Journal articles on the topic 'American Humanist Association'

Freedom is ambiguous and elusive. Context is useful for delimiting this ideal, though the notion of delimited freedom is itself paradoxical. Humanism, with its emphasis on humans as the basis of inquiry and understanding, places significance on self-defined pursuits of meaning and happiness. Freedom is essential to that endeavor. Given the centrality of freedom to humanist philosophy, an analysis of a strategic subset of their major writings and manifestos holds potential for unlocking insights about freedom. An author-created, corpus of humanist manifestos was collected, comprised of twelve texts from three organizations. Specifically, the corpus contains documents from the following organizations: the American Humanist Association (n = 3), Humanists International (n = 7), and the Center for Inquiry (n = 2), with publications ranging from the year 1933 to 2022. Frequency analyses of words of merit provided context for the centrality of freedom in humanist literature. The term freedom was analyzed in terms of time, organization, and functional form to determine the degree of consistency in usage. These insights make explicit what was ambiguous and provide a foundation from which individuals and organizations can articulate and pursue the type of humanist freedom defined in their literature.

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF AMERICAN HUMANISM by Stephen P. Weldon. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. 285 pages. Hardcover; $49.95. ISBN: 9781421438580. *The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism by Stephen Weldon recounts with approval the rise of non-theistic, and even antitheistic, thought in modern science. At the outset, I will confess to being a biased reviewer (perhaps, even, an antireviewer). If I were to tell this story, I would lament, rather than celebrate, the seemingly antireligious stance lauded in this history. I must also confess to being an active participant in this history, both as an amateur student in the fundamentalist/modernist controversy in the Presbyterian churches and in my own active involvement in faith-science discussions among evangelicals in the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). No historical account is objective--it will always reflect its author's perspective. This is true of this book and of this review. *Weldon tells the history episodically highlighting key people who contributed to this story. He begins in chapter 1, "Liberal Christianity and the Frontiers of American Belief," with Unitarians (theists/deists who reject the deity of Christ), liberal Protestants, and atheistic freethinkers. After a few chapters, he turns to a largely secular story dominated by philosophers rather than ministers. Chapter 12 presents charts that show how the 1933 Humanist Manifesto had 50% signatories who were liberal and Unitarian ministers, while the 1973 Humanist Manifesto II had only 21%. By the end of book, humanism becomes secular/atheistic humanism. Weldon describes humanism as "a view of the world that emphasizes human dignity, democracy as the ideal form of government, universal education, and scientific rationality" (p. 5). While not explicitly mentioned, but likely included in the phrase "scientific rationality," is atheism. The 1973 Humanist Manifest II begins with this theme in its opening article about religion: "We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of survival and fulfillment of the human race. As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity." *Chapter 2, "The Birth of Religious Humanism," tells the early 1900s story of ministers John Dietrich, Curtis Reese, and philosopher Roy Wood Sellers, all who were or became Unitarians. "'God-talk' was no longer useful." Unitarianism ends up being a haven for religious humanists, even for those who have eliminated traditional religious language. These are the roots of today's secular humanism. *In many ways, this era is the other side of the religious history of America that this journal's readers may know. The ASA has roots in the more conservative and traditional end of American Protestantism. The old Princeton Presbyterians, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield, represent a strictly orthodox Christianity, but one open to the advances of modern science. One did not have to be theologically liberal to be proscience. The phenomenon of young-earth creationism is a relatively recent development. Conservative Protestants were not as opposed to conventional science as Weldon's treatment suggests. *The Humanist Manifesto (1933) is the subject of chapter 3, "Manifesto for an Age of Science." It was written by Unitarian Roy Wood Sellers and spearheaded by people associated with Meadville Theological School, a small Unitarian seminary, originally in Pennsylvania; after relocating, it had a close association with the University of Chicago. The Manifesto begins with the words, "The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes." The first affirmation is "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." *"Philosophers in the Pulpit" (chap. 4) highlights the University of Columbia philosophy department and John Dewey, in particular. Dewey was one of the more prominent signers of the Humanist Manifesto and a leading advocate of philosophical pragmatism. This chapter also tells the story of Felix Adler, also associated with Columbia, and the founder of Ethical Culture, an organization with nontheistic, Jewish roots. *"Humanists at War" (chap. 5) and "Scientists on the World Stage" (chap. 6) recount the increased secularization of humanism. Humanists in the 1940s increasingly struggled with the religious character of humanism. Should the category of religion be used at all? During this era, natural scientists, such as evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley and Drosophila geneticist Hermann Muller, rather than philosophers, led the most prominent forms of humanism. This humanism was increasingly secular, scientific, and even atheistic. *Weldon is not hesitant to expose the foibles of this movement. Chapter 7, "Eugenics and the Question of Race," traces how selective population control became part of the conversation. In addition to Huxley and Muller, Margaret Sanger is also part of this story. Philosopher Paul Kurtz makes his first appearance in this chapter and continues to be a significant player in the rest of the book. He was the editor of the Humanist Manifesto and used its pages to explore the question of race and IQ. *Chapter 8, entitled "Inside the Humanist Counter'culture," describes a period dominated by questions of human sexuality and psychology. Weldon's use of the word "counterculture" is apt. In the 1960s, the feminist Patricia Robertson and lawyer/activist Tolbert McCarroll expressed the zeitgeist of the sexual revolution. The psychology of Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and Abraham Maslow moved humanism from a more objective/scientific focus to a more experiential one. They are representatives of the third force (or humanistic) school of psychology, in contrast to Freudian psychoanalysis or Skinnerian behaviorism. Although agreement was rare, by the end of the decade, under Paul Kurtz (influenced by B. F. Skinner), the public face of humanism returned to a more scientific leaning. *Chapter 9, "Skeptics in the Age of Aquarius," is one chapter where I found myself, as a traditional evangelical, to be in nearly complete agreement. This chapter describes how New Age beliefs, along with an ascending occultism, came under fire from the scientific humanists under the leadership of Paul Kurtz. Weldon even cites a Christianity Today article that makes common cause with the secular humanists in their resistance to the growing occultism of western culture. I found this chapter to be a useful critique of New Age thinking. *"The Fundamentalist Challenge" (chap. 10) and "Battling Creationism and Christian Pseudoscience" (chap. 11) recount the clash between secular evolutionists and fundamentalist creationists, especially regarding the public-school science curriculum and the teaching of evolution. Here the author clearly demonstrates his prosecularist/anti-fundamentalist inclinations. On a more personal note, the mention of Francis Schaeffer, R. J. Rushdoony, and Cornelius Van Til, strikes at my own history. While some elements of this conservative Presbyterianism were clearly anti-evolutionist, others in the conservative Reformed camp were open to the proscience (including evolutionary biology) views of Warfield and Hodge, even in the early days of anti-evolutionism among fundamentalists. While some in the ASA would count themselves among young-earth creationists or flood geologists, the majority are open to old-earth geology and even to evolutionary biology. The reaction of Weldon himself, and other critics of this era, seems more akin to a religious fundamentalism of its own--albeit a fundamentalism of naturalism. Fundamentalists are not the only ones engaging in a culture war. My own view is that old-earth geology, old universe (big bang) cosmology, and evolutionary biology should be taught as the mainstream scientific consensus even in private religious schools. But dissent and disagreement should be allowed among teachers and students alike. Sometimes it seems to me that these fundamentalist creationists and atheistic evolutionists are all more interested in indoctrination than education. *Embedded in chapter 10 is the history of the Humanist Manifesto II (coauthored by Paul Kurtz). It clearly espouses positions antithetical to traditional Christian orthodoxy, especially in the explicit anti-theistic and prosexual revolution statements. But it is striking to me how much agreement I can find with people who so strongly disagree with traditional Christian faith. This tells me two things: while fundamental religious differences may exist between people, there is something about being human in this world that brings Christians and non-Christians together on many very fundamental questions such as liberty, human dignity, friendship, and peaceful co-existence. Such values are not the unique provenance of humanists or Christians or other religious groups. The second thing is that we are much better at emphasizing differences and seeking to force others to conform to our way than we are at tolerating differences and persuading those who disagree. *The opening of chapter 12, "The Humanist Ethos of Science and Modern America," brought me once again to a personal reflection that is relevant in reviewing this book. My own love of the natural sciences can be traced to Sagan, Asimov, Clarke, Gould, Dawkins, and others who brought the wonder of science to the broader public. Without denying their a-religious, and even antireligious posture, it is noteworthy that the truths about the natural world are independent of who discovered them or communicates them. And they are wondrous whether or not you acknowledge the hand of God in creating them. The process of science works whether the world was created by God or is the result of properties of the universe that just are. It is interesting to me that a brief discussion of post-modernism appears in this chapter. Postmodernism's undermining of the objectivity of natural science leads one to wonder whether this undermines the whole book by hinting that a postmodernist perspective is the consistent non'religious/atheist view. In contrast, the ASA's faith statement states: "We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation." According to Christians, natural science is possible because creation is orderly and intelligible. Atheists and skeptics simply assert the world's orderliness and intelligibility. *Like myself, readers of this journal are likely to have a different perspective on the events traced in Weldon's book. Nevertheless, the history recounted here helps us to see why there is such a divide between science and those who continue to be influenced by more conservative religious views. As such, it is a worthwhile read and of interest to those who follow the science-faith literature. *Reviewed by Terry Gray, Instructor in Chemistry, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.

In this paper I pick up humanism, and try to show a vision of humanism based on Big History. Of course, the concept of humanism has its own long history, and it has various meanings. To examine them in detail is out of my scope. American Humanist Association defines humanism as: “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.” 1 Here, for the time being, I simply define it as an idea to admit human dignity and oppose those which oppress human beings, and discuss how Big History deals with this idea.

AbstractThe American religious landscape is transforming due to a sharp rise in the percentage of the population that is nonreligious. Political and demographic causes have been proffered but little attention has been paid to the current and potential political impact of these “nones,” especially given the established link between religion, participation, and party politics. I argue that the political impact of nonreligious Americans lies in an unexplored subset of the nonreligious population called committed seculars. Committed seculars de-identify with religion, they adopt secular beliefs, and join organizations structured on secular beliefs. Using a unique survey of a secular organization, the American Humanist Association, I demonstrate that committed seculars are extremely partisan and participatory, and are driven to participate by their ideological extremity in relation to the Democratic Party. These results point to a long-term mobilizing dimension for Democrats and indicate the potential polarizing influence of seculars in party politics.

This paper is based on a plenary presentation at the 1995 annual meetings of the Association for Humanist Sociology in Columbus, Ohio, on October 27, 1995 and on Marginality and Dissent in 20th Century American Sociology: The Case of Elizabeth Briant Lee and Alfred McClung Lee (1995), authored by John and James Galliher and published by the State University of New York Press. The authors thank AHS for the invitation to discuss the book and celebrate the Lees at the annual meetings and in the journal. We also express our thanks to Al and Betty Lee for their support and encouragement through the life of the project.

Since its initial publication, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been the object of criticism which has led to regular revisions by the American Psychiatric Association. This article analyses the debates that surrounded the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Building on the concepts of public arenas and reception theory, it explores the meaning encoded in the manual by audiences. Our results, which draw from a thematic analysis of traditional and digital media sources, identify eight audiences that react to the American Psychiatric Association’s narrative of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.): conformist, reformist, humanist, culturalist, naturalist, conflictual, constructivist and utilitarian. While some of their claims present argumentative polarities, others overlap, thus challenging the idea, often presented in academic publications, of a fixed debate. In order to further discuss on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we draw attention to claims that ‘travel’ across different communities of audiences.

Julie Underwood highlights three cases from the 2018-2019 U.S. Supreme Court term that have implications for education. In American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019), the Court ruled that a cross on public land honoring World War I soldiers was not a violation of the Establishment Clause. In this ruling, the Justices criticized the Lemon test often used in cases related to religion in schools, but they did not invalidate it entirely. In Kisor v. Wilkie (2019), Justices expressed the belief that the Court should defer to administrative agencies in interpreting complex regulations and administrative guidance. This leaves room for the Department of Education and other agencies to reinterpret regulations for political or ideological reasons. In Department of Commerce v. State of New York (2019), the Court ruled that a citizenship question on the U.S. Census is acceptable, but the that Department of Commerce did not provide an acceptable reason for the decision. The outcome of this case could affect the census count, which would then affect how education funding is allocated.

The systematic value (i.e., religious) assumptions of many areas of psychology are being increasingly explored. This article focuses on the organizational values reflected by actions of the American Psychological Association (APA). For illustrative purposes, humanism and evangelical Christianity are described and related to several APA activities and publications. APA is found to favor humanistic values and is encouraged to adopt several specific organizational changes. APA can become a stronger organization by encouraging professional self-evaluation and pluralism.

Recent major court decisions and important political events in democratic countries demonstrated, explicitly or implicitly, governmental bias in favor of a given religious tradition. Some prominent cases include the Swiss minarets ban of 2009, the 2011 ECtHR decision in the Lautsi case (Lautsi vs. Italy (2011) Application No. 30814/06) as well as the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the American Legion v. American Humanist Association case (No. 17-1717, 588 U.S. (2019), legitimizing the usage of public funds to maintain the Maryland Bladensburg Cross. Major scholars, such as David Miller, Joseph Weiler, and Cecile Laborde suggested a novel, detailed argument, justifying the rights of majorities in given countries to structure religion–state institutions following the majority religion, as long as the rights of minority communities and individuals are upheld. The aim of the current article is twofold: First, in section one, we shall attentively define the ‘religious majoritarian approach’ (RMA), that upholds the presumed rights of majorities to structure religion–state institutions according to the majority-religion. The core features of the RMA will be defined, and three pre-conditions the model requires in order to ‘fit’ any given case will be described (‘shared understanding’; ‘tradition’ and ‘democratic challenge’). Second, in section two, once we have a precise understanding of the RMA, to suggest a critical discussion of this approach. For the sake of the argument, and in order to enable a proper conversation with RMA proponents, this article will not assume that the RMA is illegitimate to begin with, as would be the case if our starting point would have been some version of liberal-neutrality. Rather, the main critical argument will be that the positive case for the RMA is under-studied. In ‘positive’, it would mean here the arguments for the RMA, rather than focusing on the mere permissibility of it. After all, if a government wishes to adopt a certain policy, it is not sufficient to argue that it does not violate certain moral or legal standards, rather, the citizens of said country would like to know what is the utility of this policy? What does it attempt to achieve? How is it justified? The ‘positive’ examination of the RMA will be divided into two categories: The first, examining the merits and plausibility of the pre-conditions and the arguments made by RMA scholars themselves. Therefore, in cases in which they are not met, the RMA should be rejected according to the RMA itself. The second is to confront RMA models with further critiques and difficulties, focusing on concerns raised regarding the entanglement between religion and state that the RMA entails, from the perspective of both religion and government. Somewhat schematically, we can label the former critique as ‘internal’, and the latter as ‘external’.

Internalized racism, or the acceptance of negative stereotypes about one’s own racial group, is associated with psychological distress; yet, few studies have explored the longitudinal impact of internalized racism on the psychological well-being of African American emerging adults. Furthermore, racial identity’s role as a protective factor in the context of internalized racism remains unclear. This study examined the longitudinal impact of internalized racism on psychological distress (depressive and anxiety symptoms) and the moderating role of racial identity beliefs among 171 African American emerging adults. Full cross-lagged panel models revealed no main effects of internalized racism beliefs on psychological distress. However, several racial identity beliefs moderated the relationship between internalized racism beliefs and changes in psychological distress over a year later. Initial levels of alteration of physical appearance, internalization of negative stereotypes, and hair change internalized racism beliefs were related to subsequent psychological distress, but only for those with certain levels of racial centrality, private regard, public regard, and assimilationist, humanist, and nationalist ideology beliefs. These findings suggest that, over time, internalized racism and racial identity beliefs can combine to influence the psychological well-being of African American emerging adults.

Se presenta aquí el texto que se ofreció como ponencia en el I Congreso Internacional de Psicología y Psicoterapias Humanistas que tuvo lugar, en noviembre de 2015, en Barcelona. El artículo se ocupa de responder a tres cuestiones principales: 1ª Desde que se inició públicamente el Movimiento de la Psicología Humanista, en 1961, al crearse la American Association for Humanistic Psychology y el Journal of Humanistic Psychology, ¿cuáles podemos considerar sus principales logros hasta la actualidad? ¿Qué influencias beneficiosas ha producido en el colectivo de los psicólogos, psicoterapeutas y otros profesionales de la salud?; 2ª Dentro del pluralismo de modelos terapéuticos relacionados, en algún grado, con la Psicología Humanista, ¿qué principales errores –o, al menos- deficiencias- se pueden señalar en una parte de sus profesionales? ¿Qué infidelidades respecto a las aspiraciones originales del Movimiento? ¿Se ha logrado superar plenamente lo que Rollo May (1986, p. 33) calificó como «período de infancia y de adolescencia» de la Psicología Humanista? 3ª Finalmente, ¿qué nuevas posibilidades se ofrecen a los implicados en las psicoterapias existencial-humanistas, teniendo presentes algunos de los principales problemas actuales experimentados por individuos y sociedades? ¿Serán capaces los psicólogos humanistas de influir beneficiosamente no sólo respecto a los primeros, sino también respecto a las segundas? El objetivo era seleccionar –sobrepasado el medio siglo de historia del Movimiento de la Psicología Humanista– un conjunto de materiales idóneos para futuros trabajos sobre historia de las psicoterapias humanistas.

The approval of the 2014 joint Global Definition of Social Work required that international social work associations review the associated ethical principles of social work. The Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles ( GSWSEP) was approved by international social work bodies in Dublin in July 2018. While the previous Statement of Ethics emphasized liberal humanist values common in the European–North American axis, the GSWSEP recognizes the global nature of the social work profession and locates human dignity at the core of social work ethics. The GSWSEP problematizes the core principles of social work, and responds to calls to decolonize social work in the context of the increasing regulation of social work.

IntroductionIn The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, Arthur A. Cohen questionsthe notion that a "Judeo-Christian" tradition even exists, and suggeststhat it is an invention of twentieth century American politics spawned byefforts to form a cultural consensus and, in the process, homogenize religiousidentification and promote interfaith harmony. The conception of such atradition is, in Cohen's words, " ... mythological or, rather, not preciselymythological but ideological and hence, as in all ideologies, shot throughwith falsification, distortion, and untruth."A political use of the term "Judeo-Christian" has gained particular currencyin the latter part of the twentieth century as reliance on certain religiousvalues, symbols and rhetoric in public discourse has both generated andreflected popular approval, the ideal of separation of church and state not withstanding.Common assumptions about the place of religion and moralityin public life are being reevaluated. In an era of greater conformity andconsensus-building, ushered in by a general swing toward conservatism inNorth American politics, an effort is being made to resurrect a shared setof traditional beliefs and values thought once to be the backbone of Americanand Canadian life. Instead of celebrating diversity and pluralism in NorthAmerica, the emphasis has been placed on the merits of unity and a sharedsense of ethics. Conservatives are engaged in an effort to redefine Americanvalues and beliefs and ameliorate what they see as deplorable conditionsprecipitated by the liberalism, secularity and moral relativism of the 1960s.This corrective impulse is proving to be an important factor in reshapingboth the religious and political scene.It is in this context that the meaning of difference has been obscured.A commitment to pluralism has been an important part of the heritage ofNorth American societies, especially Canada, since their inception and yetwhat is meant by reference to the "Judeo-Christian" tradition remains ambiguous.Rather than promoting interfaith harmony, the current use of theconcept functions to exclude those who are judged to deviate from the socialand cultural norm or to be nonbelievers, i.e., persons conceived to be a threatto the bedrock values of America. Observers of the North American religiousscene have noted that religion is used as a means of negotiating one's placein society and establishing identity. Public figures appeal to our sense ofnational identity and patriotism by talking about the United States as a 'judeoChristiannation," which, in effect, serves to exclude other religious groups(such as Muslims) and nonreligious groups from the mainstream of Americansociery.What is implied by reference to "Judeo-Christian" is even narrowerthosewho actually mean to promote an exclusively Christian America6 useit to signify the defense of purportedly Christian-cum-American values andlife-style from the inroads of secular humanism. President Reagan, in his1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando. Florida, ...

IntroductionIn The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, Arthur A. Cohen questionsthe notion that a "Judeo-Christian" tradition even exists, and suggeststhat it is an invention of twentieth century American politics spawned byefforts to form a cultural consensus and, in the process, homogenize religiousidentification and promote interfaith harmony. The conception of such atradition is, in Cohen's words, " ... mythological or, rather, not preciselymythological but ideological and hence, as in all ideologies, shot throughwith falsification, distortion, and untruth."A political use of the term "Judeo-Christian" has gained particular currencyin the latter part of the twentieth century as reliance on certain religiousvalues, symbols and rhetoric in public discourse has both generated andreflected popular approval, the ideal of separation of church and state notwithstanding.Common assumptions about the place of religion and moralityin public life are being reevaluated. In an era of greater conformity andconsensus-building, ushered in by a general swing toward conservatism inNorth American politics, an effort is being made to resurrect a shared setof traditional beliefs and values thought once to be the backbone of Americanand Canadian life. Instead of celebrating diversity and pluralism in NorthAmerica, the emphasis has been placed on the merits of unity and a sharedsense of ethics. Conservatives are engaged in an effort to redefine Americanvalues and beliefs and ameliorate what they see as deplorable conditionsprecipitated by the liberalism, secularity and moral relativism of the 1960s.This corrective impulse is proving to be an important factor in reshapingboth the religious and political scene.It is in this context that the meaning of difference has been obscured.A commitment to pluralism has been an important part of the heritage ofNorth American societies, especially Canada, since their inception and yetwhat is meant by reference to the "Judeo-Christian" tradition remains ambiguous. Rather than promoting interfaith harmony, the current use of theconcept functions to exclude those who are judged to deviate from the socialand cultural norm or to be nonbelievers, i.e., persons conceived to be a threatto the bedrock values of America. Observers of the North American religiousscene have noted that religion is used as a means of negotiating one's placein society and establishing identity. Public figures appeal to our sense ofnational identity and patriotism by talking about the United States as a 'judeoChristiannati.on," which, in effect, serves to exclude other religious groups(such as Muslims) and nonreligious groups from the mainstream of Americansociery.What is implied by reference to "Judeo-Christian" is even narrowerthosewho actually mean to promote an exclusively Christian America6 useit to signify the defense of purportedly Christian-cum-American values andlife-style from the inroads of secular humanism. President Reagan, in his1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando. Florida, ...

This article elucidates the idea of religious pluralism among Indonesian theosophies society (MTI), an association of well-educated people of Nusantara from 1901 through 1933, whose members were dominated by the high-class of Javanese and Sumatran people, Dutch and other Europeans. It argues that MTI’s ideas about pluralistic and inclusive religious perceptions and attitudes were indeed influenced by perennialism, religious humanism, Javanese Islam and Sufism that accepted religious pluralism. MTI’s deep religious outlooks and insights resulted from mixed ideas coming from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds: Europe, America, India, China and indigenous Nusantara traditions which emphasizes the principles of harmony.

This prose poem explores autobiography as a trace site for the affective encounters between life and non-life. Using my own memories of making a childhood bug collection, I attempt to answer a question Povinelli asks in Geontologies—What does life desire? —by merging it with a question raised in my own ethnographic fieldwork—What do I desire? The affective resonance between my childhood bug collection, my ethnographic fieldwork as part of my PhD program in anthropology, and Povinelli’s 2016 book disrupts linear notions of time and argues that desire for difference itself produces the distinction between life and non-life. Original PublicationBrunson, Wesley. “Dragonfly.” Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 47, no. 1, 2022, pp. 235–239. © 2022 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/anhu.12372.

General psychology includes many areas of investigation: biologicalbases of behavior, sensation and perception, consciousness andattention, motivation and emotion, conditioning, learning, cognition,language, thinking, remembering and forgetting, intelligence, and personality.During the first half of the twentieth century, psychologistsclassified themselves as structuralists, functionalists, behaviorists,gestaltists, psychoanalysts, existentialists, humanists, or cognitivists.Today, such classifications are little used in the West. If one looks at thepublications of the American Psychological Association and the BritishPsychological Society, psychologists classify themselves according totheir fields or specific topic of hterest, such as social psychology,developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, psychotherapy,counseling, occupational psychology, psychometrics, media, women,and so on. Several tools are used in psychology to study behavior,among them surveys, questionnaires, interviews, observations, experiments,and tests.Psychology is defined as the scientific study of human behavior, andits theories and methods are considered scientific and universal.According to this understanding, there are four important terms that need ...

AbstractBuilding on recent research into the religious aspects of the Cold War and the humanitarian efforts of the American Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in early twentieth-century Europe, this article locates the historical origins of religious anti-communism in late imperial Russian reactions to the revolution of 1905–07. It explores the interactions of Russian Orthodox Christian intellectuals, especially Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev, with prominent YMCA leaders such as Donald A. Lowrie and Paul B. Anderson, both of whom were mainline Protestants. Using Russian and US archives, the article documents the networks and mechanisms through which Berdyaev influenced his YMCA contacts. It shows that he shaped their efforts to fight communism in the interwar period and early Cold War through the promotion of religious values, or what Anderson referred to as ‘a Christian solution to international tension’. This concept was derived from early twentieth-century Russian ideas about the opposition between Christianity and ‘nihilism’ or ‘humanism’ as integral worldviews.

SCIENCE UNDER FIRE: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America by Andrew Jewett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. 356 pages. Hardcover; $41.00. ISBN: 9780674987913. *John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White's role in fueling popular ideas about conflict between the primarily natural sciences and religion has been often studied. It is now well known that their claims were erroneous, prejudice laden (in Draper's case against Roman Catholicism), and part of broader efforts to align science with a liberal and rationalized Christianity. In Science under Fire, Boston College historian Andrew Jewett recounts a similarly important but lesser-known tale: twentieth-century criticism of the primarily human sciences as promoting politically charged, prejudice laden, and secular accounts of human nature. *Jewett is an intellectual historian who focuses on the interplay between the sciences and public life in the United States. Science under Fire follows up on his 2012 Science, Democracy, and the American University, which explored the role of science (or, more precisely, science-inspired thinking associated with the human sciences) as a shaper of American culture from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. As with that previous work, Science under Fire illustrates how science can be practiced as a form of culture building and leveraged for sociopolitical ends. While Science, Democracy, and the American University explored how various ideas about science came to displace the then-dominant Protestant understandings of morality in the late nineteenth century, Science under Fire considers how a variety of critics reacted to the growing influence of those sciences. *Throughout both historical periods, members of the public, politicians, and many social scientists did not view science as offering a neutral or unbiased account of the nature of humans and their behavior. Rather, they practiced, appropriated, and criticized various accounts in order to advance particular visions about how society should be organized. These visions were not primarily driven by scientific data but by philosophical precommitments, including some which led their proponents to deny the validity of the Protestant and humanist values which previously anchored American public life. So, Science under Fire addresses religious and politically conservative apprehension over "amoral" psychology and the teaching of evolution in schools. However, its story is much broader. The secular and religious liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, humanities scholars and social scientists all at times lamented the dehumanizing effects of technology or worried that scientists were unduly influenced by selfish motives. *Science under Fire begins with a twenty-three-page summary of the book's main themes. This is followed by two chapters that explain the cultural developments which fostered apprehension about science's role in society. By the 1920s, some thinkers were calling on Americans to adopt "modern" scientific modes of thought, in part by dismissing religion as a source of objective values (chap. 1). Their efforts were resisted by humanities scholars, Catholics, and liberal Protestants, who focused on lambasting naturalist approaches in psychology (e.g., by Freud and John Watson) as pseudoscientific and offering classical or religious values as a bulwark against the excesses of capitalism and consumerism (chap. 2). *In the 1930s and 40s, these critiques were given new impetus as worries arose over social scientists' role in shaping Roosevelt's New Deal as well as mental associations between amoral science and Japanese and German totalitarianism (chap. 3). Post-World War II fears over science grew to encompass concerns about "amoral" scientists such as B. F. Skinner, Benjamin Spock, and others engaging in "social engineering" by training children to value social conformity at the expense of traditional religious or humanist moral guidance (chap. 4). The increasingly vehement religious opposition to scientists' attempts to address questions of morality was partly driven by opposition to "atheist" communism and featured a broad coalition of Protestant and Catholic critics decrying the effects of "scientism" (chap. 5). *There was also a postwar resurgence in interest in the humanities, as well as efforts by thinkers such as C. P. Snow, to position the social sciences as a humanist bridge between "literary" and "scientific" cultures (chap. 6). In the United States, Snow's call for greater prominence for the sciences was challenged by New Right conservatives, who regarded it as dangerously opening the door for liberal academic social scientists to portray their ideologically charged views as objectively scientific. Their efforts included supporting conservative social scientists' research, intervening in academic politics and research funding, and, somewhat 'justifiably, 'complaining about the persecution of conservative scholars (chap. 7). *Nevertheless, postwar criticism of scientism was couched in flexible enough terms to appeal to politically and theologically diverse thinkers associated with various institutes and literary endeavors (chap. 8), ultimately including many in the iconoclastic New Left counterculture of the 1960s and 70s (chap. 9). By that time, movements critical of science included religious opposition to evolution and psychology; neoconservative criticism of the "welfare state"; and feminist, Black, and indigenous critiques of science as a tool for justifying an oppressive status quo (chap. 10). *In the Reaganite era, science was targeted by pluralist, postfoundationalist, poststructuralist, and postmodern thinkers; religious conservative challenges to evolution and "secularism" in science; tighter budgets and a downgrading of blue-sky research; and worries over the implications of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering (chap. 11). After a short evaluative conclusion, sixty-two pages of endnotes help flesh out Jewett's argument. *Science under Fire helps illuminate how science and religion have interacted as culture-shaping forces in American public life. Readers will learn how debates that are prima facie about science and religion are really about values and cultural authority, and will discover the origins of some of the assumptions and strategic moves that shape popular science-faith discourse. They will also be invited to enlarge their repertoire of science-faith thinkers (e.g., John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, B. F. Skinner) and topics (behaviorism, debates over Keynesian economics as a backdrop, and how science's value-free ideal was invented and leveraged). *Nevertheless, readers should be aware that Jewett's near-exclusive focus on sweeping intellectual tendencies and the social sciences (with occasional forays to reflect on genetic technology and the atomic bomb) means that Science under Fire is not an entirely balanced account of science, politics, and religion in America. Some chapters focus on major streams of thought to the point that the story of individual movements, thinkers, and their interactions with one another is lost. Fundamentalist and conservative evangelical reactions to scientism are treated relatively perfunctorily compared to liberal Christian responses (e.g., the Institute for Religion in an Age of Science is mentioned while the American Scientific Affiliation is not). A bias toward sociological explanations occasionally leads to a degree of mischaracterization. For example, Thomas Kuhn is mentioned only in connection with the 1960s counterculture, and the Vietnam-era Strategic Hamlet Program is characterized as an attempt to "make proper citizens out of Vietnamese peasants" rooted in modernization theory (p. 181), without mentioning it as a counterinsurgency strategy inspired by Britain's successful use of "New Villages" in the Malayan emergency. Finally, although most of the book is lucid, it is occasionally meandering, repetitive, and convoluted. This is particularly true for the introduction, which readers might consider skipping on the first read. *These criticisms are not meant to be dismissive. Science under Fire is a unique and uniquely important book. Those who are willing to mine its depths will be rewarded with a treasure trove of insight into the social and political factors that continue to shape conversations about science, technology, and faith in the United States today. *Reviewed by Stephen Contakes, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA 93108.

Este trabajo se enfoca en la trayectoria de vida de Abraham Flexner, conocido en el campo de la salud por el Informe Flexner, publicado en 1910, considerado como una de las discusiones teóricas más importantes en la historia de la educación médica. Flexner fue ante todo un educador, perteneciente al movimiento progresista de educación en EEUU, encabezado por John Dewey. A lo largo del texto se analiza el momento histórico en que se inicia la conformación del campo de la salud en EEUU, sus actores, los intereses en juego, la constitución de la doxa, el rol de las fundaciones filantrópicas y de la American Medical Association. Las críticas de Flexner en el campo de la educación se centraron en los métodos pedagógicos en los diferentes niveles educativos, siendo especialmente crítico de la universidad, los posgrados y la ausencia de una formación humanista, desplazada por la investigación. La pregunta final del artículo es si los problemas enunciados por Flexner sobre la educación en general y la educación médica en particular entre fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, tienen aún vigencia en las escuelas de medicina y universidades de los países de América Latina.

In her short story Everyday Use, the African American writer Alice Walker labels her female characters Mrs. Johnson, and her two daughters: Maggie, and Dee by associating them with an animal quality. In my present paper I attempt to show the central and pivotal role played by the mechanism of 'Animal Epithet' in order to investigate to what extent does the writer apply the theory of 'Womanism' to her short fiction's protagonist and the other characters. Walker wants the reader to share her investigation journey in order to find a logical answer for the crucial questions raised in the research-paper: Why does Walker portray female characters by comparing them to animals? How does Walker manage to treat this topic aesthetically? What portrait of black woman does she prove? To answer these central questions, Walker is committed to construct her short narrative work on the base of the key elements of inversion, signifying, and quilting-like. Walker, as a womanist and animal activist is defiant and ridiculous of the mainstream agent of humanism represented by white males. She aesthetically inverts the meaning of the negative, dehumanizing image devised and everyday used by the men of ruling class into aesthetic and positive one to represent the identity of black women.

Abstract Currently more and more immunotherapeutic drugs and engineered cells have been developed to use human immune system against cancer. While humanized peripheral blood mononuclear cell reconstitution in immune deficient mice is a forward-straight model for evaluating therapeutic antibodies, this conventional model has several drawbacks to hinder its widespread use, including the graft-versus-host-disease happened after one month of reconstitution, insufficient immune cell infiltration from reconstituted circulatory system and hardly retention of functional innate immune cells, such as macrophages and nature killer cells. To overcome this, LIDE has developed a specific human immune cell and cancer cell co-inoculation model. Cancer-priming PBMC and/or its derivates were well mixed with the fresh cancer cells in MatriGel, co-transferring into NCG mice to form a relatively “hot tumor” tissue for immunotherapy, including drugs targeting T cells, dendritic cells and macrophages. Additionally, we also take advantage of human IL15 transgenic mice to study the function of ex vivo expanded NK cells. This novel method has successfully helped evaluate biological function of immune checkpoint blockers and immune agonists in multiple cancers, such as melanoma, breast cancer, lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma and ovarian cancer. Citation Format: Bin Xie, Xin Hou, Hanglu Chen, Pengfei Yang, Yanbin Zhou, Danyi Wen. Novel Immuno-Oncology drugs evaluation by humanised immune cells and cancer co-inoculated models. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 5200.

The development of gender identity in early childhood will influence how they accept their gender. Someone who confuses about their gender would be at risk to experience gender dysphoria. This study aimed to determine differences in gender identity among early childhood based on the presence of male and female teachers. The study used a quantitative approach with a cross-sectional study design. Data was collected using gender identity questionnaires from April until August 2023. The sample was 200 students (95 male; 105 female) in 23 preschool institutions (5.83 years old; SD: 0.50) in 5 regencies in East Java. Data from the two groups sample showed a difference in average scores (9.15 for children who had two gender teachers and 7.57 who only had one gender teacher). The results of statistical analysis using the Mann-Whitney U-Test showed a significance value of 0.00. The result shows significant differences in gender identity between the two groups. It shows the importance of the existence of male and female teachers in early childhood education because both have important complementary roles, especially for the children's gender identity. Researchers suggest schools, the government, or other policymakers provide regulations for the presence of male teachers in early childhood education institutions. Keywords: early childhood; gender identity; teacher gender References: Al Baqi, S. (2021). Penguatan Identitas Gender pada Siswa Laki-laki Melalui Kehadiran Guru Laki-laki di Tingkat PAUD [Strengthening Gender Identity in Male Students Through the Presence of Male Teachers at the Early Childhood Education Level]. Martabat: Jurnal Perempuan Dan Anak, 5(2), 289–309. https://doi.org/10.21274/martabat.2021.5.2.289-309 Arikunto, S. (1983). Prosedur penelitian: Suatu pendekatan praktik [Research procedure: A practical approach]. PT. Bina Aksara, Jakarta. https://books.google.co.id/books?id=6PKbAQAACAAJ Azizah, N. (2014). Pengenalan Identitas Gender pada Anak (Studi pada Taman Pendidikan Anak atau Day Care) [Introduction to Gender Identity in Children (Studies in Children's Education Parks or Day Care)]. Yin Yang, 9(1), 47–58. Beek, T. F., Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., & Kreukels, B. P. C. (2015). Gender incongruence/gender dysphoria and its classification history. International Review of Psychiatry, 28(1), 5–12. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2015.1091293 Boddington, Ellen. (2016). A qualitative exploration of gender identity in young people who identify as neither male nor female—ProQuest. May, 134. Bryan, N., & Milton Williams, T. (2017). We need more than just male bodies in classrooms: Recruiting and retaining culturally relevant Black male teachers in early childhood education. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 38(3), 209–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/10901027.2017.1346529 Bussey, K. (2010). Gender Identity Development. In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. Springer US. Cervantes, J. C. (2018). Gender Identity in Early Childhood. KnE Life Sciences, 2018, 189–198. https://doi.org/10.18502/kls.v4i8.3276 Coxon, J., & Seal, L. (2021). Medical Management to Support Trans Men In A Gender Identity Clinic. In Men’s Health (pp. 260–265). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429347238-32 Farquhar, S. (1997). Are Male Teachers Really Necessary? (9 Seiten). Gianesini, G. (2016). Gender Identity. Encyclopedia of Family Studies, 5(10), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs465 Koch, S., & Farquhar, B. (2015). Breaking through the glass doors: Men working in early childhood education and care with particular reference to research and experience in Austria and New Zealand. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 23(3), 380–391. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2015.1043812 Martin, R. (2017). Gender and Emotion Stereotypes in Children’s Television. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 61(3), 499–517. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2017.1344667 Maulana, R. A., Kurniati, E., Yulindrasari, H., No, J. S., Kec, I., Kota, S., & Barat, J. (2020). Apa yang Menyebabkan Rendahnya Keberadaan Guru Laki-laki di PAUD? [ What Causes the Low Presence of Male Teachers in ECE] 15(1), 23–32. Patacchini, E. (2019). Mothers, Peers and Gender-Role Identity Claudia Olivetti, Eleonora Patacchini and Yves Zenou. 1295. Pujisatuti, T. (2014). Peran Orang Tua Dalam Pembentukan Identitas Gender Anak [The Role of Parents in Forming Children's Gender Identity]. Syi’ar, 14(1), 53–61. Qosyasih, N. N. S., & Adriany, V. (2021). Constructing Gender Identity in Young Children. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Early Childhood Education (ICECE 2020), 538(Icece 2020), 177–179. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210322.038 Salim, R. M. A., & Safitri, S. (2020). Parents as Teachers: The Influence of Internal and External Factors on Parenting Style Differences. Jurnal Psikologi Teori Dan Terapan, 10(2), 95. https://doi.org/10.26740/jptt.v10n2.p95-104 Santrock, J. W. (2011). Life-span Development (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Smith, K. E. (1981). Male Teachers in Early Childhood Education: Sex-Role Perceptions. The Humanist Educator, 20(2), 58–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2164-6163.1981.tb00078.x Sovitriana, R. (2020). Kajian Gender Dalam Tinjauan Psikologi [Gender Studies in Psychological Review]. In Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 6(11), 951–952. (Vol. 13, Issue April). Steensma, T. D., Kreukels, B. P. C., de Vries, A. L. C., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2013). Gender identity development in adolescence. Hormones and Behavior, 64(2), 288–297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2013.02.020 Sum, T. A., Tamo, A., & Talu, I. (2003). Faktor penyebab kurangnya minat laki-laki untuk menjadi guru paud di kabupaten manggarai [Factors causing men's lack of interest in becoming early childhood teachers in Manggarai district]. Missio, 10, 192–203. VandenBos, G. R. (2015). APA Second Edition Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111704227.1 Zucker, K. J., Bradley, S. J., Sullivan, C. B. L., Kuksis, M., Birkenfeld-Adams, A., & Mitchell, J. N. (1993). A Gender Identity Interview for Children. Journal of Personality Assessment, 61(3), 443–456. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6103_2

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The clinical management of differences of sex development (DSDs) aims to guarantee best practices in medical care while addressing concerns related to non-reversible surgeries. Rhetorical analysis was conducted to study the balance between science policy and patient advocacy related to DSD surgeries as depicted in medical education materials METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Unrestricted transcripts of two educational videos and text from all chapters of a handbook addressed to medical learners and faculty by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) were submitted to automated word cloud analysis (NVivo, QSR International®). Words with a weighted percentage > 0.19% from total words of a given source were defined as words of frequent use and were selected for further analysis after exclusion of words as conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, or conversational fillers. Words sharing noun, adjective and adverb forms were coded and weighed as a single word following the Oxford dictionary. Discrepancies on word selection, exclusion or coding were resolved between four raters. The rhetorical context of most frequent words was identified. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The word cloud analysis of the video resource intended for medical learners (n=104 words of frequent use) and the video intended for medical faculty (n= 94 words of frequent use) depicts a patient-centered approach (word people’) that is based on expert opinion (word [I] think’). The handbook (n= 998 words of frequent use) makes reiterated reference to patients’; lgbt’; gender’; health’; and caring’ while underscoring health concerns that are unrelated to genital variance (health’; caring’ and medical’). The noun surgery’ did not figure among the most frequent words in spoken language nor in written text even when summing its adjective and adverb forms. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Educational materials by the AAMC on DSDs accentuate patient-centered care within a medical humanism framework. However, the lack of discussion of DSD surgeries is an educational gap that should be addressed by key science policy and patient advocacy stakeholders.

Sir William Osler’s legacy lives on through the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine (FPM). Osler was in 1911 founding President both of the Postgraduate Medical Association and on 1981 of the Inter-allied Fellowship of Medicine. These societies merged later in 1919, with Osler as President until his death at the end of that year. This joint organization was initially called the Fellowship of Medicine and Post-Graduate Medical Association and continues to this day as the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. In the 1880s, in his role as medical leader in North America, Osler pioneered hospital residency programmes for junior trainee doctors. As Regius Professor of medicine in Oxford from 1905, Osler wished early postgraduate teaching in the UK, and in London in particular, to include access to ‘the wealth of material at all the hospitals’. He also saw medical societies as important for providing reliable continuous medical develop for senior doctors.Under Osler’s leadership, the Fellowship of Medicine responded to demand for postgraduate civilian medical training after the First World War, supported by a general committee of 73 senior medical figures, with representatives from the British Army Medical Service, Medical Services of the Dominions of the United Kingdom, of America and of the British Colleges and major medical Schools. Some fifty general and specialist hospitals were initially affiliated with the Fellowship, which provided sustained support of postgraduate training well into the 1920s, including publication of a weekly bulletin of clinics, ward rounds, special lectures and organized training courses for men and women of all nationalities. In 1925, in response to expanding interest in postgraduate education, the Fellowship developed the bulletin into the Postgraduate Medical Journal, which continues as a monthly international publication. Stimulated by discussions at meetings of the FPM, through its Fellows, the FPM was influential in encouraging London and regional teaching hospitals to develop and maintain postgraduate training courses. The FPM and its Fellows also were important in supporting the creation of a purely postgraduate medical school, which was eventually founded at the Hammersmith Hospital in West London as the British, then Royal Postgraduate Medical School.At the end of the Second World War, there was a major development in provision of postgraduate medical education with the founding in 1945 of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation, which was supported by government, the University Grants Committee and the universities. There was also a marked post-war increase in general provision of postgraduate training at individual hospitals and within the medical Royal Colleges. Postgraduate Centres were established at many hospitals.Nonetheless the FPM continued some involvement in postgraduate courses until 1975. Since then the FPM has maintained a national and international role in postgraduate education through its journals, the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology (founded in 2012) and by affiliations with other organisations and institutes.Osler was an avid supporter of engagement between medicine and the humanities, chiding humanists for ignorance of modern science and fellow scientists for neglecting the humanities. The FPM has over much of the past decade supported this theme of Osler by being a major patron of the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, which has achieved significant international interest, with over 10,000 entries from over 70 countries.

Abstract Emerging evidence suggests that aberrant glycosylation in cancer impact on various stages in the disease progression including immunomodulation, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Our previous data demonstrated that fucosyltransferase 5 (FUT5), a glycosyltransferase responsible for the terminal step in synthesizing Lewis antigens, may contribute to peritoneal metastasis of ovarian cancer. In this study, using clinical samples of high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC), the most common subtype, we found that high expression of FUT5 is associated with a worse outcome. By employing multiplex immunohistochemistry (IHC) to examine T cell subsets, we found a significant decrease in CD3+CD4−CD8− (double negative, DN) T cells in FUT5high (n=10) compared to FUT5low samples (n=10), while there is no difference in the abundance of CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, CD4+ helper T cells or CD4+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells. Tumor-infiltrating DN T cells has been shown to mediate potent anti-tumor response. In addition to their cytotoxic capabilities, DN T cells largely exhibit modulatory functions on other T cell subsets. To further investigate, we performed additional IHC staining and observed a significant increase in proliferating (Ki67+) CD8+ tissue resident memory cells, which are known to be important for cancer immunity. In addition, we observed a decrease in metastases in the FUT5 knockdown group, accompanied by an increase in DN T cells in ascites and omental metastatic tumors in humanised mice, as revealed by flow cytometry, confirming a direct immunomodulatory role of FUT5. Together, these findings reveal a novel role of FUT5 in promoting immune evasion by suppressing anti-tumor DN T cells, which could provide novel insights for immunotherapy in HGSOC, which has a low response rate to immune checkpoint inhibitors (This research is supported by RGC SRFS2223-7S05, HMRF 08192286 and LSCCB under the Health@InnoHK Program launched by ITC, HKSAR). Citation Format: S. W. Fung, Sally K. Y. To, A. A. Hassan, Phillip P.C. Ip, Alice S. T. Wong. Fucosyltransferase 5 promotes immune evasion in ovarian cancer by suppressing double negative T cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 6527.

Abstract Background The STAT3 pathway may drive prostate cancer (PCa) progression to metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). STAT3 may serve as a good target for the treatment of prostate cancer. The function of STAT3 relies significantly on its SH2 domain, which promotes STAT3 homo- or hetero-dimerization, protein-protein interaction and nuclear translocation of the STAT3 dimers needed for transcription. Due to this important role, the STAT3 SH2 domain becomes an attractive therapeutic target. In a drug discovery and development program we have found two small molecular compounds named 323-1 and 323-2 that were identified as novel STAT3 SH2 domain inhibitors in a series of experiments. Material and methods In silico computational modeling, Drug Affinity Responsive Target Stability (DARTS) and Fluorescence Polarization (FP) assays were performed to examine whether compounds 323-1 and 323-2 could bind to the STAT3 protein. The antitumor activity of compounds 323-1 and 323-2 was firstly determined by clonogenic assays in different prostate tumor cells, then validated in the humanised NOD/SCID mouse CRPC model. Effects of compound 323-1 and 323-2 on STAT3 transcriptional activity were determined by the luciferase assay and protein levels by western blotting. Results In silico computational modeling, DARTS and FP assays altogether determined 323-1 and 323-2 as direct STAT3 inhibitors targeting the STAT3 SH2 domain and inhibiting both phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated STAT3 dimerization. Computational docking predicted that both 323 compounds bind to three subpockets of the STAT3 SH2 domain with full inhibition of STAT3. FP assay further confirmed that 323s target the STAT3 SH2 domain by competitively abrogating the interaction between STAT3 and the SH2-binding peptide GpYLPQTV. Compared with S3I-201, the 323 compounds exhibited stronger inhibition of STAT3 and reduced the level of IL-6-stimulated phosphorylation of STAT3 (Tyr705) in LNCaP cells over the phosphorylation of STAT1 (Tyr701) induced by IFN-ɣ in PC3 cells or the phosphorylation of STAT1 (Ser727) in DU145 cells. Both compounds down-regulated STAT3 target genes MCL1 and cyclin D1. The in-vivo data supported that 323s significantly inhibited LNCaP cell generated CRPC tumor growth. Thus, the two compounds are promising leading compounds for the treatment of cancers with hyper-activated STAT3. Conclusions Here we report that these compounds modulate the IL-6/STAT3 pathway by 1) inhibition of STAT3 phosphorylation on Tyr705 and 2) disruption of STAT3 dimerization by directly targeting its SH2 domain; 3) inhibition of STAT3 transcriptional activity. Thus, the compounds 323-1 and 323-2 are promising new leading compounds for therapeutic STAT3 inhibition. Citation Format: Yaping Hua, Waqas Azeem, Anne Margrete Øyan, Karl-Henning Kalland. Novel STAT3 inhibitors targeting the STAT3 dimerization [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 1404.

Abstract Background: BI 765063 (OSE-172) is a humanised IgG4 monoclonal antibody which binds selectively to the V1 allele of Signal Regulatory Protein α [SIRPα] blocking the SIRPα/CD47 “don't eat me” pathway. Preclinical studies showed that SIRPα blockage led to macrophage and T-cell recruitment into tumor xenografts, and induced upregulation of chemokines, cytokines and adaptive immune function genes in human tumor explants (Gauttier et al., 2020). The goal of the biomarker analyses was to characterize the BI 765063 impact on peripheral blood immune cells (PBMCs) and the tumor microenvironment (TME). Methods: Fifty patients (26 V1/V1, 24 V1/V2) received BI 765063 IV from 0.02 mg/kg to 36 mg/kg every 3 weeks. Paired tumor biopsies were collected before and 2 weeks after first BI 765063 infusion. PBMCs were collected before, then 4 h, 1, 14, and 21 days after first infusion. BI 765063 receptor occupancy (RO) was determined on peripheral CD14+ monocytes. Immunophenotyping of PBMCs was performed by flow-cytometry. TME was analysed with a Brightplex® IHC panel including CD8+ T-cells, CD68+ macrophages, SIRPα, CD47, and PD-L1. Tumor gene expression profiling was performed using the Pan Cancer Immune gene set. Results: BI 765063 full RO saturation was achieved at trough levels (C2D1, pre-dose) in V1/V1 patients treated with doses of 6 mg/kg and higher, while V1/V2 patients showed a more heterogeneous RO ranging from 40-80%, reaching an apparent saturation at ≥ 12 mg/kg. An increase of activated CD80+/CD14+ and CD40+/CD14+ monocytes in PBMCs was observed at 24 h post-treatment in both, V1/V1 and V1/V2 patients. In paired tumor biopsies, IFNγ, MHCII antigen presentation gene pathways, and CCL7 transcripts appeared to be upregulated at C1D15 in patients with a systemic exposure of ≥ 100 µg/ml. One patient with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver and lung metastases treated with BI 765063 monotherapy at 24 mg/kg achieved partial response (Champiat et al., ASCO, 2021). Baseline tumor biopsy of that patient showed that 66% of HCC tumor cells were CD47+ and 87% of CD68+ macrophages were SIRPα+. Furthermore, high levels of CD8+ T-cells were observed at baseline. At C1D15 increased CD68+ macrophage infiltration, sustained CD8 T-cell tumor accumulation and higher PD-L1 CPS (48% at baseline vs 75% at C1D15) were observed. Analysis of paired tumor biopsies in other patients showed that often, increased levels of tumor CD68+ macrophages were accompanied by CD8+ T-cell infiltration. Conclusion: This early biomarker analysis in patients with a wide range of solid tumors and treated with the first-in-class SIRPa inhibitor BI 765063 show encouraging signs of potentially mode-of-action related changes, both in peripheral blood and the TME. These early signals will be further evaluated in similar samples from the ongoing expansion cohorts in more homogeneous patient populations. Citation Format: Stephane Champiat, Philippe A. Cassier, Nuria Kotecki, Carlos Gomez-Roca, Aurélien Marabelle, Armelle Vinceneux, Christiane Jungels, Mabrouk Elgadi, Ralph Graeser, Thomas Vandewalle, Isabelle Girault, Nina Salabert-Le Guen, Nicolas Poirier, Bérangère Vasseur, Dominique Costantini, Claudia Fromond, Jean-Pierre Delord. Biomarker analyses from the Phase I clinical trial of the first-in-class SIRPa immune checkpoint inhibitor BI765063 in patients with advanced solid tumors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 1993.

Abstract Background Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) composed of an anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) antibody, a cleavable tetrapeptide-based linker, and a topoisomerase I inhibitor payload. Recent clinical trials such as BEGONIA have highlighted the potential therapeutic benefit in combining T-DXd with immuno-oncology (IO) agents such as the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab. Here, we report preclinical findings demonstrating enhanced anti-tumor activity when T-DXd is combined with dual immune checkpoint inhibition. Methods HER2-expressing human cancer cell lines were treated in vitro with T-DXd and assessed for induction of immunogenic cell death (ICD) markers and expression of NK cell-activating ligands. Human macrophages and T cells were incubated with supernatants from treated cancer cells, and their activation status evaluated via flow cytometry. In vivo, the effects of T-DXd in combination with inhibitors of PD-L1, CTLA-4, and a monovalent bispecific anti-PD-1/TIGIT antibody - a murine surrogate of rilvegostomig - on tumor growth were evaluated in BALB/c mice bearing human HER2-low EMT6 murine mammary tumors. The anti-tumor activity of T-DXd in combination with volrustomig, a monovalent bispecific antibody targeting PD-1 and CTLA-4, was also assessed in hu-CD34+ NSG mice bearing HER2-low Caki-1 renal cell carcinoma tumors. Results In vitro, T-DXd induced ICD via DXd-mediated extracellular release of inflammatory mediators ATP and HMGB1, and cell surface exposure of calreticulin. This was associated with a greater than 2-fold increase in expression of NK cell-activating ligands, and activation of both macrophages and T cells. In immunocompetent mice bearing human HER2 expressing EMT6 tumors, T-DXd treatment drove tumor growth inhibition (53%, P <0.001) that was associated with an increase in tumoral T cells (2.6-fold, P <0.05) and increased CD8+ T cell expression of the immune checkpoints PD-1, TIGIT, and TIM-3. Tumor growth inhibition relative to vehicle-treated mice was enhanced when T-DXd was combined with inhibitors of PD-L1 (108%, P <0.001), PD-L1 plus CTLA-4 (172%, P <0.001), or a bispecific PD-1/TIGIT inhibitor (181%, P <0.001). Pharmacodynamic analysis revealed how the combination of T-DXd and PD-1/TIGIT inhibition increased tumoral NK cells (3.2-fold, P <0.001) and CD8+ T cells (3.8-fold, P <0.001) relative to vehicle. Consistent with findings in syngeneic models, the combination of T-DXd with a bispecific PD-1/CTLA-4 inhibitor also enhanced tumor growth inhibition in a humanised Caki-1 model (121%) compared to T-DXd alone (72%) (P <0.001). Conclusions These data provide insight into the clinical activity observed with T-DXd and provide scientific rationale for combination strategies with novel, bispecific IO agents targeting CTLA-4 or TIGIT in addition to the PD-1/PD-L1 axis. Citation Format: Liam Jenkins, Laura Kazlauskas, Matt Wilson, Scott A. Hammond, Theresa Proia, Jerome Mettetal. Dual immune checkpoint inhibition enhances the anti-tumor activity of trastuzumab deruxtecan in preclinical models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 1366.

ABSTRACT This research aimed to compare BRIS stock performance before and after the merger. The research method was comparative quantitative that is by comparing the data used to determine differences in variables from two different groups or from the same variable in different time periods. The population and sample for this study are monthly reports of Price to Book Value, Earning per Share, Return on Equity, Debt to Equity Ratio, and Price Earning Ratio from BRIS for the period January 2020-January 2022 so that a total sample of 25 is obtained. The data analysis were the normality test and the Wilcoxon test. The requirement to carry out this test is the data normality test which functions to measure whether the data is normally distributed or not. Meanwhile, the Wilcoxon test is a non-parametric test to measure the significance of differences between two groups of paired data or similar data but at different times. This study found that stock performance as measured by PBV and EPS showed differences in performance before and after the merger. Whereas ROE, DER, PER there is no difference in stock performance before and after the merger. With this research, it can be used reference for investors to choose an analytical method as a decisive step in investing. For company owners, this research can be used as a consideration when merging. Keywords: Stock performance, BRIS, Merger, Islamic banking. ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membandingkan kinerja saham BRIS sebelum dan setelah merger. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kuantitatif komparatif yakni dengan membandingkan data-data yang digunakan untuk mengetahui perbedaan variabel dari dua kelompok berbeda ataupun dari variabel yang sama dalam jangka waktu yang berbeda. Untuk teknik pengambilan data menggunakan teknik pengambilan data dokumentasi. Pada penelitian ini menggunakan populasi dan sampel laporan bulanan Price to Book Value, Earning per Share, Return on Equity, Debt to Equity Ratio, dan Price Earning Ratio dari BRIS dengan jangka waktu Januari 2020-Januari 2022 sehingga mendapatkan total sampel 25 sampel. Untuk menguji hipotesis teknik pengujian data yang dilakukan yakni uji normalitas dan uji Wilcoxon. Syarat untuk melakukan pengujian ini yakni uji normalitas data yang berfungsi untuk mengukur apakah data berdistribusi normal atau tidak normal. Sedangkan uji Wilcoxon adalah pengujian non-parametris untuk mengukur signifikansi perbedaan dua kelompok data berpasangan ataupun data sejenis tetapi berbeda waktu. Penelitian ini mendapatkan hasil bahwa kinerja saham yang diukur melalui proksi Price to Book Value dan Earning per Share terdapat adanya perbedaan kinerja sebelum dan setelah merger. Sedangkan pada proksi Return on Equity, Debt to Equity Ratio, dan Price Earning Ratio tidak terdapat adanya perbedaan kinerja saham sebelum dan setelah merger. Dengan adanya penelitian ini dapat menjadi referensi bagi investor untuk memilih metode analisis sebagai langkah untuk menentukan dalam menanam modal. Bagi pemilik perusahaan dengan adanya penelitian ini dapat digunakan sebagai pertimbangan ketika akan melakukan merger. Kata Kunci: Kinerja saham, BRIS, Merger, perbankan syariah. DAFTAR PUSTAKA Adawiyah, A. R., & Lisiantara, G. A. (2022). Pengaruh pandemi covid-19 terhadap kinerja keuangan perbankan. Jurnal Ilmiah Komputer Akuntansi, 15(2), 465–474. https://doi.org/10.51903/kompak.v15i2.834 Alfi. (2020). Aset perbankan syariah tetap bertumbuh di tengah pandemi. Retrieved from https://finansial.bisnis.com/read/20200923/231/1295698/aset-perbankan-syariah-tetap-bertumbuh-di-tengah-pandemi Amalia. (2022). Kinerja keuangan PT. Bank Syariah Indonesia Tbk. sebelum dan efek instan merger. YUME: Journal of Management, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.2568/yum.v5i1.1184 Andre, A., Marpaung, A. M., & Mekaniwati, A. (2019). Analisis implikasi kebijakan dividen terhadap pertumbuhan perusahaan dan kinerja saham. Jurnal Ilmiah Manajemen Kesatuan, 7(1), 153–161. https://doi.org/10.37641/jimkes.v7i1.208 Anshori, M., & Iswati, S. (2009). Buku ajar metodologi penelitian kuantitatif. Pusat Penerbitan dan Percetakan UNAIR. Asbaniar, A., & Setiawan, S. (2022). Analisis kinerja saham pada industri farmasi sebelum dan setelah adanya pandemi covid-19. IQTISHADequity, 4(1), 45. https://doi.org/10.51804/iej.v4i1.1664 Bella, S., & Sari, F. (2021). Perbandingan kinerja keuangan sebelum dan sesudah akuisisi pada perusahaan yang terdaftar di BEI. Jurnal Manajemen Dan Bisnis, 1(2), 143–153. http://dx.doi.org/10.30651/imp.v1i2.10619 BNI Syariah. (2020). Laporan tahunan 2020. BNI Syariah Brigham, E. F., & Houston., J. F. (2016). Dasar-dasar manajemen keuangan. Salemba Empat. BSI. (2021). Laporan tahunan 2021: Energi baru untuk Indonesia. PT Bank Syariah Indonesia, Tbk. Cahyarini, I. (2017). Analisis perbedaan kinerja keuangan perusahaan sebelum dan sesudah merger dan akuisisi (Studi empiris pada perusahaan merger dan pengakuisisi yang terdaftar di BEI. Skripsi tidak dipublikasikan. Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. Covey, S. (1997). The 7 habits of highly effective people, restoring the character ethic. Simon & Sschuster Inc. Dewi, N. S., & Suwarno, A. E. (2022). Pengaruh ROA, ROE, EPS dan DER terhadap harga saham perusahaan (Studi empiris pada perusahaan LQ45 yang terdaftar di bursa efek Indonesia tahun 2016-2020). Seminar Nasional Pariwisata Dan Kewirausahaan (SNPK), 1, 472–482. https://doi.org/10.36441/snpk.vol1.2022.77 Diaw, A. (2014). The effect of mergers and acquisitions on shareholder wealth: The case of European banks. 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Retrieved from https://newssetup.kontan.co.id/news/bank-bri-syariah-meraup-laba-bersih-rp-248-miliar-atau-melonjak-23514 Hutauruk, D. M. (2021b). Laba bersih BRI Syariah (BRIS) melesat sebelum resmi merger. Retrieved from https://keuangan.kontan.co.id/news/laba-bersih-bri-syariah-bris-melesat-sebelum-resmi-merger Jiang, J. (2019). An empirical study on M&A performance: Evidence from horizontal mergers and acquisitions in the United States. Open Journal of Business and Management, 07(02), 976–997. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojbm.2019.72066 Khairudin, M., & Wulandari, T. (2017). Merger, akuisisi, dan kinerja saham perusahaan di bursa efek Indonesia (BEI). Jurnal Akuntansi Dan Bisnis, 17(1), 27-37. http://dx.doi.org/10.20961/jab.v17i1.220 KNKS. (2019a). Global Islamic Finance Report 2019 menempatkan Indonesia di posisi teratas dalam pasar keuangan syariah global. Siaran Pers KNKS, 1–2. Retrived from https://knks.go.id/storage/upload/1571570175-Siaran Pers Penghargaan GIFR 2019.pdf KNKS. (2019b). Kajian konversi, merger, holding, dan pembentukan bank BUMN Syariah. KNKS. Kusnandar. (2022). Sebanyak 86,93% penduduk Indonesia beragama Islam pada 31 Desember 2021. Retrieved from https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2022/02/12/sebanyak-8693-penduduk-indonesia-beragama-islam-pada-31-desember-2021 La Pade, A. (2020). Kinerja portofolio saham syariah dan faktor yang memengaruhi kinerja saham syariah di Indonesia. Li Falah: Jurnal Studi Ekonomi Dan Bisnis Islam, 5(1), 17-41. https://doi.org/10.31332/lifalah.v5i1.1884 Lyman, C. (2022). Apa itu standar deviasi dan penerapannya dalam investasi? Retrieved from https://pintu.co.id/blog/apa-itu-standar-deviasi-adalah Mahargiyantie, S. (2020). Peran strategis bank syariah Indonesia dalam ekonomi syariah di Indonesia. Al - Misbah, 1(2), 83–94. Maryanti, D., Siregar, H., & Andati, T. (2017). Perbandingan kinerja keuangan perusahaan perkebunan sebelum dan setelah akuisisi. 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Jogo de espelhos e palavras Analogias duma beleza transitiva Foi entre “formigas e cupins”[1] que descobri e inventei por “ver” o que lia. Do jardim a casa, numa aprazível “distração”, li Marina (do latim, marinus, “marinho”). Se ia em busca de cupins, absorvi-me logo numa bela atividade intrínseca de “ler” a natureza humana. Os estados/processos emocionais deram-se ao meu sonho acordado, frente à lua cheia. Por contraste mínimo, o que acontece no sonho propriamente dito é antes uma não narrativa, uma dissociação não controlada, exibida a superfície de fundo inacessível[2], graciosa alternativa criativa à “associação de ideias”. “O sonho de uma sombra”, em Píndaro (522 – 443 a.C.)[3], foi a ofuscação da “verdade” nua e crua. O sonho e a fantasia permitem a estranha fragmentação da sequência do pensamento escorreito, quando se experiencie a realidade de All-Self (ser com tudo em redor). Um efeito é imaginarmos sermos nós aquela “estrela” e recategorizamos algo num “todos juntos”, “transitarmos”[4], sem fixação, encontrado “tudo em tudo”[5]. “Somos plurais”[6] e mutantes sem “coerência”. Colocado a par o ser e o não ser, dada a aparência de Marina, numa superfície lisa refletida, convoca à reflexão que muda, quando “… todos querem, buscam, sonham com você”[7]. Na afirmação do narrador, Celso, é partilhado o desejo de alguém ou dele com “você”. Num detalhe ora geral, ora específico, algo dela poderá ser comparável ou semelhante a outra coisa, uma analogia. No encalço dela, Marco Lucchesi acompanha-nos no “eterno retorno da leitura”[8], trocadas cartas entre Celso e Marina, na década de noventa do século passado[9]. “Rasgadas”, anos passados por ele, entendidas “inúteis e vazias”[10], tendo ela dirigido um e outro e-mail inúteis, para “confissões”, via ”correspondências”[11], em que culpas confessadas nem sejam alheias a “amores mortos”[12]. Anteriormente, Celso chegaria a procurar Marina em “mundos improváveis”. Em locais de sua casa, a falsa presença, inviável, “tão querida”… Possivelmente desejada, chega a ser atingido o paradoxo da perenidade da vida, no espaço exíguo, amor eterno. Marina encontra-se em quase tudo[13]: “Digamos: a) no terreno baldio das gavetas; b) na agenda que perdeu a validade; c) nas fotos inquietas de um álbum (andorinhas em queda: sem cola, pálidas ou saturadas); d) no velho sótão que não tenho.” Como se “pousássemos os pincéis”, em continuidade, o modelo analógico varia no tempo… O escritor acrescenta: “nosso passado é analógico”[14]. Celso escuta cantos, sons e silêncios (a música “dela”?), no aparelho de rádio analógico... “Analogia”, nas nuances de significado no dicionário, são uma entre outras. E dada a representação de um objeto assemelhar-se ao original, pode Marina ser “pintada” em eternas obras de arte. “Vejo-a”, no que vejo e no que leio: “Coroação da Virgem”, de Fra Angélico (1395 — 1455); “A Madona de San Sisto”, de Rafael (1483 — 1520) … Escolho logo a bela Gioventü, de Eliseu Visconti (1866 - 1944). Figura nº 1 – Óleo sobre tela, Gioventü, de Eliseu Visconti (1898) Fonte: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovent%C3%B9 Mas é em Candido Portinari[15], numa obra de 1957 – “O menino com pássaro”, que a voz e ela… se me apagou. Seria recolhida e cuidada por aquele que a encontrasse. Figura nº 2 – Elemento de obra de Candido Portinari (1957) – O menino com pássaro Fonte: https://www.wikiart.org/en/candido-portinari/menino-com-p-ssaro-1957 Numa analogia, a figura oscila de forma contínua, entre passado e presente, imparável no tempo. Sem comparecer perante Celso, também ele num não-lugar se quedou[16]. Os seus braços, “irredentos do todo”[17], vivido um “como se…”, avançariam o distanciamento/estranheza[18] face ao espelhado “teatro de sentimentos”. Fora Marina ferida? Num “jogo de espelhos e palavras”[19], “escrevo por espelhos reticentes, com frases e lacunas movediças” …. “Estendo as mãos para o espelho…”[20]. “Refletida” a escrita em processo, encontro Lucchesi solto no outro. Nos seus termos, a palavra “espelho” dará lugar ao oculto no “jogo de espelho, analogias”[21]. Quando a reflexão teria ainda o Sol no “espelho”, o encontro de ambos jorrava luz. Perdida a década de oitenta, o que é dado, antecipado[22]? Novas luzes e sombras. Celso e Marina foram inicial “espelho de paixão”. Seguiu-se a brecha na paixão. Num salão espelhado da paixão de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo, em 1507, vejo uma figuração pintada por Hans Schäufelein. “Herodes” deu lugar à figuração doutros maus tempos, no “Espelho da Paixão” (Speculum Passionis). Cristo diante de Herodes, o malvado, que morreu com o Eclipse lunar. Num “reflexo“, o culpado, no julgamento em “Herodes”[23], convocara Cristo[24], um culpado. Eu sou o outro do outro eterno Eleia, às portas da atual Itália. Numa primeira estrofe de Poema, a expressão dum outro, Parménides (530 a.C. — 460 a.C.), para quem “deus” não foi gerado, existindo[25] ad eternum... A estaca foi colocada num limiar doutro lugar estranho, em Poema: “Aí se encontram as portas”. Talhada a via inovadora do caminhar, tendemos a cruzar linhagens para não nos perdermos. Nem tudo se desgasta e corrompe, com Parménides. No rumo incerto, outra conquista do explorador Ulisses[26], foi ter encontrado o retorno? Ulisses, Celso, Alice, Marina… Pierre e Natacha, Tristão e Isolda. No desencontro, Molly e Leopold ou Eurídice e Orfeu ... A ficarmos “aos pés da biblioteca”[27], a ler vidas nas figuras centrais, estas oferecem um recuo[28]. Abrem portas. Eternas personagens, nem todas juvenis. Celso, o narrador? Alguém que já teve um “matagal” de cabelo perdido, que “nasceu no coração [uma floresta, cabelos…] … com espinhos” - “O elogio da calvície” [29]. Outra personagem de Marina, Alice, foi um exemplo de ajuda, porto marítimo, seguro, onde atracar? Substitui, sem substituir Marina? Alice adotará, também ela, o enigmático porte de “Gioconda”, “a senhora Lisa, esposa de Giocondo”, representada por técnica do sfumato, de Da Vinci (1452 — 1519). Foi seu o “vaso”[30], que Celso amou - “vasos quebrados” [31]. Acresce que “Alice e o vira-lata branco” encontram-se ambos registados num “resumo” de carta[32], em união, bem juntos. Bem articulado no pensado é o que a carta diz e não diz. Mas quem será aquele outro vira latas? Marina ainda pede foto da outra – Alice[33]. Num e-mail registado: “Se puder [você, Celso], mande-me fotos ou vídeos de Alice. Tenho por ela um profundo afeto. Lembro-me de seu sorriso, ao piano”. Será verdade? Uma inquebrável lembrança de Celso, uma só vez, Marina tocara piano com ele, a quatro mãos[34]. Celso poderá ter reparado (n)o vaso, a dado passo. Pode ter tido outra imagem fixada à Alice, de então. Seria aquele vaso que “amava”, ou Alice[35], uma figura magnética? “Para fugir de mil perigos”, a quem não faltou Alice? Alice usou “ampolas e unguentos, magos e poções”[36]? Cuidadora, Alice, com Celso, representado nos rapazes com pássaros feridos[37]? Em suma, pareceria a Celso não existir punção operada ou poder maior, quando os relacionamentos morrem, ainda que os vasos sejam compostos de cacos que se colam: “Não posso reparar o irreparável”[38]. No entanto, Celso conhecia a técnica das peças coladas do Japão - a técnica do kintsugi[39]. Observou, até mesmo o outro vaso por si trazido com os gerânios, da sua antiga casa… “Distancia que se perde. Vaso que se encontra…”[40] Na ficção, a fiação tudo interliga “Vimos a fiação que tudo interliga. Semântica e sintaxe”[41]. Dos golpes de génio ficcional e da sangrenta História, Marco Lucchesi concebeu comparações, em que “mudam as guerras”[42] e as linguagens. Numa realidade de rapto, guerra e paixão, o poema épico transcende o amor passado que eterniza. Homero fundador da literatura ocidental, numa autêntica carnificina, a incerta “Guerra de Troia”, contou com Ájax[43] dentro do cavalo, dando guerra (infinita)[44] a Heitor, o destemido troiano, incapaz de lhe perfurar o escudo. A guerra teve que ser interrompida ao pôr do sol, intervindo Apolo. Do inicial “pomo de discórdia” entre deusas até aos feitos, nove anos passados em guerra, Ájax é “muralha”. A Ilíada evidencia que esmagou o escudo de Heitor, com uma só pedra. Quem sabe se Celso seria uma barreira inexpugnável, de tão “glacial”[45], que se tornou? Numa contenda, para o romance histórico, de 1865 e 1869, Liev Tolstói cruzou aqueles que se amaram, na passagem do Grande Cometa, em 1811: na invasão napoleónica, em 1812, a personagem recorrente, Pierre encontra-se com a bela Natacha, aparentemente apaixonada por Boris, amada por Denisov. Como foi possível a “guerra sem paz”[46]? Celso e Marina viveram dessa “Guerra de quase e talvez”[47], no que foi a “guerra que nos mata”[48]. Lendários amores infelizes e apaixonados, trágicos, na bárbara Idade Média (século V a século XV)? Tristão («tristeza») e Isolda (“das mãos de fada”)[49]. E o Rei Marcos que a perdeu[50]. Guerras nos ensaios não-ficcionais e nas ficções. Já a estranha paixão da cantora Molly e Leopold termina com o “sim” dela, apenas num solilóquio. O corpo de Molly – no livro de James Joyce - seria “sensual”[51], no que ressalta o “incêndio” interior. Divergências? Foi numa dada “tarde”, vinte anos passados, que a caixa eletrónica de Celso recebe um primeiro e-mail de Marina. Iria acabar com a guerra entre ambos. Não parece de comparar com a ficção? Marina e Celso encontrar-se-iam no fim da “guerra fria”[52], em data marcada pela queda do muro de Berlim, 9 de novembro de 1989. Numa Rádio Londres, com “mensagem de Inglaterra aos aliados”, durante a longínqua Segunda Guerra Mundial, ele passava a escutar outra transmissão no rádio bem comum, no sistema analógico. Um sinal da mensagem dela, vulgar. Metáforas básicas da descrição do real Quando se coloque uma figura de estilo, cujos sentidos figurados utilizem comparações como a “metáfora do corpo em lua cheia”[53], é a Lua “tão nua e desarmada a vaporosa Lua”. A pessoa é então toda inteira, se bem que a Lua seja fragmentada noutra fase lunar. Damo-nos a facetas diversas, também. E a não ser a transição de fase a mesma daquela grande lua, Marco Lucchesi ainda afrontou a perda irreparável de parte dela, por Celso, num desaforo: “se você esperava tapetes e fanfarras, perdeu a viagem. Abandonei a timidez, digo o que penso, e sem rodeios.”[54] Dada a acentuada guerra entre Celso e Marina, ao referencial “real”, preferi antes juntar à lua a palavra “viagem” e a palavra “mundo”, no que coloco mais do que o que (a)parece – numa alegoria. Assim, na minha perceção subjetiva, uma fenomenologia, ocorreu algo mais a aprofundar. Nessa viragem, limito mais do que o que se me abra à fixação de “guerra”, quando se sucedam figuras de estilo, no livro[55]. Num jogo de linguagem, retiro a desafogada imagem concreta: o passeio na praia, junto da Cinelândia e o que faço? No termo metafórico duma “psicologia de viagem-vida”, encontro logo ali o figurativo, portanto, com os rodeios à casa velha de Celso, com os eventos no trânsito, com as margens do mar face à praia. Meios mundos são a frente “subaquático”[56] e outros territórios e sítios. Poderia convocar imensos espaços de transição, imaginando[57] além de um “mundo submarino”[58]. Lucchesi tantas vezes observa “estrelas”, algumas “estrelas não promissoras”[59]… Voltando ao avesso, na Terra, à “viagem à roda do piano e do quarto”[60], essas são breves viagens e têm fim. Contudo, é dada à incompletude a infinita “viagem à roda dos teus olhos, punhado de beleza, informe, passageira”[61]. Numa estranha viagem de recuo (na revirada do avesso), focada uma “correspondência” sem troca, é de antemão inviabilizado o “sim” e a chegada a bom porto[62]? Da presença na ausência de Marina: tempo de sonho e pesadelo Como “resumir” os “20 anos”[63] de afastamento? Um desapego de “dez mil dias”, após o “terremoto”. “Dez mil dias” sem se falarem? Pretendo dar forma ao texto, quando pense que uma correspondência convencionada abranja reciprocidade e presença, ainda que evitada a “literatice”[64] e o “episódico”. Não “agradará” ao narrador contar das cartas, para se livrar efetivamente delas. Ameaça que irá “destruí-las”. Celso foi intempestivo, aquando do primeiro e-mail de Marina[65], após aqueles vinte anos de alheamento dela… O livro Marina reproduz a reduzida “novela”[66] de singelas cartas e e-mails. Passado o texto a pente fino, no segundo e-mail de Celso, este redige uma desculpa: “Perdi tudo, não sei como. Preciso de um novo computador. Como se não bastassem formigas e cupins. Obstinado, insisto e recupero apenas uma parte”[67]. Numa convencional “não-narrativa”, coloco a tónica na congruência e na intencional, quando seja a “dissonância”[68] desarmante de “lirismos”. Alcançada a agressividade, a crítica mordaz, a sagacidade e o ardil… Frente ao quebra-cabeças, pede-se abertura (de espírito), quando se leia o “romance de ideias”, no pensamento do ser (em Parménides e Heidegger). Na dimensão emocional, a obra de resiliência traz-me a consciência da artificialidade da ficção. Cubro de culpas a protagonista Marina. Coloco logo a poção de amor viático, um mantimento para sustento num “líquido destino”[69]. Logo passa a parecer-me que “essa viagem nunca termina”[70], numa entusiástica volta no carrocel do mundo, num “eterno retorno”[71]. Essa segunda vez que é nomeado o eterno, dá-me esperança, ainda que Celso assuma: … “não quero este destino circular”. ~ E eu quero! Se o “nosso encontro não estava escrito [no destino] … Não houve um deus a decidir nosso destino, nem brilho de uma estrela promissora. Deixámos simplesmente de escrevê-lo [ao destino]”[72]. Escrevamos o que desejemos, então, por linhas tortas. Há ocasiões, em que um sonho se repete e elucida algo[73]… As produções estéticas de artistas foram os produtos de imaginações, ainda que acreditassem ser ajudados pelo diabo, por um santo ou pelo próprio sonho avassalador e as visões enigmáticas. Giuseppe Tartini (1692 - 1770), William Blake (1757 - 1827) ou o cavaleiro Adolf von Menzel (1815 - 1905) são exemplos elucidativos do pensamento mágico dominante, nos séculos XVIII e XIX. Há quase 100 anos, o psicanalista Carl Jung[74] escreveu o seguinte, com um sentido determinista do sonho: “uma experiência anómala, que não é compreendida permanece uma mera ocorrência; compreendida torna-se uma experiência [humana excecional] vivida”. Uma característica desse tipo de experiências únicas é serem inefáveis, mal descritas. Inefáveis ilações, na sombra que vira a luz? Posso recuar atrás, ao sonho e ao tempo de Píndaro[75]. O que alcançou aquele da Verdade, quando viveu entre 522 e 443 antes da nossa era? Com Píndaro, ficou assente que “[no humano] sonho é uma sombra”. Assim colocado, “sombra” opõe-se a brilho, a luz, quando a “verdade” seja ofuscada, esboroada na obscuridade. E na medida em que seja ausente um sentido puro para as palavras, damo-nos a alegorias, a metáforas, da “transparência” da palavra, da luz ao sábio recuo paradoxal. Possa o sonho ser “iluminação”, tal Marina, duma “beleza transitiva”[76], entre as luas cheias. Marina conforma aquilo[77], o deslocado pela sombra, quando fuja a juventude, na transitória impermanência. Que espelho da “verdade”? Logo na primeira configuração, se o par não foi (ou foi?) um “espelho inverso”[78], Marina chega a ser retratada no vidro fosco, na “transformação [dela] num espelho”[79]– “uma Gioconda cheia de segredos”, representada pelo impressionista Eliseu Visconti, em Gioventü. Indecidíveis formatos. Como abordar palavras guardadas num “poço” que, a ser “raso”[80], sempre igual e espalmado, lembra o “infinito” do “abismo (líquido)”[81], entre duas pessoas que “comunicam”[82]? 2 Analise textual de marina O método de analisar textos “Coerência” traduz a ideia, cunhada pelo psicoterapeuta Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987), em que o participante apresente um relato de experiência bem estruturada - lógica, a faceta cognitiva e interpretativa, uma significação de peso na experiência “arrumada”. Na narrativa literária, a noção de “coerência” coloca-se, no antigo Dicionário de teoria da narrativa[83]: “texto como unidade no processo comunicativo, resultante de intenções e estratégias comunicativas específicas, ele é também um texto semanticamente coerente... elementos recorrentes… não integralmente redundante… progressão de informação no interior de um texto … na ‘enciclopédia’ do recetor”[84]. Na nova literatura, Marina alude o “vórtice” do redemoinho amoroso de Celso e Marina, o forte movimento do “terramoto” bem rápido, cruzado com a empolgante sonoridade das bravas ondas. Marina retém uma imensa fluidez, em torno dum eixo fixado ao vórtice entre ambos. Sorvida a voragem sentimental no turbilhão do mar, noutra asserção a “vórtice” – um turbilhão, o fenómeno “incoerente” trespassa a vitalidade dos movimentos guerreiros de “homens”, nos tempos atuais. Onde encontrar uma “secreta harmonia”[85]? Em mulheres, no desaguisado com homens? “Sem que você soubesse, caminhamos lado a lado”[86]. Seremos bem menos coerentes do que se pensou, tanto mulheres quanto homens. Todos nós, humanos, somos sujeitos de analogias. Com o “corpo inelutável”[87] de Marina, que foi o “corpo em fuga” e se encontra ao lado do seu, Celso é já do outro lado. Seja que suba ele à Tocata e Fuga em ré menor, de Bach[88]? A inconsistência é presente na ausência de outrem. Outra mexida foi dada ao mundo amoroso, com as híbridas histórias-ficções, realidades e alternativas. Na alternativa ao modo de organização de “identidade do ‘eu’ estacionário”, sem fluidez de maior, teríamos a fixação eterna. Um risco pode ser nem encararmos a vida sujeita a contingências/acasos – o sem ganhar folgo, “… e, de repente… o sobressalto”. Em Marina, o leitor transcende o sabido (ontológico) e o instituído “romance”, o que não pressupõe que todos os planos sejam antecipadamente traçados. Não sabemos se Marina nos deixou. Ela foi a “glória de um destino”[89]? Um famigerado destino? Um Deus não decide do destino do par amoroso[90]. “Desconheço a direção [do futuro, indeterminado]. Soubesse de uma senha [mágica, um código … e o controlaria Celso. No fluxo permanente de mudança, já o passado e o devir são escapes [na aparente “fuga”], uma “disfunção” no presente [na fantasia inviável]. Porque não viver o aqui-e-agora? Amplificado o tempo, a “hipertrofia…”, é inviável a luta interior, “contra a qual luta o presente”[91]. “Deu-se por fim a glória de um destino. Porque, Marina, os relógios não morrem”[92]. “O vento segue os rumos do destino [ou da predisposição de sorte]”[93], tão mais improvável do que a precisão do tempo dos relógios. Abordagem narrativa na psicologia Numa aproximação literária, na psicologia narrativa, “as personagens são os elementos permanentes que sustentam o desenrolar do enredo”[94]. Nem as personagens fogem, nem restam fragmentadas, na “transparência da voz”[95]. Quem fale no esqueleto narrativo, pensa em episódios de um “guião” (scripts) identitário ou coletivo e, para a “narrativa de perda”, em Celso, congrega-se uma “organização de significado”, no que dê conta de mudanças dessa organização afetiva e psicológica, tão frequente e intensa de privação, podendo tornar-se duradoura ou reatar uma mera ocorrência súbita. O presente texto sobre Marina apresenta “fenómenos” talhados. Dito de outro modo, dá corpo a “ideias centrais, ao happening, ao incidente em torno do qual um conjunto de ações e de interações são dirigidas, com vista a serem reconhecidas, geridas e integradas, ou com as quais um conjunto de ações se relaciona”[96]. Numa forma de encontrar e descobrir ocorrências, farei um parêntesis para o que sabemos de um autor. Na sua suspensão de ideias feitas, como nos “lugares comuns”, nos “hiatos” e nos “silêncios”, o que “lemos” nos não ditos, sem um código? Para o efeito enredado, temos a ajuda de comparações constantes, numa “codificação aberta” do texto. Utilizam-se atributos/características para as palavras todas inteiras e para a variabilidade de significados não ficar de fora. E as “palavras (sem) envelope”, plenas de pregnância e fugidias, impõem afundar numa rigorosa análise linha-a-linha. Haverá ainda que conceber dimensões gerais, para “linhas-da-história”, duma ou doutra mini narrativa ou história, em Marina, o “tempo eterno” e o imparável “relógio dos ponteiros”; a vida e a morte; a terra e o mar, a nuvem e a pedra, o fogo do amor e as suas cinzas… Ao “questionar” os dados/textos, no aprofundamento que se justifica, efetuam-se as aludidas “comparações constantes entre fenómenos”. Da projeção, da narrativa e do episódio Em Marina, identificam-se esparsas narrativas míticas, nas guerras e nos amores. No amor, o “projetado” Orfeu[97] chega a parecer ser Celso, na sua ânsia de que Marina não morra …[98]. Celso poder-se-á sentir, noutra volta, um Marcus[99], chegando tarde, perdida Isolda, amante de Tristão[100]. “Pobre rei Marcos. Tão tarde descobriu o desamor”[101]. Marina não é escrito na primeira pessoa, autorreferenciada. Discriminada a faceta “projetiva” (ex.: uma pessoa não específica ou segunda pessoa, outros, alguém de quem se fala ou escreve): Marina ou Alice descobrem-se entre uma “Gioconda cheia de segredos”, uma Molly, o “verbo infinito”, na “voz” da cantora. Um eco repetido da voz dela, Marina. O narrador e Marina “nadam no monólogo de Molly”[102]. É preciso dizer que “não sei até que ponto lembro da tua voz [Marina]”[103]. Dito de outro modo, Celso mal se recorda do que Marina “disse/diz”, repetidamente. Falhou a voz e “deixou de dizer”[104]. Por seu lado, os episódios reais reportam-se às mínimas ações/interações, as quais podem ser relatos de experiências significativas, por vezes truncadas nas premissas, donde a maior ou menor coerência lógica ou consistência lógica. Quando as palavras chegam a mudar de estado, digamos, aluadas, tornam-se “líquidas, turvas, transparentes”[105]. Passam palavras estranhas pela fluência de selves (“múltiplos eus”, mentais e subjetivos), transformações identitárias. Apreender-se-ão coerências doutros implícitos, aspetos tácitos e inaudíveis da daqui e dali. Narrativa episódica A partir dos fenómenos esparsos, no grosso volume da vida, alcançamos registos de realizações pessoais e dos impedimentos, destinos e acasos, sortes e desaires. Foi a partir dessas constatações que distingui os fenómenos de meros episódios, nas narrativas/histórias, que lembram “todo o texto mostrar de forma holística as cognições e os processos emocionais do autor”[106]. O que se designou de plot (na língua inglesa) para um “episódio”, portanto, vai de encontro à narrativa, ao deparar-se o leitor com uma sequência de eventos ao longo do tempo (“sucessão”), para um “texto”[107], mesmo no mínimo “enredo”[108]. Na forma bem estruturada, visou-se o elemento sequencial e dinâmico, na literatura (na lógica, “gramática” ou “sintaxe”), considerado o episódio o “único esqueleto indispensável” e “menos variável”[109]. A variabilidade de Marina encontra-se nas intercaladas unidades de significado/segmentos de tópico, nas breves temáticas, as quais identificam a substituição de conteúdos, nos registos escritos por Celso. Acresce haver processos narrativos de vários modos evidenciados, no sentir, no experienciar e no pensar: a “descrição externa/concreta de acontecimentos de vida (atuais ou imaginados / passados, presentes ou futuros); a “descrição interna experiencial” (subjetiva), de episódios/narrativas, com a identificação verbal de “reações afetivas e/ou estados emocionais” (ex.: “triste”, “zangado”, “frustrada”, etc.); e a “análise reflexiva/interpretativa da descrição de eventos e/ou da experiência subjetiva, sendo os eventos presentes, passados ou futuros”[110]. No primeiro domínio narrativo, a ênfase no sentir alcança menor complexidade do que o experienciar (interno) e o refletir/pensar. Episódios mínimos Após o desenlace por afastamento, surge um episódio elaborado quase no final do livro. Possui a tónica na conduta de Celso, antes da adesão ao refletido, somente após a imersão interior num quadro e num cenário: Episódio - Título Promessa de calor na aflição dela: “Antes do amanhecer, sacudo meus ossos na areia. O mundo frio no vapor das ondas [do mar], enquanto o sol desponta, bem depois, nas rochas que me vedam o horizonte [limite]. Sem que você soubesse, caminhamos lado a lado. Não sei até que ponto lembro tua voz. Tudo que diz e deixa de dizer [adiante, eco repetido]. O modo, sobretudo a transparência da voz. Como o menino e o pássaro de Portinari. Te vejo, assim, ferida, a proteger-te. Promessa de calor. Será difícil atravessar a noite (p. 91). Registei outros episódios relatados, com mais de “vinte anos”, exceto o primeiro, possivelmente mais recente: (1) Aflições de Celso no mar[111]; (2) Celso e Marina nadaram no mar e, sentir-se-iam “alegres”, possivelmente ao saírem para a praia[112]; (3) “Mística do encontro” de dois “tímidos” (“dissemos algo escasso, imponderável ... o clima, as gentes, a história”)[113]; e (4) Aludidos passeios de bicicleta[114]. Na narrativa criam-se então replays de experiência, quando se atenda ao “eu” subjetivo frente ao quotidiano, a rituais e a “inéditos”, como nos encontros a dois. Somente o episódio de Celso sozinho e aflito no mar não correu bem. Será invencível o revolto mar e a doença de coração: “… ao dorso da onda fria, apressa o coração”[115]. E se é tremendo o risco de morte no mar bravo, não é impossível lutar a dois contra o tempestuoso. O que nem quer dizer deixar de ter mão para apagar aquela ou outra terrível imagem recordada. Afinal, qualquer um sonha com “você”[116]. Ora aquele primeiro “episódio de ‘sonho’”, mas pavoroso, é ilustrativo do mundo irreal, na forma “narrativa”[117]: “um belo dia quase me fui na onda[118] de seis metros. Eu me livrei a muito custo. Um sonho breve que o sal interrompeu. Vantagem provisória...” é acordar. Já o fustigou o voraz turbilhão real da ameaça e perigo no medo da morte dela, quando volte a passar ao mar… Deixar de ser, naquela praia – que “quase levou” Marina … e que é a mesma praia, que “seduz” o narrador[119]. O perigo de afogar-se na praia é real e irreal. Anotei ilações, decorrentes interpretações do texto, nas expressões do autor: (1) Risco frente ao mar[120]; (2) Juventude, em que se possa morrer com alegria[121]; (3) Encontros, fruto de “um milagre matemático… acaso e o seu mistério”[122]; e (4) A bicicleta que “morreu”[123]? A bicicleta? Um indicador do encontro com Marina: “Passeio de bicicleta. Voa o vestido azul. Essa viagem nunca termina”[124]. Noutra apropriação do contexto, o par poderia [ver] “baleias”, ao longe, “delicadas” [125], quando iam pedalando na “bicicleta” … Num contrassenso forjado na comparação, a bicicleta dele era um “cavalo”[126]? Antes dela “morrer”[127], melhor dito, “enferrujar”[128]. Na transição de pensamentos, afetos à morte: “Não há resumo para a última carta. Porque esta é uma carta definitiva. Porque se trata da morte de Marina”[129]. E adiante: “Imploro, Marina, que não morras antes de morrer”[130]. Ficaria ela sem maior sentido de vida? A viragem de alegre “surpresa” chegou a ser concebida, numa anterior “carta destroçada”, restos do que ficou dentro do “caderno escolar” e “cujos pedaços recomponho num mosaico bizantino”[131]: “Carta de amor (desesperado) que rasguei: “...pousa nos lábios uma estrela... secreta harmonia... deserto amanhecer... teu corpo inelutável... lagoa iluminada e seios úmidos... bosque sutil... pequena morte... jogo de espelhos e palavras... teu rosto desenhado no meu peito... à mesa um copo de absinto... duas palavras e voltamos a dormir... infame precipício...” (p. 86). Os procedimentos de análise de experiências são guias de leitura, no que prendem o elucidado “desespero”, o isolamento e o limitado prazer de Celso, quando a vida pudesse afigurar-se um pesado fardo, irado contra Marina, contra o violento mar, o amor eterno… A súmula de alegria - a “surpresa” … Num resumo analítico[132], estabelecem-se relações entre um fenómeno, no sentido da conceção de um episódio. Donde, uma ilustração de seis fatores envolvidos, no episódio Promessa de calor na aflição dela[133]: - Condições causais antecedentes, para a ocorrência reportada (antes do amanhecer, já levantado Celso da areia da praia onde dormiu, ao despontar do sol); - Fenómeno per se (“sacudidos ossos” ao sol, no limite do ser, entre eternas rochas, com a ausência de Marina); - Contexto (a praia junto ao mar ensoleirado); - Estratégias somente idealizadas de ação interativa (ser tomada Marina por indefesa a proteger, no que Celso escreve da sua possibilidade de “ajuda”); - Condições intervenientes (quadro “menino com pássaro” de Portinari…), - O que constrange ou facilita o incidente/fenómeno (recordações de encontros com Marina, num local partilhado e o fenómeno de imaginar um quadro) e - Condições consequentes (a dificuldade de continuar pela noite, sem a presença de Marina e a fixada promessa de calor humano). Nessa leitura duma abstração da experiência, um episódio pode ser idealmente estruturado, se bem que escapem as estratégias de ação interativa. Noutra margem encontram-se a filosofia (de Parménides e Heidegger), o jogo com textos míticos (Ájaz, Rei Marcus…). No “romance de ideias” de Marco Lucchesi, são vastos os domínios de conhecimento. Com o autor aprendi que, ao não aceder a “coisas em si”, tenho as coisas para mim e, talvez, nos apareçam amores e guerras, por prismas do entendimento e da sensibilidade. Dos fenómenos - as aparências - “O que sei?” No quotidiano, sei que vivemos de forma a criarmos conexões entre inauditos episódios, flashbacks, substituições de interesses/temáticas nem buscadas, redundâncias e omissões (como “lacunas de memória”), numa apreensão do que nisso assuma perene “relevância”. O núcleo duro, o “essencial”[134], segundo o autor? “Perdemos as palavras essenciais”[135]. Perdemos “baleias” naquele mar alto, enferrujaram-se as “bicicletas” e desapareceu o “corpo feminino em fuga”[136]. As cartas dizem muito “mais do que parece”[137]. 3 Do mundo poético “Tornei-me um leitor de Parmênides”[138] e de Heidegger No mundo eterno, Parménides colocou o “motor imóvel” do tempo, o “livre-arbítrio”[139], o “cálculo integral”[140] … “causa e concausa”[141] … “tudo em tudo”[142]… Bastará “puxarmos o fio…”[143]? Numa passagem paradoxal da breve (?) “novela”[144], logo vemos como “tudo muda” no (des)encontro, a par de “rádios, guerras, amores”[145]. Não há confissão, não há reparação, na “narrativa não projetiva”. As “narrativas” antes partem dela[146], nos “lugares comuns”[147], registados nas mensagens. O que procura despertar Celso? “A voz de quem morreu, não as histórias”[148]. Bastaria o alcance da superfície, na “voz” dela[149]… No início de Marina, nem se espera a finalização do encontro. Não é desejado o fim do amor. Um mal irremediável. Terá morrido? Obra de “criatividade” dissonante face a espectativas de cartas de amor, Marco Lucchesi coloca-nos a margem de manobra, uma deriva, mudado Celso em permanência e, nesse sentido, as suas posições emocionais básicas são sublevadas e revoltosas, sublimadas, substituídas. Existentia, como a explicitar? Quando numa página inicial, não numerada, o autor nomeia um filósofo italiano, Emanuele Severino (1929 - 2020), que escreveu sobre Martin Heidegger, que exploração de fenómenos “metafísicos”? Martin Heidegger[150], de que trata? Li algures que Heidegger se interessou por “atualidade, realidade, em oposição a possibilidade concebida como ideia”. Ser é a totalidade do que existe. “Aí onde está cada um de nós” - da sein, seria o lugar da nossa presença, duplicada pela sombra da subjetividade. Subjetividade é o vivido que torna algo maior, quanto dá à presença novas formas afetivo-cognitivas. Mundos universais musicais Tenho aquela “vontade” de mudar o passado[151] e de criar uma ideia prospetiva de florescimento. Do mito de amor a Marina, nem estranho virem três damas dar uma flauta a um príncipe, Tamino, que buscará a sua amada. A harmonia da música condensa o “universal”, atingidos géneros e variadas “vozes” trocadas, na “Flauta Mágica”, de Mozart (1756 – 1791). O poder unificador da música é uma metáfora para o príncipe neutralizar o mal. Outra das óperas que acompanham Celso? A ópera de Verdi (1813 – 1901)? Recuo, à procura de La forza del destino, de 1862, cantado por Galina Gorchakova. Será que soubemos escutar o ciciado na voz da atualidade e o que nem se abra ao previsível, no acaso, sem destino[152]? Vozes pessoais de visionários? Na aparência, as palavras são soltas numa poéticas. Meia página abala o leitor. Meia página, umas quantas linhas de “voz”[153] , “voz marinha”, vinda do mar, submarina. Marina. Na “poética da dissonância”, fica aberta a superfície ao “espaço descontínuo”, criado por Lucchesi para ela[154]. A inatingível voz dela? Não sabemos. Na aceção do termo “fragmento”, Heidegger sublinharia essa origem deslocada de textos únicos e incompletos, que deixam espaço por concretizar. Escritores como Lucchesi, coligindo fragmentos, escapam às “correntes literárias”, “movimentos identitários” e “evidências” repetidas. Um significado de recusa de continuidade no vestígio escrito, fragmentado, foi adquirido no mar, que não é terra firme. Todavia, com “intencionalidade”[155] na voz, “nunca poderemos deixar o mundo, o que nunca deixámos”[156], o mundo terreno. Numa particular fenomenologia[157], poder-se-á conceber a “suspensão de julgá-lo”. Como não julgar o mundo do pensamento oblíquo, da metafísica passada? Ficando pela rama, na área concreta, terrena (não marítima, à beira mar, o que “sobrenada” ...). No que importa, não estamos nós fora de água? É de todo difícil alcançar maneira de arrancar o “pensamento de superfície”, também a superfície da página de Marina encante, pela superfície que cobre os reflexos incessantes, os jogos de reflexos, como ilusões e evasões, que surgem e desaparecem. Se não for atingido o que aparece antes do fundo das letras, ficamos aquém de imergir: foi muito antes que Parménides e Heidegger viveram. É preciso dizer que a superfície não se confunde com a aparência - a realidade energética, a dança terreste, da vida dançante[158]. A máscara de Marina já arrasta a ilusão do que aflora (a superfície) – a “transparência da voz”[159]. Esconde-se ela algures, no “re-dobrar” do seu ser[160]. A sua aparência causar-me-ia a diligência em “lê-la” a preceito. A voltar a Parménides e Heidegger, a profundidade[161] do livro dá antes a explorar o ser e as coisas[162], ao invés da superfície (mas com a superfície), a sua luminosidade. Quando a metáfora da luz (do dia, do Sol, da Lua promissora do brilho dos olhos verdes…) não encontra um reino perdido que persiga o ser, quantas ideias ficam subterradas e obscuras ao leitor? Foi a partir daquele ilusório mundo de reflexos (a superfície), que alcancei a incerta profundidade. Será o outro mundo (“marinho”) contrastado ao ilusório da realidade e ainda aquele outro mundo perdura, mutável e instável, matizado de cor intensa e de brilho ténue de águas passadas. Quanto ao retorno à superfície, ao aparecer, no emergir de novo, volta a agitação do mar emocional, que se ressente, no que permanece do eterno esvaziamento. Ficou um poço vazio daquele outro momento de amor ou do que dele reste nas rochas imutáveis. “Tenho por ela um profundo afeto. Lembro-me de seu sorriso, ao piano”[163]. Quando “aparecer é um compromisso metafísico”? A “metafísica” foi além de physis. Cientistas designam a metafísica de “especulação” de ideias, tantas vezes incertas, com que se debatam. O que se entende por “real” é, nesse segundo sentido, o que ultrapassa a “realidade” que conhecemos por perceção (inter)subjetiva. O real é um referencial profundo[164]e infinito; a realidade é o que conhecemos ou julgamos conhecer. Numa mediação poética para a metafísica, “aparecer” situa a presença original no mundo do ser, sendo que o mundo adote a incerteza na errância (e na morada no novo mundo). ~ Quanto “aparecer” vive acima da superfície e da aparência das coisas, é o ser que reflete um inóspito caminho de linguagem reflexiva, aproximativa e assintótica[165]. No ato de escrever, Marco Lucchesi delineou-me a possibilidade de especulação, a liberdade crítica e a ironia, abertas portas à metafísica fenomenológica. O existir em processo trouxera-me antes outros saberes e, nos espaços do mundo daqui, foi indicada a deslocação para a saída de “ex-” (em “existir”). Entretanto, aprendi que existir alcança o sentido de “pôr-se de pé”, de acordo com a etimologia. Num apelo a erguer-se (pondo-se de pé), já o próprio ser permanece em lugar recôndito, na condição de vir a aliar o desvelamento do ente – objeto, coisa, um ser, Marina... Outros “reivindicam” para si o “estar-aí” (da-sein), dito que todos “querem, buscam, sonham com você” [Marina], um corpo no que não “fuja”[166], na errância noturna. Consequência da fuga da luz? Será ela dada a “despertar” outra, a emergente Marina de Celso? Encontra-se ela ausente, no que seria de voltar a abordar a limpidez, a superfície, a “transparência”[167] da constelação “prometida” de dois seres. Uma forma de profundidade incompleta. Numa lúcida forma de escrita, patamar de sonho lúcido, Celso encontra-se em guarda. O narrador não deseja “despertar [vidas escritas]” … Talvez busque tão somente a “voz” dela, naquele eco, em que ressoa a limpidez, alcançará outra “voz”. A quem dar “voz”? A Molly, no seu solilóquio, na primeira pessoa[168]. Molly, uma inigualável cantora de ópera; Marina, de que nem sabe Celso se se lembra… da voz, dada à imagem fugidia na melodia, ao piano[169]. O que passou não se encravou. No ser em mudança, serão cristalizadas mínimas recordações, rareando “o caminho da verdade”[170], sem saída (uma aporia) tantas vezes paradoxal. Guerras dos mundos de ideias As ideias “verdadeiras” e as guerras de “opiniões” não se consolidam, nas correntes do paradoxo. Conjugam batalhas sem fim: Parménides e Zenão vs. Platão; Nicolau de Cusa vs. os que não cooperavam… Numa oposição ao seu tempo, questão cerrada e a descoberto, foi a permanência e a transformação. Parménides reteve a pura permanência, unilateral. Exigente na “ponderação”, Platão (428/427 – 348/347 a.C.) dedicou-lhe um diálogo inteiro - Parménides, em que Sócrates levou uma revisão verbal dum oponente, Zenão de Eleia (século V a.C.), para o efeito de inquirir o sentido do Uno, cujas “absurdas consequências seguem (ou não seguem?) em contradição com a referida doutrina”[171]. E se o ser é múltiplo? “Parménides”, um arauto da “revolução”? Esse é um ponto de um “resumo” do livro. Sendo que o germe da destruição estivesse plantado[172], que revisões foram geradas, a propósito das suas ideias? O que queriam mostrar os eleatas, com Zenão adiante das forças, o arauto da geometria e dos estranhos números, o infinito e o zero? Uma revolução, no conceito de tempo: fluxo constante e deixa de haver presente? O paradoxo de Zenão assinala o contrário à opinião recebida e comum, para o tempo virar uma sequência de mínimos momentos separados, donde vivermos o presente e a mudança ser ilusão. Quanto ao espaço? Sendo uno, não dá condições a haver “lugar” e “aqui”. No espaço fragmentado só há “aqui”, ausente o movimento. A revolução tem sentido no paradoxo, forjadas inesperadas dissensões. “Mudam [os tempos e] as guerras”[173]. No século XV, novo sobressalto. Gerador de ódios por contemporâneos, Nicolau de Cusa (1401 – 1464) alarmou muitos, pelo acento na compatibilidade entre extremos. Encarou a conjetura de “opostos”[174], dicotomizado o mundo por valores antagónicos, quando se creia num ponto de vista considerado válido. Nova batalha. Era Napoleónica, em França e na Europa, no ano VIII (ou, no calendário vigente, datado a 9 de novembro de 1799). Contrastaram adesões e oposições a Napoleão, herói e anti-herói, arrebatado o poder no golpe “18 do Brumário”[175]. As mudanças foram inquestionáveis, com a chefia e as saradas guerras. A guerra entre Marina e Celso não foi uma constante, também não persistiu. No foco da maior peleja, a distância a Marina[176] antecedeu outra circunstância: o entendimento de “como [Celso] se vê”[177]. Num “sinal de transição, de deslocamento”[178], veio de Celso a afirmação séria, numa trégua consigo mesmo: “já não habito na distância”[179]. Anteriormente, despedir-se-ia dela, como um Catulo[180], numa linguagem coloquial, sem intensidade e sem profundidade maior… Poderia estar a recuperar o “habitar”, junto dela. Existirem compatibilizados, nas suas oposições, requer o significado: “habitar”. Talvez se encontre algures, na linguagem. Para “morar”, fica bem longínqua a raiz etimológica, no sânscrito - vatami -, cujo termo alemão é wesen. Dir-se-ia que Celso possa já “estar-aí” (da-sein)[181]. No seu lugar - aí -, à fluência não lhe faltará diferença. Como expor uma diferença melhor do que com o ruído feito pelas diferenças da fala e do canto de Celso e Marina? Revejo a aliança, a separação, o que nem quer significar uma divisão de opostos. Há uma distinção nas “vozes”, para um sistema caótico, em várias escalas de linguagens. A organização de mundos No século XXI, em 2023, há ordem para parar e avançar no terreno do ser. “Há mais de dois milénios…”. Heidegger[182] introduziu essa conjetura perdurante[183], nas primeiras palavras de Ser e Tempo. Fora há muito “esquecido” o que surgira em Parménides, uma abstração – Poema – “onde se encontra o ser e o ente”? Ente pode ser objeto, coisa, ser … E o ser é o mais próximo do ser humano, sem que seja “um Deus ou um fundamento do mundo”[184]. Não existe um ente sem um ser. Acresce perguntar: “o que significa pensar?”[185]. Pensa-se em alguém, um ser, enquanto as guerras matam pessoas. Desde que a nossa imaginação pejou o mundo de deuses, entre ninfas, dragões ou quimeras, foi feita a equação, pelo menos: esquecido o humano. Não neutro, mas esclarecido, Heidegger rebelou-se contra ter sido minada essa incógnita do mundo – o ser, o guardião da questão[186]. Colocado o tão saliente à parte (o ser) e juntas as palavras a ideais, “ordenaram-se” melhor as coisas. Nessa incessante transformação, contra as utopias, foram cometidas “supressões” de coisas, acrescentos de quimeras, os “suplementos”, esquecidas possíveis “deformações”[187]. Aguardado o alvorecer da modernidade líquida, após a linha humanista dos anos sessenta do século passado, ainda seria antecipado o outro tempo do ser frágil, das diferenças e vulnerabilidades acrescidas. Vemos superada a razão não linear, o princípio da não-contradição[188], a alinhar o excluído. Arrastamos até mesmo para a paz a “coincidência de opostos”[189]. No reiterado pensamento ímpar de Lucchesi, um visionário de saberes ontológicos, preside o ser humano que é pensado, dito que ser e não ser não sejam iguais. Os seus conhecimentos são buscados entre um que é muitos[190]: ser e não ser e “ser de todo o ser”, na expressão de Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600). Ruínas e salvação Um genial revolucionário, Giordano Bruno, foi o que retomara o ser, em On the infinite universe and worlds (“Sobre o infinito, o universo e os mundos”). Recordado num post scriptum[191], o opositor, Bruno, foi morto. Para mais escrevera “A ceia das cinzas”[192], em gritante contraste com o fogo da paixão. Deu-se ao desfecho inolvidável, à morte horrenda, após outra intrincada conjetura resistente à “ignorância” por dogmatismo e ceticismo do tempo. Bem além e aquém do “estar aí“, em substancial presença, o que resiste à fixação ao lugar encontra-se na imaginação, em múltiplas superfícies, no não linear, cujas diversas escalas se coloca Marina. Celso vive numa efetiva transição temporal, quando “o agora é um índice [indicador] da eternidade”[193]. Quando ainda se creia na “eternidade do mundo”[194], uma exceção. Enquanto nos insurgimos, Marina poderia “fixá-lo” ao passado em comum[195]. Na “correspondência” truncada, o narrador assumirá a perspetiva de “crer na eternidade do ser. Mundo sem fim e sem Deus. Essa é a ideia que me salva”[196]. Ademais, imaginar a “eternidade” não diz que não se “aclare a contingência” [197], o acaso, por contemplação intuitiva[198] e sensível. No perpétuo salto entre histos, reparo no ocaso do relacionamento, na paragem e esgotamento dum percurso: “[As cartas de Marina, “ibérica prudência”?] Terminam com abraço afetuoso, promessas impagáveis e mil beijos de Catulo. Cartas inúteis e vazias! Abracem do não ser a eternidade!!”[199]. Creio no indecidível. Não cumpriremos todas as “promessas”, as coisas voltarão a ser as mesmas nas guerras e nos amores à beira mar: o “vestido azul”, a “pedra”, os “passeios” e as “bicicletas”[200]. Recordações e ilusões para “todas as cartas em princípio circular”[201]. “Quem sabe se…”[202], se “tudo se passa aquém da superfície”[203]? A verdade - domínio duplicado da aparência - agarra o “desvendamento”[204]. Da substância/essência não temos algo, além da aparência. E ainda que deixássemos há muito de atingir “as coisas em si”, vivemos demasiado no escuro em volta. Quanto muito, realizemos nova viragem às partes, quando “o passado é órfão do presente [índice de eternidade]”[205], no mundo compartimentado. Vivemos num “tempo inabordável”[206]. De forma paradoxal, deixámos o “museu”[207] e as “espécies” à solta, que diminuem com seres impreparados. Do ser e tempo[208] à nova hermenêutica, reatada “presença”, o que “aparece” no “compromisso metafísico” com o ser[209]? Numa filosofia para o século XX, o existencialismo ainda contou para O ser e o nada[210], no que importou o significado, o valor e o propósito da vida. Na época, avançado distanciamento/estranheza[211] face ao “teatro de sentimentos”. Na Europa, tanto “narrativa”, quanto “ficção” deram lugar ao “novo romance”[212], uma mistura de atores sociais e coletivos, de géneros misturados, uma “polifonia”[213]. A psicologia da vontade e a narrativa Na psicologia então emergente, William James[214] discriminara a “vontade de acreditar” do que queremos fazer “desacreditar” - o que seja convencionado para a época ou para a “troca” correspondida de “cartas” a e-mails, o que escape à explicação e/ou à compreensão[215]. Narrativa, na psicologia pós-racionalista, congregou a ideia de que “contadores de histórias” seriam os que estariam incrustados ao amor e ao sofrimento. Como sublinhado, nas teorias semânticas, havia outras “vozes” e “polifonias”, quando um discurso se enuncie. Fora enunciado. Ademais as (re)autorias e sensibilidades eram provenientes doutros domínios de saber, tomadas por empréstimo (nas teorias feministas, na narratologia, nas ciências sociais e humanas…). As temáticas ganharam sentidos segundos, o significado de ridículo e a ironia alcançou outra voz crítica, ainda com o romance de ideias. Com Laurence Stern[216] é possível “justificar” uns “resumos” dum Celso[217]. Os condensados foram ordenados, entre “ideias confusas”[218] dum amor límpido. Num modelo dos mundos emocionais e do “eu em processo”, as “organizações de significado pessoal” (OSP) remeteram, em fim de século, a "metáforas básicas da descrição do real”. Traduziram apreensões dinâmicas para “estrutura da personalidade” e consumaram “significados”, para formas de dar sentido à vida. O modelo OSP, de Vittorio Guidano Vittorio Guidano foi um psicoterapeuta romano, que viu a criatividade como possibilidade de transitarmos duma para outra organização de “significado pessoal”, da falta e perda à reorganização noutra emoção, talvez pelo receio da distanciação. Correu na margem de entendimentos do corpo e da culpa. Concebeu uma epistemologia, com Leslie Greenberg, Humberto Maturana, Michael Mahoney e Óscar Gonçalves. Numa visão emocional integradora, a faceta de experienciar a vida (I, em inglês; o nível de “eu experiencial”) nem se opôs mais a “significar” a experiência (a narrativa da experiência). Pode ser dado o exemplo buscado no que conheci em Guidano e num seu amigo, Leslie Greenberg, de saúde mental. Quando com eles estudei, partiram dde G. H. Mead[219], entre muitos outros. No sul africano Leslie Greenberg[220] senti a primazia conferida a existir, tão visceral, no âmago da experiência imediata, o "eu". Frente a frente ao vivido subjetivo, Vittorio Guidano[221] colocava-se noutro plano de conhecimento: o “mim reflexivo” (me, em inglês). Contrastava na relação à energia de Greenberg, uma “presença” por inteiro, uma conexão no momento, em níveis diversos (físico, emocional, cognitivo e espiritual), ou seja, havia uma consciência da plena experiência corporal e emocional, vontade de escuta ativa, busca de compreensão. Modelos para fazer mundo Na distância cavada, lemos que “a gota do mar é pequena, quando o tempo de ausência seja longo.” A memória nem se esvai na comparação e compreendido desgaste. O “piano – sobrenada”[222] … – voga à tona de água, assim sendo a memória[223], num “abismo líquido”[224]. Poderia ser a voz “atemporal”[225], inesquecível, aquela voz entretanto quebrada de Marina? Tendo lá permanecido uma presença, não se cravou… No incomensurável passar dos anos, quais “cardumes de palavras”[226], arrastaram “o vazio”[227]. A eternidade deixou de ser. Morreu um mundo terreno junto do mar. O eco imaginário de Marina, na ausência quedou-se. Existem as “rochas” [que] continuam imutáveis[228], fustigadas por ventos e marés. Do revolto mar à mata-bioma e às pedras encalhadas, sobressai o abandono, nas “correntes indomáveis”[229]. Celso, continente/recetáculo, sem mãos. Haja o que desapareça e volte com a “correnteza”[230]. Sem alcance do “mundo submarino”[231], as águas não brilham. Somente na “superfície” são “transparentes” [232] águas, para um mundo que foi desarticulado e fragmentado em partes. Como referido, no uno, teríamos um mundo total e eterno. Numa perspetiva particular, um amigo meu acentuou a condição física, metafórica e metafísica (“especulativa”) do ser. Sem ler Marina, António Maurício enfatizou o transitório – o humano para “ondas do mar” (o seu mundo parcial). Na expressão oral, coloquei as suas palavras de permeio, com parênteses retos, para elucidar o refletido do infinito: Em resumo, e metaforicamente, parece-me que [esse processo humano, dinâmico instável] tem semelhanças com o que acontece às ondas do mar[233] (…) configurações/formas locais e transitórias desse mar/suporte e alimento de todas as outras formas/configurações potencialmente possíveis do mesmo. Que podem nascer, crescer, viver/existir, reproduzir-se e morrer/deixar de ser/existir, porque são fenómenos/seres transitórios. (…) Mas não é por isso [por haver formas locais e transitórias de mar], que o mar/vácuo quântico/TAO/[234]o sem nome/... (pressuposto background/suporte/meio/ e fim de tudo o que é possível, e por isso intemporal, Total, global, cognoscível e/ou incognoscível), sem ser… seja redutível a qualquer aspeto antropomórfico[235] .... mas contendo-os... O meu amigo tem uma conceção física e de recipiente – o “vaso vazio”, o inamovível Uno[236]. Nessa substância, Maurício faz conter os mundos parciais contrastantes. Na “leitura desviante”, colocamos “entrelinhas”[237]. A “colocar parêntesis” no que se saiba ou julgue saber, houve um retorno ao mundo, no abalo cultural da consciência. Na aproximação a coisas[238], podemos condensar “cardumes de palavras”[239], no que sobreviveu unido, o par que se afastou: As “cartas deitam iodo [como o mar] e sal… [como lágrimas] [240]… novo sal”[241] Crescem as ondas que me arrastam para dentro [daquele mundo submerso]. Põe-se Celso “a nadar“[242]. [No mar] Haveria “… a correnteza“… e entretanto “as ondas sobem cada vez mais altas… Já não encontro salva-vidas. [Celso dirigindo-se a Marina, pede-lhe uma vez:] Nademos juntos”[243]… No relacionamento, terá havido … um “naufrágio e tempestade”[244]. Até no “perigo de [Celso] afogar-se na praia”[245]. Ergue-se, subleva-se ele, humano, que “não tem guelras nem escamas”[246] … No salva-vidas da terrena praia, onde não “para de chover” … “mal sei nadar em tanto azul… [Celso] Andava a saltar “nas rochas, acima do cinturão das algas”, mas mergulhara no mar, “quando é escassa a correnteza”[247]. “Caminho sobre a chuva, ondas revoltas [no mar], branca espuma”[248] … “nadar [para] tão longe” …[249]. Na deriva, as “leituras desviantes” de uma temática[250], colocam vários caminhos de leitura. Não fosse o vazio deixado de palavras… [Sempre permanecem] “As pedras [que] rugem no bater das ondas”[251] [instáveis]. [Muda o significado de] “Praia - Cadeia alimentar, baleias, pescadores”[252] … “Sinto no meu corpo a maresia [que muda também, após a vazante, de cheiro intenso do mar] e assim transformo o sal em novo sal”[253] [Em casa] O “relógio de areia” de Celso, quando se encontrava com Marina, no passado, “ficava na estante” … [porque o tempo era subjetivo]. “Um belo dia [a ampulheta] quebrou-se” … “Vinte anos” separaram [Celso e Marina] … quantos “grãos” de areia [na ampulheta] são necessário” para tanto tempo passado?[254] “… ao dorso da onda fria, apressa o coração”[255], sendo que o sal eliminado, baixe a pressão[256] [arterial] e “transformo o sal em novo sal”[257]. Nova vida. As palavras vão e vêm, na modernidade líquida. A tornarem-se as palavras “úmidas”, é o sinal de sofrimento no “sal” e na “lágrima” salgada. Qual garrafa que se joga ao mar? Flutuaram ambos num domínio intemporal, deram-se a palavras inevitavelmente “fartas de imprecisão, saudosas da beleza”[258]. E que “cartas” se virão a “salvar” do mar do esquecimento, com agrestes “ventos do Atlântico”? Na insana movimentação vital, Celso “decide [a dado momento] atravessar a maresia”[259] e quedou-se o mar de distância entre si e Marina[260], ao primeiro e-mail dela, seguido-das imagens coloridas, palavras dela. Marina aparecer-lhe-ia na imaginação dovbelo solilóquio de Molly Bloom[261], um encantatório eco. É dele o repente, quando não queira voltar ao passado: “Não me afasto deste mundo de areia… Passam navios à distância”[262]. Em terra firme, Celso, não sai de si mesmo. No final do livro, arredio, Celso dará conta do inesquecível mau tempo, em que se sentira “naufrago”, abraçado ao não-lugar[263]: “Passada a tempestade, me afogo nos teus olhos [verdes e do mar]”[264], olhos de luz fina e penetrante. Do repetido reparo no olhar de lince, o que ficamos cientes do passado na marinha de salinas, na praia e noutras paragens? A lembrança foi ter à imagem da “jovem” Lívia, sua prima e amiga de Marina… [Lívia] “deu-se às ondas”[265]. Deixou de ser. Condenado, Marcus, perdeu alguém; Celso perdeu Marina, não fossem as “fugas” intempestivas. Anunciado casamento ou “condenação”, na escuta de Grande Missa em Dó Menor, K 427[266], de Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), o significado diverge, para o cineasta Robert Bresson[267]. A perda não justifica uma causa, que seja culpa de falta de pontualidade dela ou o atraso dele. Preso ao antecipado mito: “Cheguei tarde como o Rei Marcus”[268], já que a bela Isolda amava Tristão e vogariam num barco do amor à beira mar[269]. No enlevo por Isolda, Celso assumia encontrar-se na condição do rei[270]. Outro fora a lição de Orfeu[271], que olhou para trás… “Não se ergueu” (no existir). E como a palavra concretiza o pensamento (quando o alcance), em inumeráveis mundos atingimos a parte num ou noutro fator – o mar subterrâneo, o envelope na palavra, uma sinédoque. A crer na memória “líquida”, mais uma vez, em imaginação de Marina[272], Celso “lembrou-a” de que já teriam pisado as pedras até à onda, ao imenso mar[273] Quando o a sair último apaga a luz Na ausência de fundamentos externos e de princípios internos, temos o reino perdido do ser. No mundo abandonado, aliado no estranhamento, é o esquecimento (“o fundador”) uma implicação do recuo do ser[274]. Como constatado, em Heidegger[275], surgiu o ser, um dos seus dois temas constantes. Como ser nem seja fundamento, nem seja princípio, incorreria na dobra original “ser-ente”[276]. Donde, a possibilidade de “re-dobra” do ser em Marina. Para o incauto efeito, somente desviando-se um autor, poderá recuar o ser, em que as hierarquias da existência passam a ser independentes (ser e ente), deixando de fazer sentido o que veio primeiro. Nenhum deus alguma vez pode unir o disperso, nos tempos que correm. Em Heidegger (1986 [1982]), para quê escrever “Porquê poetas”. Andaria o filósofo nos caminhos da floresta obscura, no que recuaria e o conduziu a Hölderlin (1770 — 1843): “E porquê poetas em tempos atribulados?[277]” Além da destroçada condição de “autor-idade”, o autor deslocou-se à poesia de vestígios inacessíveis. Marco Lucchesi pode ter atendido ao segundo tema de Heidegger, quando foque o eterno, em Parménides[278]. Visado fundamento do enigmático “pensamento”: leu as primeiras descobertas nos fragmentos ou vestígios escritos. De Marina, Lucchesi arrasta já o leitor às primeiras interrogações, como nos ousados fragmentos pré-socráticos incompletos, desbravados e arredios a um ponto, excêntrico a linhagens ou a “influências”. Ocorre pensar noutro ângulo de visão criativa, sem articulação entre o próximo e o longínquo, alcançado um brilho lateral, que perpassa na contemporaneidade. Qual será o derradeiro lugar em que pulse o pensar? – Pergunte-se. Em Poema, de Parménides, fragmento de conceitos acutilantes. Possuímos além da “dobra” constitutiva do ser (nos limites entre ser e ente), a prerrogativa de interrogar, de hesitar, de duvidar e de afirmar. Em que mundos desaparece e reaparece a consciência? Resposta: Nos dias que se sucedem a noites, a alternância revela-se à consciência, no sonho e na realidade percetiva. Da diferença entre mundos, Marina, o que perdura na ausência? Memórias de palavras “recorrentes: o nada, a Morte, abismos e fantasmas”[279]. Perdura o “sonho” no eterno “menino”[280]. Em Marina, o coprotagonista Celso, um retirado fazedor de “não histórias”, afigura-se retirado, o que não significa derrotado. Noutra asserção crítica, quando não se bata em retirada, poderão ser dados saltos na compreensão duma obra de múltiplas leituras. Foi no Prefácio à segunda edição de Crítica da razão pura, que Kant alertou para o pensamento, cujos “saltos temerários” nem seriam escusados. Poder-se-ia ir mais longe, no arriscando, nas nossas frágeis sociedades, a ponto de nem ser dito o que se pense, nem ousar-se o criticar. [1] Lucchesi, Marco. Marina. Santo André (SP): Rua do Sabão, 2023, p. 89. Quanto à “romaria de formigas” (p. 78), a ser desfeita, “vivo em guerra contra os cupins…” (p. 23). “Só as cartas ficaram intactas. Desprezadas até pelos cupins” (p. 24). “Pobres cartas! Ai de nós! Indigestão de todos os cupins” (p. 28). Afinal, outra maçada, será o velho computador perder cartas, “perder tudo” (p. 89). [2] A crença no acesso à profundidade teve os seus dias melhores, quando se acreditou numa via única, uma dimensão da base ao topo, entretanto barrados os códigos e a exatidão, buscada na modernidade. [3] Marina, p. 73. [4] Marina, p. 56: Marina possui uma “beleza transitiva”. Marina, p. 60: “Sou trilho morto, intransitivo [que não chega a ela]. Se não te alcanço não me basto”. Marina, p. 71: o caráter transitivo, sendo o que muda, aproximou-se de “sinal de transição, deslocamento”. [5] Marina, p. 27. [6] Marina, p. 76. [7] Marina, p. 76. [8] Marina, p. 15. [9] Marina, p. 13. [10] Marina, p. 87. [11] Marina, p. 13, p. 17. [12] Marina, p. 67. [13] Marina, p. 85. [14] Marina, p. 85. [15] Marina, p. 91. [16] Marina, p. 55. [17] Marina, p. 87. [18] Marina, p. 54: “Distância na distância da distância. Porque o demónio é filho do silêncio. António Vieira dixit”. O silêncio marca a distância tão grande entre ambos, gerador do mal. Mas Celso foi um menino com “fome da distância” (p. 63). Um dia, deixou de “habitar na distância… distância que se perde” (pp. 97-98). [19] Marina, p. 86. [20] Marina, p. 72. [21] Marina, p. 69. [22] Marina, p. 84. [23] Marina, p. 33. [24] Na alusão do autor, a xilogravura de 1507, de Hans Schäufelein the Elder? Um idoso, “o mais velho” (the elder). Ou “Cristo diante de Anás, do espelho da paixão de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo”, também de 1507? [25] Marina, p. 22. Parménides é também referido na p. 35 e na p. 98. [26] Marina, p. 49). Ulisses representa o que enfrentou perigos e riscos do mar, explorando o mundo. Escritores foram “navegadores”, por caminhos sem guia e sem antecipação, como James Joyce (1882 – 1941). [27] Marina, p. 49. [28] Marina, p. 71. Celso efetua ainda um recuo, quando “uma janela abre-se ao vento” e se desfaz o enlevo com Marina. Concretamente, recuo terá o sentido militar, na guerra. [29] Marina, pp. 34-34. [30] O vaso é um recetáculo, um contentor para as coisas sensíveis, no Timeu de Platão, datado de 360 a.C. Identifica a chora, no que acolhe as coisas em devir. [31] Marina, p. 89. [32] Marina, p. 77. Nas folhas ímpares, são dados a ler “resumos”, como o da página 27: “Sobre a morte das cigarras e o motor imóvel. As garras do leão. Livre-arbítrio, borboleta e tempestade. Software e cálculo integral. Termina com um verso de Mallarmé.” Geralmente, os “resumos” são ampliados em textos de duas páginas. [33] Marina, p. 81. [34] Marina, p. 43. [35] Marina, p. 89. [36] Marina, p. 78. [37] Marina, p. 67, post scriptum: “Leitor de pássaros, sou como um áugure romano a decifrar tua mensagem”. Na Roma antiga, desde o século VIII a.C., os sacerdotes tornar-se-iam augures, tirando presságios, partindo dos voos, do canto e das entranhas de pássaros, entre outras aves. [38] Marina, p. 89. [39] Marina, p. 87. [40] Marina, post scriptum, p. 98. [41] Marina, p. 50. Na perspetiva computacional, disse-me um informático, a diferença é nítida entre significado e semântica: “fornece-se uma semântica para um argumento (ou seja lá o que for), quando se fornece um método de traduzir os símbolos, que contém para qualquer coisa que tenha significado: dar uma semântica para uma linguagem pressupõe, ou envolve, uma Teoria do Significado. Contrasta com a sintaxe, que é apenas a gramática formal do sistema, que determina que os símbolos estão corretamente juntos ou não. Pode assim seguir-se uma sintaxe do sistema sem ter a mínima ideia da sua semântica”. [42] Marina, p. 43. [43] Marina, p. 18. Na Ilíada, poema homérico, salienta-se o belo e valente Ájax, com que lutou Heitor, sem vencedor ou vencido. [44] Marina, p. 53. [45] Marina, p. 35. [46] Marina, p. 36. [47] Marina, p. 83. [48] Marina, p. 39. [49] Marina, p. 79. [50] Marina, p. 86. [51] Marina, p. 49. [52] Marina, p. 18. A Guerra Fria, tensão geopolítica, no final da Segunda Guerra Mundial (1945), abrangeu Os Estados Unidos da América e a União das Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas (URSS), desde a Presidência de Truman, em 1947, tendo fim na dissolução da URSS. [53] Marina, p. 31. [54] Marina, p. 35. [55] Quando a alegoria apresenta dois significados, literal e figurado, as palavras, cujo significado seja literal, devem dar lugar ao significado alegórico (figurado). [56] Por extensão, ao mundo subaquático, Marina, p. 50: “… o abismo líquido”. Marina, p. 37: “um líquido destino terra adentro. Marina, p. 79: “Presumo que se lembre (ó, líquida memória!) da onda que das pedras nos levou ao mar.” [57] Imagino até mesmo O mundo à minha procura, de Ruben A, um relato autobiográfico em que o escritor dá conta da vida e da escola, que “esquece os livros”. [58] Marina, p. 49. [59] Marina, p.54. [60] Marina, p. 65. [61] Marina, p. 65. [62] Marina, p. 13. [63] Marina, p. 27, p. 29. Na mesma página 29: “de dez mil dias” …, após o “terremoto” - “uma “falha sísmica”. [64] Castro, Ruy. A vida por escrito: ciência e arte da biografia. Lisboa: Tinta da China, 2023., p. 16. A “literatice” passa pela ideia de um biógrafo atravessar a pessoa-personagem, para dela extrair o que não saiba de si mesma nos pormenores, para o efeito de conceção de episódios “inesquecíveis”. [65] Marina, p. 16. [66] Marina, p. 13. [67] Marina, p. 89. [68] Marina, p. 13. [69] Marina, p. 37. [70] O interminável percurso, é destacado na página 93. O texto continua com a presença do tempo, para “Zenão de Eleia: Aquiles corre com a tartaruga”, um paradoxo da verdade de Parménides, numa demonstração “por absurdo”. [71] Marina, p. 16. [72] Marina, p. 54. [73] Durante uma noite, após ter querido escrever insistentemente uma sonata, o compositor italiano Giuseppe Tartini compô-la a dormir e a sonhar. Intitulada O Trilo do Diabo, imaginou que o próprio maligno lhe apareceu em pessoa para tocar violino e o “ajudar”. Ele não era capaz de terminar a obra musical, mas quando acordou conseguiu acabá-la com a única parte da música de que se lembrava. [74] Jung, Carl. (1954 [1951], p. 123) [75] Marina, p. 73. [76] Marina, p. 56. [77] Marina, pp. 55-56: “A jovem [caveira sem carne] cedeu sua beleza ao brinquedo”, tratando-se de morta, que na urna funerária tinha a sua boneca de marfim, segundo Marco Lucchesi, preservada do Tempo dos antoninos, na Roma antiga, pelo autor. Portanto, aquilo, demarca a figura histórica, no achado brinquedo, que a acompanhou na urna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepereia_Tryphaena [78] Marina, p. 56. O “espelho inverso”, do aveso, passa o par a dois contrários ou simetricamente opostos. [79] Marina, p. 69. Quem diga a transformação dela alude à sua representação no quadro de outra. [80] Um poço é um recetáculo, a chora, em Platão. Um continente retém um conteúdo, as ideias sensíveis. [81] Marina, p. 50. [82] Marina, p. 96. Nessa página, é salientada a comunicação, quando gatos ronronam e cães latem. [83] Reis, Carlos, & Lopes, Ana Cristina M. Dicionário da teoria da narrativa. Coimbra: Almedina, 1987, pp. 152-155. [84] Idem, pp. 152-153. [85] Marina, p. 86. [86] Marina, p. 91. [87] Marina, p. 86. [88] Marina, p. 63. [89] Marina, p. 95. [90] Marina, p. 54. [91] Marina, p. 73. [92] Marina, p. 96. [93] Marina, post scriptum, p.97. [94] Reis, Carlos & Lopes, Ana Cristina M. Dicionário da teoria da narrativa. Coimbra: Almedina, 1987, p. 154. [95] Marina, p. 91. [96] Strauss, Anselm, & Corbin, Juliet. Basics for qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990, p. 96. [97] Marina, p. 95. Numa intercalação da história de Proteu com o mito de Orfeu, essa invenção do poeta romano Virgílio (70 a.C. — 19 a. C.), encontra-se nos versos de número 453 a 527 do Livro IV, das Geórgicas. [98] Marina, pp. 71-72. Vale ouvir a rádio Orfeu … Ouço distante a voz de Orfeu. [99] Marina, p. 80, p. 86. [100] Marina, pp. 79-80. [101] Marina, p. 80. [102] Marina, p. 49. [103] Marina, p. 91. [104] Marina, p. 91. [105] Marina, p. 49. [106] Neymeyer, Robert A. & Mahoney, Michael. Construtivismo em psicoterapia. Tradução de Mônica Giglio Armando e Fábio Appolinário. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul: Artes Médicas, 1997, p. 173. [107] Quem diga texto, poderia referir-se a trabalhos com que um texto se cruza, num filme, romance ou peça de teatro. [108] Forster, Eduard Morgan. Aspects of the novel. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1927. O “enredo” (plot) distingue-se da “história” (story), na medida em que o enredo ordena os acontecimentos de forma temporal e de forma causal, mas a “história” limita-se a ordená-los no tempo. [109] Scholes, Robert, & Kellogg, Robert. The nature of narrative. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 207, pp. 238-239. [110] Angus, Lynne; Lewin, Jennifer; Boritz, Tali; Bryntwick, Emily; Carpenter, Naomi; Watson-Gaze, James, & Greenberg, Leslie. Narrative Processes Coding System: A Dialectical Constructivist Approach to Assessing Client Change Processes in Emotion-Focused Therapy of Depression. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome 2012, 15(2), 54–61. DOI: 10.7411/RP.2012.006 [111] Marina, p. 23. [112] Marina, pp. 79-80. [113] Marina, p 83. [114] Marina, p. 94. [115] Marina, p. 71. [116] Marina, post scriptum, p. 76. [117] Marina, p. 23. [118] No risco de morte no mar bravo, noutro lugar: “… ao dorso da onda fria, apressa o coração” (Lucchesi, 2023, p. 71). [119] Marina, p. 23. [120] Marina, p. 23. [121] Marina, p. 80. A expressão é atribuída pelo autor a um livre pensador, Lucilio Vanini (1585 – 1619), que se autodenominou outro, nas obras publicadas como Giulio Cesare Vanini. [122] Marina, p. 83. [123] Marina, p. 93. [124] Marina, p. 93. [125] Marina, p. 14, p. 79. As baleias primam nos seus “afetos radicais” (p. 79). [126] Marina, p. 93. [127] Marina, p. 93. [128] Marina, p. 93. [129] Marina, p. 95. [130] Marina, post scriptum, p. 99. [131] Marina, pp. 85-86. [132] Strauss, Anselm. Qualitative analysis for social scientists. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 32. [133] Marina, p. 91: “Antes do amanhecer, sacudo meus ossos na areia. O mundo frio no vapor das ondas [do mar], enquanto o sol desponta, bem depois, nas rochas que me vedam o horizonte [limite]. Sem que você soubesse, caminhamos lado a lado. Não sei até que ponto lembro tua voz. Tudo que diz e deixa de dizer [adiante, num eco repetido]. O modo, sobretudo a transparência da voz. Como o menino e o pássaro de Portinari. Te vejo, assim, ferida, a proteger-te. Promessa de calor. Será difícil atravessar a noite”. [134] Marina, pp. 13-14. [135] Marina, p. 54. [136] Marina, p. 14. [137] Marina, p. 13. [138] Marina, p. 22. [139] A noção de “livre arbítrio contracausal” indica a decisão livre, não determinada por uma causa, um motor. [140] No cálculo integral, pensa-se na heurística, de Arquimedes (287 – 212 a.C.) , com a finalidade inicial de calcular áreas e volumes e seguir a pista e gravar o movimento dos corpos celestes, do sol, da lua e dos planetas, no que se partiu da aritmética e da geometria. [141] Concausa introduz a causa, que coexiste com outra causa, cujo efeito seja conjugado. [142] Marina, p. 27. [143] Marina, p. 27. [144] Marina, p. 13. A brevidade contrasta como o longo tempo que passou, após o encontro prolongado. [145] Marina, p. 43. [146] Marina, p. 69: “Teus olhos sabem narrativas”. [147] Marina, p. 87. [148] Marina, p. 91. [149] Marina, p. 91. [150] Heidegger, Martin. Lettre sur l’Humanism. Paris: Aubier, (1970 [1947]), p. 65. [151] Marina, p. 75. [152] “O acaso dá-nos os pensamentos, o acaso retira-no-los”. Esse é um pensamento de Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662). [153] Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Speech genres and other late essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1986. Partindo de “géneros de fala”, certas vozes farão coisas diferentes. A noção de “voz” tornou-se um conceito adequado e útil para a caracterização do narrador num texto: “quem ‘fala’”. “Quem é ‘ouvido’”, “quem expressou algo” … A ser “dada uma voz”, a “voz”, conduziu à critica de uma só voz, com Bakhtin. Na conexão de “voz”, com as ciências sociais, avançamos entre “múltiplas vozes”. [154] Marina, p. 13. [155] A “intencionalidade” em Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) e) colocou-se em “Meditações cartesianas”, para a forma basilar da consciência e dos processos psíquicos: “consciência de alguma coisa”. Donde, a proximidade das coisas. [156] Lévêque, Jean. ABCedário da filosofia. Lisboa: Reborn e Publico, 2001, p. 13. [157] O mundo e a consciência veem em conjunto, dum único golpe: se o mundo é exterior/interior à consciência, o que escape é o ribombar de “tempestade”, o espanto perante uma explosão, o ribombar do trovão. [158] Marina, p. 75. [159] Marina, p. 91. [160] A ser retomado o sentido do ser (do ser em si mesmo, do ser do “homem” e do ser do pensamento), com Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), a “metafísica” ganhou terreno, na tradição filosófica. Ficou a crítica ao que tenha sido “esquecido” - o ser, com frequência, entre Platão (428/427 – 348/347 a.C.) e Nietzsche (1844 – 1900). [161] Na etimologia de “profundidade”, “pro” indica uma direção a, e “fundus” é o esvaziamento, por extensão de fundo. [162] Na especificidade, “coisa” denota o objeto natural. Acresce o tratamento dado ao objeto ou ao termo natural-artificial, ao real-irreal, ao mental-físico. Na filosofia, “coisa” incorre numa aparição, vaga presença, quando faltem as palavras, por incerteza na “errância”, falhado o alvo … Uma tempestade abrupta, uma explosão. Coisa chega a ser conhecimento, imaginação, vontade... [163] Marina, p. 81. [164] Num referencial da personalidade do adulto, adiante aludido, a psicologia pós-racionalista enquadra um modelo da realidade humana, que conjuga a experiência e o significado da experiência (“eu-mim reflexivo”). À superfície emocional da infância, estudada em John Bowlby, o psiquiatra Vittorio Guidano, aliou a “organização do significado pessoal” (OSP). [165] Uma assíntota, na geometria, para uma curva plana, é uma linha que explora uma distância infinita em relação a um ponto (P), quando esse ponto se distancia ao infinito, sem jamais encontrar a linha. [166] Marina, post scriptum, p. 76. [167] Marina, p. 91. [168] Galindo, Caetano W. Sim, eu digo sim: Uma visita guiada ao Ulysses de James Joyce. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2016, pp. 1104-1106. [169] Marina, p. 43. [170] Parménides. Fragments du poème de Parménides. Paris: PUF, 1996. Na primeira parte do poema, foi concebido um saber puro, a “verdade”, que afeta a via dos jogos de aparência das coisas, vindo a duplicar as aparências, no “desvendamento” (a-letheia, no grego clássico). O Uno, em Parménides, deixou-nos a mensagem fragmentada, na “revelação”, a “abertura”, a verdade escrita, no poema Sobre a natureza. Tanto as diversidades do mundo exterior, quanto as “opiniões dos mortais” (referidas num décimo da segunda parte da obra – o mundo da aparência), foram distanciadas da contemplação. Parménides inspirou a noção de Platão, para a dialética (partindo de duas ideias opostas, gerada uma síntese). [171] Platón. Parménides. Tradução de Guillermo R. de Echandía. Madrid: Alianza, 1987, pp. 55-56. [172] Na circunstância, as tensões antagónicas, entre a unidade e a diversidade, haviam sido protagonizadas por Parménides e Heráclito (cerca de 500 – 450 a.C.). Forçada a ultrapassagem da disputa inicial? [173] Marina, p. 43. [174] Nicolau de Cusa manifestou a sua forma de pensar num mundo em transição, tendo defendido a necessidade de contingência (coincidentia oppositorum), por parte da natureza e aderiu à contemplação intuitiva, em que o conhecimento fosse a unidade dos contrários (no livro Docta ignorantia, “Sobre a ignorância aprendida/sobre a ignorância científica”). [175] Marina, p. 35. [176] Marina, p. 31. [177] Marina, pp. 27-36. Na página 27, assumido ter-se tornado “perigosos”, na página 35, Celso diz ter medo de si mesmo. [178] Marina, p. 71. [179] Marina, post scriptum, p. 97. [180] Marina, p. 87: “[As cartas] Terminam com abraço afetuoso, promessas impagáveis e mil beijos de Catulo”. Catulo foi um poeta romano (87/84 a.C. – 57/54 a.C.), entre outros “modernos”, criticados por Marco Cícero, um contemporâneo, escritor e autor de cartas, mas que mudou a literatura europeia, com impacto no século XVIII. [181] Heidegger, Martin. Lettre sur l’Humanism. Paris: Aubier, 1970 [1947]. Na parte final de Carta sobre humanismo, Heidegger esclareceu: “não eis-me aqui! mas sim, se posso expressar-me num francês obviamente impossível, ‘être le là’ e o ‘aí’ é precisamente a-letheia. Como esquecer que da-sein representa o “estar aí”, o “habitar”? [182] Heidegger, Martin. Être et temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. [183] Uma ontologia dedicada ao ser, existência e realidade. [184] Heidegger, Martin. Lettre sur l’Humanism. Paris: Aubier, 1970, p. 77. [185] Heidegger, Martin. Que veut dire penser? In Essais et conferences. Paris: Gallimard, 1958. [186] O ser foi abandonado, quando se colocou adiante o ousia. No saber dos ousiai, enfatizadas substâncias. [187] Goodman, Nelson. Ways of world making. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1985, pp. 7-17. [188] Marina, p. 93. Na lógica clássica, uma proposição não pode ser, em simultâneo, “verdadeira” e “falsa” (princípio da não contradição). Uma proposição é falsa ou é verdadeira (princípio do terceiro excluído). [189] Marina, p. 89. Em De docta ignorantia, de 1449, Nicolau de Cusa criou três momentos do “espírito” no itinerário, uma hermenêutica, ora voltado para o “exterior”, ora para o “interior”. Importa para a coincidência de sorte, em não serem anulados pontos de vista diferentes (opostos), do ser humano ao infinito. [190] Marina, p. 89. [191] Marina, post scriptum, p. 62. [192] Marina, p. 89. [193] Marina, p. 73. [194] Marina, p. 35. [195] Marina, p. 35. [196] Marina, p. 93. “Salva-nos” pensar que a unidade primeira não torne a escamotear o ser, frente ao ente, em Deus. A base da metafísica, ciência do ser, foi por muitos anos o debate de “substâncias”, para o que se mantenha por baixo, o “elemento” permanente da coisa. Embora o ser tenha múltiplas aceções, formulam-se todas para um princípio (arché) único, material e definido. Na “correspondência”, o ser não pretende servir a ideia de “ser para Deus”, de ser a pessoa concreta, o que se mantém (ousia, “substância”, “no bem fundo”). [197] Marina, p. 96. [198] Como Nicolau de Cusa, que viu nesse acaso o conhecimento de Deus. [199] Marina, p. 87. [200] Marina, p. 93. [201] Marina, p. 98. [202] Marina, p. 17. [203] Marina, p. 18. [204] O “desvendamento” - aletheia, no remoto Poema de Parménides, um saber do Uno, entretanto desfeito,encontra-se antes de recolocada a ordem do vivido, ou seja, “todas as formas de presença afetivas e intelectuais”, em Jean Lévèque. Lévèque, Jean. ABCedário da filosofia. Lisboa: Reborn e Público, p. 114. [205] Marina, p. 73. [206] Marina, p. 95. [207] Marina, p. 73. [208] Heidegger, Martin. Être et temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. [209] Marina, p. 22. [210] Marina, p. 93. “Não ser” tem no francês a palavra “néant”. E “nada” encontra-se em mè eon (“o não-ente”), em grego. Nem sendo a chora, o “nada”, o não-ente, nem chega a ser privação do ser, porque o “lugar” não tem qualquer objeto. O vazio de um contentor – o “vaso” - é diferente: possui forma, é chora. [211] Marina, p. 54: “Distância na distância da distância. Porque o demónio é filho do silêncio. António Vieira dixit”. O silêncio marca a distância tão grande entre ambos, gerador do mal. Mas Celso foi um menino com “fome da distância” (p. 63). Um dia, deixou de “habitar na distância… distância que se perde” (pp. 97-98). [212] Kundera, Milan. 1988. A arte do romance. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1988. Nessa obra, o “romance” é de ideias, a partir de Cervantes (1547 – 1616), por longo tempo “aguardada” a inspiração de Laurence Sterne (1713 – 1768), em D. Quixote. Ao romance de ideias foi dada outra linhagem, na marcação francesa: François Rabelais (1494 — 1553) e Denis Diderot (1713 — 1784), quando alcançaram liberdade crítica e ironia revolucionária, no renascimento e no século XVIII. O multifacetado Rabelais cruzou até as facetas na palavra, ora erudita, ora aventureira, percorrendo o lado festivo e o lado religioso e solene. [213] Marina, post scriptum, p. 76: “São minhas essas vozes: que me indagam, enlaçam, apertam, comprimem. Polifonia da gente que me habita. Mas todos querem, buscam, sonham com você”. [214] James, William. The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York, NY: Longmans, 1897. [215] Marina, p. 49. Para Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961), a “humanidade” dividiu-se em duas partes: nos que “nadariam”, com James Joyce, no Ulisses, havendo quem se “afogasse” (numa autoridade, num qualquer saber dogmático). No Ulisses, é o monólogo de Molly Bloom condutor a um “sim”. [216] A obra de Lucchesi remete a Viktor Shklovsky. um crítico literário russo, em paralelo a Laurence Stern, autor de dissonantes observações, no que este último escreveu “A vida e as opiniões do cavalheiro Tristram Shandy”, um novo Quixote.” [217] Marina, p. 17: “Cada qual começa com um resumo”. [218] Marina, pp. 29-30. [219] Mead, George Herbert. Works of George Herbert Mead. Vol. 1 Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviourist. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1967. A explicação das diferenças entre si e Greenberg, foi esclarecida por Guidano, que utilizou os termos de George Herbert Mead – I (“eu”) e me (“mim”), frente a Greenberg. Mead (1863 — 1931) concebeu o self social (Mead, 1913), no sentido de sermos a única espécie que usa a linguagem, aquisição a partir da qual planeamos, pensamos e comunicamos a experiência. A vida de uma pessoa não seria um atributo individual e privado em Mead, cuja narrativa seja uma autoexpressão, envolvendo o controlo da informação do self. [220] Geller, Shari M. & Greenberg, Leslie S. (2012). Therapeutic presence: A mindful approach to effective therapy. American Psychology Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13485-000 [221] Guidano, Vittorio. The self in process: Towards a post-racionalist therapy. New York, NY: Guilford, 1991. [222] O que seja acima do nada, sobrenada num “lugar” das coisas sensíveis, que soam e ressoam. [223] Marina, p. 43. [224] Marina, p. 50. [225] Marina, p. 49. “Persegue os temporais”, os maus tempos de vendavais no passado-presente-futuro. [226] Marina, p. 18. [227] Marina, p. 49. [228] Marina, p. 73. [229] Marina, p. 73. [230] Marina, p. 18. [231] Marina, p. 49. [232] Marina, p. 73. [233] Tanto “mar” quanto o cérebro são “suportes físicos” e “alimentos”. A imensidão das “ondas do mar” e da mente em movimento configuram um fluxo movediço e inatingível, em que o ser é originariamente “bem-fundo”, a “substância” (no latim, ousia), para o que sejam variações e transformações das coisas. [234] Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Capítulo 4, n.d. http://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching/IV. No mundo parcial ancestral chinês, pensar é agir. Reiterada a filosofia no T’ai Chi, a conexão ocorrida no Universo propicia a combinação de mente (li) e matéria (chi), “realidade última”, numa acomodação da unidade do Tao, à semelhança do “ancestral das dez-mil-coisas”: O Tao é um vaso vazio // Cujo uso nunca transborda. // Abismo! // Parece o ancestral das dez-mil-coisas! // Abranda o cume; Desfaz o emaranhado; Modera o brilho; Une o pó. // Profundo! // Parece existir algo! // Eu não sei de quem o Tao é filho. // Parece ser o anterior ao Ancestral. [235] Antropomorfismo para uma forma de pensamento em que elementos da natureza ou figuras de deuses alcançam características humanas. [236] O princípio da identidade, em Parménides, assumiu que todo o objeto é idêntico a si próprio. [237] Marina, p. 18. [238] Sartre, Jean-Paul. Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl, l’intentionalité. La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1939, 304(1), 129-132. Na medida em que a consciência traduz uma aproximação às coisas, poderá “ser algo que não ela própria”. [239] Marina, p. 18. [240] Marina, p. 18. [241] Marina, p. 37. [242] Marina, p. 18 [243] Marina, p. 18. [244] Marina, p. 21. [245] Marina, p. 23. [246] Marina, p. 23. [247] Marina, p. 23. [248] Marina, p. 26. [249] Marina, p. 28. [250] Marina, p. 28. [251] Marina, p. 28. [252] Marina, p. 29. [253] Marina, p. 37. [254] Marina, p. 42. [255] Marina, p. 71. [256] Marina, p. 37. [257] Marina, p. 37. [258] Marina, p. 49. [259] Marina, p. 16. [260] Marina, pp. 16-18. [261] Marina, p. 49. Na obra publicada em 1922, Molly Bloom, cujo nome verdadeiro era Marion, é a personagem de Ulisses, de James Joyce, uma cantora de ópera, reconhecida em Dublin, na Irlanda. No monólogo, é colocado um “fluxo de consciência”, sem parágrafos e sem pontuação de vírgulas e travessões. [262] Marina, p. 55. [263] Marina, p. 55. [264] Marina, p. 95. [265] Marina, p. 61. [266] Marina, p. 95. [267] Casar não foi contemplado por Mozart, tendo vivido poucos mais anos que Jesus. Bresson utilizou a música de Mozart, em 1956, no filme “Um condenado à morte escapou”, passado durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939 a 1945), nomeadamente no Kyrie, de Mozart (caso vocativo da palavra grega kyrios, para “senhor”). No Antigo Testamento, utilizou-se Kyrie na mais antiga tradução grega (Septuaginta), para traduzir a palavra hebraica Yahweh. No Novo Testamento, Kyrie foi o título dado a Cristo, como em Filipenses 2:11. [268] Marina, p. 86. [269] Marina, p. 86. [270] Marina, p. 79. [271] Marina, p. 95. [272] Marina, p. 79. [273] Marina, p. 79. [274] Marina, p. 55: “Ao não lugar me abraço como um náufrago”. No recuo do ser, não será “dispensado” o ser, no que me recorda o protagonista e narrador de Marina, encontrado num não lugar, sob um batimento da “pressão”. [275] Heidegger, Martin. Être et temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1980, pp. 88-89. [276] A dobra é franzida. “Eu-ente”, um depósito material insolúvel, na dobra existe o “sedimento”, em Ensaios e conferências, de Heidegger. [277] No Romantismo, após o Século das Luzes (século XVIII), Hölderlin viveria já ao “cair da noite”. Teriam deixado o mundo três deuses “fraternos” – “Héracles, Dionísio e Cristo”. Acresce dizer, sem romantismo, que alcançada a “noite”, perdermos as referências-guias, as linhagens e ficamos sós. Deixa-se de referir a autoridade (“quem sabe”) e configura-se um destino nem certo, nem seguro. Na incerteza da errância, falharia o alvo que seja excessivamente arriscado. [278] Marina, p. 22, p. 35 e p. 98. [279] Marina, p. 76. [280] Marina, p. 78.

Glosowany wyrok dotyczy kwestii konstytucyjności obecności symboli religijnych na nieruchomościach publicznych. Sąd Najwyższy USA orzekł, że około 10 metrowy krzyż łaciński wzniesiony blisko wiek temu celem upamiętnienia żołnierzy poległych w czasie I wojny światowej nie narusza zasady religijnej neutralności państwa wyrażonej w pierwszej poprawce do federalnej ustawy zasadniczej (Establishment Clause). Sąd prawidłowo rozstrzygnął, iż monument może pozostać w dotychczasowej lokalizacji ze względu na jego doniosłość historyczną i kulturową. Na uznanie zasługuje przyjęte przez Sąd inkluzywistyczne rozumienie zasady religijnej neutralności. W wyroku wskazano, iż usuwanie symboli religijnych w przestrzeni publicznej wiele osób mogłoby odebrać nie za działanie neutralne, ale za przejaw wrogości wobec religii. Autor podziela stanowisko Sądu odrzucające relewantność tzw. testu Lemona do oceny niniejszej sprawy i spraw analogicznych na rzecz zastosowania tzw. testu historii i tradycji. Zastrzeżenie budzi jednak objęcie przez Sąd domniemaniem konstytucyjności jedynie „wieloletnich” monumentów, symboli i praktyk. Wydaje się, iż kryterium ich wieku nie powinno być decydującym czynnikiem w sądowej ocenie ich konstytucyjności. W końcu Sąd trafnie podkreślając pozareligijną wymowę i funkcję kontestowanego w sprawie krzyża, jednocześnie nie doszacował jego religijnego wymiaru. Nie ma potrzeby, aby eksponując kulturową i historyczną doniosłość krzyża - czy innego symbolu religijnego - w danym społeczeństwie, zarazem pomniejszać czy zbywać milczeniem jego głęboko chrześcijańską naturę. Rozstrzygnięcie o konstytucyjności krzyża na nieruchomości publicznej za cenę jego quasi dechrystianizacji w imię doktryny ceremonialnego deizmu byłoby nieuczciwe tak wobec wierzących jak i niewierzących.

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. This article is the final entry in a three-part series considering the biographical, artistic, and cultural contexts of Joplin’s life and work and their use in K–12 general music education. “Ragtime Spaces” focuses on cultural globalization and the modernist entertainment aesthetic which supported Joplin’s work. Scott Joplin’s creative and entrepreneurial activities embodied humanism, racial uplift, and craftsmanship at a time when society became increasingly racially segregated and dehumanized. The discussion is followed by suggested student activities written in accordance with National Association for Music Education’s 2014 National Music Standards.

Interleukin (IL)-1 is a messenger for the regulation of inflammatory responses, but it can be harmful when in excess, such as in the inflammation observed in patients with autoinflammatory disease. Cryopyrinassociated periodic syndromes (CAPS) are a group of rare autoinflammatory diseases with an estimated population frequency ranging from 1–3 people per million.>1 These hereditary cytokine dysregulation syndromes encompass a spectrum of three cryopyrinopathies, including familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome (FCAS), Muckle–Wells syndrome (MWS), and neonatal-onset multisystemic inflammatory disease. In such genotypes, the NLRP3 gene that encodes cryopyrin, an inflammation mediator involved in IL-1β processing, is mutated. Canakinumab (CAN) is a humanised monoclonal antibody, which is administered subcutaneously and acts as an IL-β inhibitor drug, with a long plasma half-life (21–28 days) and an activity in the picomolar range. In the USA, CAN is indicated for the treatment of CAPS, including FCAS and MWS in adults and children. CAN was subsequently approved in 2013 for the treatment of active systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA) in patients aged ≥2.2-4 The European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved CAN for the management of CAPS, gouty arthritis (GA), and SJIA in October 2009.5 New data on CAN use in CAPS is still emerging and CAN is also currently being evaluated in the treatment of other autoinflammatory diseases, including SJIA, as well as hereditary periodic fever syndromes and a range of other conditions, such as GA.6-8 This article reviews the new preclinical and clinical evidence on CAN presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ACR/ARHP) meeting held in San Francisco, California, USA from 6th–11th November 2015.

The word “prosthetic” has its origins as a mathematical term. According to scholar Brandon W. Hawk, Plato uses the words prosthesis and prostithenai in Phaedo to mean "addition, add to, to place", and Aristotle uses it in a similar, algebraic sense in the Metaphysics. Later, as the word appears in classical Latin, it is used as a grammatical and rhetorical term, in the sense of a letter or syllable that is added on to a word, usually the addition of a syllable to the beginning of a word, hence pro-thesis (Hawk). This is the sense of the word that was “inherited … by early modern humanists”, says Hawk, but when it appears in Edward Phillips's The New World of English Words: Or, a General Dictionary (1706), we can see how, with advances in technology, it changes from a grammatical/linguistic term into a medical term. What was once word is now made flesh:Prosthesis, a Grammatical Figure, when a Letter or Syllable is added to the beginning of a Word, as Gnatus for natus, tetuli for tuli, &c. In Surgery, Prosthesis is taken for that which fills up what is wanting, as is to beseen in fistulous and hollow Ulcers, filled up with Flesh by that Art: Also themaking of artificial Legs and Arms, when the natural ones are lost.Hawk also points to P. Dionis in Course Chirurg (a 1710 textbook detailing the art of chirurgy, or surgery, as it’s known now), who uses the word to denote one type of surgical operation; that is, prosthesis becomes not a word, but an act that “adds what is deficient”, an act that repairs loss, that “fills up what is wanting”, that fills up what is “hollow”, that “fills up with flesh”. R. Brookes, in his Introduction to Physic and Surgery (1754), is the first to define prosthesis as both an act and also as a separate, material object; it is “an operation by which some instrument is added to supply the Defect of a Part which is wanting, either naturally or accidentally”. It is not until the twentieth century (1900, to be exact), though, that the word begins to refer solely to a device or object that is added on to somehow “supply the defect”, or fill up what which is “wanting”. So etymologically we move from the writer creating a new literary device, to the scientist/doctor acting in order to fix something, then back to the device again, this time as tangible object that fills a gap where there is lack and loss (Hawk).This is how we most often see the word, and so we have the notion of prosthetic used in this medicalised sense, as an "instrument", in relation to people with missing or disfunctional limbs. Having a prosthetic arm or leg in an ableist society instantly marks one as "missing" something, or being "disabled". Wheelchairs and other prosthetic accoutrements also serve as a metonymic shorthand for disability (an example of this might be how, on reserved parking spots in North America, the image on the sign is that of a person in a wheelchair). In the case of deaf people, who are also thought of as "disabled", but whose supposed disability is invisible, hearing aids and cochlear implants (CIs) serve as this kind of visible marker.* Like artificial limbs and wheelchairs, these "instruments" (they are actually called “hearing instruments” by audiologists) are sometimes added on to the purportedly “lacking” body. They are objects that “restore function to” the disabled deaf ear. As such, these devices, like wheelchairs and bionic arms, also serve as a shorthand in American culture, especially in film and visual media, where this kind of obvious, material symbolism is very helpful in efficiently driving narrative along. David L. Mitchell and Sharon T. Snyder call this kind of disability shorthand "narrative prosthesis". In their 2001 book of the same name, they demonstrate that disability and the markers of disability, far from being neglected or omitted (as has been claimed by critics like Sarah Ruiz-Grossman), actually appear in literature and film to the point where they are astonishingly pervasive. Unlike other identities who are vastly underrepresented, Mitchell and Snyder note, images of disability are almost constantly circulated in print and visual media (this is clearly demonstrated in older film studies such as John Schuchman's Hollywood Speaks and Martin Norden's Cinema of Isolation, as well). The reason that this happens, Mitchell and Snyder say, is because almost all narrative is structured around the idea of a flaw in the natural order, the resolution of that flaw, and the restoration of order. This flaw, they show, is more often than not represented by a disabled character or symbol. Disability, then, is a "crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality and analytical insight" (49). And, in the end, all narrative is thus dependent upon some type of disability used as a prosthetic, which serves not only to “fill in” lack, but also to restore and reinforce normalcy. They also state that concepts of, and characters with, disability are therefore used in literature and film primarily as “opportunist metaphorical device(s)” (205). Hearing aids and CIs are great examples of "opportunist" devices used on television and in movies, mostly as props or “add-ons” in visual narratives. This "adding on" is done, more often than not, to the detriment of providing a well rounded narrative about the lived experience of deaf people who use such devices on a daily basis. There are countless examples of this in American television shows and films (in an upward trend since 2000), including many police and crime dramas where a cochlear implant device-as-clue stands in for the dead victim’s identity (Kincheloe "Do Androids"). We see it in movies, most notably in 2018’s A Quiet Place, in which a CI is weaponized and used to defeat the alien monster/Other (as opposed to the deaf heroine doing it by herself) (Kincheloe "Tired Tropes"). In 2019's Toy Story 4, there is a non-signing child who we know is deaf because they wear a CI. In the 2019 animated Netflix series, Undone, the main character wears a CI, and it serves as one of several markers (for her and the viewer) of her possible psychological breakdown.It seems fairly obvious that literal prostheses such as hearing aids and CI devices are used as a form of media shorthand to connote hearing ideas of “deafness”. It also might seem obvious that, as props that reinforce mainstream, ableist narratives, they are there to tell us that, in the end, despite the aesthetic nervousness that disability produces, "things will be okay". It's "fixable". These are prosthetics that are easily identified and easily discussed, debated, and questioned.What is perhaps not so obvious, however, is that American Sign Language (ASL), is also used in media as a narrative prosthetic. Lennard Davis' discussion of Erving Goffman’s idea of “stigma” in Enforcing Normalcy supports the notion that sign language, like hearing aids, is a marker. When seen by the hearing, non-signing observer, sign language "stigmatizes" the signing deaf person (48). In this sense, ASL is, like a hearing aid, a tangible "sign" of deaf identity. I would then argue that ASL is, like hearing aids and CIs, used as a "narrative prosthesis" signifying deafness and disability; its insertion allows ableist narratives to be satisfyingly resolved. Even though ASL is not a static physical device, but a living language and an integral part of deaf lived experience, it is casually employed almost everywhere in media today as a cheap prop, and as such, serves narrative purposes that are not in the best interest of realistic deaf representation. Consider this example: On 13 April 2012, Sir Paul McCartney arranged for a special event at his daughter Stella McCartney’s ivy-covered store in West Hollywood. Stars and friends like Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, Quincy Jones, and Reese Witherspoon sipped cucumber margaritas and nibbled on a spread of vegetarian Mexican appetizers. Afterwards, McCartney took them all to a tent set up on the patio out back, where he proudly introduced a new video, directed by himself. This was the world premiere of the video for "My Valentine", a song from his latest (some might say oddly titled) album, Kisses from the Bottom, a song he had originally written for and sung to new wife Nancy Shevell, at their 2011 wedding.The video is very simply shot in black and white, against a plain grey backdrop. As it begins, the camera fades in on actor Natalie Portman, who is seated, wearing a black dress. She stares at the viewer intently, but with no expression. As McCartney’s voiced-over vocal begins, “What if it rained/We didn’t care…”, she suddenly starts to mouth the words, and using sign language. The lens backs up to a medium shot of her, then closes back in on a tight close up of just her hands signing “my valentine” on her chest. There is then a quick cut to actor Johnny Depp, who is sitting in a similar position, in front of a grey backdrop, staring directly at the camera, also with no expression. There is a fade back to Portman’s face, then to her body, a close up of her signing the word “appear”, and then a cut back to Depp. Now he starts signing. Unlike Portman, he does not mouth the words, but stares ahead, with no facial movement. There is then a series of jump cuts, back and forth, between shots of the two actors’ faces, eyes, mouths, hands. For the solo bridge, there is a closeup on Depp’s hands playing guitar – a cut to Portman’s face, looking down – then to her face with eyes closed as she listens. here is some more signing, we see Depp’s impassive face staring at us again, and then, at the end, the video fades out on Portman’s still figure, still gazing at us as well.McCartney told reporters that Stella had been the one to come up with the idea for using sign language in the video. According to the ASL sign language coach on the shoot, Bill Pugin, the choice to include it wasn’t that far-fetched: “Paul always has an interpreter on a riser with a spot for his concerts and Stella loves sign language, apparently” ("The Guy Who Taught Johnny Depp"). Perhaps she made the suggestion because the second stanza contains the words “I tell myself that I was waiting for a sign…” Regardless, McCartney advised her father to “ring Natalie up and just ask her if she will sign to your song”. Later realizing he wanted another person signing in the video, Paul McCartney asked Johnny Depp to join in, which he did. When asked why he chose those two actors, McCartney said, “Well, they’re just nice people, some friends from way back and they were just very kind to do it”. A week later, they all got together with cinematographer Wally Pfister, who filmed Inception and The Dark Knight, behind the camera. According to the official press release about the video, posted on McCartney’s website, the two actors then "translate[d] the lyrics of the song into sign language – each giving distinctly different performances, making ... compelling viewing" ("Paul McCartney Directs His Own"). The response to the video was quite positive; it immediately went viral on YouTube (the original posting of it got over 15 million views). The album made it to number five on the Billboard charts, with the single reaching number twenty. The album won a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal album, and the video Best Music Film (“Live Kisses”). McCartney chose to sing that particular song from the album on the award show itself, and four years later, he featured both the song and video as part of his 31 city tour, the 2017 One on One concert, in which he made four million dollars a city. All told the video has served McCartney quite well.But…For whom the sign language? And why? The video is not meant for deaf eyes. When viewed through a deaf lens, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “compelling”; it isn’t even comprehensible. It is so bad, in fact, that the video, though signed, is also captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. To the untrained, “hearing” eye, the signing seems to be providing a “deaf translation” of what is being sung. But it is in fact a pantomime. The actors are quite literally “going through the motions”. One egregious example of this is how, at the end of the video, when Depp thinks he’s signing “valentine”. it looks like he's saying “fuck-heart” (several media sources politely reported that he’d signed “enemy”). Whatever he did, it’s not a sign. In response to criticism of his signing, Depp said nonchalantly, “Apparently, instead of ‘love' I might have said, ‘murder'” ("Johnny Depp Says"). That wasn’t the only point of confusion, though: the way Portman signs “then she appears” was misunderstood by some viewers to be the sign for “tampon”. She actually signed it correctly, but media sources from MTV.com, to the Washington Post, “signsplained” that she had just gotten a bit confused between ASL and BSL signs (even though the BSL for “appears” bears no resemblance to what she did, and the ASL for tampon, while using the same classifier, is also signed quite differently). Part of the problem, according to sign coach Pugin, was that he and Depp “had about fifteen minutes to work on the song. I signed the song for hours sitting on an apple box under the camera for Johnny to be able to peripherally see me for each take. I was his “human cue card”. Johnny’s signing turned out to be more theatrical and ‘abbreviated’ because of the time issue” ("The Guy Who Taught").Portman, perhaps taking more time to rehearse, does a better job, but “theatrical and abbreviated” indeed; the signing was just not good, despite Pugin's coaching. But to hearing eyes, it looks fine; it looks beautiful, it looks poignant and somehow mysterious. It looks the way sign language is “supposed” to look.Remember, the McCartney website claimed that the actors were “translating” the lyrics. Technically speaking, “translation” would mean that the sense of the words to the song were being rendered, fluently, from one language (English) into another (SL), for an audience receptive to the second language. In order to “translate”, the translator needs to be fluent in both of the languages involved. To be clear, what Depp and Portman were doing was not translation. They are hearing people, not fluent in sign language, acting like signers (something that happens with dismaying regularity in the entertainment industry). Depp, to his credit, knew he wasn’t “translating”, in fact, he said "I was only copying what the guy showed me”. “But”, he says, "it was a gas – sign language is apparently very interpretive. It's all kind of different" (italics mine) ("Johnny Depp Passes the Buck"). Other than maybe being an embellishment on that one line, “I tell myself that I was waiting for a sign…”, the sentiments of McCartney’s song have absolutely nothing to do with ASL or deaf people. And he didn’t purposefully place sign language in his video as a way to get his lyrics across to a deaf audience. He’s a musician; it is fairly certain that the thought of appealing to a deaf audience never entered his or his daughter’s mind. It is much more likely that he made the decision to use sign language because of its cool factor; its emo “novelty”. In other words, McCartney used sign language as a prop – as a way to make his song “different”, more “touching”, more emotionally appealing. Sign adds a je ne sais quoi, a little “something”, to the song. The video is a hearing person’s fantasy of what a signing person looks like, what sign language is, and what it does. McCartney used that fantasy, and the sentimentality that it evokes, to sell the song. And it worked. This attitude toward sign language, demonstrated by the careless editing of the video, Depp’s flippant remarks, and the overall attitude that if it’s wrong it’s no big deal, is one that is pervasive throughout the entertainment and advertising industries and indeed throughout American culture in the U.S. That is, there is this notion that sign language is “a gas”. It’s just a “different” thing. Not only is it “different”, but it is also a “thing”, a prop, a little exotic spice you throw into the pot. It is, in other words, a "narrative prosthesis", an "add-on". Once you see this, it becomes glaringly apparent that ASL is not viewed in mainstream American culture as the language of a group of people, but instead is widely used and commodified as a product. The most obvious form of commodification is in the thousands of ASL products, from Precious Moment figurines, to Baby Signing videos, to the ubiquitous “I LOVE YOU” sign seen on everything from coffee mugs to tee shirts, to Nike posters with “Just Do It” in fingerspelling. But the area in which the language is most often commodified (and perhaps most insidiously so) is in the entertainment industry, in visual media, where it is used by writers, directors and actors, not to present an accurate portrait of lived deaf experience and language, but to do what Paul McCartney did, that is, to insert it just to create a “different”, unique, mysterious, exotic, heartwarming spectacle. Far too often, this commodification of the language results in weirdly distorted representations of what deaf people and their language actually are. You can see this everywhere: ASL is a prominent narrative add-on in blockbuster films like the aforementioned A Quiet Place; it is used in the Oscar winning The Shape of Water, and in Wonderstruck, and Baby Driver as well; it is used in the indie horror film Hush; it is used in a lot of films with apes (the Planet of the Apes series and Rampage are two examples); it is displayed on television, mostly in police dramas, in various CSI programs, and in series like The Walking Dead and Castle Rock; it is used in commercials to hawk everything from Pepsi to hotel chains to jewelry to Hormel lunchmeat to fast food (Burger King, Chik Fil A); it is used and commented on in interpreted concerts and music videos and football halftime shows; it is used (often misused) in PSAs for hurricanes and police stops; it is used in social media, from vlogs to cochlear implant activation videos. You can find ASL seemingly everywhere; it is being inserted more and more into the cultural mainstream, but is not appearing as a language. It is used, nine times out of ten, as a decorative ornament, a narrative prop. When Davis discusses the hearing perception of ASL as a marker or visible stigma, he points out that the usual hearing response to observing such stigma is a combination of a Freudian attraction/repulsion (the dominant response being negative). Many times this repulsion results from the appeal to pathos, as in the commercials that show the poor isolated deaf person with the nice hearing person who is signing to them so that they can now be part of the world. The hearing viewer might think to themselves "oh, thank God I'm not deaf!"Davis notes that, in the end, it is not the signer who is the disabled one in this scenario (aside from the fact that many times a signing person is not in fact deaf). The hearing, non signing observer is actually the one “disabled” by their own reaction to the signing “other”. Not only that, but the rhetorical situation itself becomes “disabled”: there is discomfort – wariness of language – laughter – compulsive nervous talking – awkwardness – a desire to get rid of the object. This is a learned response. People habituated, Davis says, do not respond this way (12-13). While people might think that the hearing audience is becoming more and more habituated because ASL is everywhere, the problem is that people are being incorrectly habituated. More often than not, sign language, when enfolded into narratives about hearing people in hearing situations, is put into service as a prop that can mitigate such awkward moments of possible tension and conflict; it is a prosthetic that "fills the gap", allowing an interaction between hearing and deaf people that almost always allows for a positive, "happy" resolution, a return to "normalcy", the very purpose of the "narrative prosthetic" as posited by Mitchell and Snyder. Once we see how ASL is being employed in media mostly as a narrative prosthesis, we can, as Mitchell and Snyder suggest we do (what I hope this essay begins to do), and that is, to begin to “undo the quick repair of disability in mainstream representations and beliefs; to try to make the prosthesis show; to flaunt its imperfect supplementation as an illusion” (8). In other words, if we can scrutinize the shorthand, and dig deeper, seeing the prosthetic for what it is, all of this seemingly exploitative commodification of ASL will be a good thing. Maybe, in “habituating” people correctly, in widening both hearing people’s exposure to ASL and their understanding of its actual role in deaf lived experience, signing will become less of a prosthetic, an object of fetishistic fascination. Maybe hearing people, as they become used to seeing signing people in real signing situations, will be less likely to walk up to deaf people they don’t know and say things like: “Oh, your language is SO beautiful”, or say, “I know sign!” (then fingerspelling the alphabet with agonising slowness and inaccuracy while the deaf person nods politely). However, if the use of ASL as a prosthetic in popular culture and visual media continues to go on unexamined and unquestioned, it will just continue to trivialise a living, breathing language. This trivialisation can in turn continue to reduce the lived experiences of deaf people to a sort of caricature, further reinforcing the negative representations of deaf people in America that are already in place, stereotypes that we have been trying to escape for over 200 years. Note* The word "deaf" is used in this article to denote the entire range of individuals with various hearing losses and language preferences, including Deaf persons and hard of hearing persons, etc. For more on these distinctions please refer to the website entry on this published by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).ReferencesDavis, Lennard. Enforcing Normalcy. New York: Verso, 1995."The Guy Who Taught Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman Sign Language." Intimate Excellent: The Fountain Theater Blog. 18 Mar. 2012. <https://intimateexcellent.com/2012/04/18/the-guy-who-taught-johnny-depp-and-natalie-portman-sign-language-in-mccartney-video/>.Fitzgerald, Roisin. "Johnny Depp Says Sign Language Mishap Isn't His Fault." HiddenHearing Blog 14 Apr. 2012. <https://hiddenhearingireland.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/johnny-depp-says-sign-language-mishap-isnt-his-fault/>.Hawk, Brandon W. “Prosthesis: From Grammar to Medicine in the Earliest History of the Word.” Disability Studies Quarterly 38.4 (2018).McCartney, Paul. "My Valentine." YouTube 13 Apr. 2012.McGinnis, Sara. "Johnny Depp Passes the Buck on Sign Language Snafu." sheknows.com 10 May 2012. <https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/959949/johnny-depp-passes-the-buck-on-sign-language-snafu/>.Miller, Julie. "Paul McCartney on Directing Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman." Vanity Fair 14 Apr. 2012. <https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/04/paul-mccartney-johnny-depp-natalie-portman-my-valentine-music-video-gwyneth-paltrow>.Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disabilities and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. 2000.Norden, Martin. F. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in Movies. Rutgers UP: 1994."Paul McCartney Directs His Own My Valentine Video." paulmccartney.com 14 Apr. 2012. <https://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/paul-mccartney-directs-his-own-my-valentine-videos-featuring-natalie-portman-and>.Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah. "Disability Representation Is Seriously Lacking in Television and the Movies: Report." Huffington Post 27 Mar. 2019. <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/disability-representation-movies-tv_n_5c9a7b85e4b07c88662cabe7>.Schuchman, J.S. Hollywood Speaks: Deafness and the Film Entertainment Industry. U Illinois P, 1999.

During the War on Terror, the United States military has been conducting an increasing number of foreign campaigns by remote control using drones—also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs)—to extend the reach of military power and augment the technical precision of targeted strikes while minimizing bodily risk to American combatants. Stationed on bases throughout the southwest, operators fly weaponized drones over the Middle East. Viewing the battle zone through a computer screen that presents them with imagery captured from a drone-mounted camera, these combatants participate in war from a safe distance via an interface that resembles a video game. Increasingly, this participation takes the form of targeted killing. Despite their relative physical safety, in 2008 reports began mounting that like boots-on-the-ground combatants, many drone operators seek the services of chaplains or other mental health professionals to deal with the emotional toll of their work (Associated Press; Schachtman). Questions about the nature of the stress or trauma that drone operators experience have become a trope in news coverage of drone warfare (see Bumiller; Bowden; Saleton; Axe). This was exemplified in May 2013, when former Air Force drone pilot Brandon Bryant became a public figure after speaking to National Public Radio about his remorse for participating in targeted killing strikes and his subsequent struggle with post-traumatic stress (PTS) (Greene and McEvers). Stories like Bryant’s express American culture’s struggle to understand the role screen-mediated, remotely controlled killing plays in shifting the location of combatants’s sense of moral agency. That is, their sense of their ability to act based on their own understanding of right and wrong. Historically, one of the primary ways that psychiatry has conceptualized combat trauma has been as combatants’s psychological response losing their sense of moral agency on the battlefield (Lifton).This articleuses the popular science fiction novel Ender's Game as an analytic lens through which to examine the ways that screen-mediated warfare may result in combat trauma by investigating the ways in which it may compromise moral agency. The goal of this analysis is not to describe the present state of drone operators’s experience (see Asaro), but rather to compare and contrast contemporary public discourses on the psychological impact of screen-mediated war with the way it is represented in one of the most influential science fiction novels of all times (The book won the Nebula Award in 1985, the Hugo Award in 1986, and appears on both the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and American Library Association’s “100 Best Books for Teens” lists). In so doing, the paper aims to counter prevalent modes of critical analysis of screen-mediated war that cannot account for drone operators’s trauma. For decades, critics of postmodern warfare have denounced how fighting from inside tanks, the cockpits of planes, or at office desks has removed combatants from the experiences of risk and endangerment that historically characterized war (see Gray; Levidow & Robins). They suggest that screen-mediation enables not only physical but also cognitive and emotional distance from the violence of war-fighting by circumscribing it in a “magic circle.” Virtual worlds scholars adopted the term “magic circle” from cultural historian Johan Huizinga, who described it as the membrane that separates the time and space of game-play from those of real life (Salen and Zimmerman). While military scholars have long recognized that only 2% of soldiers can kill without hesitation (Grossman), critics of “video game wars” suggest that screen-mediation puts war in a magic circle, thereby creating cyborg human-machine assemblages capable of killing in cold blood. In other words, these critics argue that screen-mediated war distributes agency between humans and machines in such a way that human combatants do not feel morally responsible for killing. In contrast, Ender’s Game suggests that even when militaries utilize video game aesthetics to create weapons control interfaces, screen-mediation alone ultimately cannot blur the line between war and play and thereby psychically shield cyborg soldiers from combat trauma.Orson Scott Card’s 1985 novel Ender’s Game—and the 2013 film adaptation—tells the story of a young boy at an elite military academy. Set several decades after a terrible war between humans and an alien race called the buggers, the novel follows the life of a boy named Ender. At age 6, recruiters take Andrew “Ender” Wiggin from his family to begin military training. He excels in all areas and eventually enters officer training. There he encounters a new video game-like simulator in which he commands space ship battalions against increasingly complex configurations of bugger ships. At the novel’s climax, Ender's mentor, war hero Mazer Rackham, brings him to a room crowded with high-ranking military personnel in order to take his final test on the simulator. In order to win Ender opts to launch a massive bomb, nicknamed “Little Doctor”, at the bugger home world. The image on his screen of a ball of space dust where once sat the enemy planet is met by victory cheers. Mazer then informs Ender that since he began officer training, he has been remotely controlling real ships. The video game war was, "Real. Not a game" (Card 297); Ender has exterminated the bugger species. But rather than join the celebration, Ender is devastated to learn he has committed "xenocide." Screen-mediation, the novel shows, can enable people to commit acts that they would otherwise find heinous.US military advisors have used the story to set an agenda for research and development in augmented media. For example, Dr. Michael Macedonia, Chief Technology Officer of the Army Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation told a reporter for the New York Times that Ender's Game "has had a lot of influence on our thinking" about how to use video game-like technologies in military operations (Harmon; Silberman; Mead). Many recent programs to develop and study video game-like military training simulators have been directly inspired by the book and its promise of being able to turn even a six-year-old into a competent combatant through well-structured human-computer interaction (Mead). However, it would appear that the novel’s moral regarding the psychological impact of actual screen-mediated combat did not dissuade military investment in drone warfare. The Air Force began using drones for surveillance during the Gulf War, but during the Global War on Terror they began to be equipped with weapons. By 2010, the US military operated over 7,000 drones, including over 200 weapons-ready Predator and Reaper drones. It now invests upwards of three-billion dollars a year into the drone program (Zucchino). While there are significant differences between contemporary drone warfare and the plot of Ender's Game—including the fact that Ender is a child, that he alone commands a fleet, that he thinks he is playing a game, and that, except for a single weapon of mass destruction, he and his enemies are equally well equipped—for this analysis, I will focus on their most important similarities: both Ender and actual drone operators work on teams for long shifts using video game-like technology to remotely control vehicles in aerial combat against an enemy. After he uses the Little Doctor, Mazer and Graff, Ender's long-time training supervisors, first work to circumvent his guilt by reframing his actions as heroic. “You're a hero, Ender. They've seen what you did, you and the others. I don't think there's a government on Earth that hasn't voted you their highest metal.” “I killed them all, didn't I?” Ender asked. “All who?” asked Graff. “The buggers? That was the idea.” Mazer leaned in close. “That's what the war was for.” “All their queens. So I killed all their children, all of everything.” “They decided that when they attacked us. It wasn't your fault. It's what had to happen.” Ender grabbed Mazer's uniform and hung onto it, pulling him down so they were face to face. “I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! […] but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!” He was crying. He was out of control. (Card 297–8)The novel up to this point has led us to believe that Ender at the very least understands that what he does in the game will be asked of him in real life. But his traumatic response to learning the truth reveals that he was in the magic circle. When he thinks he is playing a game, succeeding is a matter of ego: he wants to be the best, to live up to the expectations of his trainers that he is humanity’s last hope. When the magic circle is broken, Ender reconsiders his decision to use the Little Doctor. Tactics he could justify to win the game, reframed as real military tactics, threaten his sense of himself as a moral agent. Being told he is a hero provides no solace.Card wrote the novel during the Cold War, when computers were coming to play an increasingly large role in military operations. Historians of military technology have shown that during this time human behavior began to be defined in machine-like, functionalist terms by scientists working on cybernetic systems (see Edwards; Galison; Orr). Human skills were defined as components of large technological systems, such as tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry: a human skill was treated as functionally the same as a machine one. The only issue of importance was how all the components could work together in order to meet strategic goals—a cybernetic problem. The reasons that Mazer and Graff have for lying to Ender suggest that the author believed that as a form of technical augmentation, screen-mediation can be used to evacuate individual moral agency and submit human will to the command of the larger cybernetic system. Issues of displaced agency in the military cyborg assemblage are apparent in the following quote, in which Mazer compares Ender himself to the bomb he used to destroy the bugger home world: “You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it” (298). Questions of distributed agency have also surfaced in the drone debates. Government and military leaders have attempted to depersonalize drone warfare by assuring the American public that the list of targets is meticulously researched: drones kill those who we need killed. Drone warfare, media theorist Peter Asaro argues, has “created new and complex forms of human-machine subjectivity” that cannot be understood by considering the agency of the technology alone because it is distributed between humans and machines (25). While our leaders’s decisions about who to kill are central to this new cyborg subjectivity, the operators who fire the weapons nevertheless experience at least a retrospective sense of agency. As phenomenologist John Protevi notes, in the wake of wars fought by modern military networks, many veterans diagnosed with PTS still express guilt and personal responsibility for the outcomes of their participation in killing (Protevi). Mazer and Graff explain that the two qualities that make Ender such a good weapon also create an imperative to lie to him: his compassion and his innocence. For his trainers, compassion means a capacity to truly think like others, friend or foe, and understand their motivations. Graff explains that while his trainers recognized Ender's compassion as an invaluable tool, they also recognized that it would preclude his willingness to kill.It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it. It's the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough. (298)In learning that the game was real, Ender learns that he was not merely coming to understand a programmed simulation of bugger behavior, but their actual psychology. Therefore, his compassion has not only helped him understand the buggers’ military strategy, but also to identify with them.Like Ender, drone operators spend weeks or months following their targets, getting to know them and their routines from a God’s eye perspective. They both also watch the repercussions of their missions on screen. Unlike fighter pilots who drop bombs and fly away, drone operators use high-resolution cameras and fly much closer to the ground both when flying and assessing the results of their strikes. As one drone operator interviewed by the Los Angeles Times explained, "When I flew the B-52, it was at 30,000 to 40,000 feet, and you don't even see the bombs falling … Here, you're a lot closer to the actual fight, or that's the way it seems" (Zucchino). Brookings Institute scholar Peter Singer has argued that in this way screen mediation actually enables a more intimate experience of violence for drone operators than airplane pilots (Singer).The second reason Ender’s trainers give for lying is that they need someone not only compassionate, but also innocent of the horrors of war. The war veteran Mazer explains: “And it had to be a child, Ender,” said Mazer. “You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure you didn't know" (298). When Ender discovers what he has done, he loses not only his innocence but his sense of himself as a moral agent. After such a trauma, his heart is no longer whole.Actual drone operators are, of course, not kept in a magic circle, innocent of the repercussions of their actions. Nor do they otherwise feel as though they are playing, as several have publicly stated. Instead, they report finding drone work tedious, and some even play video games for fun (Asaro). However, Air Force recruitment advertising makes clear analogies between the skills they desire and those of video game play (Brown). Though the first generations of drone operators were pulled from the ranks of flight pilots, in 2009 the Air Force began training them from the ground. Many drone operators, then, enter the role having no other military service and may come into it believing, on some level, that their work will be play.Recent military studies of drone operators have raised doubts about whether drone operators really experience high rates of trauma, suggesting that the stresses they experience are seated instead in occupational issues like long shifts (Ouma, Chappelle, and Salinas; Chappelle, Psy, and Salinas). But several critics of these studies have pointed out that there is a taboo against speaking about feelings of regret and trauma in the military in general and among drone operators in particular. A PTS diagnosis can end a military career; given the Air Force’s career-focused recruiting emphasis, it makes sense that few would come forward (Dao). Therefore, it is still important to take drone operator PTS seriously and try to understand how screen-mediation augments their experience of killing.While critics worry that warfare mediated by a screen and joystick leads to a “‘Playstation’ mentality towards killing” (Alston 25), Ender's Game presents a theory of remote-control war wherein this technological redistribution of the act of killing does not, in itself, create emotional distance or evacuate the killer’s sense of moral agency. In order to kill, Ender must be distanced from reality as well. While drone operators do not work shielded by the magic circle—and therefore do not experience the trauma of its dissolution—every day when they leave the cyborg assemblage of their work stations and rejoin their families they still have to confront themselves as individual moral agents and bear their responsibility for ending lives. In both these scenarios, a human agent’s combat trauma serves to remind us that even when their bodies are physically safe, war is hell for those who fight. This paper has illustrated how a science fiction story can be used as an analytic lens for thinking through contemporary discourses about human-technology relationships. However, the US military is currently investing in drones that are increasingly autonomous from human operators. This redistribution of agency may reduce incidence of PTS among operators by decreasing their role in, and therefore sense of moral responsibility for, killing (Axe). Reducing mental illness may seem to be a worthwhile goal, but in a world wherein militaries distribute the agency for killing to machines in order to reduce the burden on humans, societies will have to confront the fact that combatants’s trauma cannot be a compass by which to measure the morality of wars. Too often in the US media, the primary stories that Americans are told about the violence of their country’s wars are those of their own combatants—not only about their deaths and physical injuries, but their suicide and PTS. To understand war in such a world, we will need new, post-humanist stories where the cyborg assemblage and not the individual is held accountable for killing and morality is measured in lives taken, not rates of mental illness. ReferencesAlston, Phillip. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, Addendum: Study on Targeted Killings.” United Nations Human Rights Council (2010). Asaro, Peter M. “The Labor of Surveillance and Bureaucratized Killing: New Subjectivities of Military Drone Operators”. Social Semiotics 23.2 (2013): 196-22. Associated Press. “Predator Pilots Suffering War Stress.” Military.com 2008. Axe, David. “How to Prevent Drone Pilot PTSD: Blame the ’Bot.” Wired June 2012.Bowden, Mark. “The Killing Machines: How to Think about Drones.” The Atlantic Sep. 2013.Brown, Melissa T. Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in US Military Recruiting Advertising during the All-Volunteer Force. London: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bumiller, Elisabeth. “Air Force Drone Operators Report High Levels of Stress.” New York Times 18 Dec. 2011: n. pag. Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1985. Chappelle, Wayne, D. Psy, and Amber Salinas. “Psychological Health Screening of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Operators and Supporting Units.” Paper presented at the Symposium on Mental Health and Well-Being across the Military Spectrum, Bergen, Norway, 12 April 2011: 1–12. Dao, James. “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do.” New York Times 22 Feb. 2013: n. pag. Edwards, Paul N. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.Galison, Peter. “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.” Critical Inquiry 21.1 (1994): 228.Gray, Chris Hables “Posthuman Soldiers in Postmodern War.” Body & Society 9.4 (2003): 215–226. 27 Nov. 2010.Greene, David, and Kelly McEvers. “Former Air Force Pilot Has Cautionary Tales about Drones.” National Public Radio 10 May 2013.Grossman, David. On Killing. Revised. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2009. Harmon, Amy. “More than Just a Game, But How Close to Reality?” New York Times 3 Apr. 2003: n. pag. Levidow, Les, and Robins. Cyborg Worlds: The Military Information Society. London: Free Association Books, 1989. Lifton, Robert Jay. Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners. New York: Random House, 1973. Mead, Corey. War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Orr, Jackie. Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.Ouma, J.A., W.L. Chappelle, and A. Salinas. Facets of Occupational Burnout among US Air Force Active Duty and National Guard/Reserve MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper Operators. Air Force Research Labs Technical Report AFRL-SA-WP-TR-2011-0003. Wright-Patterson AFB, OH: Air Force Research Laboratory. 2011.Protevi, John. “Affect, Agency and Responsibility: The Act of Killing in the Age of Cyborgs.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7.3 (2008): 405–413. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Saleton, William. “Ghosts in the Machine: Do Remote-Control War Pilots Get Combat Stress?” Slate.com Aug. 2008. Schachtman, Nathan. “Shrinks Help Drone Pilots Cope with Robo-Violence.” Wired Aug. 2008.Silberman, Steve. “The War Room.” Wired Sep. 2004: 1–5.Singer, P.W. Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Penguin Press, 2009. Zucchino, David. “Drone Pilots Have Front-Row Seat on War, from Half a World Away.” Los Angeles Times 21 Feb. 2010: n. pag.

On 17 January 2013, Wired chose the smart contact lens as one of “7 Massive Ideas That Could Change the World” describing a Google-led research project. Wired explains that the inventor, Dr. Babak Parviz, wants to build a microsystem on a contact lens: “Using radios no wider than a few human hairs, he thinks these lenses can augment reality and incidentally eliminate the need for displays on phones, PCs, and widescreen TVs”. Explained further in other sources, the technology entails an antenna, circuits embedded into a contact lens, GPS, and an LED to project images on the eye, creating a virtual display (Solve for X). Wi-Fi would stream content through a transparent screen over the eye. One patent describes a camera embedded in the lens (Etherington). Another mentions medical sensing, such as glucose monitoring of tears (Goldman). In other words, Google proposes an imagined future when we use contact lenses to search the Internet (and be searched by it), shop online, communicate with friends, work, navigate maps, swipe through Tinder, monitor our health, watch television, and, by that time, probably engage in a host of activities not yet invented. Often referred to as a bionic contact, the smart contact lens would signal a weighty shift in the way we work, socialize, and frame our online identities. However, speculative discussion over this radical shift in personal computing, rarely if ever, includes consideration of how the body, acting as a host to digital information, will manage to assimilate not only significant affordances, but also significant constraints and vulnerabilities. At this point, for most people, the smart contact lens is just an idea. Is a new medium of communication started when it is launched in an advertising campaign? When we Like it on Facebook? If we chat about it during a party amongst friends? Or, do a critical mass of people actually have to be using it to say it has started? One might say that Apple’s Macintosh computer started as a media platform when the world heard about the famous 1984 television advertisement aired during the American NFL Super Bowl of that year. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad entails an athlete running down a passageway and hurling a hammer at a massive screen depicting cold war style rulers expounding state propaganda. The screen explodes freeing those imprisoned from their concentration camp existence. The direct reference to Orwell’s 1984 serves as a metaphor for IBM in 1984. PC users were made analogous to political prisoners and IBM served to represent the totalitarian government. The Mac became a something that, at the time, challenged IBM, and suggested an alternative use for the desktop computer that had previously been relegated for work rather than life. Not everyone bought a Mac, but the polemical ad fostered the idea that Mac was certainly the start of new expectations, civic identities, value-systems, and personal uses for computers. The smart contact lens is another startling start. News of it shocks us, initiates social media clicks and forwards, and instigates dialogue. But, it also indicates the start of a new media paradigm that is already undergoing popular adoption as it is announced in mainstream news and circulated algorithmically across media channels. Since 2008, news outlets like CNN, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Asian International News, United News of India, The Times of London and The Washington Post have carried it, feeding the buzz in circulation that Google intends. Attached to the wave of current popular interest generated around any technology claiming to be “wearable,” a smart contact lens also seems surreptitious. We would no longer hold smartphones, but hide all of that digital functionality beneath our eyelids. Its emergence reveals the way commercial models have dramatically changed. The smart contact lens is a futuristic invention imagined for us and about us, but also a sensationalized idea socializing us to a future that includes it. It is also a real device that Parviz (with Google) has been inventing, promoting, and patenting for commercial applications. All of these workings speak to a broader digital culture phenomenon. We argue that the smart contact lens discloses a process of nascent posthuman adaptation, launched in an era that celebrates wearable media as simultaneously astonishing and banal. More specifically, we adopt technology based on our adaptation to it within our personal, political, medial, social, and biological contexts, which also function in a state of flux. N. Katherine Hayles writes that “Contemporary technogenesis, like evolution in general, is not about progress ... rather, contemporary technogenesis is about adaptation, the fit between organisms and their environments, recognizing that both sides of the engagement (human and technologies) are undergoing coordinated transformations” (81). This article attends to the idea that in these early stages, symbolic acts of adaptation signal an emergent medium through rhetorical processes that society both draws from and contributes to. In terms of project scope, this article contributes a focused analysis to a much larger ongoing digital rhetoric project. For the larger project, we conducted a discourse analysis on a collection of international publications concerning Babak Parviz and the invention. We searched for and collected newspaper stories, news broadcasts, YouTube videos from various sources, academic journal publications, inventors’ conference presentations, and advertising, all published between January 2008 and May 2014, generating a corpus of more than 600 relevant artifacts. Shortly after this time, Dr. Parviz, a Professor at the University of Washington, left the secretive GoogleX lab and joined Amazon.com (Mac). For this article we focus specifically on the idea of beginnings or genesis and how digital spaces increasingly serve as the grounds for emergent digital cultural phenomena that are rarely recognized as starting points. We searched through the corpus to identify a few exemplary international mainstream news stories to foreground predominant tropes in support of the claim we make that smart contacts lenses are a startling idea. Content producers deliberately use astonishment as a persuasive device. We characterize the idea of a smart contact lens cast in rhetorical terms in order to reveal how its allure works as a process of adaptation. Rhetorician and philosopher, Kenneth Burke writes that “rhetorical language is inducement to action (or to attitude)” (42). A rhetorical approach is instrumental because it offers a model to explain how we deploy, often times, manipulative meaning as senders and receivers while negotiating highly complex constellations of resources and contexts. Burke’s rhetorical theory can show how messages influence and become influenced by powerful hierarchies in discourse that seem transparent or neutral, ones that seem to fade into the background of our consciousness. For this article, we also concentrate on rhetorical devices such as ethos and the inventor’s own appeals through different modes of communication. Ethos was originally proposed by Aristotle to identify speaker credibility as a persuasive tactic. Addressed by scholars of rhetoric for centuries, ethos has been reconfigured by many critical theorists (Burke; Baumlin Ethos; Hyde). Baumlin and Baumlin suggest that “ethos describes an audience’s projection of authority and trustworthiness onto the speaker ... ethos suggests that the ethical appeal to be a radically psychological event situated in the mental processes of the audience – as belonging as much to the audience as to the actual character of a speaker” (Psychology 99). Discussed in the next section, our impression of Parviz and his position as inventor plays a dramatic role in the surfacing of the smart contact lens. Digital Rhetoric is an “emerging scholarly discipline concerned with the interpretation of computer-generated media as objects of study” (Losh 48). In an era when machine-learning algorithms become the messengers for our messages, which have become commodity items operating across globalized, capitalist networks, digital rhetoric provides a stable model for our approach. It leads us to demonstrate how this emergent medium and invention, the smart contact lens, is born amid new digital genres of speculative communication circulated in the everyday forums we engage on a daily basis. Smart Contact Lenses, Sensationalism, and Identity One relevant site for exploration into how an invention gains ethos is through writing or video penned or produced by the inventor. An article authored by Parviz in 2009 discusses his invention and the technical advancements that need to be made before the smart contact lens could work. He opens the article using a fictional and sensationalized analogy to encourage the adoption of his invention: The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse. It can see millions of colors, adjust easily to shifting light conditions, and transmit information to the brain at a rate exceeding that of a high-speed Internet connection.But why stop there?In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field—virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes. Identity building is made to correlate with smart contact lenses in a manner that frames them as exciting. Coming to terms with them often involves casting us as superhumans, wielding abilities that we do not currently possess. One reason for embellishment is because we do not need digital displays on the eyes, so the motive to use them must always be geared to transcending our assumed present condition as humans and society members. Consequently, imagination is used to justify a shift in human identity along a future trajectory.This passage above also instantiates a transformation from humanist to posthumanist posturing (i.e. “the cyborg”) in order to incent the adoption of smart contact lenses. It begins with the bold declarative statement, “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse,” which is a comforting claim about our seemingly human superiority. Indexing abstract humanist values, Parviz emphasizes skills we already possess, including seeing a plethora of colours, adjusting to light on the fly, and thinking fast, indeed faster than “a high-speed Internet connection”. However, the text goes on to summon the Terminator character and his optic feats from the franchise of films. Filmic cyborg characters fulfill the excitement that posthuman rhetoric often seems to demand, but there is more here than sensationalism. Parviz raises the issue of augmenting human vision using science fiction as his contextualizing vehicle because he lacks another way to imbricate the idea. Most interesting in this passage is the inventor’s query “But why stop there?” to yoke the two claims, one biological (i.e., “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse”) and one fictional (i.e. Terminator, Vernor Vinge characters). The query suggests, Why stop with human superiority, we may as well progress to the next level and embrace a smart contact lens just as fictional cyborgs do. The non-threatening use of fiction makes the concept seem simultaneously exciting and banal, especially because the inventor follows with a clear description of the necessary scientific engineering in the rest of the article. This rhetorical act signifies the voice of a technoelite, a heavily-funded cohort responding to global capitalist imperatives armed with a team of technologists who can access technological advancements and imbue comments with an authority that may extend beyond their fields of expertise, such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, or medicine. The result is a powerful ethos. The idea behind the smart contact lens maintains a degree of respectability long before a public is invited to use it.Parviz exhumes much cultural baggage when he brings to life the Terminator character to pitch smart contact lenses. The Terminator series of films has established the “Arnold Schwarzenegger” character a cultural mainstay. Each new film reinvented him, but ultimately promoted him within a convincing dystopian future across the whole series: The Terminator (Cameron), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow), Terminator Salvation (McG) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor) (which appeared in 2015 after Parviz’s article). Recently, several writers have addressed how cyborg characters figure significantly in our cultural psyche (Haraway, Bukatman; Leaver). Tama Leaver’s Artificial Culture explores the way popular, contemporary, cinematic, science fiction depictions of embodied Artificial Intelligence, such as the Terminator cyborgs, “can act as a matrix which, rather than separating or demarcating minds and bodies or humanity and the digital, reinforce the symbiotic connection between people, bodies, and technologies” (31). Pointing out the violent and ultimately technophobic motive of The Terminator films, Leaver reads across them to conclude nevertheless that science fiction “proves an extremely fertile context in which to address the significance of representations of Artificial Intelligence” (63).Posthumanism and TechnogenesisOne reason this invention enters the public’s consciousness is its announcement alongside a host of other technologies, which seem like parts of a whole. We argue that this constant grouping of technologies in the news is one process indicative of technogenesis. For example, City A.M., London’s largest free commuter daily newspaper, reports on the future of business technology as a hodgepodge of what ifs: As Facebook turns ten, and with Bill Gates stepping down as Microsoft chairman, it feels like something is drawing to an end. But if so, it is only the end of the technological revolution’s beginning ... Try to look ahead ten years from now and the future is dark. Not because it is bleak, but because the sheer profusion of potential is blinding. Smartphones are set to outnumber PCs within months. After just a few more years, there are likely to be 3bn in use across the planet. In ten years, who knows – wearables? smart contact lenses? implants? And that’s just the start. The Internet of Things is projected to be a $300bn (£183bn) industry by 2020. (Sidwell) This reporting is a common means to frame the commodification of technology in globalized business news that seeks circulation as much as it does readership. But as a text, it also posits how individuals frame the future and their participation with it (Pedersen). Smart contacts appear to move along this exciting, unstoppable trajectory where the “potential is blinding”. The motive is to excite and scare. However, simultaneously, the effect is predictable. We are quite accustomed to this march of innovations that appears everyday in the morning paper. We are asked to adapt rather than question, consequently, we never separate the parts from the whole (e.g., “wearables? smart contact lenses? Implants”) in order to look at them critically.In coming to terms with Cary Wolf’s definition of posthumanism, Greg Pollock writes that posthumanism is the questioning that goes on “when we can no longer rely on ‘the human’ as an autonomous, rational being who provides an Archimedean point for knowing about the world (in contrast to “humanism,” which uses such a figure to ground further claims)” (208). With similar intent, N. Katherine Hayles formulating the term technogenesis suggests that we are not really progressing to another level of autonomous human existence when we adopt media, we are in effect, adapting to media and media are also in a process of adapting to us. She writes: As digital media, including networked and programmable desktop stations, mobile devices, and other computational media embedded in the environment, become more pervasive, they push us in the direction of faster communication, more intense and varied information streams, more integration of humans and intelligent machines, and more interactions of language with code. These environmental changes have significant neurological consequences, many of which are now becoming evident in young people and to a lesser degree in almost everyone who interacts with digital media on a regular basis. (11) Following Hayles, three actions or traits characterize adaptation in a manner germane to the technogenesis of media like smart contact lenses. The first is “media embedded in the environment”. The trait of embedding technology in the form of sensors and chips into external spaces evokes the onset of The Internet of Things (IoT) foundations. Extensive data-gathering sensors, wireless technologies, mobile and wearable components integrated with the Internet, all contribute to the IoT. Emerging from cloud computing infrastructures and data models, The IoT, in its most extreme, involves a scenario whereby people, places, animals, and objects are given unique “embedded” identifiers so that they can embark on constant data transfer over a network. In a sense, the lenses are adapted artifacts responding to a world that expects ubiquitous networked access for both humans and machines. Smart contact lenses will essentially be attached to the user who must adapt to these dynamic and heavily mediated contexts.Following closely on the first, the second point Hayles makes is “integration of humans and intelligent machines”. The camera embedded in the smart contact lens, really an adapted smartphone camera, turns the eye itself into an image capture device. By incorporating them under the eyelids, smart contact lenses signify integration in complex ways. Human-machine amalgamation follows biological, cognitive, and social contexts. Third, Hayles points to “more interactions of language with code.” We assert that with smart contact lenses, code will eventually govern interaction between countless agents in accordance with other smart devices, such as: (1) exchanges of code between people and external nonhuman networks of actors through machine algorithms and massive amalgamations of big data distributed on the Internet;(2) exchanges of code amongst people, human social actors in direct communication with each other over social media; and (3) exchanges of coding and decoding between people and their own biological processes (e.g. monitoring breathing, consuming nutrients, translating brainwaves) and phenomenological (but no less material) practices (e.g., remembering, grieving, or celebrating). The allure of the smart contact lens is the quietly pressing proposition that communication models such as these will be radically transformed because they will have to be adapted to use with the human eye, as the method of input and output of information. Focusing on genetic engineering, Eugene Thacker fittingly defines biomedia as “entail[ing] the informatic recontextualization of biological components and processes, for ends that may be medical or nonmedical (economic, technical) and with effects that are as much cultural, social, and political as they are scientific” (123). He specifies, “biomedia are not computers that simply work on or manipulate biological compounds. Rather, the aim is to provide the right conditions, such that biological life is able to demonstrate or express itself in a particular way” (123). Smart contact lenses sit on the cusp of emergence as a biomedia device that will enable us to decode bodily processes in significant new ways. The bold, technical discourse that announces it however, has not yet begun to attend to the seemingly dramatic “cultural, social, and political” effects percolating under the surface. Through technogenesis, media acclimatizes rapidly to change without establishing a logic of the consequences, nor a design plan for emergence. Following from this, we should mention issues such as the intrusion of surveillance algorithms deployed by corporations, governments, and other hegemonic entities that this invention risks. If smart contact lenses are biomedia devices inspiring us to decode bodily processes and communicate that data for analysis, for ourselves, and others in our trust (e.g., doctors, family, friends), we also need to be wary of them. David Lyon warns: Surveillance has spilled out of its old nation-state containers to become a feature of everyday life, at work, at home, at play, on the move. So far from the single all-seeing eye of Big Brother, myriad agencies now trace and track mundane activities for a plethora of purposes. Abstract data, now including video, biometric, and genetic as well as computerized administrative files, are manipulated to produce profiles and risk categories in a liquid, networked system. The point is to plan, predict, and prevent by classifying and assessing those profiles and risks. (13) In simple terms, the smart contact lens might disclose the most intimate information we possess and leave us vulnerable to profiling, tracking, and theft. Irma van der Ploeg presupposed this predicament when she wrote: “The capacity of certain technologies to change the boundary, not just between what is public and private information but, on top of that, between what is inside and outside the human body, appears to leave our normative concepts wanting” (71). The smart contact lens, with its implied motive to encode and disclose internal bodily information, needs considerations on many levels. Conclusion The smart contact lens has made a digital beginning. We accept it through the mass consumption of the idea, which acts as a rhetorical motivator for media adoption, taking place long before the device materializes in the marketplace. This occurrence may also be a sign of our “posthuman predicament” (Braidotti). We have argued that the smart contact lens concept reveals our posthuman adaptation to media rather than our reasoned acceptance or agreement with it as a logical proposition. By the time we actually squabble over the price, express fears for our privacy, and buy them, smart contact lenses will long be part of our everyday culture. References Baumlin, James S., and Tita F. Baumlin. “On the Psychology of the Pisteis: Mapping the Terrains of Mind and Rhetoric.” Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita F. Baumlin. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. 91-112. Baumlin, James S., and Tita F. Baumlin, eds. Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. Bilton, Nick. “A Rose-Colored View May Come Standard.” The New York Times, 4 Apr. 2012. Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950. Cameron, James, dir. The Terminator. Orion Pictures, 1984. DVD. Cameron, James, dir. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Artisan Home Entertainment, 2003. DVD. Etherington, Darrell. “Google Patents Tiny Cameras Embedded in Contact Lenses.” TechCrunch, 14 Apr. 2014. Goldman, David. “Google to Make Smart Contact Lenses.” CNN Money 17 Jan. 2014. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012. Hyde, Michael. The Ethos of Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Leaver, Tama. Artificial Culture: Identity, Technology, and Bodies. New York: Routledge, 2012. Losh, Elizabeth. Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes. Boston: MIT Press. 2009. Lyon, David, ed. Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digital Discrimination. New York: Routledge, 2003. Mac, Ryan. “Amazon Lures Google Glass Creator Following Phone Launch.” Forbes.com, 14 July 2014. McG, dir. Terminator Salvation. Warner Brothers, 2009. DVD. Mostow, Jonathan, dir. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Warner Brothers, 2003. DVD. Parviz, Babak A. “Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens.” IEEE Spectrum, 1 Sep. 2009. Pedersen, Isabel. Ready to Wear: A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press, 2013. Pollock, Greg. “What Is Posthumanism by Cary Wolfe (2009).” Rev. of What is Posthumanism?, by Cary Wolfe. Journal for Critical Animal Studies 9.1/2 (2011): 235-241. Sidwell, Marc. “The Long View: Bill Gates Is Gone and the Dot-com Era Is Over: It's Only the End of the Beginning.” City A.M., 7 Feb. 2014. “Solve for X: Babak Parviz on Building Microsystems on the Eye.” YouTube, 7 Feb. 2012. Taylor, Alan, dir. Terminator: Genisys. Paramount Pictures, 2015. DVD. Thacker, Eugene “Biomedia.” Critical Terms for Media Studies. Eds. W.J.T Mitchell and Mark Hansen, Chicago: Chicago Press, 2010. 117-130. Van der Ploeg, Irma. “Biometrics and the Body as Information.” Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digital Discrimination. Ed. David Lyon. New York: Routledge, 2003. 57-73. Wired Staff. “7 Massive Ideas That Could Change the World.” Wired.com, 17 Jan. 2013.

Introduction In The World Is Not a Desktop, Marc Weisner, the principal scientist and manager of the computer science laboratory at Xerox PARC, stated that, “a good tool is an invisible tool.” Weisner cited eyeglasses as an ideal technology because with spectacles, he argued, “you look at the world, not the eyeglasses.” Although Weisner’s work at PARC played an important role in the creation of the field of “ubiquitous computing”, his ideal is widespread in many areas of technology design. Through repetition, and by design, technologies blend into our lives. While technologies, and communications technologies in particular, have a powerful mediating impact, many of the most pervasive effects are taken for granted by most users. When technology works smoothly, its nature and effects are invisible. But technologies do not always work smoothly. A tiny fracture or a smudge on a lens renders glasses quite visible to the wearer. The Microsoft Windows “Blue Screen of Death” on subway in Seoul (Photo credit Wikimedia Commons). Anyone who has seen a famous “Blue Screen of Death”—the iconic signal of a Microsoft Windows crash—on a public screen or terminal knows how errors can thrust the technical details of previously invisible systems into view. Nobody knows that their ATM runs Windows until the system crashes. Of course, the operating system chosen for a sign or bank machine has important implications for its users. Windows, or an alternative operating system, creates affordances and imposes limitations. Faced with a crashed ATM, a consumer might ask herself if, with its rampant viruses and security holes, she should really trust an ATM running Windows? Technologies make previously impossible actions possible and many actions easier. In the process, they frame and constrain possible actions. They mediate. Communication technologies allow users to communicate in new ways but constrain communication in the process. In a very fundamental way, communication technologies define what their users can say, to whom they say it, and how they can say it—and what, to whom, and how they cannot. Humanities scholars understand the power, importance, and limitations of technology and technological mediation. Weisner hypothesised that, “to understand invisibility the humanities and social sciences are especially valuable, because they specialise in exposing the otherwise invisible.” However, technology activists, like those at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), understand this power of technology as well. Largely constituted by technical members, both organisations, like humanists studying technology, have struggled to communicate their messages to a less-technical public. Before one can argue for the importance of individual control over who owns technology, as both FSF and EFF do, an audience must first appreciate the power and effect that their technology and its designers have. To understand the power that technology has on its users, users must first see the technology in question. Most users do not. Errors are under-appreciated and under-utilised in their ability to reveal technology around us. By painting a picture of how certain technologies facilitate certain mistakes, one can better show how technology mediates. By revealing errors, scholars and activists can reveal previously invisible technologies and their effects more generally. Errors can reveal technology—and its power and can do so in ways that users of technologies confront daily and understand intimately. The Misprinted Word Catalysed by Elizabeth Eisenstein, the last 35 years of print history scholarship provides both a richly described example of technological change and an analysis of its effects. Unemphasised in discussions of the revolutionary social, economic, and political impact of printing technologies is the fact that, especially in the early days of a major technological change, the artifacts of print are often quite similar to those produced by a new printing technology’s predecessors. From a reader’s purely material perspective, books are books; the press that created the book is invisible or irrelevant. Yet, while the specifics of print technologies are often hidden, they are often exposed by errors. While the shift from a scribal to print culture revolutionised culture, politics, and economics in early modern Europe, it was near-invisible to early readers (Eisenstein). Early printed books were the same books printed in the same way; the early press was conceived as a “mechanical scriptorium.” Shown below, Gutenberg’s black-letter Gothic typeface closely reproduced a scribal hand. Of course, handwriting and type were easily distinguishable; errors and irregularities were inherent in relatively unsteady human hands. Side-by-side comparisons of the hand-copied Malmesbury Bible (left) and the black letter typeface in the Gutenberg Bible (right) (Photo credits Wikimedia Commons & Wikimedia Commons). Printing, of course, introduced its own errors. As pages were produced en masse from a single block of type, so were mistakes. While a scribe would re-read and correct errors as they transcribed a second copy, no printing press would. More revealingly, print opened the door to whole new categories of errors. For example, printers setting type might confuse an inverted n with a u—and many did. Of course, no scribe made this mistake. An inverted u is only confused with an n due to the technological possibility of letter flipping in movable type. As print moved from Monotype and Linotype machines, to computerised typesetting, and eventually to desktop publishing, an accidentally flipped u retreated back into the realm of impossibility (Mergenthaler, Swank). Most readers do not know how their books are printed. The output of letterpresses, Monotypes, and laser printers are carefully designed to produce near-uniform output. To the degree that they succeed, the technologies themselves, and the specific nature of the mediation, becomes invisible to readers. But each technology is revealed in errors like the upside-down u, the output of a mispoured slug of Monotype, or streaks of toner from a laser printer. Changes in printing technologies after the press have also had profound effects. The creation of hot-metal Monotype and Linotype, for example, affected decisions to print and reprint and changed how and when it is done. New mass printing technologies allowed for the printing of works that, for economic reasons, would not have been published before. While personal computers, desktop publishing software, and laser printers make publishing accessible in new ways, it also places real limits on what can be printed. Print runs of a single copy—unheard of before the invention of the type-writer—are commonplace. But computers, like Linotypes, render certain formatting and presentation difficult and impossible. Errors provide a space where the particulars of printing make technologies visible in their products. An inverted u exposes a human typesetter, a letterpress, and a hasty error in judgment. Encoding errors and botched smart quotation marks—a ? in place of a “—are only possible with a computer. Streaks of toner are only produced by malfunctioning laser printers. Dust can reveal the photocopied provenance of a document. Few readers reflect on the power or importance of the particulars of the technologies that produced their books. In part, this is because the technologies are so hidden behind their products. Through errors, these technologies and the power they have on the “what” and “how” of printing are exposed. For scholars and activists attempting to expose exactly this, errors are an under-exploited opportunity. Typing Mistyping While errors have a profound effect on media consumption, their effect is equally important, and perhaps more strongly felt, when they occur during media creation. Like all mediating technologies, input technologies make it easier or more difficult to create certain messages. It is, for example, much easier to write a letter with a keyboard than it is to type a picture. It is much more difficult to write in languages with frequent use of accents on an English language keyboard than it is on a European keyboard. But while input systems like keyboards have a powerful effect on the nature of the messages they produce, they are invisible to recipients of messages. Except when the messages contains errors. Typists are much more likely to confuse letters in close proximity on a keyboard than people writing by hand or setting type. As keyboard layouts switch between countries and languages, new errors appear. The following is from a personal email: hez, if there’s not a subversion server handz, can i at least have the root password for one of our machines? I read through the instructions for setting one up and i think i could do it. [emphasis added] The email was quickly typed and, in two places, confuses the character y with z. Separated by five characters on QWERTY keyboards, these two letters are not easily mistaken or mistyped. However, their positions are swapped on German and English keyboards. In fact, the author was an American typing in a Viennese Internet cafe. The source of his repeated error was his false expectations—his familiarity with one keyboard layout in the context of another. The error revealed the context, both keyboard layouts, and his dependence on a particular keyboard. With the error, the keyboard, previously invisible, was exposed as an inter-mediator with its own particularities and effects. This effect does not change in mobile devices where new input methods have introduced powerful new ways of communicating. SMS messages on mobile phones are constrained in length to 160 characters. The result has been new styles of communication using SMS that some have gone so far as to call a new language or dialect called TXTSPK (Thurlow). Yet while they are obvious to social scientists, the profound effects of text message technologies on communication is unfelt by most users who simply see the messages themselves. More visible is the fact that input from a phone keypad has opened the door to errors which reveal input technology and its effects. In the standard method of SMS input, users press or hold buttons to cycle through the letters associated with numbers on a numeric keyboard (e.g., 2 represents A, B, and C; to produce a single C, a user presses 2 three times). This system makes it easy to confuse characters based on a shared association with a single number. Tegic’s popular T9 software allows users to type in words by pressing the number associated with each letter of each word in quick succession. T9 uses a database to pick the most likely word that maps to that sequence of numbers. While the system allows for quick input of words and phrases on a phone keypad, it also allows for the creation of new types of errors. A user trying to type me might accidentally write of because both words are mapped to the combination of 6 and 3 and because of is a more common word in English. T9 might confuse snow and pony while no human, and no other input method, would. Users composing SMS’s are constrained by its technology and its design. The fact that text messages must be short and the difficult nature of phone-based input methods has led to unique and highly constrained forms of communication like TXTSPK (Sutherland). Yet, while the influence of these input technologies is profound, users are rarely aware of it. Errors provide a situation where the particularities of a technology become visible and an opportunity for users to connect with scholars exposing the effect of technology and activists arguing for increased user control. Google News Denuded As technologies become more complex, they often become more mysterious to their users. While not invisible, users know little about the way that complex technologies work both because they become accustomed to them and because the technological specifics are hidden inside companies, behind web interfaces, within compiled software, and in “black boxes” (Latour). Errors can help reveal these technologies and expose their nature and effects. One such system, Google’s News, aggregates news stories and is designed to make it easy to read multiple stories on the same topic. The system works with “topic clusters” that attempt to group articles covering the same news event. The more items in a news cluster (especially from popular sources) and the closer together they appear in time, the higher confidence Google’s algorithms have in the “importance” of a story and the higher the likelihood that the cluster of stories will be listed on the Google News page. While the decision to include or remove individual sources is made by humans, the act of clustering is left to Google’s software. Because computers cannot “understand” the text of the articles being aggregated, clustering happens less intelligently. We know that clustering is primarily based on comparison of shared text and keywords—especially proper nouns. This process is aided by the widespread use of wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters which provide article text used, at least in part, by large numbers of news sources. Google has been reticent to divulge the implementation details of its clustering engine but users have been able to deduce the description above, and much more, by watching how Google News works and, more importantly, how it fails. For example, we know that Google News looks for shared text and keywords because text that deviates heavily from other articles is not “clustered” appropriately—even if it is extremely similar semantically. In this vein, blogger Philipp Lenssen gives advice to news sites who want to stand out in Google News: Of course, stories don’t have to be exactly the same to be matched—but if they are too different, they’ll also not appear in the same group. If you want to stand out in Google News search results, make your article be original, or else you’ll be collapsed into a cluster where you may or may not appear on the first results page. While a human editor has no trouble understanding that an article using different terms (and different, but equally appropriate, proper nouns) is discussing the same issue, the software behind Google News is more fragile. As a result, Google News fails to connect linked stories that no human editor would miss. A section of a screenshot of Google News clustering aggregation showcasing what appears to be an error. But just as importantly, Google News can connect stories that most human editors will not. Google News’s clustering of two stories by Al Jazeera on how “Iran offers to share nuclear technology,” and by the Guardian on how “Iran threatens to hide nuclear program,” seem at first glance to be a mistake. Hiding and sharing are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. But while it is true that most human editors would not cluster these stories, it is less clear that it is, in fact, an error. Investigation shows that the two articles are about the release of a single statement by the government of Iran on the same day. The spin is significant enough, and significantly different, that it could be argued that the aggregation of those stories was incorrect—or not. The error reveals details about the way that Google News works and about its limitations. It reminds readers of Google News of the technological nature of their news’ meditation and gives them a taste of the type of selection—and mis-selection—that goes on out of view. Users of Google News might be prompted to compare the system to other, more human methods. Ultimately it can remind them of the power that Google News (and humans in similar roles) have over our understanding of news and the world around us. These are all familiar arguments to social scientists of technology and echo the arguments of technology activists. By focusing on similar errors, both groups can connect to users less used to thinking in these terms. Conclusion Reflecting on the role of the humanities in a world of increasingly invisible technology for the blog, “Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory,” Duke English professor Cathy Davidson writes: When technology is accepted, when it becomes invisible, [humanists] really need to be paying attention. This is one reason why the humanities are more important than ever. Analysis—qualitative, deep, interpretive analysis—of social relations, social conditions, in a historical and philosophical perspective is what we do so well. The more technology is part of our lives, the less we think about it, the more we need rigorous humanistic thinking that reminds us that our behaviours are not natural but social, cultural, economic, and with consequences for us all. Davidson concisely points out the strength and importance of the humanities in evaluating technology. She is correct; users of technologies do not frequently analyse the social relations, conditions, and effects of the technology they use. Activists at the EFF and FSF argue that this lack of critical perspective leads to exploitation of users (Stallman). But users, and the technology they use, are only susceptible to this type of analysis when they understand the applicability of these analyses to their technologies. Davidson leaves open the more fundamental question: How will humanists first reveal technology so that they can reveal its effects? Scholars and activists must do more than contextualise and describe technology. They must first render invisible technologies visible. As the revealing nature of errors in printing systems, input systems, and “black box” software systems like Google News show, errors represent a point where invisible technology is already visible to users. As such, these errors, and countless others like them, can be treated as the tip of an iceberg. They represent an important opportunity for humanists and activists to further expose technologies and the beginning of a process that aims to reveal much more. References Davidson, Cathy. “When Technology Is Invisible, Humanists Better Get Busy.” HASTAC. (2007). 1 September 2007 http://www.hastac.org/node/779>. Eisenstein, Elisabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard UP, 1999. Lenssen, Philipp. “How Google News Indexes.” Google Blogscoped. 2006. 1 September 2007 http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-07-28-n49.html>. Mergenthaler, Ottmar. The Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler, Inventor of the Linotype. New ed. New Castle, Deleware: Oak Knoll Books, 1989. Monotype: A Journal of Composing Room Efficiency. Philadelphia: Lanston Monotype Machine Co, 1913. Stallman, Richard M. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, Massachusetts: Free Software Foundation, 2002. Sutherland, John. “Cn u txt?” Guardian Unlimited. London, UK. 2002. Swank, Alvin Garfield, and United Typothetae America. Linotype Mechanism. Chicago, Illinois: Dept. of Education, United Typothetae America, 1926. Thurlow, C. “Generation Txt? The Sociolinguistics of Young People’s Text-Messaging.” Discourse Analysis Online 1.1 (2003). Weiser, Marc. “The World Is Not a Desktop.” ACM Interactions. 1.1 (1994): 7-8. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hill, Benjamin Mako. "Revealing Errors." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/01-hill.php>. APA Style Hill, B. (Oct. 2007) "Revealing Errors," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/01-hill.php>.

IntroductionWhen she divorced, Cheryl Strayed chose for herself an entirely new surname. In Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found, the memoir she wrote and published in 2012 about hiking 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border, she recalls looking up the definition of the word “strayed”, and how its meaning resonated for her. “I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild”, Strayed writes. “Even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before” (97).From the outset of her memoir, Strayed links the notion of wildness with movement, suggesting that “becom[ing] wild” only came about for her when she moved away from—and I would suggest here deliberately rejected—a sedentary role in her life. That is, when she became a peripatetic walker: someone “travelling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods” (Oxford English Dictionary online). In this article, I discuss Strayed’s memoir Wild as an example of radical wandering. I argue that Strayed subverts the figure of the adventuring explorer in nature—who we usually think of as male—by using the idea of “dark peripatetic walking” whereby the dark peripatetic walker transgresses by going against, or existing outside of, society’s norms, walking “perhaps out of life itself” (Adams 196). Strayed walks the PCT out of desperation and grief after her mother dies and her marriage ends. While Paul Adams interprets dark peripatetic walking as a dire act, in this article I offer a reading of this impulse to wander away from as empowering: a radical “return to the self” only made possible by solitude (Barbour 201-202). My reading of Strayed’s walking as dark peripatetic offers a framework for understanding women’s walking in the wild; how, in wandering away from society’s norms, and in seeking solitude and being self-sufficient, the female walker rejects what society expects of women in the wild and finds empowerment in the transgressive act of existing in a male-dominated terrain: in this case, the literal one of the PCT, and the generic one that comprises memoirs about journeys in nature.Dark Peripatetic Walking as Radical Wandering A rich history of walking exists throughout the last few centuries, from Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur strolling the streets of Paris, to psychogeography and Guy Debord’s theory of the dérive, to pilgrimages throughout the ages. However, much of this walking was conducted in primarily urban spaces—and flânerie, in particular, excluded women both culturally and linguistically. Dark peripatetic walking is also associated with the urban rather than nature, but I want to take it out into wild landscapes. Adams describes two kinds of walking that Western society practises: “light peripatetic” and “dark peripatetic”. Light peripatetic is associated with solitude, simplicity, and idyll; in short, it connotes a Romantic strolling (193-194). Adams cites the celebrated nature writer Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” as an example of light peripatetic, in which, for Thoreau, walking is an essential, routine part of each day. Dark peripatetic is a more ominous form of walking. Adams writes that “the dark peripatetic motif signals that the bonds of society have been torn, or a character’s identity is beginning to dissolve, or both” (196). The dark peripatetic walker is seen to walk “out of doors, out of society, out of community, out of normal reality, and perhaps even out of life itself” (196). Adams associates dark peripatetic with walking in urban spaces, driven by a sense of leaving, or being forced to leave, society.Extending Adams’s concept of the dark peripatetic, we might follow the dark peripatetic walker away from an urban setting and into the wilderness. Here we find Strayed. By the time she sets out to embark on the PCT, she has transgressed a number of social norms that have taken her to the edge of society and her existence: she has been unfaithful in her marriage, which has now fallen apart; she regularly takes drugs (though does not consider herself an addict); she is struggling with depression after the death of her mother; she is emotionally isolated as significant relationships with her family and wider networks have collapsed, and she has almost no money and no plans for the immediate future. We can see in Strayed a figure poised at the edge of what could be conceived as the limit of what is bearable. Strayed’s solution is to walk away from her broken life and into solitude and nature. The impulse of dark peripatetic is away from; the dark peripatetic walker transgresses by going against, or existing outside of society’s norms, walking “perhaps out of life itself” (Adams 196). However, while Strayed’s sense of identity, and her connections with society, have come to feel tenuous, I do not insinuate that she sees hiking the PCT as an act that leads her away from life and into death. While her reasoning for embarking on the hike comes from a place of desperation, it is not a desperate act; while Strayed is unprepared for the rigours of the hike, her inexperience does not equal failure. While Adams interprets dark peripatetic walking as dire, it is possible also to interpret this impulse to walk away from as radical and empowering—particularly for women walking away from societal norms and gendered constrictions that say women should not be, nor want to be, in the wild. Woman in the WildWhen we think about “wildness”, notions of the unfamiliar are evoked; the uncomfortable, the frightening, and the physically arduous. But wildness can also evoke the empowering. For Thoreau, the word “wild” was “the past participle of to will, self-willed” (cited in Turner 111). Carol Black elaborates on this idea, describing Thoreau’s wild as “that which lives out of its own intrinsic nature rather than bowing to some extrinsic force” (Black). Understood like this, to be wild is ultimately to embody your intrinsic essence. Of course, the discussion of an “intrinsic essence”, or, implicitly, one of a woman’s, is complicated territory: as the feminist scholar Donna Haraway writes, “there is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices” (155). There is a long association between women and nature as the ecofeminist scholar Carolyn Merchant discusses in her important book The Death of Nature, with both being dominated by science and men, and both being conflated as the “nurturing mother” (xx). The association between men and nature, however, is interestingly fluid, as the ecocritic Astrid Bracke points out: “‘male’ can be seen as both culture, and nature: culture, when ‘wild’, ‘natural’ women have to be civilized, nature when it comes to drawing a contrast to the domestic sphere of the home, the place of women and children” (“Macho Nature”). The discussion of the essence of a human being is complex and potentially fraught, and would require another article to do it justice, so what I want to focus on here is the idea of wildness as being, or returning to, a sense of selfhood that may have been forgotten. I focus here on how Strayed experiences self and wildness through the act of walking in solitude, and what this means for narratives of being in the wild. The ability to inhabit, explore freely, and stake claims on wild places has often been the business of men in history and male characters in literature. For instance, Tanya Kam argues that women who hike alone are more likely to be asked what compelled them to do so, whereas this legitimisation is not required when a man does the same thing (365). She suggests that adventures in the wild are often perceived in Western society as a “rite of masculinity” (365) where the male explorer sets out to conquer “rugged, natural terrain” (353). For Kam, this stems from the concept of “frontier masculinity”, which, she writes, “depends on romanticised conceptions of the wilderness, rugged self-sufficiency, courage, masculine physical strength, autonomous individualism, and the active subordination of nature” (353). This masculine explorer trope impedes the fact that women have always been present in nature and wilderness. Sarah McFarland calls for “the reconstruction of the concept of nature itself” (45), which she argues women’s nature writing can bring about, in a way that will “integrat[e] the interests of actual women into an actual wilderness” (45). Memoirs such as Tracks (1980) by Robyn Davidson, Woman in the Wilderness (2018) by Miriam Lancewood, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube (2016) by Blair Braverman, and even The Word for Woman Is Wilderness by Abi Andrews (2018), which is not a memoir but a novel that reads like one, are a suite of texts that I think would interest McFarland, who proposes that by disrupting the notion of the solitary male “questing hero” (37), women-authored texts about being in nature refute “the myth of a womanless wilderness” (38). Strayed, with Wild, joins the lineage of women writers who do this.One strategy that Strayed uses to refute this myth, and provide an alternative to the male explorer, is to embody some of the tropes of this figure in her narration of hiking the PCT. The criteria by which Kam defines this masculine explorer are evident, in most instances, in Strayed’s narrator in Wild. During the three months that she spends hiking the PCT, she is forced to become self-sufficient; she finds courage in the face of extreme hardship; her physical strength develops, and she becomes comfortable in her autonomy. Strayed consistently highlights the gender of her body in this narration: her overweight pack “Monster” is a constant struggle for her smaller physique; she pushes herself physically so male hikers don’t overtake her; she lists the condoms and natural sea sponge she packs, anticipating occasions of physical intimacy and attending to the practicality of menstruating while on the trail. She notes, as the weeks pass, the way her hair grows straw-like from exposure to the weather, and how the developing muscles in her legs “rippl[e] beneath [her] thinning flesh in ways they never had” (190). Patches of skin on her hips and tailbone bleed and scab over from her pack chafing (190). Strayed’s walking, and how she foregrounds the femininity of her body, disrupts the idea that the wilderness is not a place for a woman’s body.However, it is important that the narrator does not seek to subordinate nature—a key aspect of Kam’s “frontier masculinity”. Embodying some, but not all, of the masculine explorer’s traits, as a female narrator-protagonist, Strayed engages with, but ultimately resists, conforming to this tradition, subverting the dominant picture of the masculine explorer in wild places. This is not to say that Strayed refrains from engaging in adversarial encounters with nature; she feels triumphant after successfully navigating snow-covered parts of the trail, and loudly blows her whistle to scare away wildlife. Strayed’s gender is key here: with this strategy, Strayed claims her place as a woman in masculine territory, but in doing so she is more concerned with reflecting on her inner life than in asserting herself over the land that she traverses. In a statement against patriarchal and colonial conceptions of “the wilderness” as empty space to be claimed (via literally claiming land, or by inscribing a romantic narrative upon it), Strayed finds her place in the landscape without owning it. She writes about being in nature, but is ultimately more occupied with being in herself.Witnessing the SelfIf the need to assert himself over nature drives the male adventurer, as Kam suggests, we might read in Wild’s female adventurer an antithesis to this impulse: the act of witness. In a moment of revelation, the narrator realises what it is that drove her, and others before her, to hike the PCT:It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. (207)Strayed’s language choices are significant here. In walking through the landscape features that she names in the above passage, she is witnessing place. Witnessing connotes viewing, but not acting upon. We might also surmise, however, that she is witnessing herself located in these places. Strayed uses the phrase “how it felt to be” to describe the essence of her experience in the wild—again, “felt” could refer to tactile experience in the landscape, or a sense of wildness in her identity that manifested through being in that landscape.On the trail, Strayed also discovers that she is comfortable alone. In a passage that is deceptively short, Strayed makes a remarkable comment on solitude as a transgressive and transformative state for a woman to seek out and ultimately feel at home in: Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. The radical aloneness of the PCT had altered that sense. Alone wasn’t a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way I never had before. (119, emphasis mine)There are two important points in this passage: the first is that Strayed feels most herself when she is alone, and the second that her understanding of aloneness has shifted. Reading Strayed’s walking as dark peripatetic allows us to see the act of walking as a radical “return to the self”. John Barbour, from whom I have borrowed this phrase, explains that “solitude … is not oriented toward escaping the world, but toward a different kind of participation in it, as made possible by the disengagement from ordinary social interactions. Solitude is a return to the self” (201-202). Kam discusses how Barbour’s “return to the self” (201-202) occurs when the subject is freed from the various social and domestic responsibilities by which they would normally be bound. She speculates that isolation, or solitude, is generally discouraged in the individual as it endangers the functionality of society. This criticism seems particularly relevant in relation to women, as it highlights their roles as home-makers in a patriarchal society. Hiking alone, Strayed finds that her participation in the world has changed—and it is through her solitary experience that this occurs. There is a safety, a self-containment, in Strayed’s solitude—which counters the narrative that for women, in particular, the wilderness contains danger and threat. As Kam points out, it is not wild animals that present the greatest threat to Strayed; it is a pair of male hunters who encounter her campsite on one occasion (Kam 363).Claiming autonomy and seeking out solitude, as Strayed does in Wild, suggests an experience of wildness that resonates with Thoreau’s understanding of it as “self-willedness” (Turner 111). After reading Wild, the phrase “radical self-containment” seems to me to describe the phenomenon of the particular kind of wildness enabled by walking; the autonomy found in solitude; and in existing beyond the reach of extrinsic forces that would normally affect one’s life. In this experience of wildness, walking, the natural world, and solitude are entwined and essential to the other: wildness is both an embodied and internal experience. ConclusionWild asks us to think about what we make of women venturing into the wild, and the role that walking plays in this. Reading Strayed’s walking in Wild as dark peripatetic suggests a framework for understanding women’s walking in the wild; how, in seeking and discovering that she is at home in solitude, the female walker rejects what society expects of women. Women are not, culturally speaking, encouraged to seek out either solitude or wild places. As nature writing has historically suggested, wild terrain is male terrain. Strayed subverts the figure of the adventuring explorer in nature with her walking by foregrounding the lived experiences of her female body, rejecting society’s role for her, and finding that she is at home in solitude. But most importantly, she does so by shifting the gaze of the walker that we encounter in much male-authored nature literature: rather than looking outward with the intention of conquering, dominating, or claiming landscape, she looks inwards, witnessing the changes in self that walking in remote, wild landscapes enables, and in doing so, gives us another narrative for contemporary journeys in the wild.ReferencesAdams, Paul C. “Peripatetic Imagery and Peripatetic Sense of Place.” Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies. Eds. Paul C. Adams, Steven Hoelscher, and Karen E. Till. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2001.Andrews, Abi. The Word for Woman Is Wilderness. London: Profile Books, 2018.Barbour, John D. The Value of Solitude: The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2004.Black, Carol. “On the Wildness of Children: The Revolution Will Not Take Place in the Classroom.” Carolblack.org, Apr. 2016. 27 May 2019 <https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/on-the-wildness-of-children/>.Bracke, Astrid. “Macho Nature? Or, Gender in New Nature Writing Part I.” Astridbracke.com, 19 Feb. 2013. Braverman, Blair. Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.Davidson, Robyn. Tracks. 1980. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.Kam, Tanya Y. “Forests of the Self: Life Writing and ‘Wild’ Wanderings.” Life Writing 13.3 (2016): 351-371. 22 Apr. 2019 <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14484528.2016.1086290>.Lancewood, Miriam. Woman in the Wilderness: A Story of Survival, Love and Self-Discovery in New Zealand. New Zealand: Allen & Unwin. 2017.McFarland, Sarah E. “Wild Women: Literary Explorations of American Landscapes.” Ed. Barbara J. Cook. Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008.Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1983.“Peripatetic.” Oxford English Dictionary. Lexico, 2019. <https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/peripatetic>.Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found. Rev. ed. London: Atlantic Books, 2013.Turner, Jack. The Abstract Wild. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1996.

The ideas put forth here do not fit perfectly or entirely into the genre and form of what has established itself as the scholarly journal article. What is put forth, instead, is a juxtaposition of lines of thinking about the scholarly and popular in publishing, past, present and future. As such it may indeed be quite appropriate to the occasion and the questions raised in the call for papers for this special issue of M/C Journal. The ideas put forth here are intended as pieces of an ever-changing puzzle of the making public of scholarship, which, I hope, may in some way fit with both the work of others in this special issue and in the discourse more broadly. The first line of thinking presented takes the form of an historical overview of publishing as context to consider a second line of thinking about the current status and future of publishing. The historical context serves as reminder (and cause for celebration) that publishing has not yet perished, contrary to continued doomsday sooth-saying that has come with each new medium since the advent of print. Instead, publishing has continued to transform and it is precisely the transformation of print, print culture and reading publics that are the focus of this article, in particular, in relation to the question of the boundaries between the scholarly and the popular. What follows is a juxtaposition that is part of an investigation in progress. Presented first, therefore, is a mapping of shifts in print culture from the time of Gutenberg to the twentieth century; second, is a contemporary snapshot of the editorial mandates of more than one hundred member journals of the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ). What such juxtaposition is able to reveal is open to interpretation, of course. And indeed, as I proceed in my investigation of publishing past, present and future, my interpretations are many. The juxtaposition raises a number of issues: of communities of readers and the cultures of reading publics; of privileged and marginalised texts (as well as their authors and their readers); of access and reach (whether in terms of what is quantifiable or in a much more subtle but equally important sense). In Canada, at present, these issues are also intertwined with changes to research funding policies and some attention is given at the end of this article to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and its recent/current shift in funding policy. Curiously, current shifts in funding policies, considered alongside an historical overview of publishing, would suggest that although publishing continues to transform, at the same time, as they say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Republics of Letters and Ghosts in Machines Republics of Letters that formed after the advent of the printing press can be conjured up as distant and almost mythical communities of elite literates, ghosts almost lost in a Gutenberg galaxy that today encompasses (and is embodied in) schools, bookshelves, and digital archives in many places across the globe. Conjuring up ghosts of histories past seems always to reveal ironies, and indeed some of the most interesting ironies of the Gutenberg galaxy involve McLuhanesque reversals or, if not full reversals, then in the least some notably sharp turns. There is a need to define some boundaries (and terms) in the framing of the tracing that follows. Given that the time frame in question spans more than five hundred years (from the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in the fifteenth century to the turn of the 21st century), the tracing must necessarily be done in broad strokes. With regard to what is meant by the “making public of scholarship” in this paper, by “making public” I refer to accounts historians have given in their attempts to reconstruct a history of what was published either in the periodical press or in books. With regard to scholarship (and the making public of it), as with many things in the history of publishing (or any history), this means different things in different times and in different places. The changing meanings of what can be termed “scholarship” and where and how it historically has been made public are the cornerstones on which this article (and a history of the making public of scholarship) turn. The structure of this paper is loosely chronological and is limited to the print cultures and reading publics in France, Britain, and what would eventually be called the US and Canada, and what follows here is an overview of changes in how scholarly and popular texts and publics are variously defined over the course of history. The Construction of Reading Publics and Print Culture In any consideration of “print culture” and reading publics, historical or contemporary, there are two guiding principles that historians suggest should be kept in mind, and, though these may seem self-evident, they are worth stating explicitly (perhaps precisely because they seem self-evident). The first is a reminder from Adrian Johns that “the very identity of print itself has had to be made” (2 italics in original). Just as the identity of print cultures are made, similarly, a history of reading publics and their identities are made, by looking to and interpreting such variables as numbers and genres of titles published and circulated, dates and locations of collections, and information on readers’ experiences of texts. Elizabeth Eisenstein offers a reminder of the “widely varying circumstances” (92) of the print revolution and an explicit acknowledgement of such circumstances provides the second, seemingly self-evident guiding principle: that the construction of reading publics and print culture must not only be understood as constructed, but also that such constructions ought not be understood as uniform. The purpose of the reconstructions of print cultures and reading publics presented here, therefore, is not to arrive at final conclusions, but rather to identify patterns that prove useful in better understanding the current status (and possible future) of publishing. The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries—Boom, then Busted by State and Church In search of what could be termed “scholarship” following the mid-fifteenth century boom of the early days of print, given the ecclesiastical and state censorship in Britain and France and the popularity of religious texts of the 15th and 16th centuries, arguably the closest to “scholarship” that we can come is through the influence of the Italian Renaissance and the revival and translation (into Latin, and to a far lesser extent, vernacular languages) of the classics and indeed the influence of the Italian Renaissance on the “print revolution” is widely recognised by historians. Historians also recognise, however, that it was not long until “the supply of unpublished texts dried up…[yet for authors] to sell the fruits of their intellect—was not yet common practice before the late 16th century” (Febvre and Martin 160). Although this reference is to the book trade in France, in Britain, and in the regions to become the US and Canada, reading of “pious texts” was similarly predominant in the early days of print. Yet, the humanist shift throughout the 16th century is evidenced by titles produced in Paris in the first century of print: in 1501, in a total of 88 works, 53 can be categorised as religious, with 25 categorised as Latin, Greek, or Humanist authors; as compared to titles produced in 1549, in a total of 332 titles, 56 can be categorised as religious with 204 categorised as Latin, Greek, or Humanist authors (Febvre and Martin 264). The Seventeenth Century—Changes in the Political and Print Landscape In the 17th century, printers discovered that their chances of profitability (and survival) could be improved by targeting and developing a popular readership through the periodical press (its very periodicity and relative low cost both contributed to its accessibility by popular publics) in Europe as well as in North America. It is worthwhile to note, however, that “to the end of the seventeenth century, both literacy and leisure were virtually confined to scholars and ‘gentlemen’” (Steinberg 119) particularly where books were concerned and although literacy rates were still low, through the “exceptionally literate villager” there formed “hearing publics” who would have printed texts read to them (Eisenstein 93). For the literate members of the public interested not only in improving their social positions through learning, but also with intellectual (or spiritual or existential) curiosity piqued by forbidden books, it is not surprising that Descartes “wrote in French to a ‘lay audience … open to new ideas’” (Jacob 41). The 17th century also saw the publication of the first scholarly journals. There is a tension that becomes evident in the seventeenth century that can be seen as a tension characteristic of print culture, past and present: on the one hand, the housing of scholarship in scholarly journals as a genre distinct from the genre of the popular periodicals can be interpreted as a continued pattern of (elitist) divide in publics (as seen earlier between the oral and the written word, between Latin and the vernacular, between classic texts and popular texts); while, on the other hand, some thinkers/scholars of the day had an interest in reaching a wider audience, as printers always had, which led to the construction and fragmentation of audiences (whether the printer’s market for his goods or the scholar’s marketplace of ideas). The Eighteenth Century—Republics of Letters Become Concrete and Visible The 18th century saw ever-increasing literacy rates, early copyright legislation (Statute of Anne in 1709), improved printing technology, and ironically (or perhaps on the contrary, quite predictably) severe censorship that in effect led to an increased demand for forbidden books and a vibrant and international underground book trade (Darnton and Roche 138). Alongside a growing book trade, “the pulpit was ultimately displaced by the periodical press” (Eisenstein 94), which had become an “established institution” (Steinberg 125). One history of the periodical press in France finds that the number of periodicals (to remain in publication for three or more years) available to the reading public in 1745 numbered 15, whereas in 1785 this increased to 82 (Censer 7). With regard to scholarly periodicals, another study shows that between 1790 and 1800 there were 640 scientific-technological periodicals being published in Europe (Kronick 1961). Across the Atlantic, earlier difficulties in cultivating intellectual life—such as haphazard transatlantic exchange and limited institutions for learning—began to give way to a “republic of letters” that was “visible and concrete” (Hall 417). The Nineteenth Century—A Second Boom and the Rise of the Periodical Press By the turn of the 19th century, visible and concrete republics of letters become evident on both sides of the Atlantic in the boom in book publishing and in the periodical press, scholarly and popular. State and church controls on printing/publishing had given way to the press as the “fourth estate” or a free press as powerful force. The legislation of public education brought increased literacy rates among members of successive generations. One study of literacy rates in Britain, for example, shows that in the period from 1840–1870 literacy rates increased by 35–70 per cent; then from 1870–1900, literacy increased by 78–261 per cent (Mitch 76). Further, with the growth and changes in universities, “history, languages and literature and, above all, the sciences, became an established part of higher education for the first time,” which translated into growing markets for book publishers (Feather 117). Similarly the periodical press reached ever-increasing and numerous reading publics: one estimate of the increase finds the publication of nine hundred journals in 1800 jumping to almost sixty thousand in 1901 (Brodman, cited in Kronick 127). Further, the important role of the periodical press in developing communities of readers was recognised by publishers, editors and authors of the time, something equally recognised by present-day historians describing the “generic mélange of the periodical … [that] particularly lent itself to the interpenetration of language and ideas…[and] the verbal and conceptual interconnectedness of science, politics, theology, and literature” (Dawson, Noakes and Topham 30). Scientists recognised popular periodicals as “important platforms for addressing a non-specialist but culturally powerful public … [they were seen as public] performances [that] fulfilled important functions in making the claims of science heard among the ruling élite” (Dawson et al. 11). By contrast, however, the scholarly journals of the time, while also increasing in number, were becoming increasingly specialised along the same disciplinary boundaries being established in the universities, fulfilling a very different function of forming scholarly and discipline-specific discourse communities through public (published) performances of a very different nature. The Twentieth Century—The Tension Between Niche Publics and Mass Publics The long-existing tension in print culture between the differentiation of reading publics on the one hand, and the reach to ever-expanding reading publics on the other, in the twentieth century becomes a tension between what have been termed “niche-marketing” and “mass marketing,” between niche publics and mass publics. What this meant for the making public of scholarship was that the divides between discipline-specific discourse communities (and their corresponding genres) became more firmly established and yet, within each discipline, there was further fragmentation and specialisation. The niche-mass tension also meant that although in earlier print culture, “the lines of demarcation between men of science, men of letters, and scientific popularizers were far from clear, and were constantly being renegotiated” (Dawson et al 28), with the increasing professionalisation of academic work (and careers), lines of demarcation became firmly drawn between scholarly and popular titles and authors, as well as readers, who were described as “men of science,” as “educated men,” or as “casual observers” (Klancher 90). The question remains, however, as one historian of science asks, “To whom did the reading public go in order to learn about the ultimate meaning of modern science, the professionals or the popularizers?” (Lightman 191). By whom and for whom, where and how scholarship has historically been made public, are questions worthy of consideration if contemporary scholars are to better understand the current status (and possible future) for the making public of scholarship. A Snapshot of Scholarly Journals in Canada and Current Changes in Funding Policies The here and now of scholarly journal publishing in Canada (a growing, but relatively modest scholarly journal community, compared to the number of scholarly journals published in Europe and the US) serves as an interesting microcosm through which to consider how scholarly journal publishing has evolved since the early days of print. What follows here is an overview of the membership of the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ), in particular: (1) their target readers as identifiable from their editorial mandates; (2) their print/online/open-access policies; and (3) their publishers (all information gathered from the CALJ website, http://www.calj-acrs.ca/). Analysis of the collected data for the 100 member journals of CALJ (English, French and bilingual journals) with available information on the CALJ website is presented in Table 1 (below). A few observations are noteworthy: (1) in terms of readers, although all 100 journals identify a scholarly audience as their target readership, more than 40% of the journal also identify practitioners, policy-makers, or general readers as members of their target audience; (2) more than 25% of the journals publish online as well as or instead of print editions; and (3) almost all journals are published either by a Canadian university or, in one case, a college (60%) or a scholarly or professional society (31%). Table 1: Target Readership, Publishing Model and Publishers, CALJ Members (N=100) Journals with identifiable scholarly target readership 100 Journals with other identifiable target readership: practitioner 35 Journals with other identifiable target readership: general readers 18 Journals with other identifiable target readership: policy-makers/government 10 Total journals with identifiable target readership other than scholarly 43 Journals publishing in print only 56 Journals publishing in print and online 24 Journals publishing in print, online and open access 16 Journals publishing online only and open access 4 Journals published through a Canadian university press, faculty or department 60 Journals published by a scholarly or professional society 31 Journals published by a research institute 5 Journals published by the private sector 4 In the context of the historical overview presented earlier, this data raises a number of questions. The number of journals with target audiences either within or beyond the academy raises issues akin to the situation in the early days of print, when published works were primarily in Latin, with only 22 per cent in vernacular languages (Febvre and Martin 256), thereby strongly limiting access and reach to diverse audiences until the 17th century when Latin declined as the international language (Febvre and Martin 275) and there is a parallel to scholarly journal publishing and their changing readership(s). Diversity in audiences gradually developed in the early days of print, as Febvre and Martin (263) show by comparing the number of churchmen and lawyers with library collections in Paris: from 1480–1500 one lawyer and 24 churchmen had library collections, compared to 1551–1600, when 71 lawyers and 21 churchmen had library collections. Although the distinctions between present-day target audiences of Canadian scholarly journals (shown in Table 1, above) and 16th-century churchmen or lawyers no doubt are considerable, again there is a parallel with regard to changes in reading audiences. Similarly, the 18th-century increase in literacy rates, education, and technological advances finds a parallel in contemporary questions of computer literacy and access to scholarship (see Willinsky, “How,” Access, “Altering,” and If Only). Print culture historians and historians of science, as noted above, recognise that historically, while scholarly periodicals have increasingly specialised and popular periodicals have served as “important platforms for addressing a non-specialist but culturally powerful public…[and] fulfill[ing] important functions in making the claims of science heard among the ruling élite” (Dawson 11), there is adrift in current policies changes (and in the CALJ data above) a blurring of boundaries that harkens back to earlier days of print culture. As Adrian John reminded us earlier, “the very identity of print itself has had to be made” (2, italics in original) and the same applies to identities or cultures of print and the members of that culture: namely, the readers, the audience. The identities of the readers of scholarship are being made and re-made, as editorial mandates extend the scope of journals beyond strict, academic disciplinary boundaries and as increasing numbers of journals publish online (and open access). In Canada, changes in scholarly journal funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada (as well as changes in SSHRC funding for research more generally) place increasing focus on impact factors (an international trend) as well as increased attention on the public benefits and value of social sciences and humanities research and scholarship (see SSHRC 2004, 2005, 2006). There is much debate in the scholarly community in Canada about the implications and possibilities of the direction of the changing funding policies, not least among members of the scholarly journal community. As noted in the table above, most scholarly journal publishers in Canada are independently published, which brings advantages of autonomy but also the disadvantage of very limited budgets and there is a great deal of concern about the future of the journals, about their survival amidst the current changes. Although the future is uncertain, it is perhaps worthwhile to be reminded once again that contrary to doomsday sooth-saying that has come time and time again, publishing has not perished, but rather it has continued to transform. I am inclined against making normative statements about what the future of publishing should be, but, looking at the accounts historians have given of the past and looking at the current publishing community I have come to know in my work in publishing, I am confident that the resourcefulness and commitment of the publishing community shall prevail and, indeed, there appears to be a good deal of promise in the transformation of scholarly journals in the ways they reach their audiences and in what reaches those audiences. Perhaps, as is suggested by the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing (CCSP), the future is one of “inventing publishing.” References Canadian Association of Learned Journals. Member Database. 10 June 2008 ‹http://www.calj-acrs.ca/>. Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing. 10 June 2008. ‹http://www.ccsp.sfu.ca/>. Censer, Jack. The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment. London: Routledge, 1994. Darnton, Robert, Estienne Roche. Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775–1800. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. Dawson, Gowan, Richard Noakes, and Jonathan Topham. Introduction. Science in the Nineteenth-century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature. Ed. Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes, and Jonathan Topham. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 1–37. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983 Feather, John. A History of British Publishing. New York: Routledge, 2006. Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800. London: N.L.B., 1979. Jacob, Margaret. Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998. Hall, David, and Hugh Armory. The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Klancher, Jon. The Making of English Reading Audiences. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987. Kronick, David. A History of Scientific and Technical Periodicals: The Origins and Development of the Scientific and Technological Press, 1665–1790. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1961. ---. "Devant le deluge" and Other Essays on Early Modern Scientific Communication. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004. Lightman, Bernard. Victorian Science in Context. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Mitch, David. The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence of Private choice and Public Policy. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Granting Council to Knowledge Council: Renewing the Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada, Volume 1, 2004. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Granting Council to Knowledge Council: Renewing the Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada, Volume 3, 2005. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Moving Forward As a Knowledge Council: Canada’s Place in a Competitive World. 2006. Steinberg, Sigfrid. Five Hundred Years of Printing. London: Oak Knoll Press, 1996. Willinsky, John. “How to be More of a Public Intellectual by Making your Intellectual Work More Public.” Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 3.1 (2006): 92–95. ---. The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. ---. “Altering the Material Conditions of Access to the Humanities.” Ed. Peter Trifonas and Michael Peters. Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the New Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 118–36. ---. If Only We Knew: Increasing the Public Value of Social-Science Research. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia depicts the last days of the earth through the eyes of a young woman, Justine, who is suffering from a severe depressive illness. In the hours leading up to the Earth’s destruction through the impact of a massive blue planet named Melancholia, Justine tells her sister that “the Earth is evil, we don’t need to grieve for it. Nobody will miss it.” We can read this apparently anti-environmental statement in one sense as a symptom of Justine’s melancholic depression. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines melancholia as a form of depression that is “qualitatively different from the sadness experienced during bereavement” (419). It is as if Justine’s illness relates to some ungrievable loss, a loss so pathologically far reaching that it short circuits the normal psychology of mourning. But, in another sense, does her statement not strike us with the ring of an absolute and inescapable truth? In the wake of our destruction, there would be no one left to mourn it since human memory itself would have been destroyed along with the global ecosystems which support and sustain it. The film’s central dramatic metaphor is that the experience of a severe depressive episode is like the destruction of the world. But the metaphor can be turned around to suggest that ecological crisis, real irreparable damage to the environment to the point where it may no longer be able to support human life, affects us with a collective melancholia because the destruction of the human species is a strictly ungrievable event. The discoveries of Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century constituted a major thought event which placed the emergence of humanity within a temporal context extending far beyond the limits of human memory. Claire Colebrook suggests that the equivalent event for present times is the thought of our own extinction, the awareness that environmental changes could bring about the end of the species: “[the] extinction awareness that is coming to the fore in the twenty-first century adds the sense of an ending to the broader awareness of the historical emergence of the human species.” While the scientific data is stark, our mediated cultural experience provides us with plenty of opportunities to, in Colebrook’s words, “[domesticate] the sense of the human end” by affirming “various modes of ‘post-humanism’” in ways which ultimately deny the shattering truth of extinction. This domestication obviously takes place in one sense on the level of a conscious denial of the scale of the ecological crisis. On another level, however, environmentally conscious representations of “the planet” or “nature” as a sheer autonomous objectivity, a self-contained but endangered natural order, may ultimately be the greatest obstacle to genuine ecological thinking. By invoking the concept of a non-human nature in perfect balance with itself we factor ourselves out of the ecological equation while simultaneously drawing on the power of an objectifying gaze. Slavoj Žižek gives the example of Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us which imagines a contemporary world in which all humans have disappeared and nature reasserts itself in the ruins of our abandoned cities. Žižek describes this as the ultimate expression of ideology because: we, the humans, are here reduced to a pure disembodied gaze observing our own absence [...] this is the fundamental subjective position of fantasy: to be reduced to a gaze observing the world in the condition of the subject’s non-existence—like the fantasy of witnessing the act of one’s own conception, parental copulation, or the act of witnessing one’s own burial (80). In many ways, the very spectacle or fantasy of our own destruction has provided us with a powerful means of naturalising it—environmental catastrophe occurs to and in a “nature” whose essence excludes us—and this renders it compatible with a psychology by which the human end is itself internalised, processed, and normalised. Ironically, this normalisation may have been affected to a great extent through the popularisation, over the last ten years or so, of environmental discourses relating to the grave threats of climate change. A film such as Wall-E, for example, shows us an entirely depopulated, desertified world in which the eponymous robot character sorts through the trash of human history, living an almost-human life among the ruins. The robot functions as a kind of proxy humanity, placing us, the viewers, in a position posterior to our own species extinction and thus sending us the ultimately reassuring message that, even in our absence, our absence will be noted. In a similar way, the drama-documentary The Age of Stupid presents a future world devastated by environmental collapse in which a lone archivist presides over the whole digitised memory of humanity and carefully constructs out of actual news and documentary footage the story of our demise. These narratives and others like them ultimately serve, whatever their intentions, to domesticate the end of humanity through the logic of a post-human mastery of the story of our own obliteration. The starker truth with which Melancholia confronts us is that the end of humanity cannot and will not be internalised by any process of human memorialisation. Von Trier’s film does not portray any post-catastrophe world from which we might be able to extract a degree of psychological comfort or residual sense of mastery. Rather, the narrative frame is entirely bounded by the impact event, which we witness first in the film’s opening shots and then again at its close. There is no narrative time posterior to the impact and yet for us, the viewers, everything happens in its shattering aftermath, according to the strange non-successional logic of the future-anterior. Everything begins and ends with the moment of impact. If the narrative itself is concerned with the lives of the characters, particularly the effects of the main character’s depression on her family relationships, then the film’s central event remains radically disjunctive, incapable of being processed on this interpersonal level through the standard cinematic tropes of the disaster or survival genres. The value of regarding Melancholia as an environmental film, then, is that it profoundly de-psychologises the prospect of our extinction while forcing the burden of this event’s unfathomable content onto us. Von Trier’s film suggests that melancholy, not mourning, is a more apt emotional register for ecological crisis and for the extinction awareness it brings, and in this sense Melancholia represents a valuable alternative to more standard environmental narratives which remain susceptible to ideological reinscriptions of human (or post-human) mastery. As ecocritic Timothy Morton suggests, “melancholy is more apt, even more ethically appropriate, to an ecological situation in which the worst has already happened, and in which we find ourselves [...] already fully implicated” (75–6). The most influential account of mourning and melancholia comes from Sigmund Freud, who described these attitudes as two different ways of dealing with loss. In the process of mourning, Freud states that there comes the realisation “that the loved object no longer exists” which “[demands] that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object” (245). The healthy outcome of this very painful process is that our libidinal attachments are free once again to take on another object of love; the lost object can be replaced according to a logic of temporal succession. Melancholia also results from a loss, says Freud, but this time it relates not simply or primarily to a replaceable external object but, more complexly, to something in the ego itself, not a discrete thing in the world but a certain way of being in the world which the lost object facilitated. Freud writes that the trauma of melancholia is thus manifested by the ego itself taking on or embodying the loss. The ego, stripped of its sense of being, comes to mimic the non-existence of that which once supported it. The “delusion” of the melancholic’s depressive state, says Freud, stems from the fact that something has ruptured her affective and libidinal attachment to the world, but this cannot be psychologically processed in terms of a replaceable loss since what is lost was never simply an external object. Her world is struck by an absence that cannot be mourned because it is kept alive as a non-being which she is. She has taken on the burden of this structural impossibility and does not pursue an imaginary resolution of it which, to invoke Žižek’s Lacanian terms once more, would involve her submitting to the subjective position of fantasy (i.e. becoming a witness to her own non-existence). The melancholic’s attitude is, Freud observes, “psychologically very remarkable” because it involves “an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life” (246). The melancholic carves out an existence apparently contrary to nature. This is the context in which Justine remarks that the earth, as an ungrievable object, is “evil.” Her melancholia is never explained in the course of the film, and, indeed, we see little of her personality apart from the events which manifest her psychological crisis. The film opens with the moment of interplanetary impact itself. The great blue planet of Melancholia approaches and begins to swallow the earth into its atmosphere. We cut immediately to Justine and her sister in the moments just before the impact: the air is electrified by the approaching collision and birds cascade from the trees. Our way into the narrative is this moment of chaos and dispersion, but von Trier’s depiction of it, his use of highly choreographed slow-motion shots resembling tableaux vivants, distance us from any sense of urgency or immediacy. It is as if the closer we come to the collision, the less real and the more stylised the world becomes; as if the impact holds a content which cannot be rendered in realist terms. By contrast, the subsequent scenes focusing on Justine’s interpersonal drama use a shaky, handheld camera which embeds us in the action. The narrative follows Justine on her wedding day. As events unfold we see cracks appear in the wedding party’s luxurious facade: Justine’s divorced parents argue viciously; her wealthy brother-in-law, who funded the wedding, fears that the occasion may be ruined by petty squabbling, to his great expense. Beneath these cracks, however, we realise that there is a deeper, more inexplicable crack opening up within Justine herself. At one point she retreats with her newlywed husband from the tumult of the wedding party. We expect from this scene an articulation or partial resolution, perhaps, of Justine’s mental conflict, or at least an insight into her character. In a more conventional story, this moment of conjugal intimacy would allow Justine to express an “authentic” desire, distinct from the superficial squabbling of her family, a means to “be herself.” But this doesn’t happen. Justine inexplicably rejects her husband’s overtures. In clinical terms, we might say that Justine’s behaviour corresponds to “anhedonia,” a loss of interest in the normal sources of pleasure or enjoyment. Invoking Freud, we could add to this that the very objective viability of her libidinal attachments has been called into question and that this is what precipitates her crisis. If such attachments are what ground us in reality, Justine’s desire seems to have become ungrounded through the emergence of something “nonobjectifiable,” to borrow a term from philosophers Deleuze and Guattari (What is Philosophy?, 209). This “something” is revealed only in the second half of the film with the appearance of Melancholia and the prospect of its obliterating impact. Justine is drawn to this new planet, in one scene luxuriating naked beneath its blue glow. We could argue, in one sense, that she has discovered in Melancholia a correlate to her own self-destructive desire: the only thing that can possibly gratify her is the annihilation of the earth itself. However in another, more constructive sense, we can say that her melancholic desire amounts to a kind of geophilosophical critique, a political and ultimately ecological protest against the territorialisation of her desire according to a supposed acceptability of objects. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that, if desire’s libidinal attachments form a kind of ground or “territory” then all territories interact with one another at some level because they are all equally founded on “lines of deterritorialization” sweeping them towards a mutually shared, extra-territorial outside (A Thousand Plateaus, 9). Or, putting it in plainer terms: beneath every ground is a non-ground such that the earth cannot ultimately ground itself in itself. Every mental, material, or social territory is founded upon this global movement of ungrounding. The trauma of Justine’s melancholia refers us to something which cannot be resolved within the given territories of her social or interpersonal milieus. While her illness can be registered in terms of the events of the film’s narrative time, the film’s central event—the collision with Melancholia—remains irreducible to the memorial properties of storytelling. We may thus argue that the impact event is not strictly speaking an element of the film’s narrative, but rather a pure cinematic sign evoking a radical form of ecological openness. The film moves through different territories—conjugal, familial, economic, scientific—but what propels us from one territory to another is the impact event whose content is reducible to none of these territories. Of all the film’s characters, only Justine is “open” to this absolute irreducibility, this resistance to closure. Her openness to Melancholia is not determined by whether or not it can be objectified, that is, rendered assimilable to the terms of a given territory. Both her brother-in-law (an amateur astronomer) and her sister attempt to calculate the chances of impact, but Justine remains open to it in a manner which does not close off that which precludes survival. In the end, as Melancholia bears down on the Earth, Justine’s attitude—which in Freud’s terms is antithetical to the instinct for life—turns out to be the most appropriate one. The point of this article is certainly not to argue that we should acquiesce to the traumatic realities of environmental crisis. Its aim, rather, is to suggest that well-being and harmony may no longer describe the appropriate emotional register for ecological thinking, given the current urgency of the crisis. Human and ecological health may, after all, be radically different and incommensurable things. The great anthropologist and structuralist thinker Claude Lévi-Strauss once remarked: I am concerned with the well-being of plants and animals that are threatened by humanity. I think ecologists make the mistake of thinking that they can defend humans and nature at the same time. I think it is necessary to decide if one prefers humans or nature. I am on the side of nature (qtd in Conley, 66). Lévi-Strauss may well be right when he says that a common human and ecological health may be an illusion of wishful thinking. However, what if there is a common trauma, whose ineradicability would not be a tragedy but, rather, evidence of radical openness in which we no longer have to pick sides (humans or plants and animals)? What if the proper “base” from which to begin thinking ecologically were not a conception of a harmonious human-ecological whole but a foundational non-harmony, an encounter with which contains something ineliminably traumatising? In a recent paper, the philosopher Reza Negarestani proposes just such a traumatic account of ecological openness. All existence, understood geophilosophically, is, says Negarestani, “conditioned by a concatenation of traumas or cuts [...] there is no single or isolated psychic trauma [...] there is no psychic trauma without an organic trauma and no organic trauma without a terrestrial trauma that in turn is deepened into open cosmic vistas.” Ecological openness, in this sense, would be necessarily melancholic, in the terms described above, in that it would necessitate the perpetual precariousness of those links by which we seek to ground ourselves. Ecology is all too often given to a “mournful” attitude, which is, as we’ve argued, the very attitude of psychological incorporation, healing, and normalisation. Similarly, “nature,” we are told, holds the key to harmonious self-regulation. 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Pentingnya membangun OCB tidak lepas dari komitmen karyawan dalam organisasi. Komitmen karyawan akan mendorong terciptanya OCB dan tanpa adanya kontrol yang baik dalam pemberian kompensasi yang sesuai dengan hasil kerja tentunya memperlambat kerja pegawai. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji dan menganalisis pengaruh kompensasi dan komitmen organisasi terhadap kepuasan kerja dan OCB. Jumlah responden dalam penelitian ini berjumlah 86 orang. Pengumpulan data diperoleh dengan kuesioner menggunakan skala likert. Metode analisis data menggunakan Path Analysis. Hasil penelitian diperoleh bahwa kompensasi berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap kepuasan kerja dan Kepuasan kerja berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap OCB. Kata Kunci : Komitmen Organisasi, Kompensasi, Kepuasan kerja dan OCBDAFTAR PUSTAKA Bangun, Wilson. (2012). Manajemen Sumber Daya Manusia. Erlangga. Jakarta. Bernardin, H. John, & Joyce E.A Russel. (2003). 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This article will look at the use of personal photographs that attempt to convey a sense of social activism as a reaction against global terrorism. Moreover, I argue that the photographs uploaded to the site “We’re Not Afraid”, which began after the London bombings in 2005, presents a forum to promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defence against the anxiety of terror. What is compelling are the ways in which the Website promotes, seemingly, everyday modalities through what may be deemed as the domestic snapshot. Nevertheless, the aura from the context of these images operates to arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence. It promotes photography’s spectacular power. To begin it is worthwhile considering the ways in which the spectacle of terrorism is mediated. For example, the bombs activated on the London Underground and at Tavistock Square on the 7th of July 2005 marked the day that London became a victim of ‘global’ terrorism, re-instilling the fear projected by the media to be alarmed and to be suspicious. In the shadow of the terrorist events of September 11, as well as the Madrid Bombings in 2004, the incidents once again drew attention to the point that in the Western world ‘we’ again can be under attack. Furthermore, the news media plays a vital role in mediating the reality and the spectacle of terrorist attacks in the display of visual ‘proof’. After the London bombings of 7 July 2005, the BBC Website encouraged photo submissions of the incidents, under the heading “London Explosions: Your Photos”, thus promoting citizen journalism. Within six hours the BBC site received more that 1000 photographs. According to Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC’s World Service and Global News division, “people were participating in our coverage in way we had never seen before” (13). Other news Websites, such as Reuters and MSNBC also set up a similar call and display of the incidents. The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the trauma of terrorism in which they became active participants in the reportage. Leading British newspapers further evoked the sensational terror of the incidents through the captioning of horrific images of destruction. It contextualised them within the realm of fascination and fear with headlines such as “London’s Day of Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text – title, caption or article – accompanying every press photograph” (16). He suggested that, with the rise to prominence of ‘the press photograph’ as a mode of visual communication, the traditional relationship between image and text was inverted: “it is not the image which comes to elucidate or ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which comes to sublimate, patheticize or rationalize the image” (25). Frederic Jameson raises a very important point in regards to the role the media plays in terror. He suggests that the Western media is not only affected by a permanent condition of amnesia, but that this has become its primary ‘informational function’ (20). Hence, terror images are constantly repeated for their affect. “When combined with the media, terrorism’s reality-making power is astounding: its capacity to blend the media’s sensational stories, old mythical stereotypes, and a burning sense of moral wrath” (Zulaika and Douglass ix). Susan Sontag, in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others, also discusses the assault of images (116). She argues that “the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree. The sufferings most often deemed worthy of representation are those understood to be the product of wrath, divine or human” (40). Furthermore, globalisation has profoundly changed the rhetoric of terrorism in which the uses of photographs for political means are ubiquitous. Sontag argues that “it seems as if there is a greater quantity of such news than before” (116). Nevertheless, she stresses, “it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad” (116). Rather, than the focus on images of despair, the “We’re Not Afraid” Website provides a reaction against visual assaults. The images suggest a turning away from the iconography of terror and suffering to a focus on everyday western middle-class modalities. The images on the site consist of domestic ritual photographic practices, such as family snapshots. The images were disseminated following what has been referred to as the ‘incidents’ by the British press of the attacks on 7 July on the London transport system. Significantly, rather than being described as an event, such as the September 11 terrorist assaults were, the term ‘incidents’ suggests that everyday modalities, the everyday ways of being, may not be affected despite the terror of the attacks. It is, perhaps, a very British approach to the idea of ‘moving on’ despite adversity, which the Website advocates. The Website invites the general public to upload personal photographs captioned with the phrase “We’re not afraid” to “show that terrorists would not change the way people lived their lives” (Clarke).The Website began on 7 July 2005 and during the first week the site received, at times, up to 15 images a minute from across the world (Nikkah). Notably, within days of the Website’s launch it received over 3500 images and 11 million hits (Clarke).The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the incidents. These images seem to support Susan Sontag’s argument from On Photography, in which she argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The images present a social activism for the predominantly white middle-class online participants and, as such, is subversive in its move away from the contextualised sensational images of violence that abound in the mainstream press. According to the site’s creator, London Web designer, Alfie Dennen “the idea for this site came from a picture of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Dennen’s own weblog. Someone else added the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’ alongside the image” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). Hence, in Dennen’s Weblog the terror and trauma of the train images of the London underground, that were circulated in the main stream press, have been recontextualised by the caption to present defiance and survival. The images uploaded onto the Website range from personal snapshots to manipulated photographs which all bear the declaration: ‘We are not afraid’. Currently, there are 770 galleries with 24 images per gallery amounting to around 18500 images that have been sent to the site. The photographs provide a crack in the projected reality of terrorism and the iconography of suffering as espoused by the mainstream media. The Website claims: We’re not afraid is an outlet for the global community to speak out against the acts of terror that have struck London, Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel-Aviv, Afghanistan, Bali, and against the atrocities occurring in cities around the world each and every day. It is a worldwide action for people not willing to be cowed by terrorism and fear mongering. It suggests that: The historical response to these types of attacks has been a show of deadly force; we believe that there is a better way. We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear. We are not afraid. (“we’re not afraid.com: Citizens for a secure world, united against terror.”) The images evoke the social memory of our era of global terrorism. Arguably, the events since September 11 have placed the individual in a protection mode. The photographs represent, as Sontag espouses, a tool against the anxiety of our time. This is a turn away from the visual iconography of despair. As such, rather than images of suffering they are images of survival, or life carrying on as usual. Or, more precisely, the images represent depictions of everyday western middle-class existence. The images range from family snaps, touristic photographs, pictures of the London underground and some manipulated images all containing the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’. Dennen “said the site had become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London and say they will not be cowed by the bombings” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). The photographs also serve as a form of protection of western middle-class values and lifestyle that may be threatened by terrorist acts. Of consideration is that “personal photographs not only bind us to our own pasts – they bind us to the pasts of the social groups to which we belong” (Gye 280). The images on the site may be described as a “revocation of social power through visibility” and as such photography is considered a “performance of power” (Frosh 46). Barthes asserts that “formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination” (25). The images loaded onto the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ assumes notions of resilience and defiance which can be closely linked to Anglo-American cultural memory and imagination. Significantly, efforts to influence ‘heart and minds’ through support of touring exhibitions were common in the earlier days of the Cold War. Sontag argues that “photographic collections can be used to substitute a world” (162). The images exalted a universal humanism, similarly to the images on the “We’re Not Afraid” site. Many exhibits were supported throughout the 1950s, often under the auspices of the USIA (United States Information Agency). A famous example is the photography exhibit ‘The Family of Man’ which travelled to 28 countries between 1955-59 and was seen by 9 million people (Kennedy 316). It contained 503 images, 273 photographers from 68 nations “it posited humanity as a universal ideal and human empathy as a compensatory response to the threat of nuclear annihilation” (Kennedy 322). Significantly, Liam Kennedy asserts that, the Cold War rhetoric surrounding the exhibition blurred the boundaries between art, information and propaganda. The exhibition has been critiqued ideologically as an imperialist project, most notably by Allan Sekula in which he states “the worldliness of photography is the outcome, not of any immanent universality of meaning, but of a project of global domination” (96). In more recent times an exhibition, backed by the US State Department titled ‘After September 11: Images from Ground Zero’, by photojournalist/art photographer Joel Meyorowitz travelled to more than 60 countries and assisted in shaping and maintaining a public memory of the attacks of the World Trade Centre and its aftermath (Kennedy 315). Similar, to ‘The Family of Man’, it adds an epic quality to the images. As Kennedy points out that: To be sure this latter exhibit has been more overtly designed as propaganda, yet it also carries the cachet of ‘culture’ (most obviously, via the signature of a renowned photographer) and is intended to transmit a universal message that transcends the politics of difference. (Kennedy 323) The Website “We’re Not Afraid’ maintains the public memory of terrorism, without the horror of suffering. With a ‘universal message’ similar to the aforementioned exhibitions, it attempts to transcends the politics of difference by addressing the ‘we’ as the ‘everyday’ citizen. It serves as a gallery space and similarly evokes western romantic universal ideals conveyed in the exhibition ‘The Family of Man’, whilst its aesthetic forms avoid the stylististically captured scenes of ‘After September 11’. As stated earlier, the site had over 11 million hits in the first few weeks; as such the sheer number of viewers exceeds that of any formal photographic exhibition. Moreover, unlike these highly constructed art exhibitions from leading professional photographers, the Website significantly presents a democratic form of participation in which the ‘personal is political’. It is the citizen journalist. It is the ‘everyday’ person, as evidenced in the predominant snapshot aesthetics and the ordinariness in the images that are employed. Kris Cohen, in his analysis of photoblogging suggests that this aesthetic emphasises the importance in “photoblogging of not thinking too much, of the role that instinct plays in the making of photographs and the photoblog” (890). As discussed, previously, the overwhelming response and contributions to the Website within days of its launch seems to suggest this. The submission of photographs suggests a visceral response to the incidents from the ‘people’ in the celebration of the ‘everyday’ and the mundane. It also should be noted that “there are now well over a million documented blogs and photoblogs in the world”, with most appearing since 2003 (Cohen 886). As Cohen suggests “their newfound popularity has provoked a gentle storm of press, along with a significant number of utopic scenarios in which blogs feature as the next emancipatory mass media product”(886). The world-wide press coverage for the “We’re Not Afraid’ site is one key example that promotes this “utopian vision of transfigured citizens and in Benedict Anderson’s well used term an ‘imagined community” (Goggin xx). Nevertheless, the defiant captioning of the images also returns us historically to the social memory of the London Blitz 1940-41 in which the theme of a transfigured community was employed and in which the London underground and shelters became a signifier for the momentum of “We’re Not Afraid’. Barthes explained in Mythologies about the “the sight of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history” (11). What I want to argue is that the mythology surrounding the London bombings articulated in the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ is determined by 20th Century history of the media and the cultural imaginary surrounding predominantly British values*.** *The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, asserted that “qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history.” (“Blair Defines British Values”). These values are suggested in the types of photographs uploaded onto the activist Website, as such notions of the British Empire are evoked. Moreover, in his address following the incident, “Blair harkened back to the ‘Blitz spirit’ that saw Londoners through the dark days of Nazi bombing during World War II — and, by association, to Winston Churchill, the wartime leader whose determined, moving speeches helped steel the national resolve” (“Blair Delivers”). In his Churchillian cadence he paid “tribute to the stoicism and resilience of the people of London who have responded in a way typical of them”. He said Britain would show “by our spirit and dignity” that “our values will long outlast” the terrorists. He further declared that “the purpose of terrorism is just that. It is to terrorize people and we will not be terrorized” (“Blair Delivers”). The mythology of the Blitz and “the interpretive context at the time (and for some years thereafter) can be summarized by the phrase ‘the People’s War’—a populist patriotism that combined criticism of the past with expectations of social change and inclusive messages of shared heritage and values” (Field 31). The image conveyed is of a renewed sense of community. The language of triumph against adversity and the endurance of ordinary citizens are also evoked in the popular press of the London incidents. The Times announced: Revulsion and resolve: Despite the shock, horror and outrage, the calm shown in London was exemplary. Ordinary life may be inconvenienced by the spectre of terror, yet terrorism will not force free societies to abandon their fundamental features. An attack was inevitable. The casualties were dreadful. The terrorists have only strengthened the resolve of Britain and its people. (“What the Papers Say”) Similarly the Daily Express headline was “We Britons Will Never Be Defeated” (“What the Papers Say”). The declaration of “We’re not afraid” alongside images on the Website follows on from this trajectory. The BBC reported that the Website “‘We’re not afraid’ gives Londoners a voice” (“Not Afraid Website Overwhelmed”). The BBC has also made a documentary concerning the mission and the somewhat utopian principles presented. Similarly discussion of the site has been evoked in other Weblogs that overwhelmingly praise it and very rarely question its role. One example is from a discussion of “We’re Not Afraid” on another activist site titled “World Changing: Change Your Thinking”. The contributor states: Well, I live in the UK and I am afraid. I’m also scared that sites like We’re Not Afraid encourage an unhealthy solidarity of superiority, nationalism and xenophobia – perpetuating a “we’re good” and “they’re evil” mentality that avoids the big picture questions of how we got here. Posted by: John Norris at July 8, 2005 03:45 AM Notably, this statement also reiterates the previous argument on cultural diplomacy presented by theorists in regards to the exhibitions of ‘The Family of Man’ and ‘After September 11’ in which the images are viewed as propaganda, promoting western cultural values. This is also supported by the mood of commentary in the British press since the London bombings, in which it is argued that “Britain and the British way of life are under threat, the implication being that the threat is so serious that it may ultimately destroy the nation and its values” (King). The significance of the Website is that it represents a somewhat democratic medium in its call for engagement and self-expression. Furthermore, the emancipatory photography of self and space, presented in the “We’re Not Afraid” site, echoes Blair’s declaration of “we will not be terrorized”. However, it follows similar politically conservative themes that were evoked in the Blitz, such as community, family and social stability, with tacit reference to social fragmentation and multi-ethnicity (Field 41-42). In general, as befitted the theme of “a People’s War,” the Blitz imagery was positive and sympathetic in the way it promoted the endurance of the ordinary citizen. Geoffrey Field suggests “it offered an implicit rejoinder to the earlier furor—focusing especially on brave, caring mothers who made efforts to retain some semblance of family under the most difficult circumstances and fathers who turned up for work no matter how heavy the bombing had been the night before” (24). Images on the Website consist of snapshots of babies, families, pets, sporting groups, people on holiday and at celebrations. It represents a, somewhat, global perspective of middle-class values. The snapshot aesthetic presents, what Liz Kotz refers to as, the “aesthetics of intimacy”. It is a certain kind of photographic work which is quasi-documentary and consists of “colour images of individuals, families, or groupings, presented in an apparently intimate, unposed manner, shot in an off-kilter, snapshot style, often a bit grainy, unfocused, off-colour” (204). These are the types of images that provide the visual gratification of solidarity amongst its contributors and viewers, as it seemingly appears more ‘real’. Yet, Kotz asserts that these type of photographs also involve a structure of power relations “that cannot be easily evaded by the spontaneous performance before the lens” (210). For example, Sarah Boxer importantly points out that “We’re Not Afraid”, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they’re not afraid of the have-nots” (1). She argues that “there’s a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure” (1). The iconography in the images of “We’re not Afraid” certainly promotes a ‘memorialisation’ of the middle-class sphere. The site draws attention to the values of the global neoliberal order in which capital accumulation is paramount. It, nevertheless, also attempts to challenge “the true victory of terrorism”, which Jean Baudrillard circumspectly remarks is in “the regression of the value system, of all the ideology of freedom and free movement etc… that the Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its eyes its power over the rest of the world”. Self-confidence is conveyed in the images. Moreover, with the subjects welcoming gaze to the camera there may be a sense of narcissism in publicising what could be considered mundane. However, visibility is power. For example, one of the contributors, Maryland USA resident Darcy Nair, said “she felt a sense of helplessness in the days after 9/11. Posting on the We’re Not Afraid may be a small act, but it does give people like her a sense that they’re doing something” (cited in Weir). Nair states that: It seems that it is the only good answer from someone like me who’s not in the government or military…There are so many other people who are joining in. When bunches of individuals get together – it does make me feel hopeful – there are so many other people who feel the same way. (cited in Weir) Participation in the Website conveys a power which consists of defiantly celebrating western middle-class aesthetics in the form of personal photography. As such, the personal becomes political and the private becomes public. The site offers an opportunity for a shared experience and a sense of community that perhaps is needed in the era of global terrorism. It could be seen as a celebration of survival (Weir). The Website seems inspirational with its defiant message. Moreover, it also has postings from various parts of the world that convey a message of triumph in the ‘everyday’. The site also presents the ubiquitous use of photography in a western cultural tradition in which idealised constructions are manifested in ‘Kodak’ moments and in which the domestic space and leisure times are immortalised and become, significantly, the arena of activism. As previously discussed Sontag argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The Website offers the sense of a global connection. It promotes itself as “citizens for a secure world, united against terror”. It attempts to provide a universal solidarity, which appears uplifting. It is a defence against anxiety in which, in the act of using personal photographs, it becomes part of the collective memory and assists in easing the frustration of not being able to do anything. As Sontag argues “often something looks, or is felt to look ‘better’ in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things” (81). Rather than focus on the tragic victim of traditional photojournalism, in which the camera is directed towards the other, the site promotes the sharing and triumph of personal moments. In the spotlight are ‘everyday’ modalities from ‘everyday people’ attempting to confront the rhetoric of terrorism. In their welcoming gaze to the camera the photographic subjects challenge the notion of the sensational image, the spectacle that is on show is that of middle-class modalities and a performance of collective power. Note Themes from this article have been presented at the 2005 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference in Sydney, Australia and at the 2006 Association for Cultural Studies Crossroads Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. References Barthes, Roland. “The Photographic Message.” Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday Press, 1977 [1961]. 15-31. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993 [1972]. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Spirit of Terrorism.” Trans. Rachel Bloul. La Monde 2 (2001). < http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html >. “Blair Defines British Values.” BBC News 28 Mar. 2000. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/693591.stm >. “Blair Delivers a Classically British Rallying Cry.” Associated Press 7 July 2005. < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8502984/ >. Boxter, Sarah. “On the Web, Fearlessness Meets Frivolousness.” The York Times 12 July 2005. < http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/arts/design/12boxe.html?ex= 1278820800&en=e3b207245991aea8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss >. Clarke, R. “Web Site Shows Defiance to Bombers: Thousands Send Images to Say ‘We Are Not Afraid.’” CNN International 12 July 2005. < http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/11/london.website/ >. “CJ Bombings in London.” MSNBC TV Citizen Journalist. < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8499792/ >. Cohen, Kris R. “What Does the Photoblog Want?” Media, Culture & Society 27.6 (2005): 883-901. Dennen, Alfie. “We’renotafraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United Against Terror.” < http://www.werenotafraid.com/ >. Field, Geoffrey. “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940–1941.” International Labor and Working-Class History 62 (2002): 11-49. Frosh, Paul. “The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power.” Social Semiotics 11.1 (2001): 43-59. Gye, Lisa. “Picture This: The Impact of Mobile Camera Phones on Personal Photographic Practices.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.2 (2007): 279-288. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern. New York: Verso, 1998. 1-20. Kennedy, Liam. “Remembering September 11: Photography as Cultural Diplomacy.” International Affairs 79.2 (2003): 315-326. King, Anthony. “What Does It Mean to Be British?” Telegraph 27 May 2005. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/27/ nbrit27.xml >. Kotz, Liz. “The Aesthetics of Intimacy.” In D. Bright (ed.), The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. London: Routledge, 1998. 204-215. “London Explosions: Your Photos.” BBC News 8 July 2005 < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4660563.stm >. Nikkhah, Roya. “We’restillnotafraid.com.” Telegraph co.uk 23 July 2005. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/24/ nseven224.xml >. “‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed.” BBC News 12 July 2005. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/4674425.stm >. Norris, John. “We’re Not Afraid”. World Changing: Change Your Thinking. < http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003069.html >. “Reuters: You Witness News.” < http://www.reuters.com/youwitness >. Sambrook, Richard. “Citizen Journalism and the BBC.” Nieman Reports (Winter 2005): 13-16. Sekula, Allan. “The Traffic in Photographs.” In Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photoworks 1973-1983. Halifax Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia College Press, 1984. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2003. Sontag. Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1977. Weir, William. “The Global Community Support and Sends a Defiant Message to Terrorists.” Hartford Courant 14 July 2005. < http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/newsarchive/news05/jul05/notafraid.html >. We’renot afraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United against Terror. < http://www.werenotafraid.com >. “What the Papers Say.” Media Guardian 8 July 2005. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jul/08/pressandpublishing.terrorism1 >. Zulaika, Joseba, and William A. Douglass. Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 1996.

This article will look at the use of personal photographs that attempt to convey a sense of social activism as a reaction against global terrorism. Moreover, I argue that the photographs uploaded to the site “We’re Not Afraid”, which began after the London bombings in 2005, presents a forum to promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defence against the anxiety of terror. What is compelling are the ways in which the Website promotes, seemingly, everyday modalities through what may be deemed as the domestic snapshot. Nevertheless, the aura from the context of these images operates to arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence. It promotes photography’s spectacular power. To begin it is worthwhile considering the ways in which the spectacle of terrorism is mediated. For example, the bombs activated on the London Underground and at Tavistock Square on the 7th of July 2005 marked the day that London became a victim of ‘global’ terrorism, re-instilling the fear projected by the media to be alarmed and to be suspicious. In the shadow of the terrorist events of September 11, as well as the Madrid Bombings in 2004, the incidents once again drew attention to the point that in the Western world ‘we’ again can be under attack. Furthermore, the news media plays a vital role in mediating the reality and the spectacle of terrorist attacks in the display of visual ‘proof’. After the London bombings of 7 July 2005, the BBC Website encouraged photo submissions of the incidents, under the heading “London Explosions: Your Photos”, thus promoting citizen journalism. Within six hours the BBC site received more that 1000 photographs. According to Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC’s World Service and Global News division, “people were participating in our coverage in way we had never seen before” (13). Other news Websites, such as Reuters and MSNBC also set up a similar call and display of the incidents. The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the trauma of terrorism in which they became active participants in the reportage. Leading British newspapers further evoked the sensational terror of the incidents through the captioning of horrific images of destruction. It contextualised them within the realm of fascination and fear with headlines such as “London’s Day of Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text – title, caption or article – accompanying every press photograph” (16). He suggested that, with the rise to prominence of ‘the press photograph’ as a mode of visual communication, the traditional relationship between image and text was inverted: “it is not the image which comes to elucidate or ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which comes to sublimate, patheticize or rationalize the image” (25). Frederic Jameson raises a very important point in regards to the role the media plays in terror. He suggests that the Western media is not only affected by a permanent condition of amnesia, but that this has become its primary ‘informational function’ (20). Hence, terror images are constantly repeated for their affect. “When combined with the media, terrorism’s reality-making power is astounding: its capacity to blend the media’s sensational stories, old mythical stereotypes, and a burning sense of moral wrath” (Zulaika and Douglass ix). Susan Sontag, in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others, also discusses the assault of images (116). She argues that “the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree. The sufferings most often deemed worthy of representation are those understood to be the product of wrath, divine or human” (40). Furthermore, globalisation has profoundly changed the rhetoric of terrorism in which the uses of photographs for political means are ubiquitous. Sontag argues that “it seems as if there is a greater quantity of such news than before” (116). Nevertheless, she stresses, “it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad” (116). Rather, than the focus on images of despair, the “We’re Not Afraid” Website provides a reaction against visual assaults. The images suggest a turning away from the iconography of terror and suffering to a focus on everyday western middle-class modalities. The images on the site consist of domestic ritual photographic practices, such as family snapshots. The images were disseminated following what has been referred to as the ‘incidents’ by the British press of the attacks on 7 July on the London transport system. Significantly, rather than being described as an event, such as the September 11 terrorist assaults were, the term ‘incidents’ suggests that everyday modalities, the everyday ways of being, may not be affected despite the terror of the attacks. It is, perhaps, a very British approach to the idea of ‘moving on’ despite adversity, which the Website advocates. The Website invites the general public to upload personal photographs captioned with the phrase “We’re not afraid” to “show that terrorists would not change the way people lived their lives” (Clarke).The Website began on 7 July 2005 and during the first week the site received, at times, up to 15 images a minute from across the world (Nikkah). Notably, within days of the Website’s launch it received over 3500 images and 11 million hits (Clarke).The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the incidents. These images seem to support Susan Sontag’s argument from On Photography, in which she argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The images present a social activism for the predominantly white middle-class online participants and, as such, is subversive in its move away from the contextualised sensational images of violence that abound in the mainstream press. According to the site’s creator, London Web designer, Alfie Dennen “the idea for this site came from a picture of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Dennen’s own weblog. Someone else added the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’ alongside the image” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). Hence, in Dennen’s Weblog the terror and trauma of the train images of the London underground, that were circulated in the main stream press, have been recontextualised by the caption to present defiance and survival. The images uploaded onto the Website range from personal snapshots to manipulated photographs which all bear the declaration: ‘We are not afraid’. Currently, there are 770 galleries with 24 images per gallery amounting to around 18500 images that have been sent to the site. The photographs provide a crack in the projected reality of terrorism and the iconography of suffering as espoused by the mainstream media. The Website claims: We’re not afraid is an outlet for the global community to speak out against the acts of terror that have struck London, Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel-Aviv, Afghanistan, Bali, and against the atrocities occurring in cities around the world each and every day. It is a worldwide action for people not willing to be cowed by terrorism and fear mongering. It suggests that: The historical response to these types of attacks has been a show of deadly force; we believe that there is a better way. We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear. We are not afraid. (“we’re not afraid.com: Citizens for a secure world, united against terror.”) The images evoke the social memory of our era of global terrorism. Arguably, the events since September 11 have placed the individual in a protection mode. The photographs represent, as Sontag espouses, a tool against the anxiety of our time. This is a turn away from the visual iconography of despair. As such, rather than images of suffering they are images of survival, or life carrying on as usual. Or, more precisely, the images represent depictions of everyday western middle-class existence. The images range from family snaps, touristic photographs, pictures of the London underground and some manipulated images all containing the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’. Dennen “said the site had become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London and say they will not be cowed by the bombings” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). The photographs also serve as a form of protection of western middle-class values and lifestyle that may be threatened by terrorist acts. Of consideration is that “personal photographs not only bind us to our own pasts – they bind us to the pasts of the social groups to which we belong” (Gye 280). The images on the site may be described as a “revocation of social power through visibility” and as such photography is considered a “performance of power” (Frosh 46). Barthes asserts that “formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination” (25). The images loaded onto the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ assumes notions of resilience and defiance which can be closely linked to Anglo-American cultural memory and imagination. Significantly, efforts to influence ‘heart and minds’ through support of touring exhibitions were common in the earlier days of the Cold War. Sontag argues that “photographic collections can be used to substitute a world” (162). The images exalted a universal humanism, similarly to the images on the “We’re Not Afraid” site. Many exhibits were supported throughout the 1950s, often under the auspices of the USIA (United States Information Agency). A famous example is the photography exhibit ‘The Family of Man’ which travelled to 28 countries between 1955-59 and was seen by 9 million people (Kennedy 316). It contained 503 images, 273 photographers from 68 nations “it posited humanity as a universal ideal and human empathy as a compensatory response to the threat of nuclear annihilation” (Kennedy 322). Significantly, Liam Kennedy asserts that, the Cold War rhetoric surrounding the exhibition blurred the boundaries between art, information and propaganda. The exhibition has been critiqued ideologically as an imperialist project, most notably by Allan Sekula in which he states “the worldliness of photography is the outcome, not of any immanent universality of meaning, but of a project of global domination” (96). In more recent times an exhibition, backed by the US State Department titled ‘After September 11: Images from Ground Zero’, by photojournalist/art photographer Joel Meyorowitz travelled to more than 60 countries and assisted in shaping and maintaining a public memory of the attacks of the World Trade Centre and its aftermath (Kennedy 315). Similar, to ‘The Family of Man’, it adds an epic quality to the images. As Kennedy points out that: To be sure this latter exhibit has been more overtly designed as propaganda, yet it also carries the cachet of ‘culture’ (most obviously, via the signature of a renowned photographer) and is intended to transmit a universal message that transcends the politics of difference. (Kennedy 323) The Website “We’re Not Afraid’ maintains the public memory of terrorism, without the horror of suffering. With a ‘universal message’ similar to the aforementioned exhibitions, it attempts to transcends the politics of difference by addressing the ‘we’ as the ‘everyday’ citizen. It serves as a gallery space and similarly evokes western romantic universal ideals conveyed in the exhibition ‘The Family of Man’, whilst its aesthetic forms avoid the stylististically captured scenes of ‘After September 11’. As stated earlier, the site had over 11 million hits in the first few weeks; as such the sheer number of viewers exceeds that of any formal photographic exhibition. Moreover, unlike these highly constructed art exhibitions from leading professional photographers, the Website significantly presents a democratic form of participation in which the ‘personal is political’. It is the citizen journalist. It is the ‘everyday’ person, as evidenced in the predominant snapshot aesthetics and the ordinariness in the images that are employed. Kris Cohen, in his analysis of photoblogging suggests that this aesthetic emphasises the importance in “photoblogging of not thinking too much, of the role that instinct plays in the making of photographs and the photoblog” (890). As discussed, previously, the overwhelming response and contributions to the Website within days of its launch seems to suggest this. The submission of photographs suggests a visceral response to the incidents from the ‘people’ in the celebration of the ‘everyday’ and the mundane. It also should be noted that “there are now well over a million documented blogs and photoblogs in the world”, with most appearing since 2003 (Cohen 886). As Cohen suggests “their newfound popularity has provoked a gentle storm of press, along with a significant number of utopic scenarios in which blogs feature as the next emancipatory mass media product”(886). The world-wide press coverage for the “We’re Not Afraid’ site is one key example that promotes this “utopian vision of transfigured citizens and in Benedict Anderson’s well used term an ‘imagined community” (Goggin xx). Nevertheless, the defiant captioning of the images also returns us historically to the social memory of the London Blitz 1940-41 in which the theme of a transfigured community was employed and in which the London underground and shelters became a signifier for the momentum of “We’re Not Afraid’. Barthes explained in Mythologies about the “the sight of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history” (11). What I want to argue is that the mythology surrounding the London bombings articulated in the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ is determined by 20th Century history of the media and the cultural imaginary surrounding predominantly British values*.** *The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, asserted that “qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history.” (“Blair Defines British Values”). These values are suggested in the types of photographs uploaded onto the activist Website, as such notions of the British Empire are evoked. Moreover, in his address following the incident, “Blair harkened back to the ‘Blitz spirit’ that saw Londoners through the dark days of Nazi bombing during World War II — and, by association, to Winston Churchill, the wartime leader whose determined, moving speeches helped steel the national resolve” (“Blair Delivers”). In his Churchillian cadence he paid “tribute to the stoicism and resilience of the people of London who have responded in a way typical of them”. He said Britain would show “by our spirit and dignity” that “our values will long outlast” the terrorists. He further declared that “the purpose of terrorism is just that. It is to terrorize people and we will not be terrorized” (“Blair Delivers”). The mythology of the Blitz and “the interpretive context at the time (and for some years thereafter) can be summarized by the phrase ‘the People’s War’—a populist patriotism that combined criticism of the past with expectations of social change and inclusive messages of shared heritage and values” (Field 31). The image conveyed is of a renewed sense of community. The language of triumph against adversity and the endurance of ordinary citizens are also evoked in the popular press of the London incidents. The Times announced: Revulsion and resolve: Despite the shock, horror and outrage, the calm shown in London was exemplary. Ordinary life may be inconvenienced by the spectre of terror, yet terrorism will not force free societies to abandon their fundamental features. An attack was inevitable. The casualties were dreadful. The terrorists have only strengthened the resolve of Britain and its people. (“What the Papers Say”) Similarly the Daily Express headline was “We Britons Will Never Be Defeated” (“What the Papers Say”). The declaration of “We’re not afraid” alongside images on the Website follows on from this trajectory. The BBC reported that the Website “‘We’re not afraid’ gives Londoners a voice” (“Not Afraid Website Overwhelmed”). The BBC has also made a documentary concerning the mission and the somewhat utopian principles presented. Similarly discussion of the site has been evoked in other Weblogs that overwhelmingly praise it and very rarely question its role. One example is from a discussion of “We’re Not Afraid” on another activist site titled “World Changing: Change Your Thinking”. The contributor states: Well, I live in the UK and I am afraid. I’m also scared that sites like We’re Not Afraid encourage an unhealthy solidarity of superiority, nationalism and xenophobia – perpetuating a “we’re good” and “they’re evil” mentality that avoids the big picture questions of how we got here. Posted by: John Norris at July 8, 2005 03:45 AM Notably, this statement also reiterates the previous argument on cultural diplomacy presented by theorists in regards to the exhibitions of ‘The Family of Man’ and ‘After September 11’ in which the images are viewed as propaganda, promoting western cultural values. This is also supported by the mood of commentary in the British press since the London bombings, in which it is argued that “Britain and the British way of life are under threat, the implication being that the threat is so serious that it may ultimately destroy the nation and its values” (King). The significance of the Website is that it represents a somewhat democratic medium in its call for engagement and self-expression. Furthermore, the emancipatory photography of self and space, presented in the “We’re Not Afraid” site, echoes Blair’s declaration of “we will not be terrorized”. However, it follows similar politically conservative themes that were evoked in the Blitz, such as community, family and social stability, with tacit reference to social fragmentation and multi-ethnicity (Field 41-42). In general, as befitted the theme of “a People’s War,” the Blitz imagery was positive and sympathetic in the way it promoted the endurance of the ordinary citizen. Geoffrey Field suggests “it offered an implicit rejoinder to the earlier furor—focusing especially on brave, caring mothers who made efforts to retain some semblance of family under the most difficult circumstances and fathers who turned up for work no matter how heavy the bombing had been the night before” (24). Images on the Website consist of snapshots of babies, families, pets, sporting groups, people on holiday and at celebrations. It represents a, somewhat, global perspective of middle-class values. The snapshot aesthetic presents, what Liz Kotz refers to as, the “aesthetics of intimacy”. It is a certain kind of photographic work which is quasi-documentary and consists of “colour images of individuals, families, or groupings, presented in an apparently intimate, unposed manner, shot in an off-kilter, snapshot style, often a bit grainy, unfocused, off-colour” (204). These are the types of images that provide the visual gratification of solidarity amongst its contributors and viewers, as it seemingly appears more ‘real’. Yet, Kotz asserts that these type of photographs also involve a structure of power relations “that cannot be easily evaded by the spontaneous performance before the lens” (210). For example, Sarah Boxer importantly points out that “We’re Not Afraid”, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they’re not afraid of the have-nots” (1). She argues that “there’s a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure” (1). The iconography in the images of “We’re not Afraid” certainly promotes a ‘memorialisation’ of the middle-class sphere. The site draws attention to the values of the global neoliberal order in which capital accumulation is paramount. It, nevertheless, also attempts to challenge “the true victory of terrorism”, which Jean Baudrillard circumspectly remarks is in “the regression of the value system, of all the ideology of freedom and free movement etc… that the Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its eyes its power over the rest of the world”. Self-confidence is conveyed in the images. Moreover, with the subjects welcoming gaze to the camera there may be a sense of narcissism in publicising what could be considered mundane. However, visibility is power. For example, one of the contributors, Maryland USA resident Darcy Nair, said “she felt a sense of helplessness in the days after 9/11. Posting on the We’re Not Afraid may be a small act, but it does give people like her a sense that they’re doing something” (cited in Weir). Nair states that: It seems that it is the only good answer from someone like me who’s not in the government or military…There are so many other people who are joining in. When bunches of individuals get together – it does make me feel hopeful – there are so many other people who feel the same way. (cited in Weir) Participation in the Website conveys a power which consists of defiantly celebrating western middle-class aesthetics in the form of personal photography. As such, the personal becomes political and the private becomes public. The site offers an opportunity for a shared experience and a sense of community that perhaps is needed in the era of global terrorism. It could be seen as a celebration of survival (Weir). The Website seems inspirational with its defiant message. Moreover, it also has postings from various parts of the world that convey a message of triumph in the ‘everyday’. The site also presents the ubiquitous use of photography in a western cultural tradition in which idealised constructions are manifested in ‘Kodak’ moments and in which the domestic space and leisure times are immortalised and become, significantly, the arena of activism. As previously discussed Sontag argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The Website offers the sense of a global connection. It promotes itself as “citizens for a secure world, united against terror”. It attempts to provide a universal solidarity, which appears uplifting. It is a defence against anxiety in which, in the act of using personal photographs, it becomes part of the collective memory and assists in easing the frustration of not being able to do anything. As Sontag argues “often something looks, or is felt to look ‘better’ in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things” (81). Rather than focus on the tragic victim of traditional photojournalism, in which the camera is directed towards the other, the site promotes the sharing and triumph of personal moments. In the spotlight are ‘everyday’ modalities from ‘everyday people’ attempting to confront the rhetoric of terrorism. In their welcoming gaze to the camera the photographic subjects challenge the notion of the sensational image, the spectacle that is on show is that of middle-class modalities and a performance of collective power. 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