaces allows the traveller to continue “living” at home—at least in the technological sense—whilst physically being abroad. This is not just true of Australians. Global Internet use has grown by 826.9% from 361 million users in 2000 to 3.3 billion users in 2015. In addition, there were 7.1 billion global SIM connections and 243 million machine-to-machine connections by the end of 2014 (GSMA Intelligence). The World Bank also reported a global growth in mobile telephone subscriptions, per 100 people, from 33.9 in 2005 to 96.3 in 2014. This also means that travellers can be socially present while physically away, which changes the way we see the world.This adoption of modern communication has changed the discourse of “abroad” in a number of ways. The 24-hour nature of the Internet allows constant connectivity. Channels that are always open means that information about a travel experience can be communicated as it is occurring. Real time communication means that ideas can be expressed synchronously on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis (Litvin et al.) through hits, clicks, messages, on-line ratings, comments and the like. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, TripAdvisor, blogs, e-mails and a growing number of channels allow for multifaceted, real time communication during travel.Tied to this, the content of communicating the travel experience has also diversified from the traditional written word. The adage that “a picture tells a thousand words” is poignantly relevant here. The imagery contributes to the message and brings with it a degree of tone and perspective and, at the same time, adds to the volume being communicated. Beyond the written word and connected with images, modern communication allows for maps and tracking during the trip. How a traveller might be feeling can be captured with emojis, what they think of an experience can be assessed and rated and, importantly, this can be “liked” or commented on from those “at home.”Technologically-enhanced communication has changed the traveller’s experience in terms of time, interaction with place, and with people. Prior to modern communication, the traveller would reflect and reconstruct travel tales to be recounted upon their return. Stories of adventure and travels could be malleable, tailored to audience, and embellished—an individual’s recount of their individual abroad experience. However, this has shifted so that the modern traveller can capture the aspects of the experience abroad on screen, upload, share and receive immediate feedback in real time, during travel. It raises the question of whether a traveller is actually experiencing or simply recording events. This could be seen as a need for validation from those at home during travel as each interaction and experience is recorded, shared and held up for scrutiny by others. It also raises the question of motivation. Is the traveller travelling for self or for others?With maps, photos and images at each point, comments back and forth, preferences, ratings, records of social interactions with newfound friends “friended” or “tagged” on Facebook, it could be argued that the travel is simply a chronological series of events influenced from afar; shaped by those who are geographically distanced.Liquid Modernity and Abroad Cresswell considered tourist places as systems of mobile and material objects, technologies, and social relations that are produced, imagined, recalled, and anticipated. Increasingly, developments in communication and closeness of electronic proximity have closed the gap of being away. There is now an unbroken link to home during travel abroad, as there is a constant and real time exchange of events and experiences, where those who are travelling and those who are at home are overlapping rather than discrete networks. Sociologists refer to this as “mobility” and it provides a paradigm that underpins the modern concept of abroad. Mobility thinking accepts the movement of individuals and the resulting dynamism of social groups and argues that actual, virtual, and imagined mobility is critical to all aspects of modern life. Premised on “liquid modernity,” it asserts that people, objects, images, and information are all moving and that there is an interdependence between these movements. The paradigm asserts a network approach of the mobile (travellers, stories, experiences) and the fixed (infrastructure, accommodation, devices). Furthermore, it asserts that there is not a single network but complex intersections of flow, moving at different speed, scale and viscosity (Sheller and Urry). This is a useful way of viewing the modern concept of abroad as it accepts a level of maintained connectivity during travel. The technological interconnectivity within these networks, along with the mobile and material objects, contributes to overlapping experiences of home and abroad.ConclusionFrom the Australian perspective, the development of a transport network, social change and the advent of technology have all impacted the experience abroad. What once was the realm of a select few and a trip to the mother country, has expanded to a “golden age” of glamour and excitement (Bednarek). Travel abroad has become part of the norm for individuals and for businesses in an increasingly global society.Over time, the experience of “abroad” has also changed. Travel and non-travel now overlap. The modern traveller can be both at home and abroad. Modernity and mobility have influenced the practice of the overseas where the traveller’s experience can be influenced by home and vice-versa simultaneously. Revisiting the modern version of the “grand tour” could mean standing in a crowded gallery space of The Louvre with a mobile phone recording and sharing the Mona Lisa experience with friends and family at home. It could mean exploring the finest detail and intricacies of the work from home using Google Art Project (Ambroise).While the lure of the unique and different provides an impetus for travel, it is undeniable that the meaning of abroad has changed. In some respects it could be argued that abroad is only physical distance. Conversely overseas travel has now melded into Australian social life in such a way that it cannot be easily unpicked from other aspects. The traditions that have seen Australians travel and experience abroad have, in any case, provided a tradition of travel which has impacted modern, social and cultural life and will continue to do so.ReferencesAustralian Government. Austrade. Tourism Forecasts 2016. Tourism Research Australia, Canberra. Forest ACT: Australian Government July 2016. Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Working Holiday Maker Visa Programme Report. Forest, ACT: Australian Government. 30 June 2015. Australian Government. “The changing Face of Modern Australia – 1950s to 1970s.” Australian Stories, 25 Sep 2016 <http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/changing-face-of-modern-australia-1950s-to-1970s>. Bednarek, Janet. "Longing for the ‘Holden Age’ of Air Travel? Be Careful What You Wish For." The Conversation 25 Nov. 2014.Cooper, Chris. Essentials of Tourism. Sydney: Pearson Higher Education, 2013.Cresswell, Tim. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006.Dubois, Ambroise. Mona Lisa, XVI century, Château du Clos Lucé. 1 Oct. 2016 <http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/mona-lisa-by-ambroise-dubois/fAEaTV3ZVjY_vw?hl=en>.GSMA Intelligence. The Mobile Economy 2015. London: GSMA (Groupe Spécial Mobile Association), 2015.Harris, Alana, and Bruce Prideaux. “The Potential for eWOM to Affect Consumer Behaviour in Tourism.” Handbook of Consumer Behaviour in Tourism. Melbourne: Routledge, in press.Holden. "Holden's Heritage & History with Australia.” Australia, n.d.Holloway, Donell, Lelia Green, and David Holloway. "The Intratourist Gaze: Grey Nomads and ‘Other Tourists’." Tourist Studies 11.3 (2011): 235-252.Lee, Robert. “Linking a Nation: Australia’s Transport and Communications 1788-1970.” Australian Heritage Council, 2003. 29 Sep. 2016 <https://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/linking-a-nation/contents>.Libai, Barak, et al. "Customer-to-Customer Interactions: Broadening the Scope of Word of Mouth Research." Journal of Service Research 13.3 (2010): 267-282.Litvin, Stephen W., Ronald E. Goldsmith, and Bing Pan. "Electronic Word-of-Mouth in Hospitality and Tourism Management." Tourism Management 29.3 (2008): 458-468.Mavric, Misela, and John Urry. Tourism Studies and the New Mobilities Paradigm. London: Sage Publications, 2009.Piesse, R.D. “Travel & Tourism.” Year Book Australia. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1966.Qantas. "Constellations." The Qantas Story. 1 Aug. 2016 <http://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/history-constellations/global/enWeb>.Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. "The New Mobilities Paradigm." Environment and Planning 38.2 (2006): 207-226.White, Naomi Rosh, and Peter B. White. "Travel as Interaction: Encountering Place and Others." Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 15.1 (2008): 42-48.
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Deer, Patrick, and Toby Miller. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C Journal 5, no. 1 (March 1, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1938.
Abstract:
By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero†into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro†that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house†of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it†happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center†until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be fucking joking.†He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?†The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.†The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,†not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.†Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,†one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.†Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.†I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,†but this was the “frozen zone.†There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,†she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.†Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,†Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero†that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,†Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family centerâ€: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.†Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11†post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.†They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.†I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.†The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.†The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they†could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.†He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?†he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?†I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.†Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero†a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA†I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us†by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our†skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?â€: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mindâ€â€”whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles†of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero†such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly†bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).
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Giblett, Rod. "New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen?" M/C Journal 16, no. 1 (March 19, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.588.
Abstract:
IntroductionNew Orleans is one of a number of infamous swamp cities—cities built in swamps, near them or on land “reclaimed” from them, such as London, Paris, Venice, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Petersburg, and Perth. New Orleans seemed to be winning the battle against the swamps until Hurricane Katrina of 2005, or at least participating in an uneasy truce between its unviable location and the forces of the weather to the point that the former was forgotten until the latter intruded as a stark reminder of its history and geography. Around the name “Katrina” a whole series of events and images congregate, including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his monumental book, After the Flood. Katrina, and the exacerbating factors of global warming and drained wetlands, and their impacts, especially on the city of New Orleans (both its infrastructure and residents), point to the cultural construction and production of the disaster. This suite of occurrences is a salutary instance of the difficulties of trying to maintain a hard and fast divide between nature and culture (Hirst and Woolley 23; Giblett, Body 16–17) and the need to think and live them together (Giblett, People and Places). A hurricane is in some sense a natural event, but in the age of global warming it is also a cultural occurrence; a flood produced by a river breaking its banks is a natural event, but a flood caused by breeched levees and drained wetlands is a cultural occurrence; people dying is a natural event, but people dying by drowning in a large and iconic American city created by drainage of wetlands is a cultural disaster of urban planning and relief logistics; and a city set in a swamp is natural and cultural, with the cultural usually antithetical to the natural. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in and as “one single catastrophe” of history, as Benjamin (392) put it, and of geography I would add in the will to fill, drain, or reclaim wetlands. Rather than a series of catastrophes proceeding one after the other through history, Benjamin's (392) “Angel of History” sees one single catastrophe of history. This single catastrophe, however, occurs not only in time, in history, but also in space, in a place, in geography. The “Angel of Geography” sees one single catastrophe of geography of wetlands dredged, filled, and reclaimed, cities set in them and cities being re-reclaimed by them in storms and floods. In the case of “Katrina,” the catastrophe of history and geography is tied up with the creation, destruction, and recreation of New Orleans in its swampy location on the Mississippi delta.New OrleansNew Orleans is not only “the nation’s quintessential river city” as Kelman (199) puts it, but also one of a number of infamous swamp cities. In his post-Katrina preface to his study of New Orleans as what he calls “an unnatural metropolis,” Colten notes:While other cities have occupied wetlands, few have the combination of poorly-drained and flood-susceptible territory of New Orleans. Portions of Washington, D.C. occupied wetlands, but there was ample solid ground above the reach of the Potomac [River’s] worst floods. Chicago’s founders platted their city on a wetland site, but the sluggish Chicago River did not drain the massive territory of the Mississippi. (5)“Occupied” is arguably a euphemism for dredging, draining, filling, and reclaiming wetlands. Occupation also conjures up visions of an occupying army, which may be appropriate in the case of New Orleans as the Army Corps of Engineers have spearheaded much of the militarisation by dredging and draining wetlands in New Orleans and elsewhere in the U.S.The location for the city was not propitious. Wilson describes how “the city itself was constructed on an uneven patch of relatively high ground in the midst of a vast swamp” (86). New Orleans for Kelman “is surrounded by a wet world composed of terrain that is not quite land” (22) with the Mississippi River delta on one side and Lake Pontchartrain and the “backswamps” on the other, though the latter were later drained. The Mississippi River for Kelman is “the continent’s most famed and largest watercourse” (199). Perhaps it is also the continent’s most tamed and leveed watercourse. Earlier Kelman related how a prominent local commentator in 1847 “personified the Mississippi as a nurturing mother” because the river “hugged New Orleans to its ‘broad bosom’” (79). Supposedly this mother was the benign, malign, and patriarchal Mother Nature of the leveed river and not the recalcitrant, matrifocal Great Goddess of the swamps that threatened to break the levees and flood the city (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands; People and Places, especially Chapter 1). The Mississippi as the mother of all American rivers gave birth to the city of New Orleans at her “mouth,” or more precisely at the other end of her anatomy with the wetland delta as womb. Because of its location at the “mouth” of the Mississippi River, New Orleans for Flint was “historically the most important port in the United States” (230). Yet by the late 1860s the river was seen by New Orleanians, Kelman argues, only as “an alimentary canal, filled with raw waste and decaying animal carcasses” (124). The “mouth” of the river had ceased to be womb and had become anus; the delta had ceased to be womb and had become bowel. The living body of the earth was dying. The river, Kelman concludes, was “not sublime” and had become “an interstate highway” (146). The Angel of Geography sees the single catastrophe of wetlands enacted in the ways in which the earth is figured in a politics of spaces and places. Ascribing the qualities of one place to another to valorise one place and denigrate another and to figure one pejoratively or euphemistically (as in this case) is “placist” (Giblett, Landscapes 8 and 36). Deconstructing and decolonising placism and its use of such figures can lead to a more eco-friendly figuration of spaces and places. New Orleans is one place to do so.What Colten calls “the swampy mire behind New Orleans” was drained in the first 40 years of the twentieth century (46). Colten concludes that, “by the 1930s, drainage and landfilling efforts had successfully reclaimed wetland between the city and the lake, and in the post-war years similar campaigns dewatered marshlands for tract housing eastward and westward from the city” (140–1). For Wilson “much of New Orleans’s history can be seen as a continuing battle with the swamp” (86). New Orleans was a frontline in the modern war against wetlands, the kind of war that Fascists such as Mussolini liked to fight because they were so easy to win (see Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 115). Many campaigns were fought against wetlands using the modern weapons of monstrous dredgers. The city had struck what Kelman calls “a Faustian bargain with the levees-only policy” (168). In other words, it had sold its soul to the devil of modern industrial technology in exchange for temporary power. New Orleans tried to dominate wetlands with the ironic result that not only “efforts to drain the city dominate early New Orleans history into the present day” as Wilson (86) puts it, but also that these efforts occasionally failed with devastating results. The city became dominated by the waters it had sought to dominate in an irony of history and geography not lost on the student of wetlands. Katrina was the means that reversed the domination of wetlands by the city. Flint argues that “Katrina’s wake-up call made it unconscionable to keep building on fragile coastlines […] and in floodplains” (232–3). And in swamps, I would add. Colten “traces the public’s abandonment of the belief that the city is no place for a swamp” (163). The city is also no place for the artificial swamp of the aftermath of Katrina depicted by Polidori. As the history of New Orleans attests, the swamp is no place for a city in the first place when it is being built, and the city is no place for a swamp in the second place when it is being ravaged by a hurricane and storm surges. City is antithetical and inimical to swamp. They are mutually exclusive. New Orleans for Wilson is “a city on a swamp” (90 my emphasis). In the 1927 flood (Wilson 111), for Kelman “one of the worst flood years in history” (157), and in the 2005 hurricane, the worst flood year so far in its history, New Orleans was transformed into a city of a swamp. The 1927 flood was at the time, and as Kelman puts it, “the worst ‘natural’ disaster in U.S. history” (161), only to be surpassed by the 2005 flood in New Orleans and the 2012 floods in north-eastern U.S. in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in which the drained marshlands of New York and New Jersey returned with a vengeance. In all these cases the swamp outside the city, or before the city, came into the city, became now. The swamp in the past returned in the present; the absent swamp asserted its presence. The historical barriers between city and swamp were removed. KatrinaKatrina for Kelman (xviii) was not a natural disaster. Katrina produced “water […] out of place” (Kelman x). In other words, and in Mary Douglas’s terms for whom dirt is matter out of place (Douglas 2), this water was dirt. It was not merely that the water was dirty in colour or composition but that the water was in the wrong place, in the buildings and streets, and not behind levees, as Polidori graphically illustrates in his photographs. Bodies were also out of place with “corpses floating in dirty water” (Kelman x) (though Polidori does not photograph these, unlike Dean Sewell in Aceh in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in what I call an Orientalist pornography of death (Giblett, Landscapes 158)). Dead bodies became dirt: visible, smelly, water-logged. Colten argues that “human actions […] make an extreme event into a disaster […]. The extreme event that became a disaster was not just the result of Katrina but the product of three centuries of urbanization in a precarious site” (xix). Yet Katrina was not only the product of three centuries of urbanisation of New Orleans’ precarious and precious watershed, but also the product of three centuries of American urbanisation of the precarious and precious airshed through pollution with greenhouse gases.The watery geographical location of New Orleans, its history of drainage and levee-building, the fossil-fuel dependence of modern industrial capitalist economies, poor relief efforts and the storm combined to produce the perfect disaster of Katrina. Land, water, and air were mixed in an artificial quaking zone of elements not in their normal places, a feral quaking zone of the elements of air, earth and water that had been in the native quaking zone of swamps now ran amok in a watery wasteland (see Giblett, Landscapes especially Chapter 1). Water was on the land and in the air. In the beginning God, when created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, and the earth was without form and void in the geographical location of a native quaking zone. In the ending, when humans are recreating the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos move over the face of the waters, and the earth is without form and void in the the geographical location and catastrophe of a feral quaking zone. Humans were thrown into this maelstrom where they quaked in fear and survived or died. Humans are now recreating the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of “Katrina.” In the beginning of the history of the city, humans created the city; from the disastrous destruction of some cities, humans are recreating the city.It is difficult to make sense of “Katrina.” Smith relates that, “as well as killing some 1500 people, the bill for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans […] was US$200 billion, making it the most costly disaster in American history,” more than “9/11” (303; see also Flint 230). A whole series of events and images congregate around the name “Katrina,” including those of photographer Robert Polidori in his book of photographs, After the Flood, with its overtones of divine punishment for human sin as with the biblical flood (Coogan et al. Genesis, Chapters 6–7). The flood returns the earth to the beginning when God created heaven and earth, when “the earth was without form and darkness moved […] upon the face of the waters” (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 2)—God's first, and arguably best, work (Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands 142–143; Canadian Wetlands “Preface”). The single catastrophe of history and geography begins here and now in the act of creation on the first day and in dividing land from water as God also did on the second day (Coogan et al. Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 7)—God’s second, and arguably second best, work. New Orleans began in the chaos of land and water. This chaos recurs in later disasters, such as “Katrina,” which merely repeat the creation and catastrophe of the beginning in the eternal recurrence of the same. New Orleans developed by dividing land from water and is periodically flooded by the division ceasing to be returning the city to its, and the, beginning but this time inflected as a human-made “swamp,” a feral quaking zone (Giblett, Landscapes Chapter 1). Catastrophe and creativity are locked together from the beginning. The creation of the world as wetland and the separation of land and water was a catastrophic action on God's part. Its repetition in the draining or filling of wetlands is a catastrophic event for the heavens and earth, and humans, as is the unseparation of land and water in floods. What Muecke calls the rhetoric of “natural disaster” (259, 263) looms large in accounts of “Katrina.” In an escalating scale of hyperbole, “Katrina” for Brinkley was a “natural disaster” (5, 60, 77), “the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history” (62), “the biggest natural disaster in recent American history” (273), and “the worst natural disaster in modern American history” (331). Yet a hurricane in and by itself is not a disaster. It is a natural event. Perhaps all that could simply be said is that “Katrina was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in U.S. history” (Brinkley 73). Yet to be recorded in U.S. history “Katrina” had to be more than just a storm. It had also to be more than merely what Muecke calls an “oceanic disaster” (259) out to sea. It had to have made land-fall, and it had to have had human impact. It was not merely an event in the history of weather patterns in the U.S. For Brinkley “the hurricane disaster was followed by the flood disaster, which was followed by human disasters” (249). These three disasters for Brinkley add up to “the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, [which] was a man-made disaster, resulting from poorly designed and managed levees and floodwalls” (426). The result was that for Brinkley “the man-made misery was worse than the storm” (597). The flood and the misery amount to what Brinkley calls “the Great Deluge [which] was a disaster that the country brought on itself” (619). The storm could also be seen as a disaster that the country brought on itself through the use of fossil fuels. The overall disaster comprising the hurricane the flood, the sinking city and its drowning or displaced inhabitants was preceded and made possible by the disasters of dredging wetlands and of global warming. Brinkley cites the work of Kerry Emanuel and concludes that “global warming makes bad hurricanes worse” (74). Draining wetlands also makes bad hurricanes worse as “miles of coastal wetlands could reduce hurricane storm surges by over three or four feet” (Brinkley 10). Miles of coastal wetlands, however, had been destroyed. Brinkley relates that “nearly one million acres of buffering wetlands in southern Louisiana disappeared between 1990 and 2005” (9). They “disappeared” as the result, not of some sort of sleight of hand or mega-conjuring trick, nor of erosion from sea-intrusion (though that contributed), but of deliberate human practice. Brinkley relates how “too many Americans saw these swamps and coastal wetlands as wastelands” (9). Wastelands needed to be redeemed into enclave estates of condos and strip developments. In a historical irony that is not lost on students of wetlands and their history, destroying wetlands can create the wasteland of flooded cities and a single catastrophe of history and geography, such as New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.In searching for a trope to explain these events Brinkley turns to the tried and true figure of the monster, usually feminised, and “Katrina” is no exception. For him, “Hurricane Katrina had been a palpable monster, an alien beast” (Brinkley xiv), “a monstrous hurricane” (72), “a monster hurricane” (115), and “the monster storm” (Brinkley 453 and Flint 230). A monster, according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Allen 768), is: (a) “an imaginary creature, usually large and frightening, composed of incongruous elements; or (b) a large or ugly or misshapen animal or thing.” Katrina was not imaginary, though it or she was and has been imagined in a number of ways, including as a monster. “She” was certainly large and frightening. “She” was composed of the elements of air and water. These may be incongruous elements in the normal course of events but not for a hurricane. “She” certainly caused ugliness and misshapenness to those caught in her wake of havoc, but aerial photographs show her to be a perfectly shaped hurricane, albeit with a deep and destructive throat imaginable as an orally sadistic monster. ConclusionNew Orleans, as Kelman writes in his post-Katrina preface, “has a horrible disaster history” (xii) in the sense that it has a history of horrible disasters. It also has a horrible history of the single disaster of its swampy location. Rather than “a chain of events that appears before us,” “the Angel of History” for Benjamin “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” (392). Rather than a series of disasters of the founding, drainage, disease, death, floods, hurricanes, etc. that mark the history of New Orleans, the Angel of History sees a single, catastrophic history, not just of New Orleans but preceding and post-dating it. This catastrophic history and geography began in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, darkness and chaos moved over the face of the waters, the earth was without form and void, and when God divided the land from the water, and is ending in industrial capitalism and its technologies, weather, climate, cities, floods, rivers, and wetlands intertwining and inter-relating together as entities and agents. Rather than a series of acts and sites of creativity and destruction that appear before us, the Angel of Geography sees one single process and place which keeps (re)creating order out of chaos and chaos out of order. This geography and history began at the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, and the wetland, and divided land from water, and continues when and as humans drain(ed) wetlands, create(d) cities, destroy(ed) cites, rebuilt/d cities and rehabilitate(d) wetlands. “Katrina” is a salutary instance of the cultural and natural operating together in the one single catastrophe and creativity of divine and human history and geography.ReferencesAllen, Robert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary. 8th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938–1940. Eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2003. 389–400.Brinkley, Douglas. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: William Morrow, 2006.Colten, Craig. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006.Coogan, Michael, Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1966.Flint, Anthony. This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996.———. The Body of Nature and Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.———. Landscapes of Culture and Nature. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.———. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011.———. Canadian Wetlands: Place and People. Bristol: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2014.Hirst, Paul, and Penny Woolley. “The Social Formation and Maintenance of Human Attributes.” Social Relations and Human Attributes. London: Tavistock, 1982. 23–31.Kelman, Ari. A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006.Muecke, Stephen. “Hurricane Katrina and the Rhetoric of Natural Disasters.” Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia. Eds. Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 2005. 259–71.Polidori, Robert. After the Flood. Göttingen: Steidl, 2006.Smith, P.D. City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.Wilson, Anthony. Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2006.
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Bond, Sue. "The Secret Adoptee's Cookbook." M/C Journal 16, no. 3 (June 22, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.665.
Abstract:
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 advertisements (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 advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements 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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Mizrach, Steven. "Natives on the Electronic Frontier." M/C Journal 3, no. 6 (December 1, 2000). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1890.
Abstract:
Introduction Many anthropologists and other academics have attempted to argue that the spread of technology is a global homogenising force, socialising the remaining indigenous groups across the planet into an indistinct Western "monoculture" focussed on consumption, where they are rapidly losing their cultural distinctiveness. In many cases, these intellectuals - people such as Jerry Mander -- often blame the diffusion of television (particularly through new innovations that are allowing it to penetrate further into rural areas, such as satellite and cable) as a key force in the effort to "assimilate" indigenous groups and eradicate their unique identities. Such writers suggest that indigenous groups can do nothing to resist the onslaught of the technologically, economically, and aesthetically superior power of Western television. Ironically, while often protesting the plight of indigenous groups and heralding their need for cultural survival, these authors often fail to recognise these groups abilities to fend for themselves and preserve their cultural integrity. On the other side of the debate are visual anthropologists and others who are arguing that indigenous groups are quickly becoming savvy to Western technologies, and that they are now using them for cultural revitalisation, linguistic revival, and the creation of outlets for the indigenous voice. In this school of thought, technology is seen not so much as a threat to indigenous groups, but instead as a remarkable opportunity to reverse the misfortunes of these groups at the hands of colonisation and national programmes of attempted assimilation. From this perspective, the rush of indigenous groups to adopt new technologies comes hand-in-hand with recent efforts to assert their tribal sovereignty and their independence. Technology has become a "weapon" in their struggle for technological autonomy. As a result, many are starting their own television stations and networks, and thus transforming the way television operates in their societies - away from global monocultures and toward local interests. I hypothesise that in fact there is no correlation between television viewing and acculturation, and that, in fact, the more familiar people are with the technology of television and the current way the technology is utilised, the more likely they are to be interested in using it to revive and promote their own culture. Whatever slight negative effect exists depends on the degree to which local people can understand and redirect how that technology is used within their own cultural context. However, it should be stated that for terms of this investigation, I consider the technologies of "video" and "television" to be identical. One is the recording aspect, and the other the distribution aspect, of the same technology. Once people become aware that they can control what is on the television screen through the instrumentality of video, they immediately begin attempting to assert cultural values through it. And this is precisely what is going on on the Cheyenne River Reservation. This project is significant because the phenomenon of globalisation is real and Western technologies such as video, radio, and PCs are spreading throughout the world, including the "Fourth World" of the planets indigenous peoples. However, in order to deal with the phenomenon of globalisation, anthropologists and others may need to deal more realistically with the phenomenon of technological diffusion, which operates far less simply than they might assume. Well-meaning anthropologists seeking to "protect" indigenous groups from the "invasion" of technologies which will change their way of life may be doing these groups a disservice. If they turned some of their effort away from fending off these technologies and toward teaching indigenous groups how to use them, perhaps they might have a better result in creating a better future for them. I hope this study will show a more productive model for dealing with technological diffusion and what effects it has on cultural change in indigenous societies. There have been very few authors that have dealt with this topic head-on. One of the first to do so was Pace (1993), who suggested that some Brazilian Indians were acculturating more quickly as a result of television finally coming to their remote villages in the 1960s. Molohon (1984) looked at two Cree communities, and found that the one which had more heavy television viewing was culturally closer to its neighboring white towns. Zimmerman (1996) fingered television as one of the key elements in causing Indian teenagers to lose their sense of identity, thus putting them at higher risk for suicide. Gillespie (1995) argued that television is actually a weapon of national states everywhere in their efforts to assimilate and socialise indigenous and other ethnic minority groups. In contrast, authors like Weiner (1997), Straubhaar (1991), and Graburn (1982) have all critiqued these approaches, suggesting that they deny subjectivity and critical thinking to indigenous TV audiences. Each of these researchers suggest, based on their field work, that indigenous people are no more likely than anybody else to believe that the things they see on television are true, and no more likely to adopt the values or worldviews promoted by Western TV programmers and advertisers. In fact, Graburn has observed that the Inuit became so disgusted with what they saw on Canadian national television, that they went out and started their own TV network in an effort to provide their people with meaningful alternatives on their screens. Bell (1995) sounds a cautionary note against studies like Graburns, noting that the efforts of indigenous New Zealanders to create their own TV programming for local markets failed, largely because they were crowded out by the "media imperialism" of outside international television. Although the indigenous groups there tried to put their own faces on the screen, many local viewers preferred to see the faces of J.R. Ewing and company, and lowered the ratings share of these efforts. Salween (1991) thinks that global media "cultural imperialism" is real - that it is an objective pursued by international television marketers - and suggests a media effects approach might be the best way to see whether it works. Woll (1987) notes that historically many ethnic groups have formed their self-images based on the way they have been portrayed onscreen, and that so far these portrayals have been far from sympathetic. In fact, even once these groups started their own cinemas or TV programmes, they unconsciously perpetuated stereotypes first foisted on them by other people. This study tends to side with those who have observed that indigenous people do not tend to "roll over" in the wake of the onslaught of Western television. Although cautionary studies need to be examined carefully, this research will posit that although the dominant forces controlling TV are antithetical to indigenous groups and their goals, the efforts of indigenous people to take control of their TV screens and their own "media literacy" are also increasing. Thus, this study should contribute to the viewpoint that perhaps the best way to save indigenous groups from cultural eradication is to give them access to television and show them how to set up their own stations and distribute their own video programming. In fact, it appears to be the case that TV, the Internet, and electronic 'new media' are helping to foster a process of cultural renewal, not just among the Lakota, but also among the Inuit, the Australian aborigines, and other indigenous groups. These new technologies are helping them renew their native languages, cultural values, and ceremonial traditions, sometimes by giving them new vehicles and forms. Methods The research for this project was conducted on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation headquartered in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Participants chosen for this project were Lakota Sioux who were of the age of consent (18 or older) and who were tribal members living on the reservation. They were given a survey which consisted of five components: a demographic question section identifying their age, gender, and individual data; a technology question section identifying what technologies they had in their home; a TV question section measuring the amount of television they watched; an acculturation question section determining their comparative level of acculturation; and a cultural knowledge question section determining their knowledge of Lakota history. This questionnaire was often followed up by unstructured ethnographic interviews. Thirty-three people of mixed age and gender were given this questionnaire, and for the purposes of this research paper, I focussed primarily on their responses dealing with television and acculturation. These people were chosen through strictly random sampling based on picking addresses at random from the phone book and visiting their houses. The television section asked specifically how many hours of TV they watched per day and per week, what shows they watched, what kinds of shows they preferred, and what rooms in their home had TVs. The acculturation section asked them questions such as how much they used the Lakota language, how close their values were to Lakota values, and how much participation they had in traditional indigenous rituals and customs. To assure open and honest responses, each participant filled out a consent form, and was promised anonymity of their answers. To avoid data contamination, I remained with each person until they completed the questionnaire. For my data analysis, I attempted to determine if there was any correlation (Pearsons coefficient r of correlation) between such things as hours of TV viewed per week or years of TV ownership with such things as the number of traditional ceremonies they attended in the past year, the number of non-traditional Lakota values they had, their fluency in the Lakota language, their level of cultural knowledge, or the number of traditional practices and customs they had engaged in in their lives. Through simple statistical tests, I determined whether television viewing had any impact on these variables which were reasonable proxies for level of acculturation. Findings Having chosen two independent variables, hours of TV watched per week, and years of TV ownership, I tested if there was any significant correlation between them and the dependent variables of Lakota peoples level of cultural knowledge, participation in traditional practices, conformity of values to non-Lakota or non-traditional values, fluency in Lakota, and participation in traditional ceremonies (Table 1). These variables all seemed like reasonable proxies for acculturation since acculturated Lakota would know less of their own culture, go to fewer ceremonies, and so on. The cultural knowledge score was based on how many complete answers the respondents knew to fill in the blank questions regarding Lakota history, historical figures, and important events. Participation in traditional practices was based on how many items they marked in a survey of whether or not they had ever raised a tipi, used traditional medicine, etc. The score for conformity to non-Lakota values was based on how many items they marked with a contrary answer to the emic Lakota value system ("the seven Ws".) Lakota fluency was based on how well they could speak, write, or use the Lakota language. And ceremonial attendance was based on the number of traditional ceremonies they had attended in the past year. There were no significant correlations between either of these TV-related variables and these indexes of acculturation. Table 1. R-Scores (Pearsons Coefficient of Correlation) between Variables Representing Television and Acculturation R-SCORES Cultural Knowledge Traditional Practices Modern Values Lakota Fluency Ceremonial Attendance Years Owning TV 0.1399 -0.0445 -0.4646 -0.0660 0.1465 Hours of TV/Week -0.3414 -0.2640 -0.2798 -0.3349 0.2048 The strongest correlation was between the number of years the Lakota person owned a television, and the number of non-Lakota (or modern Western) values they held in their value system. But even that correlation was pretty weak, and nowhere near the r-score of other linear correlations, such as between their age and the number of children they had. How much television Lakota people watched did not seem to have any influence on how much cultural knowledge they knew, how many traditional practices they had participated in, how many non-Lakota values they held, how well they spoke or used the Lakota language, or how many ceremonies they attended. Even though there does not appear to be anything unusual about their television preferences, and in general they are watching the same shows as other non-Lakota people on the reservation, they are not becoming more acculturated as a result of their exposure to television. Although the Lakota people may be losing aspects of their culture, language, and traditions, other causes seem to be at the forefront than television. I also found that people who were very interested in television production as well as consumption saw this as a tool for putting more Lakota-oriented programs on the air. The more they knew about how television worked, the more they were interested in using it as a tool in their own community. And where I was working at the Cultural Center, there was an effort to videotape many community and cultural events. The Center had a massive archive of videotaped material, but unfortunately while they had faithfully recorded all kinds of cultural events, many of them were not quite "broadcast ready". There was more focus on showing these video programmes, especially oral history interviews with elders, on VCRs in the school system, and in integrating them into various kinds of multimedia and hypermedia. While the Cultural Center had begun broadcasting (remotely through a radio modem) a weekly radio show, Wakpa Waste (Good Morning CRST), on the radio station to the north, KLND-Standing Rock, there had never been any forays into TV broadcasting. The Cultural Center director had looked into the feasibility of putting up a television signal transmission tower, and had applied for a grant to erect one, but that grant was denied. The local cable system in Eagle Butte unfortunately lacked the technology to carry true "local access" programming; although the Channel 8 of the system carried CRST News and text announcements, there was no open channel available to carry locally produced public access programming. The way the cable system was set up, it was purely a "relay" or feed from news and channels from elsewhere. Also, people were investing heavily in satellite systems, especially the new DBS (direct broadcast satellite) receivers, and would not be able to pick up local access programmes anyway. The main problem hindering the Lakotas efforts to preserve their culture through TV and video was lack of access to broadcast distribution technology. They had the interest, the means, and the stock of programming to put on the air. They had the production and editing equipment, although not the studios to do a "live" show. Were they able to have more local access to and control over TV distribution technology, they would have a potent "arsenal" for resisting the drastic acculturation their community is undergoing. TV has the potential to be a tool for great cultural revitalisation, but because the technology and know-how for producing it was located elsewhere, the Lakotas could not benefit from it. Discussion I hypothesised that the effects if TV viewing on levels of indigenous acculturation would be negligible. The data support my hypothesis that TV does not seem to have a major correlation with other indices of acculturation. Previous studies by anthropologists such as Pace and Molohon suggested that TV was a key determinant in the acculturation of indigenous people in Brazil and the U.S. - this being the theory of cultural imperialism. However, this research suggests that TVs effect on the decline of indigenous culture is weak and inconclusive. In fact, the qualitative data suggest that the Lakota most familiar with TV are also the most interested in using it as a tool for cultural preservation. Although the CRST Lakota currently lack the means for mass broadcast of cultural programming, there is great interest in it, and new technologies such as the Internet and micro-broadcast may give them the means. There are other examples of this phenomenon worldwide, which suggest that the Lakota experience is not unique. In recent years, Australian Aborigines, Canadian Inuit, and Brazilian Kayapo have each begun ambitious efforts in creating satellite-based television networks that allow them to reach their far-flung populations with programming in their own indigenous language. In Australia, Aboriginal activists have created music television programming which has helped them assert their position in land claims disputes with the Australian government (Michaels 1994), and also to educate the Europeans of Australia about the aboriginal way of life. In Canada, the Inuit have also created satellite TV networks which are indigenous-owned and operated and carry traditional cultural programming (Valaskakis 1992). Like the Aborigines and the Inuit, the Lakota through their HVJ Lakota Cultural Center are beginning to create their own radio and video programming on a smaller scale, but are beginning to examine using the reservation's cable network to carry some of this material. Since my quantitative survey included only 33 respondents, the data are not as robust as would be determined from a larger sample. However, ethnographic interviews focussing on how people approach TV, as well as other qualitative data, support the inferences of the quantitative research. It is not clear that my work with the Lakota is necessarily generalisable to other populations. Practically, it does suggest that anthropologists interested in cultural and linguistic preservation should strive to increase indigenous access to, and control of, TV production technology. Protecting indigenous groups from new technologies may cause more harm than good. Future applied anthropologists should work with the natives and help teach them how to adopt and adapt this technology for their own purposes. Although this is a matter that I deal with more intensively in my dissertation, it also appears to me to be the case that, contrary to the warnings of Mander, many indigenous cultures are not being culturally assimilated by media technology, but instead are assimilating the technology into their own particular cultural contexts. The technology is part of a process of revitalisation or renewal -- although there is a definite process of change and adaptation underway, this actually represents an 'updating' of old cultural practices for new situations in an attempt to make them viable for the modern situation. Indeed, I think that the Internet, globally, is allowing indigenous people to reassert themselves as a Fourth World "power bloc" on the world stage, as linkages are being formed between Saami, Maya, Lakota, Kayapo, Inuit, and Aborigines. Further research should focus on: why TV seems to have a greater acculturative influence on certain indigenous groups rather than others; whether indigenous people can truly compete equally in the broadcast "marketplace" with Western cultural programming; and whether attempts to quantify the success of TV/video technology in cultural preservation and revival can truly demonstrate that this technology plays a positive role. In conclusion, social scientists may need to take a sidelong look at why precisely they have been such strong critics of introducing new technologies into indigenous societies. There is a better role that they can play - that of technology broker. They can cooperate with indigenous groups, serving to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and technology between them and the majority society. References Bell, Avril. "'An Endangered Species: Local Programming in the New Zealand Television Market." Media, Culture & Society 17.1 (1995): 182-202. Gillespie, Marie. Television, Ethnicity, and Cultural Change. New York: Routledge, 1995. Graburn, Nelson. "Television and the Canadian Inuit". Inuit Etudes 6.2 (1982): 7-24. Michaels, Eric. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. Molohon, K.T. "Responses to Television in Two Swampy Cree Communities on the West James Bay." Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers 63/64 (1982): 95-103. Pace, Richard. "First-Time Televiewing in Amazonia: Television Acculturation in Gurupa, Brazil." Ethnology 32.1 (1993): 187-206. Salween, Michael. "Cultural Imperialism: A Media Effects Approach." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8.2 (1991): 29-39. Straubhaar, J. "Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity". Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8.1 (1991): 39-70. Valaskakis, Gail. "Communication, Culture, and Technology: Satellites and Northern Native Broadcasting in Canada". Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992. Weiner, J. "Televisualist Anthropology: Representation, Aesthetics, Politics." Current Anthropology 38.3 (1997): 197-236. Woll, Allen. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography. New York: Garland Press, 1987. Zimmerman, M. "The Development of a Measure of Enculturation for Native American Youth." American Journal of Community Psychology 24.1 (1996): 295-311. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steven Mizrach. "Natives on the Electronic Frontier: Television and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.6 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php>. Chicago style: Steven Mizrach, "Natives on the Electronic Frontier: Television and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 6 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steven Mizrach. (2000) Natives on the electronic frontier: television and cultural change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(6). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php> ([your date of access]).
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Van Luyn, Ariella. "Crocodile Hunt." M/C Journal 14, no. 3 (June 25, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.402.
Abstract:
Saturday, 24 July 1971, Tower Mill Hotel The man jiggles the brick, gauges its weight. His stout hand, a flash of his watch dial, the sleeve rolled back, muscles on the upper arm bundled tight. His face half-erased by the dark. There’s something going on beneath the surface that Murray can’t grasp. He thinks of the three witches in Polanski’s Macbeth, huddled together on the beach, digging a circle in the sand with bare hands, unwrapping their filthy bundle. A ritual. The brick’s in the air and it’s funny but Murray expected it to spin but it doesn’t, it holds its position, arcs forward, as though someone’s taken the sky and pulled it sideways to give the impression of movement, like those chase scenes in the Punch and Judy shows you don’t see anymore. The brick hits the cement and fractures. Red dust on cops’ shined shoes. Murray feels the same sense of shock he’d felt, sitting in the sagging canvas seat at one of his film nights, recognising the witches’ bundle, a severed human arm, hacked off just before the elbow; both times looking so intently, he had no distance or defence when the realisation came. ‘What is it?’ says Lan. Murray points to the man who threw the brick but she is looking the other way, at a cop in a white riot helmet, head like a globe, swollen up as though bitten. Lan stands on Murray’s feet to see. The pig yells through a megaphone: ‘You’re occupying too much of the road. It’s illegal. Step back. Step back.’ Lan’s back is pressed against Murray’s stomach; her bum fits snugly to his groin. He resists the urge to plant his cold hands on her warm stomach, to watch her squirm. She turns her head so her mouth is next to his ear, says, ‘Don’t move.’ She sounds winded, her voice without force. He’s pinned to the ground by her feet. Again, ‘Step back. Step back.’ Next to him, Roger begins a chant. ‘Springboks,’ he yells, the rest of the crowd picking up the chant, ‘out now!’ ‘Springboks!’ ‘Out now!’ Murray looks up, sees a hand pressed against the glass in one of the hotel’s windows, quickly withdrawn. The hand belongs to a white man, for sure. It must be one of the footballers, although the gesture is out of keeping with his image of them. Too timid. He feels tired all of a sudden. But Jacobus Johannes Fouché’s voice is in his head, these men—the Springboks—represent the South African way of life, and the thought of the bastard Bjelke inviting them here. He, Roger and Lan were there the day before when the footballers pulled up outside the Tower Mill Hotel in a black and white bus. ‘Can you believe the cheek of those bastards?’ said Roger when they saw them bounding off the bus, legs the span of Murray’s two hands. A group of five Nazis had been lined up in front of the glass doors reflecting the city, all in uniform: five sets of white shirts and thin black ties, five sets of khaki pants and storm-trooper boots, each with a red sash printed with a black and white swastika tied around their left arms, just above the elbow. The Springboks strode inside, ignoring the Nazi’s salute. The protestors were shouting. An apple splattered wetly on the sidewalk. Friday, 7 April 1972, St Lucia Lan left in broad daylight. Murray didn’t know why this upset him, except that he had a vague sense that she should’ve gone in the night time, under the cover of dark. The guilty should sneak away, with bowed heads and faces averted, not boldly, as though going for an afternoon walk. Lan had pulled down half his jumpers getting the suitcase from the top of the cupboard. She left his clothes scattered across the bedroom, victims of an explosion, an excess of emotion. In the two days after Lan left, Murray scours the house looking for some clue to where she was, maybe a note to him, blown off the table in the wind, or put down and forgotten in the rush. Perhaps there was a letter from her parents, bankrupt, demanding she return to Vietnam. Or a relative had died. A cousin in the Viet Cong napalmed. He finds a packet of her tampons in the bathroom cupboard, tries to flush them down the toilet, but they keep floating back up. They bloat; the knotted strings make them look like some strange water-dwelling creature, paddling in the bowl. He pees in the shower for a while, but in the end he scoops the tampons back out again with the holder for the toilet brush. The house doesn’t yield anything, so he takes to the garden, circles the place, investigates its underbelly. The previous tenant had laid squares of green carpet underneath, off-cuts that met in jagged lines, patches of dirt visible. Murray had set up two sofas, mouldy with age, on the carpeted part, would invite his friends to sit with him there, booze, discuss the state of the world and the problem with America. Roger rings in the afternoon, says, ‘What gives? We were supposed to have lunch.’ Murray says, ‘Lan’s left me.’ He knows he will cry soon. ‘Oh Christ. I’m so sorry,’ says Roger. Murray inhales, snuffs up snot. Roger coughs into the receiver. ‘It was just out of the blue,’ says Murray. ‘Where’s she gone?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘She didn’t say anything?’ ‘No,’ says Murray. ‘She could be anywhere. Maybe you should call the police, put in a missing report,’ says Roger. ‘I’m not too friendly with the cops,’ says Murray, and coughs. ‘You sound a bit crook. I’ll come over,’ says Roger. ‘That’d be good,’ says Murray. Roger turns up at the house an hour later, wearing wide pants and a tight collared shirt with thick white and red stripes. He’s growing a moustache, only cuts his hair when he visits his parents. Murray says, ‘I’ll make us a cuppa.’ Roger nods, sits down at the vinyl table with his hands resting on his knees. He says, ‘Are you coming to 291 on Sunday?’ 291 St Paul’s Terrace is the Brisbane Communist Party’s headquarters. Murray says, ‘What’s on?’ ‘Billy needs someone to look after the bookshop.’ Murray gives Roger a mug of tea, sits down with his own mug between his elbows, and cradles his head in his hands so his hair falls over his wrists. After a minute, Roger says, ‘Does her family know?’ Murray makes a strange noise through his hands. ‘I don’t even know how to contact them,’ he says. ‘She wrote them letters—couldn’t afford to phone—but she’s taken everything with her. The address book. Everything.’ Murray knows nothing of the specifics of Lan’s life before she met him. She was the first Asian he’d ever spoken to. She wore wrap-around skirts that changed colour in the sun; grew her hair below the waist; sat in the front row in class and never spoke. He liked the shape of her calf as it emerged from her skirt. He saw her on the great lawn filming her reflection in a window with a Sony Portapak and knew that he wanted her more than anything. Murray seduced her by saying almost nothing and touching her as often as he could. He was worried about offending her. What reading he had done made him aware of his own ignorance, and his friend in Psych told him that when you touch a girl enough — especially around the aureole — a hormone is released that bonds them to you, makes them sad when you leave them or they leave you. In conversation, Murray would put his hand on Lan’s elbow, once on the top of her head. Lan was ready to be seduced. Murray invited her to a winter party in his backyard. They kissed next to the fire and he didn’t notice until the next morning that the rubber on the bottom of his shoe melted in the flames. She moved into his house quickly, her clothes bundled in three plastic bags. He wanted her to stay in bed with him all day, imagined he was John Lennon and she Yoko Ono. Their mattress became a soup of discarded clothes, bread crumbs, wine stains, come stains, ash and flakes of pot. He resented her when she told him that she was bored, and left him, sheets pulled aside to reveal his erection, to go to class. Lan tutored high-schoolers for a while, but they complained to their mothers that they couldn’t understand her accent. She told him her parents wanted her to come home. The next night he tidied the house, and cooked her dinner. Over the green peas and potato—Lan grated ginger over hers, mixed it with chili and soy sauce, which she travelled all the way to Chinatown on a bus to buy—Murray proposed. They were married in the botanic gardens, surrounded by Murray’s friends. The night before his father called him up and said, ‘It’s not too late to get out of it. You won’t be betraying the cause.’ Murray said, ‘You have no idea what this means to me,’ and hung up on him. Sunday, 9 April 1972, 291 St Paul’s Terrace Murray perches on the backless stool behind the counter in The People’s Bookshop. He has the sense he is on the brink of something. His body is ready for movement. When a man walks into the shop, Murray panics because Billy hadn’t shown him how to use the cash register. He says, ‘Can I help?’ anyway. ‘No,’ says the man. The man walks the length of the shelves too fast to read the titles. He stops at a display of Australiana on a tiered shelf, slides his hand down the covers on display. He pauses at Crocodile Hunt. The cover shows a drawing of a bulky crocodile, scaled body bent in an S, its jaws under the man’s thumb. He picks it up, examines it. Murray thinks it odd that he doesn’t flip it over to read the blurb. He walks around the whole room once, scanning the shelves, reaches Murray at the counter and puts the book down between them. Murray picks it up, turns it over, looking for a price. It’s stuck on the back in faded ink. He opens his mouth to tell the man how much, and finds him staring intently at the ceiling. Murray looks up too. A hairline crack runs along the surface and there are bulges in the plaster where the wooden framework’s swollen. It’s lower than Murray remembers. He thinks that if he stood on his toes he could reach it with the tips of his fingers. Murray looks down again to find the man staring at him. Caught out, Murray mutters the price, says, ‘You don’t have it in exact change, do you?’ The man nods, fumbles around in his pocket for a bit and brings out a note, which he lays at an angle along the bench top. He counts the coins in the palm of his hand. He makes a fist around the coins, brings his hand over the note and lets go. The coins fall, clinking, over the bench. One spins wildly, rolls past Murray’s arm and across the bench. Murray lets it fall. He recognises the man now; it is the act of release that triggers the memory, the fingers spread wide, the wrist bent, the black watch band. This is the man who threw the brick in the Springbok protest. Dead set. He looks up again, expecting to see the same sense of recognition in the man, but he is walking out of the shop. Murray follows him outside, leaving the door open and the money still on the counter. The man is walking right along St Paul’s Terrace. He tucks the book under his arm to cross Barry Parade, as though he might need both hands free to wave off the oncoming traffic. Murray stands on the other side of the road, unsure of what to do. When Murray came outside, he’d planned to hail the man, tell him he recognised him from the strike and was a fellow comrade. They give discounts to Communist Party members. Outside the shop, it strikes him that perhaps the man is not one of them at all. Just because he was at the march doesn’t make him a communist. Despite the unpopularity of the cause —‘It’s just fucking football,’ one of Murray’s friends had said. ‘What’s it got to do with anything?’— there had been many types there, a mixture of labour party members; unionists; people in the Radical Club and the Eureka Youth League; those not particularly attached to anyone. He remembers again the brick shattered on the ground. It hadn’t hit anyone, but was an incitement to violence. This man is dangerous. Murray is filled again with nervous energy, which leaves him both dull-witted and super-charged, as though he is a wind-up toy twisted tight and then released, unable to do anything but move in the direction he’s facing. He crosses the road about five metres behind the man, sticks to the outer edge of the pavement, head down. If he moves his eyes upwards, while still keeping his neck lowered, he can see the shoes of the man, his white socks flashing with each step. The man turns the corner into Brunswick Street. He stops at a car parked in front of the old Masonic Temple. Murray walks past fast, unsure of what to do next. The Temple’s entry is set back in the building, four steps leading up to a red door. Murray ducks inside the alcove, looks up to see the man sitting in the driver’s seat pulling out the pages of Crocodile Hunt and feeding them through the half wound-down window where they land, fanned out, on the road. When he’s finished dismembering the book, the man spreads the page-less cover across the back of the car. The crocodile, snout on the side, one eye turned outwards, stares out into the street. The man flicks the ignition and drives, the pages flying out and onto the road in his wake. Murray sits down on the steps of the guild and smokes. He isn’t exactly sure what just happened. The man must have bought the book just because he liked the picture on the front of the cover. But it’s odd though that he had bothered to spend so much just for one picture. Murray remembers how he had paced the shop and studiously examined the ceiling. He’d given the impression of someone picking out furniture for the room, working out the dimensions so some chair or table would fit. A cough. Murray looks up. The man’s standing above him, his forearm resting on the wall, elbow bent. His other arm hangs at his side, hand bunched up around a bundle of keys. ‘I wouldn’t of bothered following me, if I was you,’ the man says. ‘The police are on my side. Special branch are on my side.’ He pushes himself off the wall, stands up straight, and says, ‘Heil Hitler.’ Tuesday April 19, 1972, 291 St Paul’s Terrace Murray brings his curled fist down on the door. It opens with the force of his knock and he feels like an idiot for even bothering. The hallway’s dark. Murray runs into a filing cabinet, swears, and stands in the centre of the corridor, with his hand still on the cabinet, calling, ‘Roger! Roger!’ Murray told Roger he’d come here when he called him. Murray was walking back from uni, and on the other side of the road to his house, ready to cross, he saw there was someone standing underneath the house, looking out into the street. Murray didn’t stop. He didn’t need to. He knew it was the man from the bookshop, the Nazi. Murray kept walking until he reached the end of the street, turned the corner and then ran. Back on campus, he shut himself in a phone box and dialed Roger’s number. ‘I can’t get to my house,’ Murray said when Roger picked up. ‘Lock yourself out, did you?’ said Roger. ‘You know that Nazi? He’s back again.’ ‘I don’t get it,’ said Roger. ‘It doesn’t matter. I need to stay with you,’ said Murray. ‘You can’t. I’m going to a party meeting.’ ‘I’ll meet you there.’ ‘Ok. If you want.’ Roger hung up. Now, Roger stands framed in the doorway of the meeting room. ‘Hey Murray, shut up. I can hear you. Get in here.’ Roger switches on the hallway light and Murray walks into the meeting room. There are about seven people, sitting on hard metal chairs around a long table. Murray sits next to Roger, nods to Patsy, who has nice breasts but is married. Vince says, ‘Hi, Murray, we’re talking about the moratorium on Friday.’ ‘You should bring your pretty little Vietnamese girl,’ says Billy. ‘She’s not around anymore,’ says Roger. ‘That’s a shame,’ says Patsy. ‘Yeah,’ says Murray. ‘Helen Dashwood told me her school has banned them from wearing moratorium badges,’ says Billy. ‘Far out,’ says Patsy. ‘We should get her to speak at the rally,’ says Stella, taking notes, and then, looking up, says, ‘Can anyone smell burning?’ Murray sniffs, says ‘I’ll go look.’ They all follow him down the hall. Patsy says, behind him, ‘Is it coming from the kitchen?’ Roger says, ‘No,’ and then the windows around them shatter. Next to Murray, a filing cabinet buckles and twists like wet cardboard in the rain. A door is blown off its hinges. Murray feels a moment of great confusion, a sense that things are sliding away from him spectacularly. He’s felt this once before. He wanted Lan to sit down with him, but she said she didn’t want to be touched. He’d pulled her to him, playfully, a joke, but he was too hard and she went limp in his hands. Like she’d been expecting it. Her head hit the table in front of him with a sharp, quick crack. He didn’t understand what happened; he had never experienced violence this close. He imagined her brain as a line drawing with the different sections coloured in, like his Psych friend had once showed him, except squashed in at the bottom. She had recovered, of course, opened her eyes a second later to him gasping. He remembered saying, ‘I just want to hold you. Why do you always do this to me?’ and even to him it hadn’t made sense because he was the one doing it to her. Afterwards, Murray had felt hungry, but couldn’t think of anything that he’d wanted to eat. He sliced an apple in half, traced the star of seeds with his finger, then decided he didn’t want it. He left it, already turning brown, on the kitchen bench. Author’s Note No one was killed in the April 19 explosion, nor did the roof fall in. The bookstore, kitchen and press on the first floor of 291 took the force of the blast (Evans and Ferrier). The same night, a man called The Courier Mail (1) saying he was a member of a right wing group and had just bombed the Brisbane Communist Party Headquarters. He threatened to bomb more on Friday if members attended the anti-Vietnam war moratorium that day. He ended his conversation with ‘Heil Hitler.’ Gary Mangan, a known Nazi party member, later confessed to the bombing. He was taken to court, but the Judge ruled that the body of evidence was inadmissible, citing a legal technicality. Mangan was not charged.Ian Curr, in his article, Radical Books in Brisbane, publishes an image of the Communist party quarters in Brisbane. The image, entitled ‘After the Bomb, April 19 1972,’ shows detectives interviewing those who were in the building at the time. One man, with his back to the camera, is unidentified. I imagined this unknown man, in thongs with the long hair, to be Murray. It is in these gaps in historical knowledge that the writer of fiction is free to imagine. References “Bomb in the Valley, Then City Shots.” The Courier Mail 20 Apr. 1972: 1. Curr, Ian. Radical Books in Brisbane. 2008. 24 Jun. 2011 < http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2008/07/18/radical-books-in-brisbane/ >. Evans, Raymond, and Carole Ferrier. Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History. Brisbane: Vulgar Press, 2004.
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Bond, Sue. "Heavy Baggage: Illegitimacy and the Adoptee." M/C Journal 17, no. 5 (October 25, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.876.
Abstract:
Teichman notes in her study of illegitimacy that “the point of the legitimate/illegitimate distinction is not to cause suffering; rather, it has to do with certain widespread human aims connected with the regulation of sexual activities and of population” (4). She also writes that, until relatively recently, “the shame of being an unmarried mother was the worst possible shame a woman could suffer” (119). Hence the secrecy, silences, and lies that used to be so common around the issue of an illegitimate birth and adoption.I was adopted at birth in the mid-1960s in New Zealand because my mother was a long way from family in England and had no support. She and my father had fallen in love, and planned to marry, but it all fell apart, and my mother was left with decisions to make. It was indeed a difficult time for unwed mothers, and that issue of shame and respectability was in force. The couple who adopted me were in their late forties and had been married for twenty-five years. My adoptive father had served in World War Two in the Royal Air Force before being invalided out for health problems associated with physical and psychological injuries. He was working in the same organisation as my mother and approached her when he learned of her situation. My adoptive mother loved England as her Home all of her life, despite living in Australia permanently from 1974 until her death in 2001. I did not know of my adoption until 1988, when I was twenty-three years old. The reasons for this were at least partly to do with my adoptive parents’ fear that I would leave them to search for my birth parents. My feelings about this long-held secret are complex and mixed. My adoptive mother never once mentioned my adoption, not on the day I was told by my adoptive father, nor at any point afterwards. My adoptive father only mentioned it again in the last two years of his life, after a long estrangement from me, and it made him weep. Even in the nursing home he did not want me to tell anyone that I had been adopted. It was impossible for me to obey this request, for my sense of self and my own identity, and for the recognition of the years of pain that I had endured as his daughter. He wanted to keep so much a secret; I could not, and would not, hold anything back anymore.And so I found myself telling anyone who would listen that I was adopted, and had only found out as an adult. This did not transmogrify into actively seeking out my birth parents, at least not immediately. It took some years before I obtained my original birth certificate, and then a long while again before I searched for, and found, my birth mother. It was not until my adoptive mother died that I launched into the search, probably because I did not want to cause her pain, though I did not consciously think of it that way. I did not tell my adoptive father of the search or the discovery. This was not an easy decision, as my birth mother would have liked to see him again and thank him, but I knew that his feelings were quite different and I did not want to risk further hurt to either my birth mother or my adoptive father. My own pain endures.I also found myself writing about my family. Other late discovery adoptees, as we are known, have written of their experiences, but not many. Maureen Watson records her shock at being told by her estranged husband when she was 40 years old; Judith Lucy, the comedian, was told in her mid-twenties by her sister-in-law after a tumultuous Christmas day; the Canadian author Wayson Choy was in his late fifties when he received a mysterious phone call from a woman about seeing his “other” mother on the street.I started with fiction, making up fairy tales or science fiction scenarios, or one act plays, or poetry, or short stories. I filled notebooks with these words of confusion and anger and wonder. Eventually, I realised I needed to write about my adoptive life in fuller form, and in life story mode. The secrecy and silences that had dominated my family life needed to be written out on the page and given voice and legitimacy by me. For years I had thought my father’s mental disturbance and destructive behaviour was my fault, as he often told me it was, and I was an only child isolated from other family and other people generally. My adoptive mother seemed to take the role of the shadow in the background, only occasionally stepping forward to curb my father’s disturbing and paranoid reactions to life.The distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy may not have been created and enforced to cause suffering, but that, of course, is what it did for many caught in its circle of grief and exclusion. For me, I did not feel the direct effect of being illegitimate at birth, because I did not “know”. (What gathered in my unconscious over the years was another thing altogether.) This was different for my birth mother, who suffered greatly during the time she was pregnant, hoping something would happen that would enable her to keep me, but finally having to give me up. She does not speak of shame, only heartache. My adoptive father, however, felt the shame of having to adopt a child; I know this because he told me in his own words at the end of his life. Although I did not know of my adoption until I was an adult, I picked up his fear of my inadequacy for many years beforehand. I realise now that he feared that I was “soiled” or “tainted”, that the behaviour of my mother would be revisited in me, and that I needed to be monitored. He read my letters, opened my diaries, controlled my phone calls, and told me he had spies watching me when I was out of his range. I read in Teichman’s work that the word “bastard”, the colloquial term for an illegitimate child or person, comes from the Old French ba(s)t meaning baggage or luggage or pack-saddle, something that could be slept on by the traveller (1). Being illegitimate could feel like carrying heavy baggage, but someone else’s, not yours. And being adopted was supposed to render you legitimate by giving you the name of a father. For me, it added even more heavy baggage. Writing is one way of casting it off, refusing it, chipping it away, reducing its power. The secrecy of my adoption can be broken open. I can shout out the silence of all those years.The first chapter of the memoir, “A Shark in the Garden”, has the title “Revelation”, and concerns the day I learned of my adoptive status. RevelationI sat on my bed, formed fists in my lap, got up again. In the mirror there was my reflection, but all I saw was fear. I sat down, thought of what I was going to say, stood again. If I didn’t force myself out through my bedroom door, all would be lost. I had rung the student quarters at the hospital, there was a room ready. I had spoken to Dr P. It was time for me to go. The words were formed in my mouth, I had only to speak them. Three days before, I had come home to find my father in a state of heightened anxiety, asking me where the hell I had been. He’d rung my friend C because I had told him, falsely, that I would be going over to her place for a fitting of the bridesmaid dresses. I lied to him because the other bridesmaid was someone he disliked intensely, and did not approve of me seeing her. I had to tell him the true identity of the other bridesmaid, which of course meant that I’d lied twice, that I’d lied for a prolonged period of time. My father accused me of abusing my mother’s good nature because she was helping me make my bridesmaid’s dress. I was not a good seamstress, whereas my mother made most of her clothes, and ours, so in reality she was the one making the dress. When you’ve lied to your parents it is difficult to maintain the high ground, or any ground at all. But I did try to tell him that if he didn’t dislike so many of my friends, I wouldn’t have to lie to him in order to shield them and have a life outside home. If I knew that he wasn’t going to blaspheme the other bridesmaid every time I said her name, then I could have been upfront. What resulted was a dark silence. I was completing a supplementary exam in obstetrics and gynaecology. Once passed, I would graduate with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree, and be able to work as an intern in a hospital. I hated obstetrics and gynaecology. It was about bodies like my own and their special functions, and seemed like an invasion of privacy. Women were set apart as specimens, as flawed creatures, as beings whose wombs were always going wrong, a difficult separate species. Men were the predominant teachers of wisdom about these bodies, and I found this repugnant. One obstetrician in a regional hospital asked my friend and me once if we had regular Pap smears, and if our menstrual blood contained clots. We answered him, but it was none of his business, and I wished I hadn’t. I can see him now, the small eyes, the bitchiness about other doctors, the smarminess. But somehow I had to get through it. I had to get up each morning and go into the hospital and do the ward rounds and see patients. I had to study the books. I had to pass that exam. It had become something other than just an exam to me. It was an enemy against which I must fight.My friend C was getting married on the 19th of December, and somehow I had to negotiate my father as well. He sometimes threatened to confiscate the keys to the car, so that I couldn’t use it. But he couldn’t do that now, because I had to get to the hospital, and it was too far away by public transport. Every morning I woke up and wondered what mood my father would be in, and whether it would have something to do with me. Was I the good daughter today, or the bad one? This happened every day. It was worse because of the fight over the wedding. It was a relief to close my bedroom door at night and be alone, away from him. But my mother too. I felt as if I was betraying her, by not being cooperative with my father. It would have been easier to have done everything he said, and keep the household peaceful. But the cost of doing that would have been much higher: I would have given my life over to him, and disappeared as a person.I could wake up and forget for a few seconds where I was and what had happened the day before. But then I remembered and the fear exploded in my stomach. I lived in dread of what my father would say, and in dread of his silence.That morning I woke up and instantly thought of what I had to do. After the last fight, I realised I did not want to live with such pain and fear anymore. I did not want to cause it, or to live with it, or to kill myself, or to subsume my spirit in the pathology of my father’s thinking. I wanted to live.Now I knew I had to walk into the living room and speak those words to my parents.My mother was sitting in her spot, at one end of the speckled and striped grey and brown sofa, doing a crossword. My father was in his armchair, head on his hand. I walked around the end of the sofa and stood by ‘my’ armchair next to my mother.“Mum and Dad, I need to talk with you about something.”I sat down as I said this, and looked at each of them in turn. Their faces were mildly expectant, my father’s with a dark edge.“I know we haven’t been getting on very well lately, and I think it might be best if I leave home and go to live in the students’ quarters at the hospital. I’m twenty-three now. I think it might be good for us to spend some time apart.” This sounded too brusque, but I’d said it. It was out in the atmosphere, and I could only wait. And whatever they said, I was going. I was leaving. My father kept looking at me for a moment, then straightened in his chair, and cleared his throat.“You sound as if you’ve worked this all out. Well, I have something to say. I suppose you know you were adopted.”There was an enormous movement in my head. Adopted. I suppose you know you were adopted. Age of my parents at my birth: 47 and 48. How long have you and Dad been married, Mum? Oooh, that’s a tricky one. School principal’s wife, eyes flicking from me to Mum and back again, You don’t look much like each other, do you? People referring to me as my Mum’s friend, not her daughter. I must have got that trait from you Oh no I know where you got that from. My father not wanting me to marry or have children. Not wanting me to go back to England. Moving from place to place. No contact with relatives. This all came to me in a flash of memory, a psychological click and shift that I was certain was audible outside my mind. I did not move, and I did not speak. My father continued. He was talking about my biological mother. The woman who, until a few seconds before, I had not known existed.“We were walking on the beach one day with you, and she came towards us. She didn’t look one way or another, just kept her eyes straight ahead. Didn’t acknowledge us, or you. She said not to tell you about your adoption unless you fell in with a bad lot.”I cannot remember what else my father said. At one point my mother said to me, “You aren’t going to leave before Christmas are you?”All of her hopes and desires were in that question. I was not a good daughter, and yet I knew that I was breaking her heart by leaving. And before Christmas too. Even a bad daughter is better than no daughter at all. And there nearly was no daughter at all. I suppose you know you were adopted.But did my mother understand nothing of the turmoil that lived within me? Did it really not matter to her that I was leaving, as long as I didn’t do it before Christmas? Did she understand why I was leaving, did she even want to know? Did she understand more than I knew? I did not ask any of these questions. Instead, at some point I got out of the chair and walked into my bedroom and pulled out the suitcase I had already packed the night before. I threw other things into other bags. I called for a taxi, in a voice supernaturally calm. When the taxi came, I humped the suitcase down the stairs and out of the garage and into the boot, then went back upstairs and got the other bags and humped them down as well. And while I did this, I was shouting at my father and he was shouting at me. I seem to remember seeing him out of the corner of my eye, following me down the stairs, then back up again. Following me to my bedroom door, then down the stairs to the taxi. But I don’t think he went out that far. I don’t remember what my mother was doing.The only words I remember my father saying at the end are, “You’ll end up in the gutter.”The only words I remember saying are, “At least I’ll get out of this poisonous household.”And then the taxi was at the hospital, and I was in a room, high up in a nondescript, grey and brown building. I unpacked some of my stuff, put my clothes in the narrow wardrobe, my shoes in a line on the floor, my books on the desk. I imagine I took out my toothbrush and lotions and hairbrush and put them on the bedside table. I have no idea what the weather was like, except that it wasn’t raining. The faces of the taxi driver, of the woman in reception at the students’ quarters, of anyone else I saw that day, are a blur. The room is not difficult to remember as it was a rectangular shape with a window at one end. I stood at that window and looked out onto other hospital buildings, and the figures of people walking below. That night I lay in the bed and let the waves of relief ripple over me. My parents were not there, sitting in the next room, speaking in low voices about how bad I was. I was not going to wake up and brace myself for my father’s opprobrium, or feel guilty for letting my mother down. Not right then, and not the next morning. The guilt and the self-loathing were, at that moment, banished, frozen, held-in-time. The knowledge of my adoption was also held-in-time: I couldn’t deal with it in any real way, and would not for a long time. I pushed it to the back of my mind, put it away in a compartment. I was suddenly free, and floating in the novelty of it.ReferencesChoy, Wayson. Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. Ringwood: Penguin, 2000.Lucy, Judith. The Lucy Family Alphabet. Camberwell: Penguin, 2008.Teichman, Jenny. Illegitimacy: An Examination of Bastardy. New York: Cornell University Press, 1982. Watson, Maureen. Surviving Secrets. Short-Stop Press, 2010.
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Mullen, Mark. "It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me." M/C Journal 6, no. 1 (February 1, 2003). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2134.
Abstract:
I remember the first time I saw a dead body. I spawned just before dawn; around me engines were clattering into life, the dim silhouettes of tanks beginning to move out in a steady grinding rumble. I could dimly make out a few other people, the anonymity of their shadowy outlines belied by the names hanging over their heads in a comforting blue. Suddenly, a stream of tracers arced across the sky; explosions sounded nearby, then closer still; a tank ahead of me stopped, turned sluggishly, and fired off a couple of rounds, rocking slightly against the recoil. The radio was filled with talk of Germans in the town, but I couldn’t even see the town. I ran toward what looked like the shattered hulk of a building and dived into what I hoped was a doorway. It was already occupied by another Tommy and together we waited for it to get lighter, listening to the rattle of machine guns, the sharp ping as shells ricocheted off steel, the sickening, indescribable, but immediately recognisable sound when they didn’t. Eventually, the other soldier moved out, but I waited for the sun to peek over the nearby hills. Once I was able to see where I was going, I made straight for the command post on the edge of town, and came across a group of allied soldiers standing in a circle. In the centre of the circle lay a dead German soldier, face up. “Well I’ll be damned,” I said aloud; no one else said anything, and the body abruptly faded. I remember the first time I killed someone. I had barely got the Spit V up to 4000 feet when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something below me. I dropped the left wing and saw a Stuka making a bee-line for the base. I made a hash of the turn, almost stalling, but he obviously had no idea I was there. I saddled-up on his six, dropping down low to avoid fire from his gunner, and opened up on him. I must have hit him at perfect convergence because he disintegrated, pieces of dismembered airframe raining down on the field below. I circled the field, putting all my concentration into making the landing that would make the kill count, then switched off the engine and sat in the cockpit for a moment, heart pounding. As you can tell, I’ve been in the wars lately. The first example is drawn from the launch of Cornered Rat Software’s WWII Online: Blitzkrieg (2001) while the second is based on a short stint playing Warbirds 3 (2002). Both games are examples of one of the most interesting recent developments in computer and video gaming: the increasing popularity and range of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs); other notable examples of historical combat simulation MMOGs include HiTech Creations Aces High (2002) and Jaleco Entertainment’s Fighter Ace 3.5 (2002). For a variety of technical reasons, most popular multiplayer games—particularly first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Doom, Quake, and more recently Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)—are played on player-organised servers that are usually limited to 32 or fewer players; terrain maps are small and rotated every couple of hours on average. MMOGs, by contrast, feature anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of players hosted on a handful of company-run servers. The shared virtual geography of these worlds is huge, extending across tens of thousands of square miles; these worlds are also persistent in that they respond dynamically to the actions of players and continue to do so while individual players are offline. As my opening anecdotes demonstrate, the experience of dealing and receiving virtual death is central to massively multiplayer simulations as it is to so many forms of computer games. Yet for an experience is that is so ubiquitous in computer games (and, some would say, even constitutes their experiential core) death is under-theorised. Mainstream culture tends to see computer and console game mayhem according to a rigid desensitisation argument: the experience of repeatedly killing other players online leads to a gradual erosion of the individual moral sense which makes players more likely to countenance killing people in the real world. Nowhere was this argument more in evidence that in the wake of the murder of fifteen students by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. The discovery that the two boys were enthusiastic players of Id Software’s Doom and Quake resulted in an avalanche of hysterical news stories that charged computer games with a number of evils: eroding kids’ ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, encouraging them to imitate the actions represented in the games, and immuring them to the real-world consequences of violence. These claims were hardly new, and had in fact been directed at any number of violent popular entertainment genres over the years. What was new was the claim that the interactive nature of FPS games rendered them a form of simulated weapons training. What was also striking about the discourse surrounding the Littleton shooting was just how little the journalists covering the story knew about computer, console and arcade games. Nevertheless, their approach to the issue encouraged readers to see games as having real life analogs. Media discussion of the event also reinforced the notion of a connection with military training techniques, making extensive use of Lt. Col. (ret) David Grossman, a former Army ranger and psychologist who led the charge in claiming that games were “mass-murder simulators” (Gittrich, AA06). This controversy over the role of violent computer games in the Columbine murders is part of a larger cultural discourse that adopts the logical fallacy characteristic of moral panics: coincidence equals causation. Yet the impoverished discussion of online death and destruction is also due in no small measure to an entrenched hostility toward popular entertainment as a whole, a hostility that is evident even in the work of some academic critics who study popular culture. Andrew Darley, for example, argues that, never has the flattening of meaning or depth in the traditional aesthetic sense of these words been so pronounced as in the action-simulation genres of the computer game: here, aesthetic experience is tied directly to the purely sensational and allied to tests of physical dexterity (143). In this view, the repeated experience of death is merely a part of the overall texture of a form characterised not so much by narrative as by compulsive repetition. More generally, computer games are seen by many critics as the pernicious, paradigmatic instance of the colonisation of individual consciousness by cultural spectacle. According to this Frankfurt school-influenced critique (most frequently associated with the work of Guy Debord), spectacle serves both to mystify and pacify its audience: The more the technology opens up narrative possibilities, the less there is for the audience to do. [. . .]. When the spectacle conceals the practice of the artists who create it, it [announces]…itself as an expression of a universe beyond human volition and effort (Filewood 24). In supposedly sapping its audience’s critical faculties by bombarding them with a technological assault whose only purpose is to instantiate a deterministic worldview, spectacle is seen by its critics as exemplifying the work of capitalist ideology which teaches people not to question the world around them by establishing, in Althusser’s famous phrase, an “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of their existence” (162). The desensitisation thesis is thus part of a larger discourse that considers computer games paradoxically to be both escapist and as having real-world effects. With regard to online death, neo-Marxism meets neo-Freudianism: players are seen as hooked on the thrill not only of destroying others but also of self-destruction. Death is thus considered the terminus of all narrative possibility, and the participation of individuals in fantasy-death and mayhem is seen to lead inevitably to several kinds of cultural death: the death of “family values,” the death of community, the death of individual responsibility, and—given the characterisation of FPS games in particular as lacking in plot and characterisation—the death of storytelling. However, it is less productive to approach computer, arcade and console games as vehicles for force-feeding content with pre-determined cultural effects than it is to understand them as venues within and around which players stage a variety of theatrical performances. Thus even the bêtes noire of the mainstream media, first-person shooters, serve as vehicles for a variety of interactions ranging from the design of new sounds, graphics and levels, new “skins” for player characters, the formation of “tribes” or “clans” that fight and socialise together, and the creation of elaborate fan fictions. This idea that narrative does not simply “happen” within the immediate experience of playing the game, but is in fact produced by a dynamic interplay of interactions for which the game serves as a focus, also suggests a very different way of looking at the role of death online. Far from being the logical endpoint, the inevitable terminus of all narrative possibility, death becomes the indispensable starting point for narrative. In single-player games, for example, the existence of the simple “save game” function—differing from simply putting the game board to one side in that the save function allows the preservation of the game world in multiple temporal states—generates much of the narrative and dramatic range of computer games. Generally a player saves the game because he or she is facing an obstacle that may result in death; saving the game at that point allows the player to investigate alternatives. Thus, the ever-present possibility of death in the game world becomes the origin of all narratives based on forward investigation. In multiplayer and MMOG environments, where the players have no control over the save game state, it is nevertheless the possibility of a mode of forward projection that gives the experience its dramatic intensity. Flight simulation games in particular are notoriously difficult to master; the experience of serial death, therefore, becomes the necessary condition for honing your flying skills, trying out different tactics in a variety of combat situations, trying similar tactics in different aircraft, and so on. The experience of online death creates a powerful narrative impulse, and not only in those situations where death is serialised and guaranteed. A sizable proportion of the flight sim communities of both Warbirds and Aces High participate in specially designed scenario events that replicate a specific historical air combat event (the Battle of Britain, the Coral Sea, USAAF bomber operations in Europe, etc.) as closely as possible. What makes these scenarios so compelling for many players is that they are generally “one life” events: once the player is dead, they are out for the rest of the event and this creates an intense experience that is completely unlike flying in the everyday free-for-all arenas. The desensitisation thesis notwithstanding, there is little evidence that this narrative investment in death produces a more casual attitude toward real-life death amongst MMOG players. For example, when real-world death intrudes, simulation players often reach for the same rituals of comfort and acknowledgement that are employed offline. Recently, when an Aces High player died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of 35, his squadron held an elaborate memorial event in his honor. Over a hundred players bailed out over an aerodrome—bailing out is the only way that a player in Aces High can acquire a virtual human body—and lined the edges of the runway as members of the dead player’s squad flew the missing man formation overhead (GrimmCAF). The insistence upon bodily presence in the context of a classic military ceremony marking irrecoverable absence suggests the way in which the connections between real and virtual worlds are experienced by players: as tensions, but also as points where identities are negotiated. This example does not seem to indicate that everyday familiarity with virtual death has dulled the players’ sensibilities to the sorrow and loss accompanying death in the real world. I began this article talking about death in simulation MMOGs for a number of reasons. In the first place, MMOGs are more commonly identified with their role-playing examples (MMORPGs) such as Ultima Online and Everquest, games that focus on virtual community-building and exploration in addition to violence and conquest. By contrast, simulation games tend to be seen as having more in common with first-person shooters like Quake, in the way in which they foreground the experience of serial death. Secondly, it is precisely the connection between simulation and death that makes games in general (as I demonstrated in relation to the media coverage of the Columbine murders) so problematic. In response, I would argue that one of the most interesting aspects of computer games recently has been the degree to which generic distinctions have been breaking down. MMORPGs, which had their roots in the Dungeons and Dragons gaming world, and the text-based world of MUDs and MOOs have since developed sophisticated third-person and even first-person representational styles to facilitate both peaceful character interactions and combat. Likewise, first-person shooters have begun to add role-playing elements (see, for example, Looking Glass Studios’ superb System Shock 2 (1999) or Lucasarts' Jedi Knight series). This trend has also been incorporated into simulation MMOGs: World War II Online includes a rudimentary set of character-tracking features, and Aces High has just announced a more ambitious expansion whose major focus will be the incorporation of role-playing elements. I feel that MMOGs in particular are all evolving towards a state that I would describe as “simulance:” simulations that, while they may be associated with a nominal representational reality, are increasingly about exploring the narrative possibilities, the mechanisms of theatrical engagement for self and community of simulation itself. Increasingly, none of the terms "simulation,” "role-playing" or indeed “game” quite captures the texture of these evolving experiences. In their complex engagement with both scripted and extemporaneous narrative, the players have more in common with period re-enactors; the immersive power of a well-designed flight simulator scenario produces a feeling in players akin to the “period rush” experienced by battlefield re-enactors, the frisson between awareness of playing a role and surrendering completely to the momentary power of its illusory reality. What troubles critics about simulations (and what also blinds them to the narrative complexity in other forms of computer games) is that they are indeed not simply examples of re-enactment —a re-staging of supposedly real events—but a generative form of narrative enactment. Computer games, particularly large-scale online games, provide a powerful set of theatrical tools with which players and player communities can help shape narratives and deepen their own narrative investment. Obviously, they are not isolated from real-world cultural factors that shape and constrain narrative possibility. However, we are starting to see the way in which the games use the idea of virtual death as the generative force for new storytelling frameworks based, in Filewood’s terms, on forward investigation. As games begin to move out of their incunabular state, they may contribute to the re-shaping of culture and consciousness, as other narrative platforms have done. Far from causing the downfall of civilisation, game-based narratives may bring with them a greater cultural awareness of simultaneous narrative possibility, of the past as sets of contingent phenomena, and a greater attention to practical, hands-on experimental problem-solving. It would be ironic, but no great surprise, if a form built around the creative possibilities inherent in serial death in fact made us more attentive to the rich alternative possibilities of living. Works Cited Aces High. HiTech Creations, 2002. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. By Louis Althusser, trans. Ben Brewster. New York, 1971. 127-86. Barry, Ellen. “Games Feared as Youths’ Basic Training; Industry, Valued as Aid to Soldiers, on Defensive.” The Boston Globe 29 Apr 1999: A1. LexisNexis. Feb. 7, 2003. Cornered Rat Software. World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. Strategy First, 2001. http://www.wwiionline.com/ Darley, Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge, 2000. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 1967. Der Derian, James. “The Simulation Syndrome: From War Games to Game Wars.” Social Text 8.2 (1990): 187-92. Filewood, Alan. “C:\Games\Dramaturgy: The Cybertheatre of Computer Games.” Canadian Theatre Review 81 (Winter 1994): 24-28. Gittrich, Greg. “Expert Differs with Kids over Video Game Effects.” The Denver Post 27 Apr 1999: AA-06. LexisNexis. Feb. 7 2003. GrimmCAF. “MojoCAF’s Memorial Flight.” Aces High BB, 13 Dec. 2002. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... IEntertainment Network. Warbirds III. Simon and Schuster Interactive, 2002.http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=w... Jenkins, Henry, comp. “Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back.” From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 1998. 328-41. Lieberman, Joseph I. “The Social Impact of Music Violence.” Statement Before the Governmental Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, 1997. http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberma... Feb. 7 2003. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free, 1997. Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000. Pyro. “AH2 FAQ.” Aces High BB, 29 Jan. 2003. Internet. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... Feb. 8 2003. Links http://www.wwiionline.com/ http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/ http://www.hitechcreations.com/ http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=wbiii/content_home.php http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=77265 http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberman/releases/r110697c.html http://www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/ http://www.ea.com/eagames/official/moh_alliedassault/home.jsp http://www.jaleco.com/fighterace/index.html http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=72560 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Mullen, Mark. "It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.php>. APA Style Mullen, M., (2003, Feb 26). It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.html
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Haller, Beth. "Switched at Birth: A Game Changer for All Audiences." M/C Journal 20, no. 3 (June 21, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1266.
Abstract:
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Family Network show Switched at Birth tells two stories—one which follows the unique plot of the show, and one about the new openness of television executives toward integrating more people with a variety of visible and invisible physical embodiments, such as hearing loss, into television content. It first aired in 2011 and in 2017 aired its fifth and final season.The show focuses on two teen girls in Kansas City who find out they were switched due to a hospital error on the day of their birth and who grew up with parents who were not biologically related to them. One, Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), lives with her wealthy parents—a stay-at-home mom Kathryn (Lea Thompson) and a former professional baseball player, now businessman, father John (D.W. Moffett). She has an older brother Toby (Lucas Grabeel) who is into music. In her high school science class, Bay learns about blood types and discovers her parents’ blood types could not have produced her. The family has professional genetic tests done and discovers the switch (ABC Family, “This Is Not a Pipe”).In the pilot episode, Bay’s parents find out that deaf teen, Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc), is actually their daughter. She lives in a working class Hispanic neighbourhood with her hairdresser single mother Regina (Constance Marie) and grandmother Adrianna (Ivonne Coll), both of whom are of Puerto Rican ancestry. Daphne is deaf due to a case of meningitis when she was three, which the rich Kennishes feel happened because of inadequate healthcare provided by working class Regina. Daphne attends an all-deaf school, Carlton.The man who was thought to be her biological father, Angelo Sorrento (Gilles Marini), doesn’t appear in the show until episode 10 but becomes a series regular in season 2. It becomes apparent that Daphne believes her father left because of her deafness; however, as the first season progresses, the real reasons begin to emerge. From the pilot onwards, the show dives into clashes of language, culture, ethnicity, class, and even physical appearance—in one scene in the pilot, the waspy Kennishes ask Regina if she is “Mexican.” As later episodes reveal, many of these physical appearance issues are revealed to have fractured the Vasquez family early on—Daphne is a freckled, strawberry blonde, and her father (who is French and Italian) suspected infidelity.The two families merge when the Kennishes ask Daphne and her mother to move into their guest house in order get to know their daughter better. That forces the Kennishes into the world of deafness, and throughout the show this hearing family therefore becomes a surrogate for a hearing audience’s immersion into Deaf culture.Cultural Inclusivity: The Way ForwardShow creator Lizzy Weiss explained that it was actually the ABC Family network that “suggested making one of the kids disabled” (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences). Weiss was familiar with American Sign Language (ASL) because she had a “classical theatre of the Deaf” course in college. She said, “I had in the back of my head a little bit of background at least about how beautiful the language was. So I said, ‘What if one of the girls is deaf?’” The network thought it was wonderful idea, so she began researching the Deaf community, including spending time at a deaf high school in Los Angeles called Marlton, on which she modelled the Switched at Birth school, Carlton. Weiss (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) says of the school visit experience:I learned so much that day and spoke to dozens of deaf teenagers about their lives and their experiences. And so, this is, of course, in the middle of writing the pilot, and I said to the network, you know, deaf kids wouldn’t voice orally. We would have to have those scenes only in ASL, and no sound and they said, ‘Great. Let’s do it.’ And frankly, we just kind of grew and grew from there.To accommodate the narrative structure of a television drama, Weiss said it became clear from the beginning that the show would need to use SimCom (simultaneous communication or sign supported speech) for the hearing or deaf characters who were signing so they could speak and sign at the same time. She knew this wasn’t the norm for two actual people communicating in ASL, but the production team worried about having a show that was heavily captioned as this might distance its key—overwhelmingly hearing—teen audience who would have to pay attention to the screen during captioned scenes. However, this did not appear to be the case—instead, viewers were drawn to the show because of its unique sign language-influenced television narrative structure. The show became popular very quickly and, with 3.3 million viewers, became the highest-rated premiere ever on the ABC Family network (Barney).Switched at Birth also received much praise from the media for allowing its deaf actors to communicate using sign language. The Huffington Post television critic Maureen Ryan said, “Allowing deaf characters to talk to each other directly—without a hearing person or a translator present—is a savvy strategy that allows the show to dig deeper into deaf culture and also to treat deaf characters as it would anyone else”. Importantly, it allowed the show to be unique in a way that was found nowhere else on television. “It’s practically avant-garde for television, despite the conventional teen-soap look of the show,” said Ryan.Usually a show’s success is garnered by audience numbers and media critique—by this measure Switched at Birth was a hit. However, programs that portray a disability—in any form—are often the target of criticism, particularly from the communities they attempting to represent. It should be noted that, while actress Katie Leclerc, who plays Daphne, has a condition, Meniere’s disease, which causes hearing loss and vertigo on an intermittent basis, she does not identify as a deaf actress and must use a deaf accent to portray Daphne. However, she is ASL fluent, learning it in high school (Orangejack). This meant her qualifications met the original casting call which said “actress must be deaf or hard of hearing and must speak English well, American Sign Language preferred” (Paz, 2010) Leclerc likens her role to that of any actor to who has to affect body and vocal changes for a role—she gives the example of Hugh Laurie in House, who is British with no limp, but was an American who uses a cane in that show (Bibel).As such, initially, some in the Deaf community complained about her casting though an online petition with 140 signatures (Nielson). Yet many in the Deaf community softened any criticism of the show when they saw the production’s ongoing attention to Deaf cultural details (Grushkin). Finally, any lingering criticisms from the Deaf community were quieted by the many deaf actors hired for the show who perform using ASL. This includes Sean Berdy, who plays Daphne’s best friend Emmett, his onscreen mother, played by actress Marlee Matlin, and Anthony Natale who plays his father; their characters both sign and vocalize in the show. The Emmett character only communicates in ASL and does not vocalise until he falls in love with the hearing character Bay—even then he rarely uses his voice.This seemingly all-round “acceptance” of the show gave the production team more freedom to be innovative—by season 3 the audience was deemed to be so comfortable with captions that the shows began to feature less SimCom and more all-captioned scenes. This lead to the full episode in ASL, a first on American mainstream television.For an Hour, Welcome to Our WorldSwitched at Birth writer Chad Fiveash explained that when the production team came up with the idea for a captioned all-ASL episode, they “didn’t want to do the ASL episode as a gimmick. It needed to be thematically resonant”. As a result, they decided to link the episode to the most significant event in American Deaf history, an event that solidified its status as a cultural community—the 1988 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet University in Washington. This protest inspired the March 2013 episode for Switched at Birth and aired 25 years to the week that the actual DPN protest happened. This episode makes it clear the show is trying to completely embrace Deaf culture and wants its audience to better understand Deaf identity.DPN was a pivotal moment for Deaf people—it truly solidified members of a global Deaf community who felt more empowered to fight for their rights. Students demanded that Gallaudet—as the premier university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students—no longer have a hearing person as its president. The Gallaudet board of trustees, the majority of whom were hearing, tried to force students and faculty to accept a hearing president; their attitude was that they knew what was best for the deaf persons there. For eight days, deaf people across America and the world rallied around the student protestors, refusing to give in until a deaf president was appointed. Their success came in the form of I. King Jordan, a deaf man who had served as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the time of the protest.The event was covered by media around the world, giving the American Deaf community international attention. Indeed, Gallaudet University says the DPN protest symbolized more than just the hiring of a Deaf president; it brought Deaf issues before the public and “raised the nation’s consciousness of the rights and abilities of deaf and hard of hearing people” (Gallaudet University).The activities of the students and their supporters showed dramatically that in the 1980s deaf people could be galvanized to unite around a common issue, particularly one of great symbolic meaning, such as the Gallaudet presidency. Gallaudet University represents the pinnacle of education for deaf people, not only in the United States but throughout the world. The assumption of its presidency by a person himself deaf announced to the world that deaf Americans were now a mature minority (Van Cleve and Crouch, 172).Deaf people were throwing off the oppression of the hearing world by demanding that their university have someone from their community at its helm. Jankowski (Deaf Empowerment; A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict) studied the Gallaudet protest within the framework of a metaphor. She found a recurring theme during the DPN protest to be Gallaudet as “plantation”—which metaphorically refers to deaf persons as slaves trying to break free from the grip of the dominant mastery of the hearing world—and she parallels the civil rights movement of African Americans in the 1960s. As an example, Gallaudet was referred to as the “Selma of the Deaf” during the protest, and protest signs used the language of Martin Luther King such as “we still have a dream.” For deaf Americans, the presidency of Gallaudet became a symbol of hope for the future. As Jankowski attests:deaf people perceived themselves as possessing the ability to manage their own kind, pointing to black-managed organization, women-managed organizations, etc., struggling for that same right. They argued that it was a fight for their basic human rights, a struggle to free themselves, to release the hold their ‘masters’ held on them. (“A Metaphorical Analysis”)The creators of the Switched at Birth episode wanted to ensure of these emotions, as well as historical and cultural references, were prevalent in the modern-day, all-ASL episode, titled Uprising. That show therefore wanted to represent both the 1988 DPN protest as well as a current issue in the US—the closing of deaf schools (Anderson). The storyline focuses on the deaf students at the fictitious Carlton School for the Deaf seizing one of the school buildings to stage a protest because the school board has decided to shut down the school and mainstream the deaf students into hearing schools. When the deaf students try to come up with a list of demands, conflicts arise about what the demands should be and whether a pilot program—allowing hearing kids who sign to attend the deaf school—should remain.This show accomplished multiple things with its reach into Deaf history and identity, but it also did something technologically unique for the modern world—it made people pay attention. Because captioning translated the sign language for viewers, Lizzy Weiss, the creator of the series, said, “Every single viewer—deaf or hearing—was forced to put away their phones and iPads and anything else distracting … and focus … you had to read … you couldn’t do anything else. And that made you get into it more. It drew you in” (Stelter). The point, Weiss said, “was about revealing something new to the viewer—what does it feel like to be an outsider? What does it feel like to have to read and focus for an entire episode, like deaf viewers do all the time?” (Stelter). As one deaf reviewer of the Uprising episode said, “For an hour, welcome to our world! A world that’s inconvenient, but one most of us wouldn’t leave if offered a magic pill” (DR_Staff).This episode, more than any other, afforded hearing television viewers an experience perhaps similar to deaf viewers. The New York Times reported that “Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers commented by the thousands after the show, with many saying in effect, “Yes! That’s what it feels like” (Stelter).Continued ResonancesWhat is also unique about the episode is that in teaching the hearing viewers more about the Deaf community, it also reinforced Deaf community pride and even taught young deaf people a bit of their own history. The Deaf community and Gallaudet were very pleased with their history showing up on a television show—the university produced a 30-second commercial which aired within the episode, and held viewing parties. Gallaudet also forwarded the 35 pages of Facebook comments they’d received about the episode to ABC Family and Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz said of the episode (Yahr), “Over the past 25 years, [DPN] has symbolised self-determination and empowerment for deaf and hard of hearing people around the world”. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) also lauded the episode, describing it as “phenomenal and groundbreaking, saying the situation is very real to us” (Stelter)—NAD had been vocally against budget cuts and closings of US deaf schools.Deaf individuals all over the Internet and social media also spoke out about the episode, with overwhelmingly favourable opinions. Deaf blogger Amy Cohen Efron, who participated in 1988′s DPN movement, said that DPN was “a turning point of my life, forcing me to re-examine my own personal identity, and develop self-determinism as a Deaf person” and led to her becoming an activist.When she watched the Uprising episode, she said the symbolic and historical representations in the show resonated with her. In the episode, a huge sign is unfurled on the side of the Carlton School for the Deaf with a girl with a fist in the air under the slogan “Take Back Carlton.” During the DPN protest, the deaf student protesters unfurled a sign that said “Deaf President Now” with the US Capitol in the background; this image has become an iconic symbol of modern Deaf culture. Efron says the image in the television episode was much more militant than the actual DPN sign. However, it could be argued that society now sees the Deaf community as much more militant because of the DPN protest, and that the imagery in the Uprising episode played into that connection. Efron also acknowledged the episode’s strong nod to the Gallaudet student protestors who defied the hearing community’s expectations by practising civil disobedience. As Efron explained, “Society expected that the Deaf people are submissive and accept to whatever decision done by the majority without any of our input and/or participation in the process.”She also argues that the episode educated more than just the hearing community. In addition to DPN, Uprising was filled with other references to Deaf history. For example a glass door to the room at Carlton was covered with posters about people like Helen Keller and Jean-Ferdinand Berthier, a deaf educator in 19th century France who promoted the concept of deaf identity and culture—Efron says most people in the Deaf community have never heard of him. She also claims that the younger Deaf community may also not be aware of the 1988 DPN protest—“It was not in high school textbooks available for students. Many deaf and hard of hearing students are mainstreamed and they have not the slightest idea about the DPN movement, even about the Deaf Community’s ongoing fight against discrimination, prejudice and oppression, along with our victories”.Long before the Uprising episode aired, the Deaf community had been watching Switched at Birth carefully to make sure Deaf culture was accurately represented. Throughout season 3 David Martin created weekly videos in sign language that were an ASL/Deaf cultural analysis of Switched at Birth. He highlighted content he liked and signs that were incorrect, a kind of a Deaf culture/ASL fact checker. From the Uprising episode, he said he thought this quote from Marlee Matlin’s character said it all, “Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes they will never understand” (Martin). That succinctly states what the all-ASL episode was trying to capture—creating an awareness of Deaf people’s cultural experience and their oppression in hearing society.Even a deaf person who was an early critic of Switched at Birth because of the hiring of Katie Leclerc and the use of SimCom admitted he was impressed with the all-ASL episode (Grushkin):all too often, we see media accounts of Deaf people which play into our society’s perceptions of Deaf people: as helpless, handicapped individuals who are in need of fixes such as cochlear implants in order to “restore” us to society. Almost never do we see accounts of Deaf people as healthy, capable individuals who live ordinary, successful lives without necessarily conforming to the Hearing ‘script’ for how we should be. And important issues such as language rights or school closings are too often virtually ignored by the general media.In addition to the episode being widely discussed within the Deaf community, the mainstream news media also covered Uprising intensely, seeing it as a meaningful cultural moment, not just for the Deaf community but for popular culture in general. Lacob wrote that he realises that hearing viewers probably won’t understand what it means to be a deaf person in modern America, but he believes that the episodeposits that there are moments of understanding, commonalities, and potential bridge-building between these two communities. And the desire for understanding is the first step toward a more inclusive and broad-minded future.He continues:the significance of this moment can’t be undervalued, nor can the show’s rich embrace of deaf history, manifested here in the form of Gallaudet and the historical figures whose photographs and stories are papered on the windows of Carlton during the student protest. What we’re seeing on screen—within the confines of a teen drama, no less—is an engaged exploration of a culture and a civil rights movement brought to life with all of the color and passion it deserves. It may be 25 years since Gallaudet, but the dreams of those protesters haven’t faded. And they—and the ideals of identity and equality that they express—are most definitely being heard.Lacob’s analysis was praised by several Deaf people—by a Deaf graduate student who teaches a Disability in Popular Culture course and by a Gallaudet student who said, “From someone who is deaf, and not ashamed of it either, let me say right here and now: that was the most eloquent piece of writing by someone hearing I have ever seen” (Emma72). The power of the Uprising episode illustrated a political space where “groups actively fuse and blend their culture with the mainstream culture” (Foley 119, as cited in Chang 3). Switched at Birth—specifically the Uprising episode—has indeed fused Deaf culture and ASL into a place in mainstream television culture.ReferencesABC Family. “Switched at Birth Deaf Actor Search.” Facebook (2010). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedSearch>.———. “This Is Not a Pipe.” Switched at Birth. Pilot episode. 6 June 2011. <http://freeform.go.com/shows/switched-at-birth>.———. “Not Hearing Loss, Deaf Gain.” Switched at Birth. YouTube video, 11 Feb. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W604uSkrk>.Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “Talking Diversity: ABC Family’s Switched at Birth.” Emmys.com (Feb. 2012). <http://www.emmys.com/content/webcast-talking-diversity-abc-familys-switched-birth>.Anderson, G. “‘Switched at Birth’ Celebrates 25th Anniversary of ‘Deaf President Now’.” Pop-topia (5 Mar. 2013). <http://www.pop-topia.com/switched-at-birth-celebrates-25th-anniversary-of-deaf-president-now/>.Barney, C. “’Switched at Birth’ Another Winner for ABC Family.” Contra Costa News (29 June 2011). <http://www.mercurynews.com/tv/ci_18369762>.Bibel, S. “‘Switched at Birth’s Katie LeClerc Is Proud to Represent the Deaf Community.” Xfinity TV blog (20 June 2011). <http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/2011/06/20/switched-at-births-katie-leclerc-is-proud-to-represent-the-deaf-community/>.Chang, H. “Re-Examining the Rhetoric of the ‘Cultural Border’.” Essay presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Dec. 1988.DR_Staff. “Switched at Birth: How #TakeBackCarlton Made History.” deafReview (6 Mar. 2013). <http://deafreview.com/deafreview-news/switched-at-birth-how-takebackcarlton-made-history/>.Efron, Amy Cohen. “Switched At Birth: Uprising – Deaf Adult’s Commentary.” Deaf World as I See It (Mar. 2013). <http://www.deafeyeseeit.com/2013/03/05/sabcommentary/>.Emma72. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” Comment. The Daily Beast (28 Feb. 2013). <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Fiveash, Chad. Personal interview. 17 Jan. 2014.Gallaudet University. “The Issues.” Deaf President Now (2013). <http://www.gallaudet.edu/dpn_home/issues.html>.Grushkin, D. “A Cultural Review. ASL Challenged.” Switched at Birth Facebook page. Facebook (2013). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedatBirth/posts/508748905835658>.Jankowski, K.A. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1997.———. “A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict at the Gallaudet Protest.” Unpublished seminar paper presented at the University of Maryland, 1990.Lacob, J. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” The Daily Beast 28 Feb. 2013. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Martin, D. “Switched at Birth Season 2 Episode 9 ‘Uprising’ ASL/Deaf Cultural Analysis.” David Martin YouTube channel (6 Mar. 2013). <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA0vqCysoVU>.Nielson, R. “Petitioned ABC Family and the ‘Switched at Birth’ Series, Create Responsible, Accurate, and Family-Oriented TV Programming.” Change.org (2011). <http://www.change.org/p/abc-family-and-the-switched-at-birth-series-create-responsible-accurate-and-family-oriented-tv-programming>.Orangejack. “Details about Katie Leclerc’s Hearing Loss.” My ASL Journey Blog (29 June 2011). <http://asl.orangejack.com/details-about-katie-leclercs-hearing-loss>.Paz, G. “Casting Call: Open Auditions for Switched at Birth by ABC Family.” Series & TV (3 Oct. 2010). <http://seriesandtv.com/casting-call-open-auditions-for-switched-at-birth-by-abc-family/4034>.Ryan, Maureen. “‘Switched at Birth’ Season 1.5 Has More Drama and Subversive Soapiness.” The Huffington Post (31 Aug. 2012). <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/switched-at-birth-season-1_b_1844957.html>.Stelter, B. “Teaching Viewers to Hear with Their Eyes Only.” The New York Times 8 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/arts/television/teaching-viewers-to-hear-the-tv-with-eyes-only.html>.Van Cleve, J.V., and B.A. Crouch. A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America. DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1989.Yahr, E. “Gallaudet University Uses All-Sign Language Episode of ‘Switched at Birth’ to Air New Commercial.” The Washington Post 3 Mar. 2013 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/gallaudet-university-uses-all-sign-language-episode-of-switched-at-birth-to-air-new-commercial/2013/03/04/0017a45a-8508-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_blog.html>.
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Quinn, Karina. "The Body That Read the Laugh: Cixous, Kristeva, and Mothers Writing Mothers." M/C Journal 15, no. 4 (August 2, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.492.
Abstract:
The first time I read Hélène Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa I swooned. I wanted to write the whole thing out, large, and black, and pin it across an entire wall. I was 32 and vulnerable around polemic texts (I was always copying out quotes and sticking them to my walls, trying to hold onto meaning, unable to let the writing I read slip out and away). You must "write your self, your body must be heard" (Cixous 880), I read, as if for the hundredth time, even though it was the first. Those decades old words had an echoing, a resonance to them, as if each person who had read them had left their own mnemonic mark there, so that by the time they reached me, they struck, immediately, at my core (not the heart or the spine, or even the gut, but somewhere stickier; some pulsing place in amongst my organs, somewhere not touched, a space forgotten). The body that read The Laugh was so big its knees had trouble lifting it from chairs (“more body, hence more writing”, Cixous 886), and was soon to have its gallbladder taken. Its polycystic ovaries dreamed, lumpily and without much hope, of zygotes. The body that read The Laugh was a wobbling thing, sheathed in fat (as if this could protect it), with a yearning for sveltness, for muscle, for strength. Cixous sang through its cells, and called it to itself. The body that read The Laugh wrote itself back. It spoke about dungeons, and walls that had collected teenaged fists, and needles that turned it somnambulant and concave and warm until it was not. It wrote trauma in short and staggering sentences (out, get it out) as if narrative could save it from a fat-laden and static decline. Text leaked from tissue and bone, out through fingers and onto the page, and in increments so small I did not notice them, the body took its place. I was, all-of-a-sudden, more than my head. And then the body that read The Laugh performed the ultimate coup, and conceived.The body wrote then about its own birth, and the birth of its mother, and when its own children were born, of course, of course, about them. “Oral drive, anal drive, vocal drive–all these drives are our strengths, and among them is the gestation drive–all just like the desire to write: a desire to live self from within, a desire for the swollen belly, for language, for blood” (Cixous 891). The fat was gone, and in its place this other tissue, that later would be he. What I know now is that the body gets what the body wants. What I know now is that the body will tell its story, because if you “censor the body [… then] you censor breath and speech at the same time” (Cixous 880).I am trying to find a beginning. Because where is the place where I start? I was never a twinkle in my mother’s eye. It was the seventies. She was 22 and then 23–there was nothing planned about me. Her eyes a flinty green, hair long and straight. When I think of her then I remember this photo: black and white on the thick photo paper that is hard to get now. No shiny oblong spat from a machine, this paper was pulled in and out of three chemical trays and hung, dripping, in a dark red room to show me a woman in a long white t-shirt and nothing else. She stares straight out at me. On the shirt is a women’s symbol with a fist in the middle of it. Do you know the one? It might have been purple (the symbol I mean). When I think of her then I see her David Bowie teeth, the ones she hated, and a packet of Drum tobacco with Tally-Hos tucked inside, and some of the scars on her forearms, but not all of them, not yet. I can imagine her pregnant with me, the slow gait, that fleshy weight dragging at her spine and pelvis. She told me the story of my birth every year on my birthday. She remembers what day of the week the contractions started. The story is told with a kind of glory in the detail, with a relishing of small facts. I do the same with my children now. I was delivered by forceps. The dent in my skull, up above my right ear, was a party trick when I was a teenager, and an annoyance when I wanted to shave my head down to the bone at 18. Just before Jem was born, I discovered a second dent behind my left ear. My skull holds the footprint of those silver clamps. My bones say here, and here, this is where I was pulled from you. I have seen babies being born this way. They don’t slide out all sealish and purple and slippy. They are pulled. The person holding the forcep handles uses their whole body weight to yank that baby out. It makes me squirm, all that pulling, those tiny neck bones concertinaing out, the silver scoops sinking into the skull and leaving prints, like a warm spoon in dough. The urgency of separation, of the need to make two things from one. After Jem was born he lay on my chest for hours. As the placenta was birthed he weed on me. I felt the warm trickle down my side and was glad. There was nothing so right as my naked body making a bed for his. I lay in a pool of wet (blood and lichor and Jem’s little wee) and the midwives pushed towels under me so I wouldn’t get cold. He sucked. White waffle weave blankets over both of us. That bloody nest. I lay in it and rested my free hand on his vernix covered back; the softest thing I had ever touched. We basked in the warm wet. We basked. How do I sew theory into this writing? Julia Kristeva especially, whose Stabat Mater describes those early moments of holding the one who was inside and then out so perfectly that I am left silent. The smell of milk, dew-drenched greenery, sour and clear, a memory of wind, of air, of seaweed (as if a body lived without waste): it glides under my skin, not stopping at the mouth or nose but caressing my veins, and stripping the skin from the bones fills me like a balloon full of ozone and I plant my feet firmly on the ground in order to carry him, safe, stable, unuprootable, while he dances in my neck, floats with my hair, looks right and left for a soft shoulder, “slips on the breast, swingles, silver vivid blossom of my belly” and finally flies up from my navel in his dream, borne by my hands. My son (Kristeva, Stabat Mater 141). Is theory more important than this? The smell of milk (dried, it is soursweet and will draw any baby to you, nuzzling and mewling), which resides alongside the Virgin Mother and the semiotics of milk and tears. The language of fluid. While the rest of this writing, the stories not of mothers and babies, but one mother and one baby, came out smooth and fast, as soon as I see or hear or write that word, theory, I slow. I am concerned with the placement of things. I do not have the sense of being free. But if there’s anything that should come from this vain attempt to answer Cixous, to “write your self. Your body must be heard” (880), it should be that freedom and theory, boundary-lessness, is where I reside. If anything should come from this, it is the knowing that theory is the most creative pursuit, and that creativity will always speak to theory. There are fewer divisions than any of us realise, and the leakiness of bodies, of this body, will get me there. The smell of this page is of lichor; a clean but heady smell, thick with old cells and a foetus’s breath. The smell of this page is of blood and saliva and milk mixed (the colour like rotten strawberries or the soaked pad at the bottom of your tray of supermarket mince). It is a smell that you will secretly savour, breathe deeply, and then long for lemon zest or the sharpness of coffee beans to send away that angelic fug. That milk and tears have a language of their own is undeniable. Kristeva says they are “metaphors of non-language, of a ‘semiotic’ that does not coincide with linguistic communication” (Stabat Mater 143) but what I know is that these fluids were the first language for my children. Were they the first language for me? Because “it must be true: babies drink language along with the breastmilk: Curling up over their tongues while they take siestas–Mots au lait, verbae cum lacta, palabros con leche” (Wasserman quoted in Giles 223). The enduring picture I have of myself as an infant is of a baby who didn’t cry, but my mother will tell you a different story, in the way that all of us do. She will tell you I didn’t smile until I was five months old (Soli and Jem were both beaming at three months). Born six weeks premature, my muscles took longer to find their place, to assemble themselves under my skin. She will tell you I screamed in the night, because all babies do. Is this non-language? Jem was unintelligible much of the time. I felt as if I was holding a puzzle. Three o’clock in the morning, having tried breastfeeds, a bath with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, bouncing him in a baby sling on the fitball (wedged into a corner so that if I nodded off I would hopefully swoon backwards, and the wall would wake me), walking him around and around while rocking and singing, then breastfeeding again, and still he did not sleep, and still he cried and clawed at my cheeks and shoulders and wrists and writhed; I could not guess at what it was he needed. I had never been less concerned with the self that was me. I was all breasts and milk and a craving for barbecued chicken and watermelon at three in the morning because he was drinking every ounce of energy I had. I was arms and a voice. I was food. And then I learnt other things; about let downs and waking up in pools of the stuff. Wet. Everywhere. “Lactating bodies tend towards anarchy” (Bartlett 163). Any body will tend towards anarchy – there is so much to keep in – but there are only so many openings a person can keep track of, and breastfeeding meant a kind of levelling up, meant I was as far from clean and proper as I possibly could be (Kristeva, Powers of Horror 72).In the nights I was not alone. Caren could not breastfeed him, but could do everything else, and never said I have to work tomorrow, because she knew I was working too. During waking hours I watched him constantly for those mystical tired signs, which often were hungry signs, which quickly became overtired signs. There was no figuring it out. But Soli, with Soli, I knew. The language of babies had been sung into my bones. There is a grammar in crying, a calling out and telling, a way of knowing that is older than I’ll ever be. Those tiny bodies are brimming with semiotics. Knees pulled up is belly ache, arching is tired, a look to the side I-want-that-take-me-there-not-there. There. Curling in, the whole of him, is don’t-look-at-me-now-hands-away. Now he is one he uses his hands to tell me what he wants. Sign language because I sign and so, then, does he, but also an emphatic placing of my hands on his body or toys, utensils, swings, things. In the early hours of a Wednesday morning I tried to stroke his head, to close his wide-open eyes with my fingertips. He grabbed my hand and moved it to his chest before I could alight on the bridge of his nose. And yesterday he raised his arm into the air, then got my hand and placed it into his raised hand, then stood, and led me down to the laundry to play with the dustpan and broom. His body, literally, speaks.This is the language of mothers and babies. It is laid down in the darkest part of the night. Laid down like memory, like dreams, stitched into tiredness and circled with dread adrenalin and fear. It will never stop. That baby will cry and I will stare owl-eyed into the dark and bend my cracking knees (don’t shake the baby it will only make it worse don’t shake don’t). These babies will grow into children and then adults who will never remember those screaming nights, cots like cages, a stuffed toy pushed on them as if it could replace the warmth of skin and breath (please, please, little bear, replace the warmth of skin and breath). I will never remember it, but she will. They will never remember it, but we will. Kristeva says too that mothers are in a “catastrophe of identity which plunges the proper Name into that ‘unnameable’ that somehow involves our imaginary representations of femininity, non-language, or the body” (Stabat Mater 134). A catastrophe of identity. The me and the not-me. In the night, with a wrapped baby and aching biceps, the I-was batting quietly at the I-am. The I-am is all body. Arms to hold and bathe and change him, milk to feed him, a voice to sing and soothe him. The I-was is a different beast, made of words and books, uninterrupted conversation and the kind of self-obsession and autonomy I didn’t know existed until it was gone. Old friends stopped asking me about my day. They asked Caren, who had been at work, but not me. It did not matter that she was a woman; in this, for most people we spoke to, she was the public and I was the private, her work mattered and mine did not. Later she would commiserate and I would fume, but while it was happening, it was near impossible to contest. A catastrophe of identity. In a day I had fed and walked and cried and sung and fed and rocked and pointed and read books with no words and rolled inane balls across the lounge room floor and washed and sung and fed. I had circled in and around while the sun traced its arc. I had waited with impatience for adult company. I had loved harder than I ever had before. I had metamorphosed and nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. A catastrophe of identity it was, but the noise and visibility that the word catastrophe invokes was entirely absent. And where was the language to describe this peeling inside out? I was burnished bright by those sleepless nights, by the requirement of the I-am. And in those nights I learned what my mother already knew. That having children is a form of grief. That we lose. But that we gain. At 23, what’s lost is possibility. She must have seen her writer’s life drilling down to nothing. She knew that Sylvia Plath had placed her head, so carefully on its pillow, in that gas filled place. No pungent metaphor, just a poet, a mother, who could not continue. I had my babies at 34 and 36. I knew some of what I would lose, but had more than I needed. My mother had started out with not enough, and so was left concave and edged with desperation as she made her way through inner-city Sydney’s grime, her children singing from behind her wait for me, wait for me, Mama please wait for me, I’m going just as fast as I can.Nothing could be more ‘normal’ than that a maternal image should establish itself on the site of that tempered anguish known as love. No one is spared. Except perhaps the saint or the mystic, or the writer who, by force of language, can still manage nothing more than to demolish the fiction of the mother-as-love’s-mainstay and to identify with love as it really is: a fire of tongues, an escape from representation (Kristeva, Stabat Mater 145).We transformed, she and I. She hoped to make herself new with children. A writer born of writers, the growing and birthing of our tiny bodies forced her to place pen to paper, to fight to write. She carved a place for herself with words but it kept collapsing in on her. My father’s bi-polar rages, his scrubbing evil spirits from the soles of her shoes in the middle of the night, wore her down, and soon she inhabited that maternal image anyway, in spite of all her attempts to side step it. The mad mother, the single mother, the sad mother. And yes I remember those mothers. But I also remember her holding me so hard sometimes I couldn’t breathe properly, and that some nights when I couldn’t sleep she had warm eyes and made chamomile tea, and that she called me angel. A fire of tongues, but even she, with her words, couldn’t escape from representation. I am a writer born of writers born of writers (triply blessed or cursed with text). In my scramble to not be mad or bad or sad, I still could not escape the maternal image. More days than I can count I lay under my babies wishing I could be somewhere, anywhere else, but they needed to sleep or feed or be. With me. Held captive by the need to be a good mother, to be the best mother, no saint or mystic presenting itself, all I could do was write. Whole poems sprang unbidden and complete from my pen. My love for my children, that fire of tongues, was demolishing me, and the only way through was to inhabit this vessel of text, to imbibe the language of bodies and tears and night, and make from it my boat.Those children wrote my body in the night. They taught me about desire, that unbounded scribbling thing that will not be bound by subjectivity, by me. They taught me that “the body is literally written on, inscribed, by desire and signification” (Grosz 60), and every morning I woke with ashen bones and poetry aching out through my pores, with my body writing me.This Mother ThingI maintain that I do not have to leavethe house at nightall leathery and eyelinered,all booted up and raw.I maintain that I do not miss thosesmoky rooms (wait that’s not allowed any more)where we strut and, without looking,compare tattoos.Because two years ago I had you.You with your blonde hair shining, your eyes like a creek after rain, that veinthat’s so blue on the side of your small nosethat people think you’ve been bruised.Because two years ago you cameout of me and landed here and grew. There is no going out. We (she and me) washand cook and wash and clean and love.This mother thing is the making of me but I missthose pulsing rooms,the feel of all of you pressing in onall of me.This mother thing is the making of me. And in text, in poetry, I find my home. “You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing” (Cixous 885). The mother-body writes herself, and is made new. The mother-body writes her own mother, and knows she was always-already here. The mother-body births, and breastfeeds, and turns to me in the aching night and says this: the Medusa? The Medusa is me.ReferencesBartlett, Alison. Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.Cixous, Hélène, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen (Trans.). "The Laugh of the Medusa." Signs 1.4 (1976): 875-93. Giles, Fiona. Fresh Milk. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994.Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez (Trans.) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.Kristeva, Julia, and Arthur Goldhammer (Trans.). "Stabat Mater." Poetics Today 6.1-2 (1985): 133-52.
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Kerasidou, Xaroula (Charalampia). "Regressive Augmentation: Investigating Ubicomp’s Romantic Promises." M/C Journal 16, no. 6 (November 7, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.733.
Abstract:
Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods. Mark Weiser on ubiquitous computing (21st Century Computer 104) In 2007, a forum entitled HCI 2020: Human Values in a Digital Age sought to address the questions: What will our world be like in 2020? Digital technologies will continue to proliferate, enabling ever more ways of changing how we live. But will such developments improve the quality of life, empower us, and make us feel safer, happier and more connected? Or will living with technology make it more tiresome, frustrating, angst-ridden, and security-driven? What will it mean to be human when everything we do is supported or augmented by technology? (Harper et al. 10) The forum came as a response to, what many call, post-PC technological developments; developments that seek to engulf our lives in digital technologies which in their various forms are meant to support and augment our everyday lives. One of these developments has been the project of ubiquitous computing along with its kin project, tangible computing. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) made its appearance in the late 1980s in the labs of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as the “third wave” in computing, following those of the mainframe and personal computing (Weiser, Open House 2). Mark Weiser, who coined the term, along with his collaborators at Xerox PARC, envisioned a “new technological paradigm” which would leave behind the traditional one-to-one relationship between human and computer, and spread computation “ubiquitously, but invisibly, throughout the environment” (Weiser, Gold and Brown 693). Since then, the field has grown and now counts several peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and academic and industrial research centres around the world, which have set out to study the new “post-PC computing” under names such as Pervasive Computing, Ambient Intelligence, Tangible Computing, The Internet of Things, etc. Instead of providing a comprehensive account of all the different ubicomp incarnations, this paper seeks to focus on the early projects and writings of some of ubicomp’s most prominent figures and tease out, as a way of critique, the origins of some of its romantic promises. From the outset, ubiquitous computing was heavily informed by a human-centred approach that sought to shift the focus from the personal computer back to its users. On the grounds that the PC has dominated the technological landscape at the expense of its human counterparts, ubiquitous computing promised a different human-machine interaction, with “machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs” (104, my italics) placing the two in opposite and antagonistic terrains. The problem comes about in the form of interaction between people and machines … So when the two have to meet, which side should dominate? In the past, it has been the machine that dominates. In the future, it should be the human. (Norman 140) Within these early ubicomp discourses, the computer came to embody a technological menace, the machine that threatened the liberal humanist value of being free and in control. For example, in 1999 in a book that was characterized as “the bible of ‘post-PC’ thinking” by Business Week, Donald Norman exclaimed: we have let ourselves to be trapped. … I don’t want to be controlled by a technology. I just want to get on with my life, … So down with PC’s; down with computers. All they do is complicate our lives. (72) And we read on the website of MIT’s first ubicomp project Oxygen: For over forty years, computation has centered about machines, not people. We have catered to expensive computers, pampering them in air-conditioned rooms or carrying them around with us. Purporting to serve us, they have actually forced us to serve them. Ubiquitous computing then, in its early incarnations, was presented as the solution; the human-centred, somewhat natural approach, which would shift the emphasis away from the machine and bring control back to its legitimate owner, the liberal autonomous human subject, becoming the facilitator of our apparently threatened humanness. Its promise? An early promise of regressive augmentation, I would say, since it promised to augment our lives, not by changing them, but by returning us to a past, better world that the alienating PC has supposedly displaced, enabling us to “have more time to be more fully human” (Weiser and Brown). And it sought to achieve this through the key characteristic of invisibility, which was based on the paradox that while more and more computers will permeate our lives, they will effectively disappear. Ubicomp’s Early Romantic Promises The question of how we can make computers disappear has been addressed in computer research in various ways. One of the earliest and most prominent of these is the approach, which focuses on the physicality of the world seeking to build tangible interfaces. One of the main advocates of this approach is MIT’s Tangible Media Group, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii. The group has been working on their vision, which they call “Tangible Bits,” for almost two decades now, and in 2009 they were awarded the “Lasting Impact Award” at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) for their metaDesk platform, presented in 1997 (fig.1), which explores the coupling of everyday physical objects with digital information (Ullmer and Ishii). Also, in 2004 in a special paper titled “Bottles: A Transparent Interface as a Tribute to Mark Weiser”, Ishii presented once again an early project he and his group developed in 1999, and for which they were personally commented by Weiser himself. According to Ishii, bottles (fig. 2)—a system which comprises three glass bottles “filled with music” each representing a different musical instrument, placed on a Plexiglas “stage” and controlled by their physical manipulation (moving, opening or closing them)—no less, “illustrates Mark Weiser’s vision of the transparent (or invisible) interface that weaves itself into the fabric of everyday life” (1299). Figure 1: metaDesk platform (MIT Tangible Media Group) Figure 2: musicBottles (MIT Tangible Media Group) Tangible computing was based on the premise that we inhabit two worlds: the physical world and cyberspace, or as Ishii and Ullmer put it, the world of atoms and the world of bits claiming that there is gap between these two worlds that left us “torn between these parallel but disjoint spaces” (1). This agreed with Weiser’s argument that cyberspace, and specifically the computer, has taken centre stage leaving the real world—the real people, the real interactions—in the background and neglected. Tangible computing then sought to address this problem by "bridging the gaps between both cyberspace and the physical environment" (1). As Ishii and Ullmer wrote in 1997: The aim of our research is to show concrete ways to move beyond the current dominant model of GUI [Graphic User Interface] bound to computers with a flat rectangular display, windows, a mouse, and a keyboard. To make computing truly ubiquitous and invisible, we seek to establish a new type of HCI that we call "Tangible User Interfaces" (TUIs). TUIs will augment the real physical world by coupling digital information to everyday physical objects and environments. (2) “Our intention is to take advantage of natural physical affordances to achieve a heightened legibility and seamlessness of interaction between people and information” (2). In his earlier work computer scientist Paul Dourish turned to phenomenology and the concept of embodiment in order to develop an understanding of interaction as embodied. This was prior to his recent work with cultural anthropologist Bell where they examined the motivating mythology of ubiquitous computing along with the messiness of its lived experience (Dourish and Bell). Dourish, in this earlier work observed that one of the common critical features early tangible and ubiquitous computing shared is that “they both attempt to exploit our natural familiarity with the everyday environment and our highly developed spatial and physical skills to specialize and control how computation can be used in concert with naturalistic activities” (Context-Aware Computing 232). They then sought to exploit this familiarity in order to build natural computational interfaces that fit seamlessly within our everyday, real world (Where the Action Is 17). This idea of an existing set of natural tactile skills appears to come hand-in-hand with a nostalgic, romantic view of an innocent, simple, and long gone world that the early projects of tangible and ubiquitous computing sought to revive; a world where the personal computer not only did not fit, an innocent world in fact displaced by the personal computer. In 1997, Ishii and Ullmer wrote about their decision to start their investigations about the “future of HCI” in the museum of the Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments at Harvard University in their efforts to get inspired by “the aesthetics and rich affordances of these historical scientific instruments” concerned that, “alas, much of this richness has been lost to the rapid flood of digital technologies” (1). Elsewhere Ishii explained that the origin of his idea to design a bottle interface began with the concept of a “weather forecast bottle;” an idea he intended to develop as a present for his mother. “Upon opening the weather bottle, she would be greeted by the sound of singing birds if the next day’s weather was forecasted to be clear” (1300). Here, we are introduced to a nice elderly lady who has opened thousands of bottles while cooking for her family in her kitchen. This senior lady; who is made to embody the symbolic alignment between woman, the domestic and nature (see Soper, Rose, Plumwood); “has never clicked a mouse, typed a URL, nor booted a computer in her life” (Ishii 1300). Instead, “my mother simply wanted to know the following day’s weather forecast. Why should this be so complicated?” (1300, my italics). Weiser also mobilised nostalgic sentiments in order to paint a picture of what it would be to live with ubiquitous computing. So, for example, when seeking a metaphor for ubiquitous computing, he proposed “childhood – playful, a building of foundations, constant learning, a bit mysterious and quickly forgotten by adults” (Not a Desktop 8). He viewed the ubicomp home as the ideal retreat to a state of childhood; playfully reaching out to the unknown, while being securely protected and safely “at home” (Open House). These early ideas of a direct experience of the world through our bodily senses along with the romantic view of a past, simple, and better world that the computer threatened and that future technological developments promised, could point towards what Leo Marx has described as America’s “pastoral ideal”, a force that, according to Marx, is ingrained in the American view of life. Balancing between primitivism and civilisation, nature and culture, the pastoral ideal “is an embodiment of what Lovejoy calls ‘semi-primitivism’; it is located in a middle ground somewhere ‘between’, yet in a transcendent relation to, the opposing forces of civilisation and nature” (Marx 23). It appears that the early advocates of tangible and ubiquitous computing sought to strike a similar balance to the American pastoral ideal; a precarious position that managed to reconcile the disfavour and fear of Europe’s “satanic mills” with an admiration for the technological power of the Industrial Revolution, the admiration for technological development with the bucolic ideal of an unspoiled and pure nature. But how was such a balance to be achieved? How could the ideal middle state be achieved balancing the opposing forces of technological development and the dream of the return to a serene pastoral existence? According to Leo Marx, for the European colonisers, the New World was to provide the answer to this exact question (101). The American landscape was to become the terrain where old and new, nature and technology harmonically meet to form a libertarian utopia. Technology was seen as “‘naturally arising’ from the landscape as another natural ‘means of happiness’ decreed by the Creator in his design of the continent. So, far from conceding that there might be anything alien or ‘artificial’ about mechanization, technology was seen as inherent in ‘nature’; both geographic and human” (160). Since then, according to Marx, the idea of the “return” to a new Golden Age has been engrained in the American culture and it appears that it informs ubiquitous computing’s own early visions. The idea of a “naturally arising” technology which would facilitate our return to the once lost garden of security and nostalgia appears to have become a common theme within ubiquitous computing discourses making appearances across time and borders. So, for example, while in 1991 Weiser envisioned that ubiquitous technologies will make “using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods” (21st Century Computer 11), twelve years later Marzano writing about Philip’s vision of Ambient Intelligence promised that “the living space of the future could look more like that of the past than that of today” (9). While the pastoral defined nature in terms of the geographical landscape, early ubiquitous computing appeared to define nature in terms of the objects, tools and technologies that surround us and our interactions with them. While pastoral America defined itself in contradistinction to the European industrial sites and the dirty, smoky and alienating cityscapes, within those early ubiquitous computing discourses the role of the alienating force was assigned to the personal computer. And whereas the personal computer with its “grey box” was early on rejected as the modern embodiment of the European satanic mills, computation was welcomed as a “naturally arising” technological solution which would infuse the objects which, “through the ages, … are most relevant to human life—chairs, tables and beds, for instance, … the objects we can’t do without” (Marzano 9). Or else, it would infuse the—newly constructed—natural landscape fulfilling the promise that when the “world of bits” and the “world of atoms” are finally bridged, the balance will be restored. But how did these two worlds come into existence? How did bits and atoms come to occupy different and separate ontological spheres? Far from being obvious or commonsensical, the idea of the separation between bits and atoms has a history that grounds it to specific times and places, and consequently makes those early ubiquitous and tangible computing discourses part of a bigger story that, as documented (Hayles) and argued (Agre), started some time ago. The view that we inhabit the two worlds of atoms and bits (Ishii and Ullmer) was endorsed by both early ubiquitous and tangible computing, it was based on the idea of the separation of computation from its material instantiation, presenting the former as a free floating entity able to infuse our world. As we saw earlier, tangible computing took the idea of this separation as an unquestionable fact, which then served as the basis for its research goals. As we read in the home page of the Tangible Media Group’s website: Where the sea of bits meets the land of atoms, we are now facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenship in the physical and digital worlds. "Tangible Bits" is our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): we seek a seamless coupling of bits and atoms by giving physical form to digital information and computation (my italics). The idea that digital information does not have to have a physical form, but is given one in order to achieve a coupling of the two worlds, not only reinforces the view of digital information as an immaterial entity, but also places it in a privileged position against the material world. Under this light, those early ideas of augmentation or of “awakening” the physical world (Ishii and Ullmer 3) appear to be based on the idea of a passive material world that can be brought to life and become worthy and meaningful through computation, making ubiquitous computing part of a bigger and more familiar story. Restaging the dominant Cartesian dualism between the “ensouled” subject and the “soulless” material object, the latter is rendered passive, manipulable, and void of agency and, just like Ishii’s old bottles, it is performed as a mute, docile “empty vessel” ready to carry out any of its creator’s wishes; hold perfumes and beverages, play music, or tell the weather. At the same time, computation was presented as the force that could breathe life to a mundane and passive world; a free floating, somewhat natural, immaterial entity, like oxygen (hence the name of MIT’s first ubicomp project), like the air we breathe that could travel unobstructed through any medium, our everyday objects and our environment. But it is interesting to see that in those early ubicomp discourses computation’s power did not extend too far. While computation appeared to be foregrounded as a powerful, almost magic, entity able to give life and soul to a soulless material world, at the same time it was presented as controlled and muted. The computational power that would fill our lives, according to Weiser’s ubiquitous computing, would be invisible, it wouldn’t “intrude on our consciousness” (Weiser Not a Desktop 7), it would leave no traces and bring no radical changes. If anything, it would enable us to re-establish our humanness and return us to our past, natural state promising not to change us, or our lives, by introducing something new and unfamiliar, but to enable us to “remain serene and in control” (Weiser and Brown). In other words, ubiquitous computing, as this early story goes, would not be alienating, complex, obtrusive, or even noticeable, for that matter, and so, at the end of this paper, we come full circle to ubicomp’s early goals of invisibility with its underpinnings of the precarious pastoral ideal. This short paper focused on some of ubicomp’s early stories and projects and specifically on its promise to return us to a past and implicitly better world that the PC has arguably displaced. By reading these early promises of, what I call, regressive augmentation through Marx’s work on the “pastoral ideal,” this paper sought to tease out, in order to unsettle, the origins of some of ubicomp’s romantic promises. References Agre, P. E. Computation and Human Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Dourish, P. “Seeking a Foundation for Context-Aware Computing.” Human–Computer Interaction 16.2-4 (2001): 229-241. ———. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Dourish, P. and Genevieve Bell. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011.Grimes, A., and R. Harper. “Celebratory Technology: New Directions for Food Research in HCI.” In CHI’08, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM, 2008. 467-476. Harper, R., T. Rodden, Y. Rogers, and A. Sellen (eds.). Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the Year 2020. Microsoft Research, 2008. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/Cambridge/projects/hci2020/downloads/BeingHuman_A3.pdf›. Hayles, K. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Ishii, H. “Bottles: A Transparent Interface as a Tribute to Mark Weiser.” IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems 87.6 (2004): 1299-1311. Ishii, H., and B. Ullmer. “Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms.” In CHI ’97, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM, 1997. 234-241. Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. 35th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Marzano, S. “Cultural Issues in Ambient Intelligence”. In E. Aarts and S. Marzano (eds.), The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2003. Norman, D. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Oroducts Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London, New York: Routledge, 1993. Rose, G. Feminism and Geography. Cambridge: Polity, 1993. Soper, K. “Naturalised Woman and Feminized Nature.” In L. Coupe (ed.), The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2000. Ullmer, B., and H. Ishii. “The metaDESK: Models and Prototypes for Tangible User Interfaces.” In UIST '97, Proceedings of the 10th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. New York: ACM, 1997. 223-232. Weiser, M. “The Computer for the 21st Century." Scientific American 265.3 (1991): 94-104. ———. “The Open House.” ITP Review 2.0, 1996. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://makingfurnitureinteractive.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/wholehouse.pdf›. ———. “The World Is Not a Desktop." Interactions 1.1 (1994): 7-8. Weiser, M., and J.S. Brown. “The Coming Age of Calm Technology.” 1996. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.johnseelybrown.com/calmtech.pdf›. Weiser, M., R. Gold, and J.S. Brown. “The Origins of Ubiquitous Computing at PARC in the Late 80s.” Pervasive Computing 38 (1999): 693-696.
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Hearn, James (Jim) Joseph. "Percy." M/C Journal 13, no. 5 (October 16, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.284.
Abstract:
Percy was a put upon pig. Everywhere he went, others pointed and stared. It was never Percy’s intention to be the focus of gossip and innuendo, but it seemed that from the moment he was born, other animals were destined to imbue him with all sorts of various—and often competing—meanings. Percy had asked for none of it. He thought of life as a rather simple affair. What made it complex and often baffling had more to do with what his farmyard friends projected onto him rather than anything that Percy would describe as pig related. As such, Percy had decided early on in life, that he would have no truck with superstition of any kind. The horses would grimace as he walked by; the cows would shake their heads and smile as if … well, Percy could never work out what the ‘as if’ stood in for. It obviously, though, had something to do with long, long ago. Recently, Percy had begun thinking about leaving the farm. This was not a decision to be taken lightly; in fact, it required a great deal of thought and careful planning: mulling over possible outcomes, unforeseen dangers and bends in the road. All clichés of course, but so many elements of any journey are. It was in the setting off, Percy reasoned, that the clichéd nature of any journey ended, and the individual narrative began. Percy’s one friend in the farmyard was Ian the carpet snake, and like Percy, he was unpopular with the other animals. Ian was something of a philosopher and Percy enjoyed their occasional conversations, particularly when things were going poorly for him with the other animals. Which was generally often and generally for reasons that had to do with ancient history rather than any particular matter at hand. “I think that it’s my body that’s the problem”, Percy sighed to Ian as he trotted into the barn. Ian was never quick to respond, reluctant as he was to withdraw from whatever band of sunlight he had managed to slither into. “And what problem is that little pig”, Ian demurred, unable to open his eyes just yet. “Oh well, the same problem as ever I expect”, Percy replied, obviously troubled by his relationships with the other animals in the farmyard. “They’ve been at it again have they?” Ian asked. “The thing is they’re never not at it”, Percy said grumpily. “And I’m sick of trying to work out why it is that everyone has such problems with me”. “Perhaps if you weren’t the only pig in the farmyard …” “But that’s just it, I am the only pig in the farmyard and it’s becoming intolerable. I have no understanding as to why, for the horses, I am an utter disgrace: to the cows, I’m something to pity; the birds see me as an object of ridicule and the chickens … are so arrogant toward me. Chickens! For goodness sake!” “And how is all this related to your body?” Ian asked. “Well,” Percy began, “I can’t help but think I’m somehow flawed. It’s as if my body is a joke of some kind. And it’s a joke that everyone else seems to understand but me. And no one, and I do mean no one, is prepared to tell me the joke to my face. If only I could understand why they feel so strongly about my very presence I might be able to argue my case, assure them that I am somehow different to the pigs they have in their minds”. “Mmm”, Ian muttered as he slithered into a coil and out of his sunlight. This was always the moment of commitment with Ian; the moment that signified a conversation was becoming interesting to the point where he might be encouraged to say something deep and wise; profound even. “Well, they do have a point, Percy”, Ian said. “You are enormously fat, your legs are very short, and your tail curls in disgrace at the size of your behind”. “But that’s just who I am”, squealed Percy in despair. “I can’t help the form my body takes”. Percy was close to tears, his frustration beginning to overwhelm him. “Do not cry or I will not talk to you”, Ian demanded, suddenly forceful. “Oh not you too. Can’t you see I’m distressed? My body”, Percy began, “is constantly hungry. It gives me no relief and my legs … can’t you see they have to be this way in order to support my frame? Being short means my legs are very powerful, they can move me about at more than a fair clip. It’s not right that the horses belittle me. It’s as if all the other animals think I’ve somehow asked to be born this way. As if … no one can see my good points”. “And tell me, Percy”, Ian asked kindly, “what are your good points?” “Well”, Percy replied, “I’m not fussy. I’m very pragmatic. I’m not a dreamer like the cows, or vain like the horses. Nor am I unable to commit like the birds. I have a great capacity to enlighten others as to the possibilities of pleasure and”, Percy continued, a little less sure, “I am loyal and kind”. “Mmm”, Ian demurred once more, “and yet the others are still unkind to you”. “The grasshoppers say that it’s a hangover from the dark ages; that no one actually remembers why it is they should hate me … it’s just that everyone’s sure that is what they’re supposed to do”. “Perhaps,” began Ian, “If you ate a little less?” “But you don’t understand either”, Percy cried. “You’re meant to be my friend, Ian. My one and only friend and yet you criticise me just like they do. As if … as if, my very pig-ness offends you”. “Well I do know how you feel if that is any consolation, Percy. Trust me when I say that my fan club are not people you want to hang out with. Honestly, snake lovers are troubled folk. They simple don’t understand a snake’s desire to be left alone”. “Well I don’t want to be left alone. I want to belong!” shouted Percy. So loud did Percy shout, that the horses standing outside the barn overheard him. And the idea of Percy wanting to belong made them laugh and neigh so loudly that the noise threatened to bring the humans over. Which was never a good idea. Except at feeding time. “Oh, Percy”, Ian sighed, as the horses cantered off shaking their manes in the breeze. “You can’t escape your identity. You think I want to be a carpet snake? Well, I don’t. I want to be an eagle. I’d do anything to be an eagle but that’s just not going to happen. One has to accept ones fate. And unfortunately for you, what being a pig means in this particular moment, is … well”, Ian said rationally, “rather a sad thing. But I will say this, being a pig is better than being a rat. Rats are foul and nasty creatures and you will not find anyone to disagree”. “Except perhaps a rat”, Percy exclaimed. “Oh, they know what foul creatures they are alright”, Ian corrected Percy. “But only because everyone thinks poorly of them”, Percy implored. “Such reasons exist for good … reason”, Ian stated. “Well I’m sure that the reason there are so many rats is because they know they have to stick together. They know the world is against them through no fault of their own”. “For goodness sake, Percy … our identities are put upon us all. Depending upon who our parents are, what time and place we are born into. Tell me this … if you were born a hundred years ago in a different country, do you think you would be the same pig? Do you think you would even speak the same language?” “Well … I don’t know. I’m sure I would have the same pig qualities”. “Indeed. But those qualities belong to your body, to your pig-ness rather than to who Percy is”. “But who Percy is … is constantly put-upon. Constantly manufactured by the other animals. It’s as if my fate was already decided when I was born; as if, just being born a pig was somehow wrong; somehow a disgraceful, offensive thing”. “Exactly”, Ian agreed enthusiastically. “Well, it’s not logical. It’s offensive and cruel”, Percy replied, suddenly agitated. “No one … not one single other animal has ever thought to address me as Percy. They simply see me as a pig. And the absolute worst thing about that is, being a pig, is somehow a dreadful thing for each and every other animal in the farmyard. No one thinks highly of pigs. Not even the dreadful fox who despite his cruel nature would never think to eat pork”. “Well … I’m sure if you lost a little weight’, Ian suggested. “Oh, you’re no help at all”, Percy exclaimed, suddenly angry. “Well I’m not going to take it anymore. I’m going to find a place where I belong. A place where other pigs like me have opportunities and the chance …”, Percy broke off, his courage suddenly deserting him. “The chance for what?” Ian enquired rather cynically. “It doesn’t matter”, Percy replied. “Oh, I think it does” Ian added. “You do, after all, need to know the reason for setting off”. “The reason I’m setting off is because I’m tired of being the only pig; the only animal in the barn who is put-upon is such vicious ways. Why have such dreadful meanings attached themselves to my pig-ness? It’s not fair. I want the chance”, Percy continued. “I want the chance to like my pig-ness, to celebrate my short, fat body and curly tail. I want to find a place where what it means to be a pig is normal rather than something obscure or somehow something to be ridiculed”. “Mmm”, Ian muttered once more as he stretched his long body into the fading band of light. “Good luck and God speed little pig”. “And I’m not a little pig!” Percy exclaimed as he trotted away from Ian, into the reassuring squalor of his pen. Later that night, after all the other animals had fallen asleep, Percy gently opened the latch that kept the gate of his pen closed, walked to the open door of the barn, then disappeared into the bright and starry night. The next morning there was much commotion in the barnyard. The farmer, upon realising that Percy had disappeared, mounted a short though thorough search of the farm. All the other animals were surprised by the farmer’s obvious concern for Percy. It was a concern that the other animals did not share. “Good thing, too”, said the horses amongst each other. “Dreadful little animal”, said the cows. “The neighbourhood is so much cleaner already”, tweetered the birds. “And less smelly”, chimed in the chickens. “Good riddance”, agreed Ian the carpet snack, who was keen to use the occasion to ingratiate himself with the other animals. “You know …” said the oldest and wisest of the cows. “To be born a pig is a punishment from the Gods”. “Yes I know”, said the horse standing next to the cow. “That pig must have killed someone in a past life”. “Yes”, replied the cow, “I never did like the way he tried to be so friendly when he was obviously such a foul creature”. “His very pig-ness disgusted me”, agreed Ian. “Still …”, replied the old cow somewhat suspiciously to Ian. “You did talk with him from time to time”. “It wasn’t that I liked talking to the pig”, corrected Ian. “The pig would simply trot over to where I was … on those dreadful, stumpy, trotting legs and talk and talk and talk. Last time he did so I was asleep; I didn’t wake up until he’d uttered his last sentence”. “You were giggling like a couple of school children yesterday”, corrected the horse. “It wasn’t me…”, Ian replied, attempting to correct the impression that Percy and he were somehow friends. “If you really want to know what happened to the pig last night … I ate him”. The other animals were suddenly dumbfounded. “Liar”, said the old cow. “Yes, liar”, agreed the horse. “It’s not a lie. I always hated that pig and last night …. When everyone else was asleep, I ate the pig”, Ian lied. “You’re a liar, snake. I saw the pig leave early this morning. He opened the latch on the gate to his pen and walked out the barn door without so much as a backwards glance”. Ian looked around at the other animals. Then he slithered away. “That damn snake is just as bad as the pig”, snorted horse. “Worse”, suggested the wise old cow. “You know snakes are compelled to live their lives so close to the ground because the Gods cut off all their legs after one of them lied about what he was capable of”. “Sounds just like that horrible carpet snake”, sneered chicken. “And carpet snakes are called carpet snakes because they came from that dreadful country over the hill that makes the rugs that humans love so much”. “Dreadful, dreadful, slithering snake”, hissed the blackest of the horses. Percy trotted merrily in the bright morning sun, just off to the side of the dirt road. He found that constantly travelling suited him. The whole idea of living in a pen was actually not something he ever wanted to return to. In fact, despite his initial fears when he set off the night before, Percy decided there was very little he liked about his past life. Now that he had his freedom he was determined to keep it; treasure it like the most precious of things. All the animals had decided at a hastily convened meeting that Ian the carpet snake had to be disposed of. Everyone agreed that the farm would be a much friendlier place without both the pig and the snake. “This is our one chance”, horse said very slowly and seriously. “If we don’t grasp it now, we will be forever condemned to share our farm with creatures who none of us like”. “It is a rare opportunity”, mused the cow. “Well it simply has to happen”, said the chicken haughtily. “What we need”, suggested the horse. “Is a plan”. “Yes”, agreed the cow. “Well I already have a plan”, said the bird from up in the tree. “And what’s that?” asked the horse. “Well, because the snake always eats all the mice before any of us birds have a chance to indulge, our plan is to poison a mice and then … just before it dies, place it near the carpet snake so he eats it and in so doing, poisons himself”. The other animals all looked up at the two birds on the branch above their heads. “You’ve really thought about this”, horse said. “Well, of course we have”, fumed the other bird. “Why just yesterday I was swooping down on a little mouse and just as I reached out to grab it in my claws, that evil snake swooped from nowhere and swallowed it whole”. “The snake is very greedy”, mused the cow. “Yes. Nobody likes the snake. Am I right?” asked the horse. “Hear, hear”, everyone agreed. “Right. Put your plan into action then birds and let’s all meet back here in an hour”, commanded the horse. “Good luck”, called the chickens after the birds. Percy couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d heard the noise in the distance as he trotted along in the sun, and then, from out of nowhere, a truck had turned a corner on the winding dirt road and driven straight past him. On board the truck was layer upon layer of pigs; what seemed to Percy like millions of pigs. A whole high-rise city of moving pigs, all squealing and talking in a language that was unfamiliar to him. And as the truck that was filled with pigs rolled past Percy, all he could do was follow it with his eyes. Suddenly Percy was overcome with a sense that his destiny lay onboard that truck; that if only he could manage to get inside the city of moving pigs then he would finally feel that he had found somewhere he could belong. Percy set off at a furious pace, running as fast as he could after the truck. As he got closer and closer, he realised that all the pigs were calling out to him. They seemed to be cheering him on, excited … no, desperate for him to succeed. Percy thought that if he could just run up alongside the driver’s window and somehow get his attention—perhaps by squealing very, very loudly—that the driver would stop the truck and ... The city of pigs continued to squeal desperately at Percy as he raced past their many faces. And Percy squealed back as best he could, desperate to get to the front of the truck and draw the driver’s attention. The truck suddenly slowed to negotiate a bump in the dirt road and Percy found himself in front off the cab. He turned back to face the slowly rolling wheels of the truck and squealed at the top of his voice. The truck’s air brakes hissed noisily and then the whole countryside went quiet for a beat. Percy was breathing very heavily; his face was deep red as he looked desperately up at the windscreen of the cab. Both doors of the truck opened at once and the driver and his passenger hopped to the ground. “Never seen that before”, said the passenger to the driver. “No. Wonder where he came from?” asked the driver. “I think he wants to get on board”, suggested the passenger. Then both the men laughed as they whistled to Percy and slapped at their legs, encouraging the pig to join them at the back of the truck. All the other pigs suddenly squealed as one, desperate to get Percy’s attention. Percy had never heard such a noise; it was both completely familiar though unintelligible. The other pigs seemed somehow overwhelmed by his presence … as if, they’d never seen a pig quite like Percy before. And Percy, as he trotted up the ramp of the truck into the comforting squalor of a million other pigs, squealed happily back at them, finally knowing what it felt like to belong.
46
Starrs, Bruno. "Hyperlinking History and Illegitimate Imagination: The Historiographic Metafictional E-novel." M/C Journal 17, no. 5 (October 25, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.866.
Abstract:
‘Historiographic Metafiction’ (HM) is a literary term first coined by creative writing academic Linda Hutcheon in 1988, and which refers to the postmodern practice of a fiction author inserting imagined--or illegitimate--characters into narratives that are intended to be received as authentic and historically accurate, that is, ostensibly legitimate. Such adventurous and bold authorial strategies frequently result in “novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon, A Poetics 5). They can be so entertaining and engaging that the overtly intertextual, explicitly inventive work of biographical HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (Nunning 353) for, as Philippa Gregory, the author of HM novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), has said regarding this genre of creative writing: “Fiction is about imagined feelings and thoughts. History depends on the outer life. The novel is always about the inner life. Fiction can sometimes do more than history. It can fill the gaps” (University of Sussex). In a way, this article will be filling one of the gaps regarding HM.Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) is possibly the best known cinematic example of HM, and this film version of the 1986 novel by Winston Groom particularly excels in seamlessly inserting images of a fictional character into verified history, as represented by well-known television newsreel footage. In Zemeckis’s adaptation, gaps were created in the celluloid artefact and filled digitally with images of the actor, Tom Hanks, playing the eponymous role. Words are often deemed less trustworthy than images, however, and fiction is considered particularly unreliable--although there are some exceptions conceded. In addition to Gregory’s novel; Midnight’s Children (1980) by Salman Rushdie; The Name of the Rose (1983) by Umberto Eco; and The Flashman Papers (1969-2005) by George MacDonald Fraser, are three well-known, loved and lauded examples of literary HM, which even if they fail to convince the reader of their bona fides, nevertheless win a place in many hearts. But despite the genre’s popularity, there is nevertheless a conceptual gap in the literary theory of Hutcheon given her (perfectly understandable) inability in 1988 to predict the future of e-publishing. This article will attempt to address that shortcoming by exploring the potential for authors of HM e-novels to use hyperlinks which immediately direct the reader to fact providing webpages such as those available at the website Wikipedia, like a much speedier (and more independent) version of the footnotes in Fraser’s Flashman novels.Of course, as Roland Barthes declared in 1977, “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture” (146) and, as per any academic work that attempts to contribute to knowledge, a text’s sources--its “quotations”--must be properly identified and acknowledged via checkable references if credibility is to be securely established. Hence, in explaining the way claims to fact in the HM novel can be confirmed by independently published experts on the Internet, this article will also address the problem Hutcheon identifies, in that for many readers the entirety of the HM novel assumes questionable authenticity, that is, the novel’s “meta-fictional self-reflexivity (and intertextuality) renders their claims to historical veracity somewhat problematic, to say the least” ("Historiographic Metafiction: Parody", 3). This article (and the PhD in creative writing I am presently working on at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia) will possibly develop the concept of HM to a new level: one at which the Internet-connected reader of the hyperlinked e-novel is made fully (and even instantly) aware of those literary elements of the narrative that are legitimate and factual as distinct from those that are fictional, that is, illegitimate. Furthermore, utilising examples from my own (yet-to-be published) hyperlinked HM e-novel, this article demonstrates that such hyperlinking can add an ironic sub-text to a fictional character’s thoughts and utterances, through highlighting the reality concerning their mistaken or naïve beliefs, thus creating HM narratives that serve an entertainingly complex yet nevertheless truly educational purpose.As a relatively new and under-researched genre of historical writing, HM differs dramatically from the better known style of standard historical or biographical narrative, which typically tends to emphasise mimesis, the cataloguing of major “players” in historical events and encyclopaedic accuracy of dates, deaths and places. Instead, HM involves the re-contextualisation of real-life figures from the past, incorporating the lives of entirely (or, as in the case of Gregory’s Mary Boleyn, at least partly) fictitious characters into their generally accepted famous and factual activities, and/or the invention of scenarios that gel realistically--but entertainingly--within a landscape of well-known and well-documented events. As Hutcheon herself states: “The formal linking of history and fiction through the common denominators of intertextuality and narrativity is usually offered not as a reduction, as a shrinking of the scope and value of fiction, but rather as an expansion of these” ("Intertextuality", 11). Similarly, Gregory emphasises the need for authors of HM to extend themselves beyond the encyclopaedic archive: “Archives are not history. The trouble with archives is that the material is often random and atypical. To have history, you have to have a narrative” (University of Sussex). Functionally then, HM is an intertextual narrative genre which serves to communicate to a contemporary audience an expanded story or stories of the past which present an ultimately more self-reflective, personal and unpredictable authorship: it is a distinctly auteurial mode of biographical history writing for it places the postmodern author’s imaginative “signature” front and foremost.Hutcheon later clarified that the quest for historical truth in fiction cannot possibly hold up to the persuasive powers of a master novelist, as per the following rationale: “Fact is discourse-defined: an event is not” ("Historiographic Metafiction", 843). This means, in a rather simplistic nutshell, that the new breed of HM novel writer is not constrained by what others may call fact: s/he knows that the alleged “fact” can be renegotiated and redefined by an inventive discourse. An event, on the other hand, is responsible for too many incontrovertible consequences for it to be contested by her/his mere discourse. So-called facts are much easier for the HM writer to play with than world changing events. This notion was further popularised by Ansgar Nunning when he claimed the overtly explicit work of HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (353). HM authors can radically alter, it seems, the way the reader perceives the facts of history especially when entertaining, engaging and believable characters are deliberately devised and manipulated into the narrative by the writer. Little wonder, then, that Hutcheon bemoans the unfortunate reality that for many readers the entirety of a HM work assumes questionable “veracity” due to its author’s insertion of imaginary and therefore illegitimate personages.But there is an advantage to be found in this, the digital era, and that is the Internet’s hyperlink. In our ubiquitously networked electronic information age, novels written for publication as e-books may, I propose, include clickable links on the names of actual people and events to Wikipedia entries or the like, thus strengthening the reception of the work as being based on real history (the occasional unreliability of Wikipedia notwithstanding). If picked up for hard copy publication this function of the HM e-novel can be replicated with the inclusion of icons in the printed margins that can be scanned by smartphones or similar gadgets. This small but significant element of the production reinforces the e-novel’s potential status as a new form of HM and addresses Hutcheon’s concern that for HM novels, their imaginative but illegitimate invention of characters “renders their claims to historical veracity somewhat problematic, to say the least” ("Historiographic Metafiction: Parody", 3).Some historic scenarios are so little researched or so misunderstood and discoloured by the muddy waters of time and/or rumour that such hyperlinking will be a boon to HM writers. Where an obscure facet of Australian history is being fictionalised, for example, these edifying hyperlinks can provide additional background information, as Glenda Banks and Martin Andrew might have wished for when they wrote regarding Bank’s Victorian goldfields based HM novel A Respectable Married Woman. This 2012 printed work explores the lives of several under-researched and under-represented minorities, such as settler women and Aboriginal Australians, and the author Banks lamented the dearth of public awareness regarding these peoples. Indeed, HM seems tailor-made for exposing the subaltern lives of those repressed individuals who form the human “backdrop” to the lives of more famous personages. Banks and Andrew explain:To echo the writings of Homi K. Bhaba (1990), this sets up a creative site for interrogating the dominant, hegemonic, ‘normalised’ master narratives about the Victorian goldfields and ‘re-membering’ a marginalised group - the women of the goldfields, the indigenous [sic], the Chinese - and their culture (2013).In my own hyperlinked short story (presently under consideration for publishing elsewhere), which is actually a standalone version of the first chapter of a full-length HM e-novel about Aboriginal Australian activists Eddie Mabo and Chicka Dixon and the history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, entitled The Bullroarers, I have focussed on a similarly under-represented minority, that being light-complexioned, mixed race Aboriginal Australians. My second novel to deal with Indigenous Australian issues (see Starrs, That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance), it is my first attempt at writing HM. Hopefully avoiding overkill whilst alerting readers to those Wikipedia pages with relevance to the narrative theme of non-Indigenous attitudes towards light-complexioned Indigenous Australians, I have inserted a total of only six hyperlinks in this 2200-word piece, plus the explanatory foreword stating: “Note, except where they are well-known place names or are indicated as factual by the insertion of Internet hyperlinks verifying such, all persons, organisations, businesses and places named in this text are entirely fictitious.”The hyperlinks in my short story all take the reader not to stubs but to well-established Wikipedia pages, and provide for the uninformed audience the following near-unassailable facts (i.e. events):The TV program, A Current Affair, which the racist character of the short story taken from The Bullroarers, Mrs Poulter, relies on for her prejudicial opinions linking Aborigines with the dealing of illegal drugs, is a long-running, prime-time Channel Nine production. Of particular relevance in the Wikipedia entry is the comment: “Like its main rival broadcast on the Seven Network, Today Tonight, A Current Affair is often considered by media critics and the public at large to use sensationalist journalism” (Wikipedia, “A Current Affair”).The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, located on the lawns opposite the Old Parliament House in Canberra, was established in 1972 and ever since has been the focus of Aboriginal Australian land rights activism and political agitation. In 1995 the Australian Register of the National Estate listed it as the only Aboriginal site in Australia that is recognised nationally for representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their political struggles (Wikipedia, “The Aboriginal Tent Embassy”).In 1992, during an Aboriginal land rights case known as Mabo, the High Court of Australia issued a judgment constituting a direct overturning of terra nullius, which is a Latin term meaning “land belonging to no one”, and which had previously formed the legal rationale and justification for the British invasion and colonisation of Aboriginal Australia (Wikipedia, “Terra Nullius”).Aboriginal rights activist and Torres Strait Islander, Eddie Koiki Mabo (1936 to 1992), was instrumental in the High Court decision to overturn the doctrine of terra nullius in 1992. In that same year, Eddie Mabo was posthumously awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Awards (Wikipedia, “Eddie Mabo”).The full name of what Mrs Poulter blithely refers to as “the Department of Families and that” is the Australian Government’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (Wikipedia, “The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs”).The British colonisation of Australia was a bloody, murderous affair: “continuous Aboriginal resistance for well over a century belies the ‘myth’ of peaceful settlement in Australia. Settlers in turn often reacted to Aboriginal resistance with great violence, resulting in numerous indiscriminate massacres by whites of Aboriginal men, women and children” (Wikipedia, “History of Australia (1788 - 1850)”).Basically, what is not evidenced empirically with regard to the subject matter of my text, that is, the egregious attitudes of non-Indigenous Australians towards Indigenous Australians, can be extrapolated thanks to the hyperlinks. This resonates strongly with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s assertion in 2012 that those under-represented by mainstream, patriarchal epistemologies need to be engaged in acts of “reclaiming, reformulating and reconstituting” (143) so as to be re-presented as authentic identities in these HM artefacts of literary research.Exerting auteurial power as an Aboriginal Australian author myself, I have sought to imprint on my writing a multi-levelled signature pertaining to my people’s under-representation: there is not just the text I have created but another level to be considered by the reader, that being my careful choice of Wikipedia pages to hyperlink certain aspects of the creative writing to. These electronic footnotes serve as politically charged acts of “reclaiming, reformulating and reconstituting” Aboriginal Australian history, to reuse the words of Smith, for when we Aboriginal Australian authors reiterate, when we subjugated savages wrestle the keyboard away from the colonising overseers, our readers witness the Other writing back, critically. As I have stated previously (see Starrs, "Writing"), receivers of our words see the distorted and silencing master discourse subverted and, indeed, inverted. Our audiences are subjectively repositioned to see the British Crown as the monster. The previously presumed rational, enlightened and civil coloniser is instead depicted as the author and perpetrator of a violently racist, criminal discourse, until, eventually, s/he is ultimately eroded and made into the Other: s/he is rendered the villainous, predatory savage by the auteurial signatures in revisionist histories such as The Bullroarers.Whilst the benefit in these hyperlinks as electronic educational footnotes in my short story is fairly obvious, what may not be so obvious is the ironic commentary they can make, when read in conjunction with the rest of The Bullroarers. Although one must reluctantly agree with Wayne C. Booth’s comment in his classic 1974 study A Rhetoric of Irony that, in some regards, “the very spirit and value [of irony] are violated by the effort to be clear about it” (ix), I will nevertheless strive for clarity and understanding by utilizing Booth’s definition of irony “as something that under-mines clarities, opens up vistas of chaos, and either liberates by destroying all dogmas or destroys by revealing the inescapable canker of negation at the heart of every affirmation” (ix). The reader of The Bullroarers is not expecting the main character, Mrs Poulter, to be the subject of erosive criticism that destroys her “dogmas” about Aboriginal Australians--certainly not so early in the narrative when it is unclear if she is or is not the protagonist of the story--and yet that’s exactly what the hyperlinks do. They expose her as hopelessly unreliable, laughably misinformed and yes, unforgivably stupid. They reveal the illegitimacy of her beliefs. Perhaps the most personally excoriating of these revelations is provided by the link to the Wikipedia entry on the Australian Government’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, which is where her own daughter, Roxy, works, but which Mrs Poulter knows, gormlessly, as “the Department of Families and that”. The ignorant woman spouts racist diatribes against Aboriginal Australians without even realising how inextricably linked she and her family, who live at the deliberately named Boomerang Crescent, really are. Therein lies the irony I am trying to create with my use of hyperlinks: an independent, expert adjudication reveals my character, Mrs Poulter, and her opinions, are hiding an “inescapable canker of negation at the heart of every affirmation” (Booth ix), despite the air of easy confidence she projects.Is the novel-reading public ready for these HM hyperlinked e-novels and their potentially ironic sub-texts? Indeed, the question must be asked: can the e-book ever compete with the tactile sensations a finely crafted, perfectly bound hardcover publication provides? Perhaps, if the economics of book buying comes into consideration. E-novels are cheap to publish and cheap to purchase, hence they are becoming hugely popular with the book buying public. Writes Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, a successful online publisher and distributor of e-books: “We incorporated in 2007, and we officially launched the business in May 2008. In our first year, we published 140 books from 90 authors. Our catalog reached 6,000 books in 2009, 28,800 in 2010, 92,000 in 2011, 191,000 in 2012 and as of this writing (November 2013) stands at over 250,000 titles” (Coker 2013). Coker divulged more about his company’s success in an interview with Forbes online magazine: “‘It costs essentially the same to pump 10,000 new books a month through our network as it will cost to do 100,000 a month,’ he reasons. Smashwords book retails, on average, for just above $3; 15,000 titles are free” (Colao 2012).In such a burgeoning environment of technological progress in publishing I am tempted to say that yes, the time of the hyperlinked e-novel has come, and to even predict that HM will be a big part of this new wave of postmodern literature. The hyperlinked HM e-novel’s strategy invites the reader to reflect on the legitimacy and illegitimacy of different forms of narrative, possibly concluding, thanks to ironic electronic footnoting, that not all the novel’s characters and their commentary are to be trusted. Perhaps my HM e-novel will, with its untrustworthy Mrs Poulter and its little-known history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy addressed by gap-filling hyperlinks, establish a legitimising narrative for a people who have traditionally in white Australian society been deemed the Other and illegitimate. Perhaps The Bullroarers will someday alter attitudes of non-Indigenous Australians to the history and political activities of this country’s first peoples, to the point even, that as Nunning warns, we witness a change in the “hegemonic discourse of history” (353). If that happens we must be thankful for our Internet-enabled information age and its concomitant possibilities for hyperlinked e-publications, for technology may be separated from the world of art, but it can nevertheless be effectively used to recreate, enhance and access that world, to the extent texts previously considered illegitimate achieve authenticity and veracity.ReferencesBanks, Glenda. A Respectable Married Woman. Melbourne: Lacuna, 2012.Banks, Glenda, and Martin Andrew. “Populating a Historical Novel: A Case Study of a Practice-led Research Approach to Historiographic Metafiction.” Bukker Tillibul 7 (2013). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://bukkertillibul.net/Text.html?VOL=7&INDEX=2›.Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977.Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.Colao, J.J. “Apple’s Biggest (Unknown) Supplier of E-books.” Forbes 7 June 2012. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/06/07/apples-biggest-unknown-supplier-of-e-books/›.Coker, Mark. “Q & A with Smashwords Founder, Mark Coker.” About Smashwords 2013. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹https://www.smashwords.com/about›.Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver, San Diego: Harcourt, 1983.Forrest Gump. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Paramount Pictures, 1994.Fraser, George MacDonald. The Flashman Papers. Various publishers, 1969-2005.Groom, Winston. Forrest Gump. NY: Doubleday, 1986.Gregory, Philippa. The Other Boleyn Girl. UK: Scribner, 2001.Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK: Taylor and Francis, 1988.---. “Intertextuality, Parody, and the Discourses of History: A Poetics of Postmodernism History, Theory, Fiction.” 1988. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://ieas.unideb.hu/admin/file_3553.pdf›.---. “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History.” Eds. P. O’Donnell and R.C. Davis, Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins UP, 1989. 3-32.---. “Historiographic Metafiction.” Ed. Michael McKeon, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 830-50.Nunning, Ansgar. “Where Historiographic Metafiction and Narratology Meet.” Style 38.3 (2004): 352-75.Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.Starrs, D. Bruno. That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! Saarbrücken, Germany: Just Fiction Edition (paperback), 2011; Starrs via Smashwords (e-book), 2012.---. “Writing Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?” M/C Journal 17.4 (2014). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/834›.Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. London & New York: Zed Books, 2012.University of Sussex. “Philippa Gregory Fills the Historical Gaps.” University of Sussex Alumni Magazine 51 (2012). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.scribd.com/doc/136033913/University-of-Sussex-Alumni-Magazine-Falmer-issue-51›.Wikipedia. “A Current Affair.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Current_Affair›.---. “Aboriginal Tent Embassy.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tent_Embassy›.---. “Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Families,_Housing,_Community_Services_and_Indigenous_Affairs›.---. “Eddie Mabo.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Mabo›.---. “History of Australia (1788 – 1850).” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Australia_(1788%E2%80%931850)#Aboriginal_resistance›.---. “Terra Nullius.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius›.
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Sexton-Finck, Larissa. "Violence Reframed: Constructing Subjugated Individuals as Agents, Not Images, through Screen Narratives." M/C Journal 23, no. 2 (May 13, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1623.
Abstract:
What creative techniques of resistance are available to a female filmmaker when she is the victim of a violent event and filmed at her most vulnerable? This article uses an autoethnographic lens to discuss my experience of a serious car crash my family and I were inadvertently involved in due to police negligence and a criminal act. Employing Creative Analytical Practice (CAP) ethnography, a reflexive form of research which recognises that the creative process, producer and product are “deeply intertwined” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 930), I investigate how the crash’s violent affects crippled my agency, manifested in my creative praxis and catalysed my identification of latent forms of institutionalised violence in film culture, its discourse and pedagogy that also contributed to my inertia. The article maps my process of writing a feature length screenplay during the aftermath of the crash as I set out to articulate my story of survival and resistance. Using this narrative inquiry, in which we can “investigate how we construct the world, ourselves, and others, and how standard objectifying practices...unnecessarily limit us” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 924), I outline how I attempted to disrupt the entrenched power structures that exist in dominant narratives of violence in film and challenge my subjugated positioning as a woman within this canon. I describe my engagement with the deconstructionist practices of writing the body and militant feminist cinema, which suggest subversive opportunities for women’s self-determination by encouraging us to embrace our exiled positioning in dominant discourse through creative experimentation, and identify some of the possibilities and limitations of this for female agency. Drawing on CAP ethnography, existentialism, film feminism, and narrative reframing, I assert that these reconstructive practices are more effective for the creative enfranchisement of women by not relegating us to the periphery of social systems and cultural forms. Instead, they enable us to speak back to violent structures in a language that has greater social access, context and impact.My strong desire to tell screen stories lies in my belief that storytelling is a crucial evolutionary mechanism of resilience. Narratives do not simply represent the social world but also have the ability to change it by enabling us to “try to figure out how to live our lives meaningfully” (Ellis 760). This conviction has been directly influenced by my personal story of trauma and survival when myself, my siblings, and our respective life partners became involved in a major car crash. Two police officers attending to a drunken brawl in an inner city park had, in their haste, left the keys in the ignition of their vehicle. We were travelling across a major intersection when the police car, which had subsequently been stolen by a man involved in the brawl – a man who was wanted on parole, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit, and was driving at speeds exceeding 110kms per hour - ran a red light and crossed our path, causing us to crash into his vehicle. From the impact, the small four-wheel drive we were travelling in was catapulted metres into the air, rolling numerous times before smashing head on into oncoming traffic. My heavily pregnant sister was driving our vehicle.The incident attracted national media attention and our story became a sensationalist spectacle. Each news station reported erroneous and conflicting information, one stating that my sister had lost her unborn daughter, another even going so far as to claim my sister had died in the crash. This tabloidised, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, culture of journalism, along with new digital technologies, encourages and facilitates the normalisation of violent acts, often inflicted on women. Moreover, in their pursuit of high-rating stories, news bodies motivate dehumanising acts of citizen journalism that see witnesses often inspired to film, rather than assist, victims involved in a violent event. Through a connection with someone working for a major news station, we discovered that leading news broadcasters had bought a tape shot by a group of men who call themselves the ‘Paparazzi of Perth’. These men were some of the first on the scene and began filming us from only a few metres away while we were still trapped upside down and unconscious in our vehicle. In the recording, the men are heard laughing and celebrating our tragedy as they realise the lucrative possibilities of the shocking imagery they are capturing as witnesses pull us out of the back of the car, and my pregnant sister incredibly frees herself from the wreckage by kicking out the window.As a female filmmaker, I saw the bitter irony of this event as the camera was now turned on me and my loved ones at our most vulnerable. In her discussion of the male gaze, a culturally sanctioned form of narrational violence against women that is ubiquitous in most mainstream media, Mulvey proposes that women are generally the passive image, trapped by the physical limits of the frame in a permanent state of powerlessness as our identity is reduced to her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (40). For a long period of time, the experience of performing the role of this commodified woman of a weaponised male gaze, along with the threat of annihilation associated with our near-death experience, immobilised my spirit. I felt I belonged “more to the dead than to the living” (Herman 34). When I eventually returned to my creative praxis, I decided to use scriptwriting as both my “mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, Writing Strategies 21), test whether I could work through my feelings of alienation and violation and reclaim my agency. This was a complex and harrowing task because my memories “lack[ed] verbal narrative and context” (Herman 38) and were deeply rooted in my body. Cixous confirms that for women, “writing and voice...are woven together” and “spring from the deepest layers of her psyche” (Moi 112). For many months, I struggled to write. I attempted to block out this violent ordeal and censor my self. I soon learnt, however, that my body could not be silenced and was slow to forget. As I tried to write around this experience, the trauma worked itself deeper inside of me, and my physical symptoms worsened, as did the quality of my writing.In the early version of the screenplay I found myself writing a female-centred film about violence, identity and death, using the fictional narrative to express the numbness I experienced. I wrote the female protagonist with detachment as though she were an object devoid of agency. Sartre claims that we make objects of others and of ourselves in an attempt to control the uncertainty of life and the ever-changing nature of humanity (242). Making something into an object is to deprive it of life (and death); it is our attempt to keep ourselves ‘safe’. While I recognise that the car crash’s reminder of my mortality was no doubt part of the reason why I rendered myself, and the script’s female protagonist, lifeless as agentic beings, I sensed that there were subtler operations of power and control behind my self-objectification and self-censorship, which deeply concerned me. What had influenced this dea(r)th of female agency in my creative imaginings? Why did I write my female character with such a red pen? Why did I seem so compelled to ‘kill’ her? I wanted to investigate my gender construction, the complex relationship between my scriptwriting praxis, and the context within which it is produced to discover whether I could write a different future for myself, and my female characters. Kiesinger supports “contextualizing our stories within the framework of a larger picture” (108), so as to remain open to the possibility that there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with us, per se, “but rather something very wrong with the dynamics that dominate the communicative system” (109) within which we operate: in the case of my creative praxis, the oppressive structures present in the culture of film and its pedagogy.Pulling FocusWomen are supposed to be the view and when the view talks back, it is uncomfortable.— Jane Campion (Filming Desire)It is a terrible thing to see that no one has ever taught us how to develop our vision as women neither in the history of arts nor in film schools.— Marie Mandy (Filming Desire)The democratisation of today’s media landscape through new technologies, the recent rise in female-run production companies (Zemler) in Hollywood, along with the ground-breaking #MeToo and Time’s Up movements has elevated the global consciousness of gender-based violence, and has seen the screen industry seek to redress its history of gender imbalance. While it is too early to assess the impact these developments may have on women’s standing in film, today the ‘celluloid ceiling’ still operates on multiple levels of indoctrination and control through a systemic pattern of exclusion for women that upholds the “nearly seamless dialogue among men in cinema” (Lauzen, Thumbs Down 2). Female filmmakers occupy a tenuous position of influence in the mainstream industry and things are not any better on the other side of the camera (Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling). For the most part, Hollywood’s male gaze and penchant for sexualising and (physically or figuratively) killing female characters, which normalises violence against women and is “almost inversely proportional to the liberation of women in society” (Mandy), continues to limit women to performing as the image rather than the agent on screen.Film funding bodies and censorship boards, mostly comprised of men, remain exceptionally averse to independent female filmmakers who go against the odds to tell their stories, which often violate taboos about femininity and radically redefine female agency through the construction of the female gaze: a narrational technique of resistance that enables reel woman to govern the point of view, imagery and action of the film (Smelik 51-52). This generally sees their films unjustly ghettoised through incongruent classification or censorship, and forced into independent or underground distribution (Sexton-Finck 165-182). Not only does censorship propose the idea that female agency is abject and dangerous and needs to be restrained, it prevents access to this important cinema by women that aims to counter the male gaze and “shield us from this type of violence” (Gillain 210). This form of ideological and institutional gatekeeping is not only enforced in the film industry, it is also insidiously (re)constituted in the epistemological construction of film discourse and pedagogy, which in their design, are still largely intrinsically gendered institutions, encoded with phallocentric signification that rejects a woman’s specificity and approach to knowledge. Drawing on my mutually informative roles as a former film student and experienced screen educator, I assert that most screen curricula in Australia still uphold entrenched androcentric norms that assume the male gaze and advocate popular cinema’s didactic three-act structure, which conditions our value systems to favour masculinity and men’s worldview. This restorative storytelling approach is argued to be fatally limiting to reel women (Smith 136; Dancyger and Rush 25) as it propagates the Enlightenment notion of a universal subjectivity, based on free will and reason, which neutralises the power structures of society (and film) and repudiates the influence of social positioning on our opportunity for agency. Moreover, through its omniscient consciousness, which seeks to efface the presence of a specific narrator, the three-act method disavows this policing of female agency and absolves any specific individual of responsibility for its structural violence (Dyer 98).By pulling focus on some of these problematic mechanisms in the hostile climate of the film industry and its spaces of learning for women, I became acutely aware of the more latent forms of violence that had conditioned my scriptwriting praxis, the ambivalence I felt towards my female identity, and my consequent gagging of the female character in the screenplay.Changing Lenses How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become?— Laurel Richardson (Fields of Play 1)In the beginning, there is an end. Don’t be afraid: it’s your death that is dying. Then: all the beginnings.— Helene Cixous (Cixous and Jensen 41)The discoveries I made during my process of CAP ethnography saw a strong feeling of dissidence arrive inside me. I vehemently wanted to write my way out of my subjugated state and release some of the anguish that my traumatised body was carrying around. I was drawn to militant feminist cinema and the French poststructuralist approach of ‘writing the body’ (l’ecriture feminine) given these deconstructive practices “create images and ideas that have the power to inspire to revolt against oppression and exploitation” (Moi 120). Feminist cinema’s visual treatise of writing the body through its departure from androcentric codes - its unformulaic approach to structure, plot, character and narration (De Lauretis 106) - revealed to me ways in which I could use the scriptwriting process to validate my debilitating experience of physical and psychic violence, decensor my self and move towards rejoining the living. Cixous affirms that, “by writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into…the ailing or dead figure” (Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa 880). It became clear to me that the persistent themes of death that manifested in the first draft of the script were not, as I first suspected, me ‘rehearsing to die’, or wanting to kill off the woman inside me. I was in fact “not driven towards death but by death” (Homer 89), the close proximity to my mortality, acting as a limit, was calling for a strengthening of my life force, a rebirth of my agency (Bettelheim 36). Mansfield acknowledges that death “offers us a freedom outside of the repression and logic that dominate our daily practices of keeping ourselves in order, within the lines” (87).I challenged myself to write the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unexplored and to allow myself to go to places in me that I had never before let speak by investigating my agency from a much more layered and critical perspective. This was both incredibly terrifying and liberating and enabled me to discard the agentic ‘corset’ I had previously worn in my creative praxis. Dancyger and Rush confirm that “one of the things that happens when we break out of the restorative three-act form is that the effaced narrator becomes increasingly visible and overt” (38). I experienced an invigorating feeling of empowerment through my appropriation of the female gaze in the screenplay which initially appeased some of the post-crash turmoil and general sense of injustice I was experiencing. However, I soon, found something toxic rising inside of me. Like the acrimonious feminist cinema I was immersed in – Raw (Ducournau), A Girl Walks Home at Night (Amirpour), Romance (Breillat), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Baise-Moi (Despentes and Thi), In My Skin (Van), Anatomy of Hell (Breillat) – the screenplay I had produced involved a female character turning the tables on men and using acts of revenge to satisfy her needs. Not only was I creating a highly dystopian world filled with explicit themes of suffering in the screenplay, I too existed in a displaced state of rage and ‘psychic nausea’ in my daily life (Baldick and Sartre). I became haunted by vivid flashbacks of the car crash as abject images, sounds and sensations played over and over in my mind and body like a horror movie on loop. I struggled to find the necessary clarity and counterbalance of stability required to successfully handle this type of experimentation.I do not wish to undermine the creative potential of deconstructive practices, such as writing the body and militant cinema, for female filmmakers. However, I believe my post-trauma sensitivity to visceral entrapment and spiritual violence magnifies some of the psychological and physiological risks involved. Deconstructive experimentation “happens much more easily in the realm of “texts” than in the world of human interaction” (hooks 22) and presents agentic limitations for women since it offers a “utopian vision of female creativity” (Moi 119) that is “devoid of reality...except in a poetic sense” (Moi 122). In jettisoning the restorative qualities of narrative film, new boundaries for women are inadvertently created through restricting us to “intellectual pleasure but rarely emotional pleasure” (Citron 51). Moreover, by reducing women’s agency to retaliation we are denied the opportunity for catharsis and transformation; something I desperately longed to experience in my injured state. Kaplan acknowledges this problem, arguing that female filmmakers need to move theoretically beyond deconstruction to reconstruction, “to manipulate the recognized, dominating discourses so as to begin to free ourselves through rather than beyond them (for what is there ‘beyond’?)” (Women and Film 141).A potent desire to regain a sense of connectedness and control pushed itself out from deep inside me. I yearned for a tonic to move myself and my female character to an active position, rather than a reactive one that merely repeats the victimising dynamic of mainstream film by appropriating a reversed (female) gaze and now makes women the violent victors (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 130). We have arrived at a point where we must destabilise the dominance-submission structure and “think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain” (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 135). I became determined to write a screen narrative that, while dealing with some of the harsh realities of humanity I had become exposed to, involved an existentialist movement towards catharsis and activity.ReframingWhen our stories break down or no longer serve us well, it is imperative that we examine the quality of the stories we are telling and actively reinvent our accounts in ways that permit us to live more fulfilling lives.— Christine Kiesinger (107)I’m frightened by life’s randomness, so I want to deal with it, make some sense of it by telling a film story. But it’s not without hope. I don’t believe in telling stories without some hope.— Susanne Bier (Thomas)Narrative reframing is underlined by the existentialist belief that our spiritual freedom is an artistic process of self-creation, dependent on our free will to organise the elements of our lives, many determined out of our control, into the subjective frame that is to be our experience of our selves and the world around us (107). As a filmmaker, I recognise the power of selective editing and composition. Narrative reframing’s demand for a rational assessment of “the degree to which we live our stories versus the degree to which our stories live us” (Kiesinger 109), helped me to understand how I could use these filmmaking skills to take a step back from my trauma so as to look at it objectively “as a text for study” (Ellis 108) and to exercise power over the creative-destructive forces it, and the deconstructive writing methods I had employed, produced. Richardson confirms the benefits of this practice, since narrative “is the universal way in which humans accommodate to finitude” (Writing Strategies 65).In the script’s development, I found my resilience lay in my capacity to imagine more positive alternatives for female agency. I focussed on writing a narrative that did not avoid life’s hardships and injustices, or require them to be “attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified” (Nietzsche and Hollingdale 68), yet still involved a life-affirming sentiment. With this in mind, I reintroduced the three-act structure in the revised script as its affectivity and therapeutic denouement enabled me to experience a sense of agentic catharsis that turned “nauseous thoughts into imaginations with which it is possible to live” (Nietzsche 52). Nevertheless, I remained vigilant not to lapse into didacticism; to allow my female character to be free to transgress social conventions surrounding women’s agency. Indebted to Kaplan’s writing on the cinematic gaze, I chose to take up what she identifies as a ‘mutual gaze’; an ethical framework that enabled me to privilege the female character’s perspective and autonomy with a neutral subject-subject gaze rather than the “subject-object kind that reduces one of the parties to the place of submission” (Feminism and Film 135). I incorporated the filmic technique of the point of view (POV) shot for key narrative moments as it allows an audience to literally view the world through a character’s eyes, as well as direct address, which involves the character looking back down the lens at the viewer (us); establishing the highest level of identification between the spectator and the subject on screen.The most pertinent illustration of these significant scriptwriting changes through my engagement with narrative reframing and feminist film theory, is in the reworking of my family’s car crash which became a pivotal turning point in the final draft. In the scene, I use POV and direct address to turn the weaponised gaze back around onto the ‘paparazzi’ who are filming the spectacle. When the central (pregnant) character frees herself from the wreckage, she notices these men filming her and we see the moment from her point of view as she looks at these men laughing and revelling in the commercial potential of their mediatised act. Switching between POV and direct address, the men soon notice they have been exposed as the woman looks back down the lens at them (us) with disbelief, reproaching them (us) for daring to film her in this traumatic moment. She holds her determined gaze while they glance awkwardly back at her, until their laughter dissipates, they stop recording and appear to recognise the culpability of their actions. With these techniques of mutual gazing, I set out to humanise and empower the female victim and neutralise the power dynamic: the woman is now also a viewing agent, and the men equally perform the role of the viewed. In this creative reframing, I hope to provide an antidote to filmic violence against and/or by women as this female character reclaims her (my) experience of survival without adhering to the culture of female passivity or ressentiment.This article has examined how a serious car crash, being filmed against my will in its aftermath and the attendant damages that prevailed from this experience, catalysed a critical change of direction in my scriptwriting. The victimising event helped me recognise the manifest and latent forms of violence against women that are normalised through everyday ideological and institutional systems in film and prevent us from performing as active agents in our creative praxis. There is a critical need for more inclusive modes of practice – across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy – that are cognisant and respectful of women’s specificity and our difference to the androcentric landscape of mainstream film. We need to continue to exert pressure on changing violent mechanisms that marginalise us and ghettoise our stories. As this article has demonstrated, working outside dominant forms can enable important emancipatory opportunities for women, however, this type or deconstruction also presents risks that generally leave us powerless in everyday spaces. While I advocate that female filmmakers should look to techniques of feminist cinema for an alternative lens, we must also work within popular film to critique and subvert it, and not deny women the pleasures and political advantages of its restorative structure. By enabling female filmmakers to (re)humanise woman though encouraging empathy and compassion, this affective storytelling form has the potential to counter violence against women and mobilise female agency. Equally, CAP ethnography and narrative reframing are critical discourses for the retrieval and actualisation of female filmmakers’ agency as they allow us to contextualise our stories of resistance and survival within the framework of a larger picture of violence to gain perspective on our subjective experiences and render them as significant, informative and useful to the lives of others. This enables us to move from the isolated margins of subcultural film and discourse to reclaim our stories at the centre.ReferencesA Girl Walks Home at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Say Ahh Productions, 2014.Anatomy of Hell. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Tartan Films, 2004. Baise-Moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. FilmFixx, 2000.Baldick, Robert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 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California: AltaMira, 2004.Filming Desire: A Journey through Women's Cinema. Dir. Marie Mandy. Women Make Movies, 2000.Gillain, Anne. “Profile of a Filmmaker: Catherine Breillat.” Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981-2001. Eds. Roger Célestin, Eliane Françoise DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 206.Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery. London: Pandora, 1994.Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge, 2005.hooks, bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990.In My Skin. Dir. Marina de Van. Wellspring Media, 2002. Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Routledge, 1988.———. Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Kiesinger, Christine E. “My Father's Shoes: The Therapeutic Value of Narrative Reframing.” Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics. Eds. Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002. 107-111.Lauzen, Martha M. “Thumbs Down - Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers - A Study by Dr. Martha Lauzen.” Alliance of Women Film Journalists, 25 July 2012. 4-5.———. The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 100, 250, and 500 Films of 2018. Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film San Diego State University 2019. <https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2018_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf>.Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2000.Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 2002.Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Feminism and Film. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. 34-47.Nietzsche, Friedrich W. The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing. New York: Doubleday, 1956.Nietzsche, Friedrich W., and Richard Hollingdale. Beyond Good and Evil. London: Penguin Books, 1990.Raw. Dir. Julia Ducournau. Petit Film, 2016.Richardson, Laurel. Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1990.———. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997.———. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000.Romance. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Trimark Pictures Inc., 2000.Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge, 1969.Sexton-Finck, Larissa. Be(com)ing Reel Independent Woman: An Autoethnographic Journey through Female Subjectivity and Agency in Contemporary Cinema with Particular Reference to Independent Scriptwriting Practice. 2009. <https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/1688/2/02Whole.pdf>.Smelik, Anneke. And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.Smith, Hazel. The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005.Thomas, Michelle. “10 Years of Dogme: An Interview with Susanne Bier.” Future Movies, 5 Aug. 2005. <http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=119>.Trouble Every Day. Dir. Claire Denis. Wild Bunch, 2001. Zemler, Mily. “17 Actresses Who Started Their Own Production Companies.” Elle, 11 Jan. 2018. <https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/g14927338/17-actresses-with-production-companies/>.
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Sk, Farooq. "Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 Journal > Journal > Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 > Page 6 PERFORMANCE AND EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF GASOLINE-ETHANOL BLENDS ON PFI-SI ENGINE Authors: D.Vinay Kumar ,G.Samhita Priyadarsini,V.Jagadeesh Babu,Y.Sai Varun Teja, DOI NO: https://doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00051 admin July 26, 2020 Abstract: Alcohol based fuels can be produced from renewable energy sources and has the potential to reduce pollutant emissions due to their oxygenated nature. Lighter alcohols like ethanol and methanol are easily miscible with gasoline and by blending alcohols with gasoline; a part of conventional fuel can be replaced while contributing to fuel economy. Several researchers tested various ethanol blends on different engine test rigs and identified ethanol as one of the most promising ecofriendly fuels for spark ignition engine. Its properties high octane number, high latent heat of vaporization give better performance characteristics and reduces exhaust emissions compared to gasoline. This paper focuses on studying the effects of blending 50 of ethanol by volume with gasoline as it hardly needs engine modifications. Gasoline (E0) and E50 fuels were investigated experimentally on single-cylinder, four-stroke port fuel injection spark ignition engine by varying engine speed from 1500 rpm to 3500 rpm. Performance Characteristics like torque, brake power, specific fuel consumption, and volumetric efficiency and exhaust emissions such as HC, CO, CO2, NOx were studied.. Keywords: Ethanol,Emissions,Gasoline,Port fuel Injection, Refference: I Badrawada, I. G. G., and A. A. P. Susastriawan. “Influence of ethanol–gasoline blend on performance and emission of four-stroke spark ignition motorcycle.” Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2019): 1-6. II Doğan, Battal, et al. “The effect of ethanol-gasoline blends on performance and exhaust emissions of a spark ignition engine through exergy analysis.” Applied Thermal Engineering 120 (2017): 433-443. III Efemwenkiekie, U. Ka, et al. “Comparative Analysis of a Four Stroke Spark Ignition Engine Performance Using Local Ethanol and Gasoline Blends.” Procedia Manufacturing 35 (2019): 1079-1086. IV Galloni, E., F. Scala, and G. Fontana. “Influence of fuel bio-alcohol content on the performance of a turbo-charged, PFI, spark-ignition engine.” Energy 170 (2019): 85-92. V Hasan, Ahmad O., et al. “Impact of changing combustion chamber geometry on emissions, and combustion characteristics of a single cylinder SI (spark ignition) engine fueled with ethanol/gasoline blends.” Fuel 231 (2018): 197-203. VI Mourad, M., and K. Mahmoud. “Investigation into SI engine performance characteristics and emissions fuelled with ethanol/butanol-gasoline blends.” Renewable Energy 143 (2019): 762-771. VII Singh, Ripudaman, et al. “Influence of fuel injection strategies on efficiency and particulate emissions of gasoline and ethanol blends in a turbocharged multi-cylinder direct injection engine.” International Journal of Engine Research (2019): 1468087419838393. VIII Thakur, Amit Kumar, et al. “Progress in performance analysis of ethanol-gasoline blends on SI engine.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 69 (2017): 324-340. View Download Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS FOR CUSTOMIZED AFO USING ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING Authors: Gamini Suresh,Nagarjuna Maguluri,Kunchala Balakrishna, DOI NO: https://doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00052 admin July 26, 2020 Abstract: Neurodegenerative conditions and compressed nerves often cause an abnormal foot drop that affects an individual gait and make it difficult to walk normally. Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) is the medical device which is recommended for the patients to improve the walking ability and decrease the risk of falls. Custom AFOs provide better fit, comfort and performance than pre-manufactured ones. The technique of 3D-printing is suitable for making custom AFOs. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is a 3D-printing method for custom AFO applications with the desired resistance and material deposition rate. Generally, FDM is a thermal process; therefore materials thermal behaviour plays an important role in optimizing the performance of the printed parts. The objective of this study is to evaluate the thermal behaviour of PLA, ABS, nylon and WF-PLA filaments before manufacturing the AFO components using the FDM method. In the study, the sequence of testing materials provides a basic measuring method to investigate AFO device parts thermal stability. Thermal analysis (TG/DTG and DSC) was carried out before 3D printing is to characterize the thermal stability of each material. Keywords: Additive Manufacturing,Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO),FusedDeposition Modelling,ThermalAnalysis, Refference: I. J. Pritchett, “Foot drop: Background, Anatomy, Pathophysiology,” Medscape Drugs, Dis. Proced., vol. 350, no. apr27_6, p. h1736, 2014. II. J. Graham, “Foot drop: Explaining the causes, characteristics and treatment,” Br. J. Neurosci. Nurs., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 168–172, 2010. III. Y. Feng and Y. Song, “The Categories of AFO and Its Effect on Patients With Foot Impair: A Systemic Review,” Phys. Act. Heal., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 8–16, 2017. IV. J. H. P. Pallari, K. W. Dalgarno, J. Munguia, L. Muraru, L. Peeraer, S. Telfer, and J. Woodburn” Design and additive fabrication of foot and ankle-foot orthoses”21st Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium – An Additive Manufacturing Conference, SFF 2010 (2010) 834-845 V. Y. Jin, Y. He, and A. Shih, “Process Planning for the Fuse Deposition Modeling of Ankle-Foot-Othoses,” Procedia CIRP, vol. 42, no. Isem Xviii, pp. 760–765, 2016. VI. R. K. Chen, Y. an Jin, J. Wensman, and A. Shih, “Additive manufacturing of custom orthoses and prostheses-A review,” Addit. Manuf., vol. 12, pp. 77–89, 2016. VII. A. D. Maso and F. Cosmi, “ScienceDirect 3D-printed ankle-foot orthosis : a design method,” Mater. Today Proc., vol. 12, pp. 252–261, 2019. VIII. B. Yuan et al., “Designing of a passive knee-assisting exoskeleton for weight-bearing,” in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2017, vol. 10463 LNAI, pp. 273–285. IX. R. Spina, B. Cavalcante, and F. Lavecchia, “Diment LE, Thompson MS, Bergmann JHM. Clinical efficacy and effectiveness of 3D printing: a systematic review.,” AIP Conf. Proc., vol. 1960, 2018. X. M. Srivastava, S. Maheshwari, T. K. Kundra, and S. Rathee, “ScienceDirect Multi-Response Optimization of Fused Deposition Modelling Process Parameters of ABS Using Response Surface Methodology ( RSM ) -Based Desirability Analysis,” Mater. Today Proc., vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 1972–1977, 2017. XI. E. Malekipour, S. Attoye, and H. El-Mounayri, “Investigation of Layer Based Thermal Behavior in Fused Deposition Modeling Process by Infrared Thermography,” Procedia Manuf., vol. 26, pp. 1014–1022, 2018. XII. A. Patar, N. Jamlus, K. Makhtar, J. Mahmud, and T. Komeda, “Development of dynamic ankle foot orthosis for therapeutic application,” Procedia Eng., vol. 41, no. Iris, pp. 1432–1440, 2012. XIII. Y. A. Jin, H. Li, Y. He, and J. Z. Fu, “Quantitative analysis of surface profile in fused deposition modelling,” Addit. Manuf., vol. 8, pp. 142–148, 2015. XIV. M. Walbran, K. Turner, and A. J. McDaid, “Customized 3D printed ankle-foot orthosis with adaptable carbon fibre composite spring joint,” Cogent Eng., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–11, 2016. XV. N. Wierzbicka, F. Górski, R. Wichniarek, and W. Kuczko, “The effect of process parameters in fused deposition modelling on bonding degree and mechanical properties,” Adv. Sci. Technol. Res. J., vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 283–288, 2017. XVI. S. Farah, D. G. Anderson, and R. Langer, “Physical and mechanical properties of PLA, and their functions in widespread applications — A comprehensive review,” Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev., vol. 107, pp. 367–392, 2016. XVII. S. Wojtyła, P. Klama, and T. Baran, “Is 3D printing safe ? Analysis of the thermal treatment of thermoplastics : ABS , PLA , PET , and,” vol. 9624, no. April, 2017. XVIII. G. Cicala et al., “Polylactide / lignin blends,” J. Therm. Anal. Calorim., 2017. XIX. S. Y. Lee, I. A. Kang, G. H. Doh, H. G. Yoon, B. D. Park, and Q. Wu, “Thermal and mechanical properties of wood flour/talc-filled polylactic acid composites: Effect of filler content and coupling treatment,” J. Thermoplast. Compos. Mater., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 209–223, 2008. XX. Y. Tao, H. Wang, Z. Li, P. Li, and S. Q. Shi, “Development and application ofwood flour-filled polylactic acid composite filament for 3d printing,” Materials (Basel)., vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 1–6, 2017. XXI. D. Lewitus, S. McCarthy, A. Ophir, and S. Kenig, “The effect of nanoclays on the properties of PLLA-modified polymers Part 1: Mechanical and thermal properties,” J. Polym. Environ., vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 171–177, 2006. XXII. H. J. Chung, E. J. Lee, and S. T. Lim, “Comparison in glass transition and enthalpy relaxation between native and gelatinized rice starches,” Carbohydr. Polym., vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 287–298, 2002. View Download Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 CFD STUDIES OF MIXING BEHAVIOR OF INERT SAND WITH BIOMASS IN FLUIDIZED BED Authors: B.J.M.Rao,K.V.N.S.Rao, DOI NO: https://doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00053 admin July 26, 2020 Abstract: Agriculture deposits, which remains unused and often causes ecological problems, could play an important role as an energy source to meet energy needs in developing countries ‘ rural areas. Moreover, energy levels in these deposits are low and need to be elevated by introducing efficient operative conversion technologies to utilize these residues as fuels. In this context, the utilization of a fluidized bed innovation enables a wide range of non-uniform-sized low-grade fuels to be effectively converted into other forms of energy.This study was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of fluidized conversion method for transformation of agricultural by-products such as rice husk, sawdust, and groundnut shells into useful energy. The present investigation was conducted to know the mixing characteristics of sand and fuel have been found by conducting experiments with mixing ratio of rice husk (1:13), saw dust(1:5) and groundnut shells (1:12), the variation of particle movement in the bed and mixing characteristics are analyzed. The impact of sand molecule size on the fluidization speed of two biofuel and sand components is studied and recommended for groundnut shells using a sand molecule of 0.6 mm size and for rice husk, sawdust 0.4 mm sand particle size. Also, establish that the particle size of sand has a significant effect on mingling features in case of sawdust. In the next part of the investigation, the CFD simulations of the fluidized bed are done to investigate the mixing behavior of sand and biomass particles. A set of simulations are conducted by ANSYS FLUENT16; the state of the bed is the same as that of the test. The findings were presented with the volume fraction of sand and biomass particles in the form of contour plots. Keywords: Biomass,sand,mixing behavior,Volume Fraction,CFD model, Refference: I Anil Tekale, Swapna God, Balaji Bedre, Pankaj Vaghela, Ganesh Madake, Suvarna Labade (2017), Energy Production from Biomass: Review, International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology, Volume 2, Issue 10, ISSN No: – 2456 – 2165. II Anil Kumar, Nitin Kumar , Prashant Baredar , Ashish Shukla (2015), A review on biomass energy resources, potential, conversion and policy in India, Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Reviews 45-530-539. III Zhenglan Li, ZhenhuaXue (2015), Review of Biomass Energy utilization technology, 3rd International Conference on Material, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. IV Abdeen Mustafa Omer (2011), Biomass energy resources utilisation and waste management, Journal of Agricultural Biotechnology and Sustainable Development Vol. 3(8), pp. 149 -170 V Rijul Dhingra, Abhinav Jain, Abhishek Pandey, and Srishti Mahajan (2014), Assessment of Renewable Energy in India, International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, Vol. 5, No. 5. VI Paulina Drożyner, Wojciech Rejmer, Piotr Starowicz,AndrzejKlasa, Krystyna A. Skibniewska (2013), Biomass as a Renewable Source of Energy, Technical Sciences 16(3), 211–220. VII Souvik Das, Swati Sikdar (2016), A Review on the Non-conventional Energy Sources in Indian Perspective, International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), Volume: 03 Issue: 02. VIII Maninder, Rupinderjit Singh Kathuria, Sonia Grover, Using Agricultural Residues as a Biomass Briquetting: An Alternative Source of Energy, IOSR Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IOSRJEEE), ISSN: 2278-1676 Volume 1, Issue 5 (July-Aug. 2012), PP 11-15. IX H.B.Goyal, DiptenduldDeal, R.C.Saxena (2006) Bio-fuels from thermochemical conversion of renewable resources: A review, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 12, Issue 2Pages 504-517. X Digambar H. Patil, J. K. Shinde(2017) A Review Paper on Study of Bubbling Fluidized Bed Gasifier, International Journal for Innovative Research in Science & Technology, Volume 4, Issue 4 XI Neil T.M. Duffy, John A. Eaton (2013) Investigation of factors affecting channelling in fixed-bed solid fuel combustion using CFD, Combustion and Flame 160, 2204–2220. XII Xing Wu, Kai Li, Feiyue and Xifeng Zhu (2017), Fluidization Behavior of Biomass Particles and its Improvement in a Cold Visualized Fluidized, Bio Resources 12(2), 3546-3559. XIII N.G. Deen, M. Van Sint Annaland, M.A. Van der Hoef, J.A.M. Kuipers (2007), Reviewof discrete particle modeling of fluidized beds, Chemical Engineering Science 62, 28 – 44. XIV BaskaraSethupathySubbaiah, Deepak Kumar Murugan, Dinesh Babu Deenadayalan, Dhamodharan.M.I (2014), Gasification of Biomass Using Fluidized Bed, International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 3, Issue 2. XV Priyanka Kaushal, Tobias Pröll and Hermann Hofbauer, Modelling and simulation of the biomass fired dual fluidized bed gasifier at Guessing/Austria. XVI Dawit DiribaGuta (2012), Assessment of Biomass Fuel Resource Potential and Utilization in Ethiopia: Sourcing Strategies for Renewable Energies, International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, Vol.2, and No.1. View Download Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 AN APPROACH FOR OPTIMISING THE FLOW RATE CONDITIONS OF A DIVERGENT NOZZLE UNDER DIFFERENT ANGULAR CONDITIONS Authors: Lam Ratna Raju ,Ch. Pavan Satyanarayana,Neelamsetty Vijaya Kavya, DOI NO: https://doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00054 admin July 26, 2020 Abstract: A spout is a device which is used to offer the guidance to the gases leaving the burning chamber. Spout is a chamber which has a capability to change over the thermo-compound essentials created within the ignition chamber into lively vitality. The spout adjustments over the low speed, excessive weight, excessive temperature fuel in the consuming chamber into rapid gasoline of decrease weight and low temperature. An exciting spout is used if the spout weight volume is superior vehicles in supersonic airplane machines commonly combine a few sort of a distinctive spout. Our exam is surpassed on the use of programming like Ansys Workbench for arranging of the spout and Fluent 15.0 for separating the streams inside the spout. The events of staggers for the pipe formed spouts have been seen close by trade parameters for numerous considered one of a kind edges. The parameters underneath recognition are differentiated and that of shape spout for singular terrific edges by using keeping up the gulf, outlet and throat width and lengths of joined together and diverse quantities as same. The simultaneous component and throat expansiveness are kept regular over the cases.The surprise of stun became envisioned and the effects exhibited near closeness in direction of motion of Mach circle and its appearance plans as exposed in numerous preliminary considers on advancement in pipe molded particular spouts with assorted edges four°,7°, 10°, Occurrence of stun is seen with higher special factors Keywords: Nozzle,Supersonic Rocket Engine,Divergent edges, Refference: I. Varun, R.; Sundararajan,T.; Usha,R.; Srinivasan,ok.; Interaction among particle-laden under increased twin supersonic jets, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering 2010 224: 1005. II. Pandey,K.M.; Singh, A.P.; CFD Analysis of Conical Nozzle for Mach 3 at Various Angles of Divergence with Fluent Software, International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications, Vol. 1, No. 2, August 2010, ISSN: 2010-0221. III. Natta, Pardhasaradhi.; Kumar, V.Ranjith.; Rao, Dr. Y.V. Hanumantha.; Flow Analysis of Rocket Nozzle Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (Cfd), International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA), ISSN: 2248-9622,Vol. 2, Issue five, September- October 2012, pp.1226-1235. IV. K.M. Pandey, Member IACSIT and A.P. Singh. K.M.Pandey, Member, IACSIT and S.K.YadavK.M.Pandey and S.K.Yadav, ―CFD Analysis of a Rocket Nozzle with Two Inlets at Mach2.1, Journal of Environmental Research and Development, Vol 5, No 2, 2010, pp- 308-321. V. Shigeru Aso, ArifNur Hakim, Shingo Miyamoto, Kei Inoue and Yasuhiro Tani “ Fundamental examine of supersonic combustion in natural air waft with use of surprise tunnel” Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Kyushu University, Japan , Acta Astronautica 57 (2005) 384 – 389. VI. P. Padmanathan, Dr. S. Vaidyanathan, Computational Analysis of Shockwave in Convergent Divergent Nozzle, International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA), ISSN: 2248-9622 , Vol. 2, Issue 2,Mar-Apr 2012, pp.1597-1605. VII. Adamson, T.C., Jr., and Nicholls., J.A., “On the shape of jets from Highly below improved Nozzles into Still Air,” Journal of the Aerospace Sciences, Vol.26, No.1, Jan 1959, pp. Sixteen-24. VIII. Lewis, C. H., Jr., and Carlson, D. J., “Normal Shock Location in underneath increased Gas and Gas particle Jets,” AIAA Journal, Vol 2, No.4, April 1964, pp. 776-777. Books IX. Anderson, John D.Jr.; Modern Compressible Flow with Historical Perspective, Third edition, 2012 X. Versteeg. H.; Malalasekra.W.; An Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics The Finite Volume Method, Second Edition,2009. XI. H.K.Versteeg and W.Malala Sekhara, “An introduction to Computational fluid Dynamics”, British Library cataloguing pub, 4th version, 1996. XII. Lars Davidson, “An introduction to turbulenceModels”, Department of thermo and fluid dynamics, Chalmers college of era, Goteborg, Sweden, November, 2003. XIII. Karna s. Patel, “CFD analysis of an aerofoil”, International Journal of engineering studies,2009. XIV. K.M. Pandey, Member IACSIT and A.P. Singh “CFD Analysis of Conical Nozzle for Mach 3 at Various Angles of Divergence with Fluent Software,2017. XV. P. Parthiban, M. Robert Sagayadoss, T. Ambikapathi, Design And Analysis Of Rocket Engine Nozzle by way of the usage of CFD and Optimization of Nozzle parameters, International Journal of Engineering Research, Vol.Three., Issue.5., 2015 (Sept.-Oct.). View Download Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF DRIVE SHAFT FOR AN AUTOMOBILE APPLICATIONS Authors: Govindarajulu Eedara,P. N. Manthru Naik, DOI NO: https://doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00055 admin July 26, 2020 Abstract: The driveshaft is a mechanical instrument that is used in automobiles. The other name of the drive shaft is driveshaft is prop shaft. It has one long cylindrical structure consist of two universal joints. By using the driveshaft it transfers the rotary motion to the differential by using the helical gearbox. By using this rotary motion the rare wheels will run. The 3dimensional Model of automobile drive Shaft is designed using CATIA parametric which enables product development processes and thereby brings about an optimum design. Now a day’s steel is using the best material for the driveshaft.In this paper replacing the composite materials (Kevlar, e-glass epoxy) instead of steel material and itreduces a considerable amount of weight when compared to the conventional steel shaft. The composite driveshaft have high modulus is designed by using CATIA software and tested in ANSYS for optimization of design or material check and providing the best datebook Keywords: The driveshaft ,CATIA,automobile,steel,composite materials,ANSYS,Kevla,e-glass epoxy, Refference: I A.R. Abu Talib, Aidy Ali, Mohamed A. Badie, Nur Azienda Che Lah, A.F. Golestaneh Developing a hybrid, carbon/glass-fiber-reinforced, epoxy composite automotive driveshaft, Material and Design, volume31, 2010, pp 514 – 521 II ErcanSevkat, Hikmet Tumer, Residual torsional properties of composite shafts subjected to impact Loadings, Materials, and design, volume – 51, 2013, pp -956-967. III H. Bayrakceken, S. Tasgetiren, I. Yavuz two cases of failure in the power transmission system on vehicles: A Universal joint yoke and a drive shaft, volume-14,2007,pp71. IV H.B.H. Gubran, Dynamics of hybrid shafts, Mechanics Research communication, volume – 32, 2005, pp – 368-374. V Shaw D, Simitses DJ, SheinmanI. Imperfection sensitivity of laminated cylindrical shells in torsion and axial compression. ComposStruct 1985; 4(3) pp:35–60. View Download Journal Vol – 15 No -7, July 2020 EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF AN SI ENGINE USING E10 EQUIVALENT TERNARY GASOLINE- ALCOHOL BLENDS." JOURNAL OF MECHANICS OF CONTINUA AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES 15, no. 7 (July 26, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.26782/jmcms.2020.07.00056.