Journal articles on the topic 'Brick-making industry'

The intention of Program Kemitraan Masyarakat Stimulus (PKMS), The Cooperated Program of Stimulus Community, is providing the training and empowerment on the process of concrete brick making to the cooperated group maker of solid concrete brick product at around Palangka Raya to enhance the product quality for the solid block (non-hole concrete brick) to be high quality with low price per unit, as well to improve the market demand of relating its product. The objective of this program is in order to be able improving the income of cooperated group maker of solid concrete brick product without disregarding the quality of produced concrete brick. The target of cooperation for this program, PKMS, is the home industry of concrete brick making owned by Mr. Ino and Mr. Alpi where are located at subdistrict of Panarung. The method used in this is the training, guidance, and further cross checking with some solutions in the production and marketing part. The training and guidance are implemented to achieve the high quality of solid block of concrete brick, followed by the knowledge of basic raw material, design of mixed model, maintenance, and testing of concrete brick quality. The main output will be the enhancement of solid block of concrete brick with high quality product. This activity will be published on the scientific and engineering publication such as journal and final report.

Spent bleaching earth (SBE) is a waste from cooking oil industry. It is categorized as one of the hazardous and toxic materials, because oil residues in it. Generally, SBE is overcome by landfill and it’s sometimes become problems. Basically SBE contains SiO2 and the size of the grain is very fine, almost the same as the fine aggregate of sand used for making brick. In this study, the making of brick used SBE with several variations (2.75% - 27.52%) of the total raw materials used. Brick making methods are based on SNI 03-0348-1989 for raw material ratio, SNI 03-0348-1989 for molding and presshing, SNI 03-6825-2002 for drying and curing. The brick quality was determined based on fineness modulus parameters, dry weight, brick absorption to water and compressive strength. Brick contain SBE 2.75% was produced with molding size of 15cm x 30cm x 9cm, it has an average dry weight of 7.80 kg, compressive strength of 8.95 MPa and absorbing power of 1.26%.

Reconstruction and urban development in Kabul, Afghanistan, has prompted vast expansion of the clay quarrying and brick making industry. This study identified the extent and distribution of clay quarrying and brick kilns in the greater Kabul area between 1965 and 2018. Very high-resolution satellite imagery was interpreted to quantify and characterize the type, number, and location of brick kilns for 1965, 2004, 2011, and 2018. Geospatial analysis of kilns together with geologic data and the results of hyperspectral image analysis yielded information regarding the extent of relevant mineral resources. Finally, kernel density analysis of kiln locations for each date called attention to their shifting spatial distribution. The study found that the clay quarrying and brick making industry has expanded exponentially. The type of kilns has transitioned from artisanal style clamp kilns to small-scale Bull’s Trench Kilns (BTK), and ultimately to Fixed Chimney Bull’s Trench Kilns (FCBTK). While quarrying has occurred entirely within quaternary windblown loess and clay deposits, artisanal clamp kilns were located in fine sediments containing montmorillonite and FCBTKs have developed in sediments containing calcite and muscovite. The study’s inventory of kilns was then used to estimate kiln workforce at 27,500 workers and production at 1.579 billion bricks per year.

Abstract. The Role of Majapahit Museum as a Mediator between Heritage Preservation and Brick-Making Industry. Trowulan, the archaeological site which is believed as the former capital of theMajapahit Kingdom, currently suffers damages caused by the local brick-making industry. Majapahit Museum is one of the institutions which can suppress, or even stop, the growth and development of thebrick-making industry. The aim of this research is to provide a recommendation for the development of Majapahit Museum in the future in order to work as a mediator that can bridge both interestsbetween heritage preservation (government, archaeologists, academicians, and non-governmental organizations) and local citizens, especially the brick-makers. The methods used on this research is qualitative method through observation and literature study, followed by analysis based on new museology approach and cultural resources management approach. Based on the result, it is expected that the Majapahit Museum can play a key-role in raising the awareness of local citizens of the importance of the Trowulan site. The preserved site will provide benefits and positive impacts to three aspects in society, which are ideological, academic, and economic aspects. Abstrak. Trowulan, situs arkeologi yang diduga merupakan ibukota Kerajaan Majapahit, mengalami kerusakan yang semakin hari semakin parah seiring dengan perkembangan industri pembuatan bata oleh masyarakat setempat. Museum Majapahit adalah salah satu pihak yang dapat tampildalam upaya menekan, atau bahkan menghentikan, laju pertumbuhan dan perkembangan industri pembuatan bata tersebut. Penelitian dilakukan untuk memberikan suatu rekomendasi terhadap pengembangan Museum Majapahit pada masa mendatang agar dapat berperan sebagai mediator yangmenjembatani kepentingan pelestari budaya (baik pemerintah, arkeolog, akademisi, maupun Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat) dengan masyarakat Trowulan, khususnya para pembuat bata. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian adalah metode kualitatif melalui observasi dan studi literatur, disertaianalisis berdasarkan pendekatan new museology dan pendekatan cultural resources management. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, Museum Majapahit diharapkan berperan sebagai media yang mampu menanamkan dan menumbuhkan kesadaran masyarakat setempat mengenai pentingnya kelestarian Situs Trowulan. Situs yang lestari akan memberikan manfaat dan dampak positif terhadap tiga aspek di dalam kehidupan masyarakat, yaitu aspek ideologis, akademis, dan ekonomis.

Waste may be defined as an unwanted material generated after the manufacturing process from industry, agriculture, or from house hold activity. Waste causes many nuisances in the environment. It produces many types of infection, for human and animal. The sludge from tannery effluent plants has problem of disposal. Dewatered sludge is disposed off by land filling. However, it is not an appropriate solution, due to the land limitation. The production of sludge in tannery effluent plant is about to increase every year. In addition, the constraint to treat sludge is very high in cost and time-consuming, which is the disadvantage to the responsible parties. Therefore, this study was carried out to utilize those sludge waste (SW) produced from the tannery effluent plant as a brick. The sludge brick (SB) mixtures were incorporated with many ratios of SW. Tests were conducted such as fineness test, specific gravity, water absorption and compressive strength. As the conclusion, brick with 20% utilization of SW is acceptable to produce good quality of brick. This study shows that the disposal of tannery sludge TSW would act as a suitable material for manufacturing of bricks with proportionate mix and design.

From 1900 to 1940, family businesses in the brick- and tile-making industry of Athens and its port, Piraeus, were a notable institution that played an important role in the development of the sector and its transformation from artisanal to factory production. They formed a dense network of small and medium-scale units, from which more than 20 big factories would emerge after the 1920s. Α strong and constant antagonism between them, on the one side, and the few European-scale large industrial units, on the other, developed. Within this framework, the story of the Athens brick industry in this period can be vividly interpreted through the function and evolution of familial firms (which were under the control of nuclear, extended or multinuclear families) and the actions of their owners.

AbstractBuilding construction is one of the fastest growing industries in India and it puts a huge burden on its limited natural resources. Fired clay bricks are one of the major constituent materials for the construction industry and it produces a huge amount of greenhouse gases. This research tries to highlight the use of alternative materials and how they can be modulated to suit the Indian construction industry. Bio-brick or agro-waste based brick is one such material that has the potential to be a sustainable and cost-effective solution. It acts as good heat and sound insulator and at the same time has overall negative carbon footprint. Additionally, it also acts as a deterrent to stubble burning, prevalent in northern India which causes severe air pollution. Due to its low density, it reduces dead load in high rise structures, thereby making RCC construction more economical. The study also highlights the use of Bio-brick in various areas of a structure. Another important objective of this research is to inspire and motivate architects, designers, researchers and builders to encourage and support the development of such sustainable and eco-sensitive material in construction industry.

Choosing a supplier is a strategic activity, especially if the supplier will supply items that are used for a long period. PT. CPS is a company engaged in the construction services sector which also carries out procurement process activities, including the supplier selection process. In carrying out the building production process, PT. CPS requires the main raw material, namely light brick (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete). PT. CPS does not yet have a main supplier of light bricks AAC, and supplier selection is done subjectively and based on the lowest price without making certain calculations. This resulted in several problems such as miss communication during the process of ordering materials, and delays in delivery that made the company have to order from other suppliers. This study aims to calculate the criteria weight for light brick suppliers and select the best light brick supplier based on the weight criteria specified by PT. CPS. The process of making supplier evaluation criteria is carried out using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and ranking suppliers with the Technique Method for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). From the research results obtained weighting of 5 criteria, namely the criteria of price, quality, delivery, reputation and position in industry, and communication system by placing the price criterion as the criterion with the greatest weight, which was 0.56165. The supplier ranking results obtained the best light brick supplier in the first position, namely PT. Sinar Indogreen Kencana with a Preference Value of 0.76858, the second position of PT. Superior Prima Sukses with a Preference Value of 0.49827, and the third position is PT. Viccon Modern Industry with a Preference Value of 0.49448.

PT.Viccon Modren Industries is a company engaged in the brick industry light . Problems often arise during the process of making light brick is a lightweight brick compressive strength is not in accordance with company standards for ˃3,50 N / mm² , so the quality is not optimal light brick . In an effort to overcome these problems , it is necessary to control the production of Online Quality Control with Statistical Process Control methods to identify the root of the problems that occur in the production of lightweight brick . Statistical tools in Statistical Process Control methods include check sheets , Pareto charts , cause-effect diagrams , and maps control p . Then the data Statistical Process Control is integrated with the Taguchi method as Offline Quality Control to be used as a parameter in determining the factors that have significant influence in the optimization of compressive strength of lightweight brick. Based on the research showed that the factors significantly influence the light brick compressive strength is the amount of cement and gypsum number . Combination level of the factors that resulted in the average value and variance of compressive strength of lightweight brick that is optimal is the same , namely the setting factor water volume at level 2 for 150 Liter ( A2 ) , factor the amount of silica sand on level 2 of 550 Kg ( B2 ), cement jumalah factor on level 3 of 350 Kg ( C3 ) , as well as gypsum julah factor on level 3 of 300 Kg ( D3 ). Keywords : compressive strength , Statistical Process Control , Taguchi Methods.

Small industry has a big role in encouraging development in areas, especially rural areas, which cannot be separated from national development in accordance with regional autonomy and regional aspirations. One of the small industries to fulfill development is the brick-making industry manually because it still uses a simple process in its production. Manual brick making cannot be separated from the risks that will arise for workers, one of the risks is fatigue due to the workload carried out in the process of making bricks repeatedly, the workload can be in the form of physical loads or mental loads. Fatigue from work will reduce performance and increase the rate of work errors. Increasing work errors will provide opportunities for work accidents. From this it is necessary to measure workload on work fatigue from the results of the ergonomic analysis of brickwork manual workers with Linear Regression with web-based programming. Each worker will be recorded based on the category Initial Pulse, Work Rate, Body Weight, Blood Pressure, Height, Age, as well as several questions to workers needed to measure the workload against work fatigue. Questions about Activity Weakness and Physical Fatigue in a span of days (Very Often, Often, Sometimes, Never; to each worker. The conclusion from the results of the workload analysis has an influence on fatigue of work in making bricks manually, namely Normal or Not Fatigue 6 workers , and Needs Improvement 9 workers with the percentage classification of Cardiovascular Load (CVL) is 40% and 60%.

The study examines cottage industrial solid waste management practices in Mubi Metropolis where the generation and management were dominantly the focal points. Collection of data was largely based on reconnaissance and questionnaire surveys. The survey administered a set of questionnaire to 124 cottage firms, where data collected were summarized and presented in form of percentages and tables. Consequently, descriptive and quantitative statistical analysis for valid decision making was employed. Analysis however reveals the major types of cottage firms as grain polishing or husk removal, furniture making, bakery, flour mills, water packaging and brick/block industry, where findings shows waste generated by them being peculiar to what they produce, as saw dust, grain husk, charcoal and ashes pure water bags and brick/block rubbles. Some of the waste generated are reusable and are sold as animal feed or given out to people for free which is dumped on farmland as soil amend. Concerted cottage industrial waste reuse or recycling which partly forms the cornerstones to shrinking the overwhelming urban waste problem in the area is ardently recommended.

AbstractThis study uses transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and analytical electron microscopy (AEM) supported by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to investigate the mineralogical and textural changes produced in carbonated clays by firing. Sample bars were prepared using raw clays composed of quartz, illite and carbonates with minor amounts of smectite, chlorite, feldspars and Fe oxides. The raw samples were then fired at temperatures of between 800 and 1050°C. The XRD data show that increases in firing temperature result in dehydroxylation of clay minerals, carbonate decomposition and the formation of Ca-bearing silicates (e.g. gehlenite, wollastonite, pyroxenes and anorthite). The sizes of the Ca-silicate crystals make the use of the SEM inappropriate since they lie below the resolution threshold. However, TEM/AEM do provide the required textural and compositional characterization, revealing that there is a broad range of pyroxene compositions, some of which resemble fassaite, and that Ca/Mg ratios increase with temperature. The TEM also shows significant dehydroxylation and vitrification of the clay-rich matrix at T of ~800°C. Observed mineralogical and textural changes probably occurred in a system with a local disequilibrium much like small-scale, high-temperature metamorphic reactions (i.e. pyrometamorphism). The importance of these results is that they enable the selection of more appropriate raw clay composition and firing dynamics (temperature, firing duration and cooling rate) for both the brickmaking industry and brick conservation in the field of cultural heritage.

Desa Mekarmulya adalah salah satu desa dari 10 desa yang masuk dalam wilayah administratif Kecamatan Telukjambe Barat, Kabupaten Karawang. Dikepalai oleh seorang kepada desa dan dibantu oleh seorang sekretaris desa dan segenap perangkat desa. Desa Mekarmulya dikenal sebagai sentral industri rumahan (home industry) pembuatan batu bata merah pres. Hampir semua warga menjadi pembuat batu bata merah. Namun lambat laun usaha ini kian lesu dan kalah bersaing dengan adanya batu bata ringan. Lesunya penjualan batu bata merah ini juga dirasakan langsung oleh para buruh yang bekerja di salah satu pengrajin batu bata merah. Di sisi lian, terdapat potensi bekas galian material batu bata merah menjadi kolam untuk budi daya ikan air tawar sebagai tambahan penghasilan bagi para pengrajin bata merah yang mulai menurun. Untuk sementara waktu, sebagai permulaan ikan yang direkomendasikan adalah ikan nila karena mudah beradaptasi dengan lingkungan dan cepat berkembang biak. Selain budi daya ikan dan dijual secara mentah, juga disarankan untuk menjual hasil ikan tersebut berupa makanan olahannya seperti nugget, ikan asap, dan lain-lain. Kata kunci: Mekarmulya, Batu Bata Merah, Budidaya, Ikan Air Tawar Mekarmulya Village is one of the 10 villages included in the administrative area of ​​Telukjambe Barat District, Karawang Regency. Headed by a village officer and assisted by a village secretary and all village officials. Mekarmulya Village is known as the center of the cottage industry for making pressed red bricks. Almost all residents become red brick makers. However, gradually this business became sluggish and could not compete with the light bricks. The sluggish sales of red bricks were also felt directly by the workers who worked in one of the red brick craftsmen. On the other side, there is the potential for the ex-excavated red brick material to become a pond for freshwater fish resources as an additional stage for the red brick craftsmen, which is starting to decline. For a while, the fish that refused to start was tilapia because it was easy to adapt to the environment and quickly reproduced. Apart from cultivating fish and selling it raw, it is also advisable to sell fish products in the form of processed food such as nuggets, smoked fish, and others. Keywords: Mekarmulya, Red Bricks, Cultivation, freshwater fish

Purpose The Malaysian retail industry, which contributes toward almost 45 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is on a downward trend. As such, the main purpose of this study is to improve the performance of the Malaysian retail industry through the incorporation of Industry 4.0 technologies. The incorporation of Industry 4.0 technologies in the retail industry has led to the emergence of Retail 4.0 which can also be defined as omni-channel retailing. Design/methodology/approach The adoption of Retail 4.0, which is a combination of omni-channel retailing and also novel technologies, has been proven to improve the performance of retailers in many countries. As such, the authors have given suggestions on how Retail 4.0 can be incorporated by Malaysian retailers for the betterment of the Malaysian retail industry. Findings Problems faced by retailers these days are boring `brick and mortar' stores, out of stock (OOS) issues, price discrepancy and long queues. Retail 4.0 has enabled retailers to overcome these problems by creating novel shopping experiences, better inventory management, and improved operational efficiency and also more informed decision making in real time. Limitations The incorporation of Industry 4.0 technologies in Malaysia is still in the infancy stage. As such, skilled professionals need to be brought in to help implement these technologies in the retail industry. Practical implications Omni-channel retailing and the usage of various technologies by `brick and mortar' stores is very appealing to Malaysia's Gen Y and Gen Z who make up 67 per cent of the country's population. The spending power of this young generation can help to boost the performance of the Malaysian retail industry. Originality/value To date, no known study has been done on the impact of Retail 4.0 on Malaysian retailers. The results of this study will be very valuable to managers who are keen to improve the performance of their respective retail channels.

Brick as a material is of vital importance in the construction industry, however, the burning processes for its preparation contribute to environmental pollution and the generation of greenhouse gases; for this reason, the present research has as aims to propose quality traditional materials for sustainable buildings through the design of soil-cement mixtures in making brick using raw materials from the amazon region of Ecuador: Centza mine (MC) and Quiringue mine (MQ) and improve the mechanical properties of the brick by incorporating carbon nanotubes, which have been dispersed in two aqueous media, sodium naphthalene sulfonate (NSS) and calcium chloride (CC) in percentages of 0.5%, 1% and 1.5%. The characterization of the raw material (analysis: physicochemical and mineralogical) was of great help. The optimum percentage of cement and water was determined through simple compression tests and soil compaction respectively. The different combinations were tested at indirect traction strength at ages 7, 14 and 28 days, determining an optimal mixture for each group of combinations, in this way the simple compressive strength of bricks has been estimated using the Griffith criterion and validation of results by finite element method applying the CivilFEM software, obtaining a resistance of 4 MPa in mixtures of SC-Ar1, 6.3 MPa in combinations of MWCNTs NSS-9 and 5.3 MPa in mixtures of CC-4 MWCNTs, increasing resistance by 57.5% and 32.5% with respect to soil-cement bricks and qualifying them as suitable for use in construction according to standars.

Construction industry relies heavily on conventional material such as cement, sand and gravel for the production of concrete The river sand and gravels which are most commonly used as fine aggregates and coarse aggregates respectively in the production of concrete, poses the problem of acute shortage in many areas, whose continued use has started posing serious problem with respect to its availability, cost and environmental impact. Attempt is being made in this project to use the locally available waste materials to replace the river sand and gravels to produce light weight and low cost concrete. Sawdust and Brick ballast are easily affordable at low costs, which are partially replaces with river sand and gravels respectively for making concrete. Natural sand and Gravels have been partially replaced (4% SD 8% BB, 4% SD 16% BB, 4% SD 24% BB, 8% SD 8% BB, 8% SD 16% BB, 8% SD 24% BB, 12% SD 8% BB, 12% SD 16% BB and 12% SD 24% BB. by using M30 grade of concrete) with sawdust and broken brick ballast respectively. For this, thirty concrete cubes of size 150mm X 150mm X 150mm have been casted and water cement ratio of 0.42 has been used. Water reducing admixture is used to increase the workability. Slump test, Compacting factor test and compressive strength at (28 days) of specimens having above combinations have been compared with control specimens. The workability and compressive strength gradually decreases for the increasing the replacement percentages. The optimum mix found to produce M30 grade of concrete is 8% of sawdust and 16% of Brick ballast.

Burned periclase brick became a commonly used refractory material during the 1940s and early 1950s in the steel-making industry. Unfortunately, periclase brick easily reacts with water or water vapor and results in dimensional instability, i.e., a volume expansion. This may lead to the mechanical failure of any article made from it. Considerable research has been performed in the past 30 years to suppress the hydration susceptibility of magnesia refractory.Boron has been found to be extremely effective in improving the hydration resistance of magnesia. It can be added to magnesite, brucite, light calcined magnesia or it can be deposited on post dead burned magnesia. However, the use of boron decreases the hot loading bearing properties of the magnesia and the dissolution of the boron into certain grades of steel may adversely affect their mechanical properties. Moreover, the addition of boron compounds requires a high-temperature calcination, normally higher than 1600°C, which has been proven uneconomical.Other dopants, incorporated either on the surface or in the bulk, have been reported to have various effects on the hydration susceptibility. The ultimate goal of the work reported here is to determine if there is a correlation between the hydration susceptibility of MgO having various cation substitutions for Mg and the energies of the resulting lattices.

Kota Jepara salah satu kota dimana terdapat peluang usaha untuk memenuhi kebutuhan batubata. Sentra batu bata salah satunya berada di desa Kalipucang Kulon kecamatan Welahan. Dari kekuatan mekanik batu bata masih di bawah standar, densitas rendah, porositas tinggi dan warna merah. Batu bata mengandung pasir besi dan jenis tanah lempung merah. Usaha pembuatan batu bata di desa Kalipucang Kulon sebanyak 54 buahyang terdaftar di kantor Kelurahan tahun 2015. Banyak terjadi permasalahan di mitra UK batu bata Kalipucang Kulon, antara lain, pembuatan batu bata konvesnsional dan ukuran batu bata tidak standar SNI. Aspek pemasaran masih menunggu pembeli, manajeman usaha bersifat kekeluargaan dan minimnya strategi pemasaran,modal terbatas, dan kurangnya informasi mengakses pinjaman modal. Tujuan pengabdian pada masyarakat Program Kemitraan Masyarakat (PKM) yaitu pembuatan mesin batu bata untuk meningkatkan produksi, pembuatan dan pemeliharaan website e-commerce untuk jual produk batu bata, manajemen usaha, strategi pemasaran, member informasi dan pendampingan mendapatkan modal usaha. Metode yang dipakaiadalah Workshop pembuatan dan pengoperasian mesin batu bata press sesuai standar SNI, pelatihan pembuatan dan pemeliharaan website e-commerce, memberikan pelatihan kewirausahaan, strategi pemasaranproduk, member informasi dan pendampingan untuk mendapatkan modal usaha,dan cara mengakses bantuan dana. Hasilnya dengan penerapan mesin batu bata press manpu meningkatkan 880% dibandingkan denganmanual tenaga manusia. Kekuatan mekanik batu bata merah paling optimal dimiliki oleh komposisi campuran dengan kode B3 dengan kekuatan tekan 41.712 Kg/cm2 dan densitas 25,87 kg/m3. Peningkatan produksi dengan sifat mekanik batu bata press mampu meningkatkan pendapatan usaha keluarga dan kualitas batu bata.Kata kunci: Kalipucang, batu bata, mesin, ektruder, densitasAbstractJepara is one of town where there is a business opportunity to meet the need of bricks. The brick industry center is located in Kalipucang Kulon Village, Welahan Subdistrict. Seen from the mechanical power, the bricks are still below the standard, with low density, high porosity, and red in color. Bricks contain iron sand and are made of red clay soil. There are 54 registered business entities of bricks in Kalipucang Kulon Village in 2015. There have been a lot of problems faced by the partner of the community service program in Kalipucang Kulon Village, such as the brick making is still conventional and the dimensions are not based on the (Indonesian National Standard or SNI. The marketing aspect is that they still wait for buyers. Besides, the management is family-based, the marketing strategies are still minimal, the capical is limited, and there is a lack of information about how to access capital loan. The Community Partnership Program was aimed at creating a brick making machine that would increase the production rate, creating and maintaining e-commerce website to sell the bricks, teaching about business management and marketing strategies, and giving information and assistances to get venture capital. Method applies was by giving a workshop on creating and operating press brick machine based on the SNI, training on creating and maintaining ecommerce website, training on entrepreneurship, and product marketing strategies, and giving information and assistances to get venture capital and how to access capital loan. The result showed that by using the press brick machine, the production had been increasing up to 880% compared to when making manually. The most optimal mechanical power of red bricks was when the bricks were made of the composition of mixture coded B3 with compressive strength of 41.712 Kg/cm2 and density of 25,87kg/m3. The production increase using press brick machine has improve the family’s revenue as well as the bricks’ quality itself.

Kota Jepara salah satu kota dimana terdapat peluang usaha untuk memenuhi kebutuhan batubata. Sentra batu bata salah satunya berada di desa Kalipucang Kulon kecamatan Welahan. Dari kekuatan mekanik batu bata masih di bawah standar, densitas rendah, porositas tinggi dan warna merah. Batu bata mengandung pasir besi dan jenis tanah lempung merah. Usaha pembuatan batu bata di desa Kalipucang Kulon sebanyak 54 buahyang terdaftar di kantor Kelurahan tahun 2015. Banyak terjadi permasalahan di mitra UK batu bata Kalipucang Kulon, antara lain, pembuatan batu bata konvesnsional dan ukuran batu bata tidak standar SNI. Aspek pemasaran masih menunggu pembeli, manajeman usaha bersifat kekeluargaan dan minimnya strategi pemasaran,modal terbatas, dan kurangnya informasi mengakses pinjaman modal. Tujuan pengabdian pada masyarakat Program Kemitraan Masyarakat (PKM) yaitu pembuatan mesin batu bata untuk meningkatkan produksi, pembuatan dan pemeliharaan website e-commerce untuk jual produk batu bata, manajemen usaha, strategi pemasaran, member informasi dan pendampingan mendapatkan modal usaha. Metode yang dipakaiadalah Workshop pembuatan dan pengoperasian mesin batu bata press sesuai standar SNI, pelatihan pembuatan dan pemeliharaan website e-commerce, memberikan pelatihan kewirausahaan, strategi pemasaranproduk, member informasi dan pendampingan untuk mendapatkan modal usaha,dan cara mengakses bantuan dana. Hasilnya dengan penerapan mesin batu bata press manpu meningkatkan 880% dibandingkan denganmanual tenaga manusia. Kekuatan mekanik batu bata merah paling optimal dimiliki oleh komposisi campuran dengan kode B3 dengan kekuatan tekan 41.712 Kg/cm2 dan densitas 25,87 kg/m3. Peningkatan produksi dengan sifat mekanik batu bata press mampu meningkatkan pendapatan usaha keluarga dan kualitas batu bata.Kata kunci: Kalipucang, batu bata, mesin, ektruder, densitasAbstractJepara is one of town where there is a business opportunity to meet the need of bricks. The brick industry center is located in Kalipucang Kulon Village, Welahan Subdistrict. Seen from the mechanical power, the bricks are still below the standard, with low density, high porosity, and red in color. Bricks contain iron sand and are made of red clay soil. There are 54 registered business entities of bricks in Kalipucang Kulon Village in 2015. There have been a lot of problems faced by the partner of the community service program in Kalipucang Kulon Village, such as the brick making is still conventional and the dimensions are not based on the (Indonesian National Standard or SNI. The marketing aspect is that they still wait for buyers. Besides, the management is family-based, the marketing strategies are still minimal, the capical is limited, and there is a lack of information about how to access capital loan. The Community Partnership Program was aimed at creating a brick making machine that would increase the production rate, creating and maintaining e-commerce website to sell the bricks, teaching about business management and marketing strategies, and giving information and assistances to get venture capital. Method applies was by giving a workshop on creating and operating press brick machine based on the SNI, training on creating and maintaining ecommerce website, training on entrepreneurship, and product marketing strategies, and giving information and assistances to get venture capital and how to access capital loan. The result showed that by using the press brick machine, the production had been increasing up to 880% compared to when making manually. The most optimal mechanical power of red bricks was when the bricks were made of the composition of mixture coded B3 with compressive strength of 41.712 Kg/cm2 and density of 25,87kg/m3. The production increase using press brick machine has improve the family’s revenue as well as the bricks’ quality itself.

Ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis processes can be useful in the dairy foods industry. When milk is processed, milk fat and casein are rejected fully (e.g., are in retentate) and thus are concentrated by ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis membranes. Lactic cultures are slow to reduce the pH of retentate because of its increased buffering capacity since concentrated calcium phosphate and proteins are present. Conditions for growth of pathogenic microorganisms and inhibition of such bacteria in ultrafiltered milk differ from those of unfiltered milk. The principal advantage of using ultrafiltered milk for conversion into such cheeses as Cheddar, cottage, Havarti, Feta, brick, Colby, and Domiati is an increase in yield of product. Additional benefits claimed for use of ultrafiltered milk in cheese making include reduction in costs of energy, equipment, and labor; improved consistency of cheese flavor; and possible production of new byproducts.

Purpose The case aims around transition and threats to survival in a brick kiln family business. Second, it stimulates an understanding on the need toward collective decision making by the family during the maturity stage of the family business. The purpose of this paper besides addressing entrepreneurship is to examine the “family-ness” in a family business and its benefits, the transition management issues and to understand the difficulties in handling conflicts during succession and transition cycle in a closely held family business. Design/methodology/approach The case is based on primary research, which is exploratory and secondary information followed by testing the case several times. To authenticate information, multiple sources of information with individual interviews both structured and unstructured at different levels have been used in a time frame of over one year. Findings The competency of the business purely lies in the quality of the product, utilization of market opportunity, harnessing capability, honesty and complete involvement in business. Undoubtedly, the family business has reflected growth but its existence in near future is doubtful due to certain exogenous uncontrollable factors, such as restriction by government regulation. The subsequent generation desires to actively participate in the family business. However, it is constrained by the new government regulations and the business life cycle. Thus, the family is reluctantly compelled to start focusing on newer alternatives or business ideas. Transitions, both in business and in family, have posed a challenge to the founder. Should the family continue in the same business with added constraints or the next generation starts building on a new idea as an option and spin-off from existing family business? These are scenarios for trade-offs. Research limitations/implications The case is restricted to transition in business and in family, within a traditional family business of brick kilns. It is about a strategic choice impending with the founder and his siblings. Interpretations may be connected with related family businesses; however, riders exist, as different firms falling under different industry verticals undergo unique scenarios. Practical implications The outcome of the research-based case study shall assist entrepreneurs in the brick kiln industry to understand transition issues and challenges imposed upon due to changing government regulations. Social implications Implications exist for practitioners who may like to anticipate conflict arising due to transition and have mitigation techniques in place. Originality/value The case is original, while the new generation is looking to switch or diversify the business.

Fore knowledge of the characteristics of ceramic raw materials is of utmost importance during the development, processing and production stages of any ceramic product. This work describes the characterization of clays commonly used in the ceramics industry. Two different clays were selected: clay A, from Tubarão-SC and clay B, from Porto Alegre-RS. Their chemical composition was obtained by X-ray fluorescence and their mineralogy by X-ray diffraction, coupled with numerical rational analysis. Their thermal behaviour was studied by differential thermal analysis and thermogravimetry. Their particle size distribution and plasticity were also determined. Clay A showed circa 47.5 % quartz (by weight), 40.2 % kaolinite and 9.9 % muscovite mica. Clay B showed a high kaolinite content (circa 72 wt.%), accompanied by montmorillonite (circa 10 %) and potash feldspar (circa 10 % microcline). Clay B was found to be much more plastic than clay A, and both are suitable for pottery, tiles and brick making.

Due to the high demand for cheap construction materials, clay-made brick manufacturing has become a thriving industry in Bangladesh, with manufacturing kilns heavily concentrated in the peripheries of larger cities and towns. These manufacturing sites, known as brickfields, operate using centuries-old technologies which expel dust, ash, black smoke and other pollutants into the atmosphere. This in turn impacts the air quality of cities and their surroundings and may also have broader impacts on health, the environment, and potentially contribute to global climate change. Using remotely sensed Landsat imagery, this study identifies brickfield locations and areal expansion between 1990 and 2015 in Dhaka, and employs spatial statistics methods including quadrat analysis and Ripley’s K-function to analyze the spatial variation of brickfield locations. Finally, using nearest neighbor distance as density functions, the distance between brickfield locations and six major geographical features (i.e., urban, rural settlement, wetland, river, highway, and local road) were estimated to investigate the threat posed by the presence of such polluting brickfields nearby urban, infrastructures and other natural areas. Results show significant expansion of brickfields both in number and clusters between 1990 and 2015 with brickfields increasing in number from 247 to 917 (total growth rate 271%) across the Dhaka urban center. The results also reveal that brickfield locations are spatially clustered: 78% of brickfields are located on major riverbanks and 40% of the total are located in ecologically sensitive wetlands surrounding Dhaka. Additionally, the average distance from the brick manufacturing plant to the nearest urban area decreased from 1500 m to 500 m over the study period. This research highlights the increasing threats to the environment, human health, and the sustainability of the megacity Dhaka from brickfield expansion in the immediate peripheral areas of its urban center. Findings and methods presented in this study can facilitate data-driven decision making by government officials and city planners to formulate strategies for improved brick production technologies and decreased environmental impacts for this urban region in Bangladesh.

Abstract. Climate change is a growing concern that is attracting international efforts. India, as a developing country, has committed to reducing its emission intensity of GDP up to 30 %–35 % by 2030. The emission intense sectors would be targeted to achieve climate commitment. One of the emission intense sector is construction raw material manufacturing that contributes 10 % share in the total emissions making it one of the potential mitigation sector. The study examines emissions from the construction raw materials namely, cement, steel, and brick manufacturing and presents two emission scenarios up to 2050. Energy efficient scenario (S2) is compared with a reference scenario (S1) developed based on a bottom-up approach. The results indicate that a moderate energy efficiency improvements and technological shifts lead to a decrease in emissions of 72 MT CO2 by 2030 and 137 MT CO2 by 2050. Further, the steel industry has the highest reduction potential, as the current technologies are energy inefficient. Similarly, the current dependency on fired bricks may be shifted to cement setting blocks leading to emission reductions. Cement manufacturing, on the other hand, shows limited scope for emission reduction that may be achieved through energy efficiency improvements. Efforts towards energy efficiency improvements in construction raw material manufacturing would result in reductions beyond the existing commitment of the Paris Agreement for India by 2030.

Abstract:This article examines the local economy of a parish in south-east Essex during a period when economic, social and technological factors were transforming rural Britain. Record linkages are used to construct a microhistory of Hockley to analyse the exploitation of the landscape and rural livelihoods. Agricultural and occupational change reflected many national economic and social influences, but there are also counter examples to regional patterns of farming practice and large scale agrarian capitalist landownership. The agricultural depression of c.1875–96 effected a shift from arable to livestock farming and the development of market gardening facilitated by the railway. A reduction in agricultural employment opportunities, and the absence of a cottage industry for women, led to a significant out-migration of working-age people. The microhistory demonstrates that local factors, such as access to a tidal river, the timing of the arrival of the railway, the availability of brick-making clay and new trades provided livelihood opportunities and influenced the structure and operation of the rural economy.

Optimal selection of sustainable materials in construction projects can benefit several stakeholders in their respective industries with the triple bottom line (TBL) framework in a broader perspective of greater business value. Multiple criteria of social, environmental, and economic aspects should be essentially accounted for the optimal selection of materials involving the significant group of experts to avoid project failures. This paper proposes an evaluation framework for solving multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problems with incomplete weight information by extending the combinative distance assessment (CODAS) method with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. To compute the unknown weights of the evaluation criteria, this paper presents an optimization model based on the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy distance measure. In this study, we emphasize the importance of individual decision makers. To illustrate the proposed approach, an example of material selection in automotive parts industry is presented followed by a real case study of brick selection in sustainable building construction projects. The comparative study indicates the advantages of the proposed approach in comparison with the some relevant approaches. A sensitivity analysis of the proposed IVIF-CODAS method has been performed by changing the criteria weights, where the results show a high degree of stability.

Brazil is among the five largest world paint producers. According to the Brazilian Association of paint manufacturers, this sector has achieved in 2011 revenues of US$ 3.90 billion and produced 1.359 billion liters of paint. Today, construction sector absorbs about 65% of solid paint in that country. However, all that industrial process increases levels of paint waste, which are so many times disposed without proper treatment producing environmental contamination. Such waste when improperly managed can seriously harm human health as well as the environment. So, currently industries are seeking to minimize the waste at source and reuse them. In the state of Rio Grande do Norte, faced with need to implement environmental guidelines and to reduce environmental impacts caused by waste originating from manufacturing process,. Water-based paint manufacturers use an effluent treatment system through settling tanks and filtration of waste. Such residues can be used utilized in soil-cement bricks making. In this work manufactured soil-cement bricks using water-based paint waste as a fine aggregator. Recycled bricks were characterized by a fine water absorption and compressive strength according ABNT requirements. Results have also shown that these bricks can be used in building industry as a brick sealer.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic approach for the evaluation and selection of curtain wall systems for medium-high rise building construction. Design/methodology/approach – The authors have identified the different types of curtain wall systems that are commonly used in the building construction industry in Saudi Arabia; examined the various performance as well as financial and non-financial criteria affecting the evaluation and selection of these systems; and subjected the identified different types of curtain wall systems to several filtering processes, namely feasibility ranking, evaluation by comparison and weighted evaluation to facilitate making a decision on the most suitable system to select. Findings – The analysis of the collected data indicated that the precast concrete curtain wall system is considered to be the first choice. The second choice is the prefabricated brick panel curtain wall system. Originality/value – Curtain walls are the most recognized elements of contemporary structures today. There exists ample variety of materials and designs that could be utilized for the development of these building elements. This paper is of practical value to project owners, architects and design professionals endeavoring on the process of selecting and specifying curtain wall systems in their projects.

Abstract Current changes in technology and the role of the Internet open up new opportunities for companies both to communicate with the public and organisational functionality of its own structure. The fact that Social Media entered the business landscape, can be globally experience in the novel ways of communication, particularly between all stakeholders in organisation’s environment, but also in growing tendency in search for the new knowledge and expertise in digital environment. Organisations existing in brick-and-mortar landscape, observing ongoing and continues development of the digital technologies that ubiquitously transforming the way we perceive a role of marketing and making Public Relations more fascinating discipline in the XXI century. Becoming more exposed to the public, marketers needs to understand importance of their role in the new age of digital era but more importantly to be able to adapt to a new environment by building their digital presence with accordance to tomorrow’s reality and prevailing expectations. Every geographical region has its own unique approach in practicing public relations and building their own understanding of that concept. What is more, one also has to take into consideration the relations between corporate culture and organizational environment and it’s influence on certain managerial practices. Broadening the traditional perspective and communication by the new and growing acceptance of the dot.com era, internet is defining new rules, that continuously supported by the visionary and innovatory approach of modern organisations, not only modelling PR and marketing but companies as a whole. The aim of this article is to identify the changing trends of the new PR model that continuously evolve in the digital era and changing our way of building robust two-direction communication channel. The article presents four case studies (Poland and the UK) of social media in PR on the automotive market.

The increase in Indonesia's development activities increases people's consumption of more quality construction materials and is easy to reach in terms of price. Building materials with good quality can improve the quality of building construction. The increasing need of the community for building materials triggered the development of the brick-making industry. Redbrick is an element of building used in building construction made from clay base material with or without other mixed materials. This research is a type of experimental research. The purpose of this study is to know and analyze the composition of the addition of corn bark ash and ash corn cob appropriately to produce the quality of bricks with high compressive strength, low water absorption, and large density. Additional materials in this study in the form of corn bark ash and ash corn cob. The quality of red bricks is seen from three aspects, namely compressive strength, water absorption, and density. The largest compressive strength was obtained in the addition of ash corn cob by 2.5% by 37.2 Kg/Cm2 and the compressive strength of 49.5 Kg/Cm2 on the addition of corn skin ash by 2.5%. Water absorption measurement of all types of red bricks the results of the study showed all the results of water absorption is not eligible sni. The highest density was obtained from a mixture of 2.5% ash corn cob material of 17.5 gr/Cm3. the best composition to produce bricks with strong compressive value and high density and have low water absorption is 2.5% addition of ash corn cob and the addition of 2.5% corn skin ash. Keywords: Red bricks, strong press, water absorption, density.

The study emphasis on physical properties and geochemical of the clays from Bestari Jaya area to determine its suitability for any commercial application. Nine samples collected from six boreholes as representative of white and dark clay in the study area. All samples examined through the optical properties test and physical properties such as moisture, specific gravity, Atterberg limit and particle size distributions. The geochemical and mineralogical conducted using XRF and XRD analysis. The clays from Bestari Jaya considered of having variation in the brightness from medium to high brightness as shown by Delta L value (51.32-73.49%). The moisture content ranges between 34.50-81.03%. The plasticity index (PI) and plasticity limit (PL) values found in ranges of 18-32% with an average of 22.22%, and 32-46% with an average of 37.11% respectively. The plasticity limit and index reveals that the Bestari Jaya clays can be classify as kaolinite clays that are suitable for pottery and brick making. The specific gravity ranges between 2.49 – 2.70 with an average of 2.61. The average value is similar to the value of pure china clay (2.6). The SiO2 content in Bestari Jaya clays is between 37.49 – 69.96 wt% and Al2O3 is between 18.92 – 33.02 wt%. While the L.O.I values are between 8.71-16.04%. Kaolinite as the dominant mineral phases in all clay samples with composition ranges from 65-97.7% and an average of 73.12%. Apart of that, quartz in ranges of 5.3 – 20.6%, identified in almost all samples. Muscovite, hematite and magnetite occur as accessory minerals. Referring to standard and result obtained on representative sample, the Bestari Jaya clays potentially used in the production of smaller tiles for unexclusive pedestrian traffic. The presence of significance amount of heavy metals makes it unsuitable to use in the pharmaceutical or paper industry.

The construction industry is a vital part of the modern economic system. Construction work often has significant negative impacts on the environment and sustainable economic development, such as degradation of the environment, depletion of resources, and waste generation. Therefore, environmental concerns must be taken into account when evaluating and making decisions in the construction industry. In this regard, sustainable construction is considered as the best way to avoid resource depletion and address environmental concerns. Selection of sustainable building materials is an important strategy in sustainable construction that plays an important role in the design and construction phase of buildings. The assessment of experts is one of the most important steps in the material selection process, and their subjective judgment can lead to unpredictable uncertainty. The existing methods cannot effectively demonstrate and address uncertainty. This paper proposes an integrated Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory of evidence and the ARAS method for selecting sustainable materials under uncertainty. The Dempster-Shafer Evidence Theory is a relatively new and appropriate tool for substantiating decisions when information is nonspecific, ambiguous, or conflicting. The Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS) method has many advantages to deal with MCDM problems with non-commensurable and even conflicting criteria and to obtain the priority of alternatives based on the utility function. The proposed method converts experts’ opinions into the basic probability assignments for real alternatives, which are suitable for DS evidence theory. It uses the ARAS method to obtain final estimation results. Finally, a real case study identifying the priority of using five possible alternative building materials demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed approach in addressing the challenges of sustainable construction. Four main criteria including economic, social, environmental, and technical criteria and 25 sub-criteria were considered for the selection of sustainable materials. The specific case study using the proposed method reveals that the weight of economic, socio-cultural, environmental, and technical criteria are equal to 0.327, 0.209, 0.241, and 0.221, respectively. Based on these results, economic and environmental criteria are determined as the most important criteria. The results of applying the proposed method reveal that aluminum siding with a final score of 0.538, clay brick with a score of 0.494, and stone façade with a final score of 0.482 are determined as the best alternatives in terms of sustainability.

It is estimated that India has more than 1,00,000 brick kilns producing about 250 billion bricks annually, employing about 15 million workers and consuming about 35 million tons of coal annually. The brick industry is growing as the demand for bricks is increasing in the towns and villages due to the fast economic growth, urbanization and prosperity. It is alarming to note that 300 mm depth of fertile top soil in India will be consumed for burnt clay brick production in about 60 years. Usually, brick kilns are situated in rural and or periphery of urban areas in the country. The secondary data is collected for the purpose of knowing history of brick industry in world and especially in India. It is found that the process of making a brick has not changed much over the centuries or across geographies. The brick sector in India is unorganized and is tremendous in size and spread. India is the second largest brick producer (China dominates with 54 % share) in the world. The bricks industries have challenges like rapid increase in brick production, environmental concerns, use of large quantities of coal in brick kilns, use of good quality agriculture topsoil for brick production, shortage of workers, Increased competition etc. There is need to prepare action plan for sustainable development of Brick industry in India.

Introduction: Exposure to dust is an essential factor in the brick production industry. Determining the mortality rate from silicosis and lung cancer is very important in exposure to crystalline silica dust. Therefore, this study was conducted to risk assessment of workers in machine factories and traditional brick production workshops. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2016 in a machine factory and five traditional active brick production workshops in Qarchak and Varamin city located in the southeast of Tehran. All employees of a brick-making machine factory (40 people) and five traditional brick-making workshops (30 people) were selected by census sampling. Their exposure to total respiratory dust and respirable crystalline silica was evaluated by the NIOSH0600 method and NIOSH7602 optimal method. Mortality risk assessment from silicosis and lung cancer was performed based on Mannetej and Rice models. Data were analyzed by t-test after entering SPSS19 software. Results: The average concentrations of crystalline silica and total respiratory dust in traditional workshops are 0.651 ±0.69 and 28.27 ± 23.05, and in a machine factory are 0.297± 0.27 and 17.6 ±8.6 mg / m3. The T-test showed a significant difference between the traditional and mechanical brick factory in occupational exposure to total respiratory dust (P=0.001). However, no significant difference was observed in exposure to crystalline silica (P=0.107). In both traditional and machine brick factory, the risk of death from silicosis and lung cancer is unacceptable. Conclusion: The results showed that the industry's mechanization has reduced exposure to total respiratory dust and crystalline silica and reduces the risk of death from lung cancer. But the risk of death from lung cancer and silicosis is still high in both traditional and mechanical factories

Tenayan Raya Subdistrict is an area that has a thickness of soft clay layer. Some cases of building failure were cracks and tilts due to high shrinkage of soil. Nearby is also a brick home industry center, where ashes are produced from bricks burning. Soil Improvement of Tenayan-Raya's Clay and utilization of brick ash will be carried out in this research. This study aims to stabilize the soil with lime and utilize the brick ash to improve shear strength and bearing capacity of the soil. The study was conducted in the laboratory by making several combinations of content clay, lime, and Brick Ash (BA), for the soil mixture which will be added with 10% ash brick. The effect of curing and soaked will also be seen for its rising on soil properties of Unconfined Compression Strength, and CBR laboratories. The influence of water will also be reviewed on the dry side, optimal moisture content, and wet side. The test results show that the Soil has Low Plasticity soil type category CL-ML symbols, according to the Unified classification. Increasing of strength due to stabilization with lime is obtained in conditions of water in optimal moisture content, where the addition of lime is 10% and 10% brick ash, was produced to increase the maximum value of Unconfined Compression Strength and CBR laboratory value. Curing setup time and saturation (soaked) also had affect the value of Unconfined Compressive Strength and CBR laboratory test. At longer time for curing, shear strength will rise proved by the value of UCS Test andbearing capacity value also increase that can be seen of the laboratory CBR test. Curing will make the shrinkage of clay reduced, this can be proven from differences value of Unconfined Compressive strength test between samples with and without soaked, are relatively small.

High strength, high hardness and very tough engineering material derived from geologically occurring minerals and processed into a tool that rubs or wears off by friction is regarded as an abrasive. Abrasives are produced in different forms and shapes and they afford good opportunities for precision scraping away or machining. In this empirical paper, effort is made in establishing a case for the production of abrasive tools that are formulated with silicon carbide and aluminium oxide as catalytic raw materials. These are locally found in the researchers’ locality a place that has many geological deposits of solid minerals. At each of Ozizza, Ndibe, Kpoghirikpo and Unwana beaches, eleven samples of sand were collected at random locations from the Cross River that is flowing through Ozizza down to Unwana for physical and geochemical investigation to determine its suitability for abrasive making. Sand at the four locations were subjected to physical and geochemical investigation. Generally, the sand was physically characterized by bright colours of white, brown and yellow. Some samples at some locations contained dark specks of organic matter. From the distribution, the sand is generally of medium grade size as shown by the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Geochemically by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis, the oxide contents are: SiO2 (91.73%), CaO (0.045%), Al2O3 (4.24%), Fe2O3 (1.36%), TiO2 (0.21%), K2O (0.86%). The silica content (91.73%) of the sand is well above the industrial specification of 80% for sanitary ware making and suitable for the silica brick industry, for road dressing mixed with special asphalt. The physical and geochemical property results indicate that the sand is a good material for direct use in abrasive (sand paper and sand blasting).making, glass making and in the building and construction industries.

The development of the industrial sector should be developed to encourage economic activity, especially in sectors that support the activities of entrepreneurship .To develop the industrial sector can be done by identifying the factors that support the factors of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges faced in the development of a brick.Brick is a business venture that has been known by the public, especially by the people of Bengkulu Utara. Excellence of the qualities of this brick making business has the potential to be further developed, but the problem is that these efforts have not managed optimally by managers and local governments. Strategy formulation is done by using SWOT analysis. Results of this study showed that of the SWOT analysis, which uses matrix EFAS, IFAS, and SWOT matrix. External factors with the highest scores that affect business development opportunities bricks are factors that settlement growth opportunities, while the highest threat is the increasing internal competition.Internal factors with the highest score is the strength factor that is of good quality, while the highest weakness is the lack of knowledge on the technology and quality control due to the lack of opportunity to keep abreast of times. Next is the formulation of the proposed development strategy is based on a fundamental strategy in the strategy of strength and opportunities, strategies, weaknesses and opportunities, strengths and threats strategy, and strategy weaknesses and threats. Keywords: Industry, SWOT analysis, Bricks Business Village City Court

With the change in the industrial world from the Neolithic world to the present, and the increase in the diversity in application methods; the subjects covered by the ceramics have increased in parallel with the conditions . It is possible to divide into three main groups as those that qualify as historical findings and indicators, plastic arts and industrial ceramics. Although they are considered as different fields, architecture and ceramics are in close dialogue. The use, which started with mud brick for the first time as a building material in ceramics, continues today by being present in many components of architecture. It is a rare and precious situation in terms of architecture that the preferred ceramic, thanks to its high utility/performance ratio, is not only a building element, but also adds a pure creation and artistic value. Influence of human is important in the organization of contemporary space in architecture. When the user requirements are included in the design problem as concrete and abstract, the concepts of modularity and aesthetics appear. The modular design of the reinforcement elements enables flexible design by making it possible to change the number of units according to the place to be practiced, which is compatible with the separation works. For space dividers made of ceramic units, the primary consideration is to add aesthetic value to the space of which it is a part, while meeting the requirements as a function. In this article study; The relationship between ceramics, which is a competent material in the fields of industry and art, and architecture is examined through the building envelope and space-dividing examples, and it is aimed to emphasize that qualified and original building and space arrangements are possible as a result of the joint work of different disciplines. Keywords: Interior design, ceramic separations, room dividers, modular

Media critics tend to think about reviews in two ways: either as autonomous acts of creative intervention or as necessary fodder for publicity campaigns. Rather than elevate either of these options, I offer an account of my own reviewing experience as anecdotal evidence of the interrelation between creative intervention and commodification at work in every printed newspaper review. As Frederick Jameson argued long ago in his essay “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”, capitalist culture always contains elements of utopian or counter-hegemonic fantasy, but these elements are quickly absorbed and squelched within the market. Indeed, the appearance of literary criticism itself is bound up with the transformation of cultural activity into commodity form. In order to appreciate how reviews function within the economy of literary journalism, one should underestimate neither the ease with which even the most insightful review has always already been absorbed into the process of commodification nor how this process can work against the market’s own best interests. (For a study of the economic impact of reviewing, see Cameron. For the complications involved in writing a history of reviews and reviewers, see Fosdick.) For the last few years, I have written book reviews primarily for my local newspaper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen. As a 15,000-run newspaper, the Press-Citizen is listed in the small newspaper category for journalism awards and is one of the smallest newspapers owned by the giant media conglomerate, Gannett. Because Iowa City is home to the Big Ten, 30,000-student University of Iowa, the Press-Citizen has a more highly educated audience than that of other newspapers with similar press runs. Yet the educated readership also means that the local population expects a journalistic product with the sophistication of the New Yorker while the marketplace is only slightly larger than that of the little old ladies in Dubuque. Because of budget limitations, the Press-Citizen’s cultural reporting occupies a small percentage of its local news pages. As a result, the editorial staff deems newsworthy only those reviews demonstrating a clear local angle. From one perspective, this decision represents a commitment to the community. In practical terms, however, the policy means that the newspaper solicits reviews only for the authors who participate in “Live from Prairie Lights”, a reading series jointly sponsored by the university’s not-for-profit, public radio station, WSUI, and one of the city’s independently owned bookstores, Prairie Lights. The reading series owes its reputation, in part, to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, consistently hailed by U.S. News and World Report as the number one MFA creative writing program in the nation. Because the Workshop attracts established alumni (such as Michael Cunningham and John Irving) as well as ambitious younger writers, Prairie Lights has become a popular stop for authors touring in the geographical pentagram between Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Before I even type a word, therefore, any review I send to the Press-Citizen already has been commodified by the editorial staff’s decision to base its definition of newsworthiness on the publicity needs of a network of local businesses. Furthermore, if I decide not to write a review – or if the editorial staff decides it cannot afford to pay any correspondent for the review – the newspaper simply saves money and hassle by reprinting wire reviews published in any of the other 100 Gannett newspapers in the U.S. In order to add to the variety – to increase heterogeneity in the public sphere – I must first submit to a very restricted notion of what that sphere is. While Gannett’s business model involves absorbing and centralising local media outlets, Prairie Lights’s business model tends to undermine such a corporate mindset through its role as the area’s largest independent bookstore. Sponsoring “Live from Prairie Lights” is one way that the store, with help from the radio station, fights for its survival against superstore chains and discounted on-line giants. My review’s extra publicity for Prairie Lights, then, helps a brick-and-mortar independent bookstore maintain its independence. To the bookstore staff, the fact that my review appears in the local paper matters more than whether I denounce or celebrate a visiting writer. So, again, before I type a single word, my reviews simultaneously participate within a compromised commercial system and undermine the corporate policies of my newspaper’s parent company by helping support the independent mindset of a key local business. Just as my printed review is always already framed by the local editorial policies of a media conglomerate and the promotional needs of a large independent bookstore, it is also automatically placed in conversation with the paratextual press releases, plot synopses, and blurbs provided by the publishing houses. Even if I approach the work from a completely different angle than the publicists suggest, readers will readily align my perspective against the myriad of uncritical, press-release-based reviews to be found on Google News, Lexis-Nexis, or Metacritic.com. And even if local readers manage to avoid those reviews, they will still be exposed to the official publicity information if they listen to WSUI’s “Live from Prairie Lights”. Despite the commitment of Iowa Public Radio to an independent assessment of news and culture, the introductions provided by the program’s host nearly always regurgitate the publicity information as the homogenizing conceptual frame into which all aberrant discussions of the work become mere exceptions that prove the rule. The interrelation between creativity and commodification becomes apparent even in best-case scenarios. In September 2002, for example, the University of Iowa Press published a book of recently rediscovered Farm Service Agency photographs from the 1930s that proved complementary to the more familiar photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. An Iowa writer worked with the photographer’s surviving family members and wrote a well-documented, insightful, historical narrative to contextualise the photos. Anticipating local interest in the collection, Prairie Lights ordered hundreds of copies and moved the radio broadcast from the bookstore to a larger auditorium. Because of the Iowa connections at every phase of the project, it was easy to convince the Press-Citizen to run a lengthy review accompanied by several photos. After sifting through the photographs, digesting the narrative, and skeptically perusing the university press’s promotional material, I challenged myself to do something more than regurgitate the information provided me. Giving a cultural studies twist to Anatole France’s romantic dictum of the good critic relating the adventures of his soul among masterpieces, I decided to provide my own analysis of the photographs as cultural objects and only then turn to the narrative as a contrasting explanation of the uncanny vibrancy of these images of the last century. While I was sometimes critical of her evaluation, the author was impressed enough with my efforts that she called my editor to inform him personally that my review was the best she had read and that I was the only reviewer who had actually looked beyond the press release. Having never before been so complimented by an author, I decided to attend the reading and meet her face-to-face. Not surprisingly, the experience proved disillusioning. The writer proved as insightful in the program’s question and answer session as she had been in her prose, and the photos were as intriguing on the video screen as they were in the book. Yet the mobile radio production equipment and the portable cashier station – even more so, its constant beeping – made clear just how my investment of time and intellect served crossed purposes. While I was helping my readership make sense of these rediscovered photos from the past, I was also helping the University of Iowa Press and Prairie Lights sell books even as I was helping the Press-Citizen sell ads for the press and bookstore. The photo collections brought enough pleasure that many of the audience members were buying several copies to give as gifts, but that pleasure was both preconditioned for and a by-product of the cycle of production and publicity. At the moment when my review proved insightful enough to warrant a commendatory phone call from the author, it was most at risk of becoming a mere cog in the process of commodification. Rather than declare with any finality that reviews are either inspired or ingratiating, media critics need to continue to account for such interconnections between the creative and commercial factors of publication. References Cameron, Samuel. “On the Role of Critics in the Culture Industry.” Journal of Cultural Economics 19.4 (December 1995): 321-31. Fosdick, Scott. “From Discussion Leader to Consumer Guide.” Journalism History 30.2 (Summer 2004): 91-7. Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text 1 (1979): 130-48. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Charis-Carlson, Jeffrey. "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>. APA Style Charis-Carlson, J. (Oct. 2005) "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>.

IntroductionOver three days in November 2017, 400 people gathered for a conference at the Sam’s Town Hotel and Gambling Hall in Las Vegas, Nevada. The majority of attendees were fiction authors but the conference program looked like no ordinary writer’s festival; there were no in-conversation interviews with celebrity authors, no panels on the politics of the book industry and no books launched or promoted. Instead, this was a gathering called 20Books2017, a self-publishing conference about the business of fiction ebooks and there was expertise in the room.Among those attending, 50 reportedly earned over $100,000 US per annum, with four said to be earning in excess of $1,000,000 US year. Yet none of these authors are household names. Their work is not adapted to film or television. Their books cannot be found on the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores. For the most part, these authors go unrepresented by the publishing industry and literary agencies, and further to which, only a fraction have ever actively pursued traditional publishing. Instead, they write for and sell into a commercial fiction market dominated by a single retailer and publisher: online retailer Amazon.While the online ebook market can be dynamic and lucrative, it can also be chaotic. Unlike the traditional publishing industry—an industry almost stoically adherent to various gatekeeping processes: an influential agent-class, formalized education pathways, geographic demarcations of curatorial power (see Thompson)—the nascent ebook market is unmapped and still somewhat ungoverned. As will be discussed below, even the markets directly engineered by Amazon are subject to rapid change and upheaval. It can be a space with shifting boundaries and thus, for many in the traditional industry both Amazon and self-publishing come to represent a type of encroaching northern dread.In the eyes of the traditional industry, digital self-publishing certainly conforms to the barbarous north of European literary metaphor: Orwell’s ‘real ugliness of industrialism’ (94) governed by the abject lawlessness of David Peace’s Yorkshire noir (Fowler). But for adherents within the day-to-day of self-publishing, this unruly space also provides the frontiers and gold-rushes of American West mythology.What remains uncertain is the future of both the traditional and the self-publishing sectors and the degree to which they will eventually merge, overlap and/or co-exist. So-called ‘hybrid-authors’ (those self-publishing and involved in traditional publication) are becoming increasingly common—especially in genre fiction—but the disruption brought about by self-publishing and ebooks appears far from complete.To the contrary, the Amazon-led ebook iteration of this market is relatively new. While self-publishing and independent publishing have long histories as modes of production, Amazon launched both its Kindle e-reader device and its marketplace Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) a little over a decade ago. In the years subsequent, the integration of KDP within the Amazon retail environment dramatically altered the digital self-publishing landscape, effectively paving the way for competing platforms (Kobo, Nook, iBooks, GooglePlay) and today’s vibrant—and, at times, crassly commercial—self-published fiction communities.As a result, the self-publishing market has experienced rapid growth: self-publishers now collectively hold the largest share of fiction sales within Amazon’s ebook categories, as much as 35% of the total market (Howey). Contrary to popular belief they do not reside entirely at the bottom of Amazon’s expansive catalogue either: at the time of writing, 11 of Amazon’s Top 50 Bestsellers were self-published and the median estimated monthly revenue generated by these ‘indie’ books was $43,000 USD / month (per author) on the American site alone (KindleSpy).This international publishing market now proffers authors running the gamut of commercial uptake, from millionaire successes like romance writer H.M. Ward and thriller author Mark Dawson, through to the 19% of self-published authors who listed their annual royalty income as $0 per annum (Weinberg). Their overall market share remains small—as little as 1.8% of trade publishing in the US as a whole (McIlroy 4)—but the high end of this lucrative slice is particularly dynamic: science fiction author Michael Anderle (and 20Books2017 keynote) is on-track to become a seven-figure author in his second year of publishing (based on Amazon sales ranking data), thriller author Mark Dawson has sold over 300,000 copies of his self-published Milton series in 3 years (McGregor), and a slew of similar authors have recently attained New York Times and US Today bestseller status.To date, there is not a broad range of scholarship investigating the operational logics of self-published fiction. Timothy Laquintano’s recent Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing (2016) is a notable exception, drawing self-publishing into historical debates surrounding intellectual property, the future of the book and digital abundance. The more empirical portions of Mass Authorship—taken from activity between 2011 to 2015—directly informs this research and his chapter on Amazon (Chapter 4) could be read as a more macro companion to my findings below; taken together and compared they illustrate just how fast-moving the market is. Nick Levey’s work on ‘post-press’ literature and its inherent risks (and discourses of cultural capitol) also informs my thesis here.In addition to which, there is scholarship centred on publishing more generally that also touches on self-published writers as a category of practitioner (see Baverstock and Steinitz, Haughland, Thomlinson and Bélanger). Most of this later work focuses almost entirely on the finished product, usually situating self-publishing as directly oppositional to traditional publishing, and thus subordinating it.In this paper, I hope to outline how the self-publishers I’ve observed have enacted various tactical approaches that specifically strive to tame their chaotic marketplace, and to indicate—through one case study (Amazon exclusivity)—a site of production and resistance where they have occasionally succeeded. Their approach is one that values information sharing and an open-source approach to book-selling and writing craft, ideologies drawn more from the tech / start-up world than commercial book industry described by Thompson (10). It is a space deeply informed by the virtual nature of its major platforms and as such, I argue its relation to the world of traditional publishing—and its representation within the traditional book industry—are tenuous, despite the central role of authorship and books.Making the Virtual Self-Publishing SceneWithin the study of popular music, the use of Barry Shank and Will Straw’s ‘scene’ concept has been an essential tool for uncovering and mapping independent/DIY creative practice. The term scene, defined by Straw as cultural space, is primarily interested in how cultural phenomena articulates or announces itself. A step beyond community, scene theorists are less concerned with examining an evolving history of practice (deemed essentialist) than they are concerned with focusing on the “making and remaking of alliances” as the crucial process whereby communal culture is formed, expressed and distributed (370).A scene’s spatial dimension—often categorized as local, translocal or virtual (see Bennett and Peterson)—demands attention be paid to hybridization, as a diversity of actors approach the same terrain from differing vantage points, with distinct motivations. As a research tool, scene can map action as the material existence of ideology. Thus, its particular usefulness is its ability to draw findings from diverse communities of practice.Drawing methodologies and approaches from Bourdieu’s field theory—a particularly resonant lens for examining cultural work—and de Certeau’s philosophies of space and circumstantial moves (“failed and successful attempts at redirection within a given terrain,” 375), scene focuses on articulation, the process whereby individual and communal activity becomes an observable or relatable or recordable phenomena.Within my previous work (see Bennett and Rogers, Rogers), I’ve used scene to map a variety of independent music-making practices and can see clear resemblances between independent music-making and the growing assemblage of writers within ebook self-publishing. The democratizing impulses espoused by self-publishers (the removal of gatekeepers as married to visions of a fiction/labour meritocracy) marry up quite neatly with the heady mix of separatism and entrepreneurialism inherent in Australian underground music.Self-publishers are typically older and typically more upfront about profit, but the communal interaction—the trade and gifting of support, resources and information—looks decidedly similar. Instead, the self-publishers appear different in one key regard: their scene-making is virtual in ways that far outstrip empirical examples drawn from popular music. 20Books2017 is only one of two conferences for this community thus far and represents one of the few occasions in which the community has met in any sort of organized way offline. For the most part, and in the day-to-day, self-publishing is a virtual scene.At present, the virtual space of self-published fiction is centralized around two digital platforms. Firstly, there is the online message board, of which two specific online destinations are key: the first is Kboards, a PHP-coded forum “devoted to all things Kindle” (Kboards) but including a huge author sub-board of self-published writers. The archive of this board amounts to almost two million posts spanning back to 2009. The second message board site is a collection of Facebook groups, of which the 10,000-strong membership of 20BooksTo50K is the most dominant; it is the originating home of 20Books2017.The other platform constituting the virtual scene of self-publishing is that of podcasting. While there are a number of high-profile static websites and blogs related to self-publishing (and an emerging community of vloggers), these pale in breadth and interaction when compared to podcasts such as The Creative Penn, The Self-Publishing Podcast, The Sell More Books Show, Rocking Self-Publishing (now defunct but archived) and The Self-Publishing Formula podcast. Statistical information on the distribution of these podcasts is unavailable but the circulation and online discussion of their content and the interrelation between the different shows and their hosts and guests all point to their currency within the scene.In short, if one is to learn about the business and craft production modes of self-publishing, one tends to discover and interact with one of these two platforms. The consensus best practice espoused on these boards and podcasts is the data set in which the remainder of this paper draws findings. I have spent the last two years embedded in these communities but for the purposes of this paper I will be drawing data exclusively from the public-facing Kboards, namely because it is the oldest, most established site, but also because all of the issues and discussion presented within this data have been cross-referenced across the different podcasts and boards. In fact, for a long period Kboards was so central to the scene that itself was often the topic of conversation elsewhere.Sticking in the Algorithm: The Best Practice of Fiction Self-PublishingSelf-publishing is a virtual scene because its “constellation of divergent interests and forces” (Shank, Preface, x) occur almost entirely online. This is not just a case of discussion, collaboration and discovery occurring online—as with the virtual layer of local and translocal music scenes—rather, the self-publishing community produces into the online space, almost exclusively. Its venues and distribution pathways are online and while its production mechanisms (writing) are still physical, there is an almost instantaneous and continuous interface with the online. These writers type and, increasingly dictate, their work into the virtual cloud, have it edited there (via in-text annotation) and from there the work is often designed, formatted, published, sold, marketed, reviewed and discussed online.In addition to which, a significant portion of these writers produce collaborative works, co-writing novels and co-editing them via cooperative apps. Teams of beta-readers (often fans) work on manuscripts pre-launch. Covers, blurbs, log lines, ad copy and novel openings are tested and reconfigured via crowd-sourced opinion. Seen here, the writing of the self-publishing scene is often explicitly commercial. But more to the fact, it never denies its direct co-relation with the mandates of online publishing. It is not traditional writing (it moves beyond authorship) and viewing these writers as emerging or unpublished or indeed, using the existing vernacular of literary writing practices, often fails to capture what it is they do.As the self-publishers write for the online space, Amazon forms a huge part of their thinking and working. The site sits at the heart of the practices under consideration here. Many of the authors drawn into this research are ‘wide’ in their online retail distribution, meaning they have books placed with Amazon’s online retail competitors. Yet the decision to go ‘wide’ or stay exclusive to Amazon — and the volume of discussion around this choice — is illustrative of how dominant the company remains in the scene. In fact, the example of Amazon exclusivity provides a valuable case-study.For self-publishers, Amazon exclusivity brings two stated and tangible benefits. The first relates to revenue diversification within Amazon, with exclusivity delivering an additional revenue stream in the form of Kindle Unlimited royalties. Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a subscription service for ebooks. Consumers pay a flat monthly fee ($13.99 AUD) for unlimited access to over a million Kindle titles. For a 300-page book, a full read-through of a novel under KU pays roughly the same royalty to authors as the sale of a $2.99 ebook, but only to Amazon-exclusive authors. If an exclusive book is particularly well suited to the KU audience, this can present authors with a very serious return.The second benefit of Amazon exclusivity is access to internal site merchandising; namely ‘Free Days’ where the book is given away (and can chart on the various ‘Top 100 Free’ leaderboards) and ‘Countdown Deals’ where a decreasing discount is staggered across a period (thus creating a type of scarcity).These two perks can prove particularly lucrative to individual authors. On Kboards, user Annie Jocoby (also writing as Rachel Sinclair) details her experiences with exclusivity:I have a legal thriller series that is all-in with KU [Kindle Unlimited], and I can honestly say that KU has been fantastic for visibility for that particular series. I put the books into KU in the first part of August, and I watched my rankings rise like crazy after I did that. They've stuck, too. If I weren't in KU, I doubt that they would still be sticking as well as they have. (anniejocoby)This is fairly typical of the positive responses to exclusivity, yet it incorporates a number of the more opaque benefits entangled with going exclusive to Amazon.First, there is ‘visibility.’ In self-publishing terms, ‘visibility’ refers almost exclusively to chart positions within Amazon. The myriad of charts — and how they function — is beyond the scope of this paper but they absolutely indicate — often dictate — the discoverability of a book online. These charts are the ‘front windows’ of Amazon, to use an analogy to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Books that chart well are actively being bought by customers and they are very often those benefiting from Amazon’s powerful recommendation algorithm, something that expands beyond the site into the company’s expansive customer email list. This brings us to the second point Jocoby mentions, the ‘sticking’ within the charts.There is a widely held belief that once a good book (read: free of errors, broadly entertaining, on genre) finds its way into the Amazon recommendation algorithm, it can remain there for long periods of time leading to a building success as sales beget sales, further boosting the book’s chart performance and reviews. There is also the belief among some authors that Kindle Unlimited books are actively favoured by this algorithm. The high-selling Amanda M. Lee noted a direct correlation:Rank is affected when people borrow your book [under KU]. Page reads don't play into it all. (Amanda M. Lee)Within the same thread, USA Today bestseller Annie Bellet elaborated:We tested this a bunch when KU 2.0 hit. A page read does zip for rank. A borrow, even with no pages read, is what prompts the rank change. Borrows are weighted exactly like sales from what we could tell, it doesn't matter if nobody opens the book ever. All borrows now are ghost borrows, of course, since we can't see them anymore, so it might look like pages are coming in and your rank is changing, but what is probably happening is someone borrowed your book around the same time, causing the rank jump. (Annie B)Whether this advantage is built into the algorithm in a (likely) attempt to favour exclusive authors, or by nature of KU books presenting at a lower price point, is unknown but there is anecdotal evidence that once a KU book gains traction, it can ‘stick’ within the charts for longer periods of time compared to non-exclusive titles.At the entrepreneurial end of the fiction self-publishing scene, Amazon is positioned at the very centre. To go wide—to follow vectors through the scene adjacent to Amazon — is to go around the commercial centre and its profits. Yet no one in this community remains unaffected by the strategic position of this site and the market it has either created or captured. Amazon’s institutional practices can be adopted by competitors (Kobo Plus is a version of KU) and the multitude of tactics authors use to promote their work all, in one shape or another, lead back to ‘circumstantial moves’ learned from Amazon or services that are aimed at promoting work sold there. Further to which, the sense of instability and risk engendered by such a dominant market player is felt everywhere.Some Closing Ideas on the Ideology of Self-PublishingSelf-publishing fiction remains tactical in the de Certeau sense of the term. It is responsive and ever-shifting, with a touch of communal complicity and what he calls la perruque (‘the wig’), a shorthand for resistance that presents itself as submission (25). The entrepreneurialism of self-published fiction trades off this sense of the tactical.Within the scene, Amazon bestseller charts aren’t as much markers of prestige as systems to be hacked. The choice between ‘wide’ and exclusive is only ever short-term; it is carefully scrutinised and the trade-offs and opportunities are monitored week-to-week and debated constantly online. Over time, the self-publishing scene has become expert at decoding Amazon’s monolithic Terms of Service, ever eager to find both advantage and risk as they attempt to lever the affordances of digital publishing against their own desire for profit and expression.This sense of mischief and slippage forms a big part of what self-publishing is. In contrast to traditional publishing—with its long lead times and physical real estate—self-publishing can’t help but appear fragile, wild and coarse. There is no other comparison possible.To survive in self-publishing is to survive outside the established book industry and to thrive within a new and far more uncertain market/space, one almost entirely without a mapped topology. Unlike the traditional publishing industry—very much a legacy, a “relatively stable” population group (Straw 373)—self-publishing cannot escape its otherness, not in the short term. Both its spatial coordinates and its pathways remain too fast-evolving in comparison to the referent of traditional publishing. In the short-to-medium term, I imagine it will remain at some cultural remove from traditional publishing, be it perceived as a threatening northern force or a speculative west.To see self-publishing in the present, I encourage scholars to step away from traditional publishing industry protocols and frameworks, to strive to see this new arena as the self-published authors themselves understand it (what Muggleton has referred to a “indigenous meaning” 13).Straw and Shank’s scene concept provides one possible conceptual framework for this shift in understanding as scene’s reliance on spatial considerations harbours an often underemphazised asset: it is a theory of orientation. At heart, it draws as much from de Certeau as Bourdieu and as such, the scene presented in this work is never complete or fixed. It is de Certeau’s city “shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces” (93). These scenes—be they musicians or authors—are only ever glimpsed and from a vantage point of close proximity. In short, it is one way out of the essentialisms that currently shroud self-published fiction as a craft, business and community of authors. The cultural space of self-publishing, to return Straw’s scene definition, is one that mirrors its own porous, online infrastructure, its own predominance in virtuality. Its pathways are coded together inside fast-moving media companies and these pathways are increasingly entwined within algorithmic processes of curation that promise meritocratization and disintermediation yet delivery systems that can be learned and manipulated.The agility to publish within these systems is the true skill-set required to self-publish fiction online. It traverses specific platforms and short-term eras. It is the core attribute of success in the scene. Everything else is secondary, including the content of the books produced. It is not the case that these books are of lesser literary quality or that their ever-growing abundance is threatening—this is the counter-argument so often presented by the traditional book industry—but more so that without entrepreneurial agility, the quality of the ebook goes undetermined as it sinks lower and lower into a distribution system that is so open it appears endless.ReferencesAmanda M. Lee. “Re: KU Page Reads and Rank.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,232945.msg3245005.html#msg3245005>.Annie B [Annie Bellet]. “Re: KU Page Reads and Rank.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,232945.msg3245068.html#msg3245068>.Anniejocoby [Annie Jocoby]. “Re: Tell Me Why You're WIDE or KU ONLY.” Kboards: Writer’s Cafe. 1 Oct. 2007 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242514.msg3558176.html#msg3558176>.Baverstock, Alison, and Jackie Steinitz. “Why Are the Self-Publishers?” Learned Publishing 26 (2013): 211-223.Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual. Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.———, and Ian Rogers. Popular Music Scenes and Cultural Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, 1984.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 1984.Haugland, Ann. “Opening the Gates: Print On-Demand Publishing as Cultural Production” Publishing Research Quarterly 22.3 (2006): 3-16.Howey, Hugh. “October 2016 Author Earnings Report: A Turning of the Tide.” Author Earnings. 12 Oct. 2016 <http://authorearnings.com/report/october-2016/>.Kboards. About Kboards.com. 2017. 4 Oct. 2017 <https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,242026.0.html>.KindleSpy. 2017. Chrome plug-in.Laquintano, Timothy. Mass Authorship and the Rise of Self-Publishing. University of Iowa Press, 2016.Levey, Nick. “Post-Press Literature: Self-Published Authors in the Literary Field.” Post 45. 1 Oct. 2017 <http://post45.research.yale.edu/2016/02/post-press-literature-self-published-authors-in-the-literary-field-3/>.McGregor, Jay. “Amazon Pays $450,000 a Year to This Self-Published Writer.” Forbes. 17 Apr. 2017 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2015/04/17/mark-dawson-made-750000-from-self-published-amazon-books/#bcce23a35e38>.McIlroy, Thad. “Startups within the U.S. Book Publishing Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 33 (2017): 1-9.Muggleton, David. Inside Subculture: The Post-Modern Meaning of Style. Berg, 2000.Orwell, George. Selected Essays. Penguin Books, 1960.Fowler, Dawn. ‘‘This Is the North – We Do What We Want’: The Red Riding Trilogy as ‘Yorkshire Noir.” Cops on the Box. University of Glamorgan, 2013.Rogers, Ian. “The Hobbyist Majority and the Mainstream Fringe: The Pathways of Independent Music Making in Brisbane, Australia.” Redefining Mainstream Popular Music, eds. Andy Bennett, Sarah Baker, and Jodie Taylor. Routlegde, 2013. 162-173.Shank, Barry. Dissonant Identities: The Rock’n’Roll Scene in Austin Texas. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.Straw, Will. “Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music.” Cultural Studies 5.3 (1991): 368–88.Thomlinson, Adam, and Pierre C. Bélanger. “Authors’ Views of e-Book Self-Publishing: The Role of Symbolic Capital Risk.” Publishing Research Quarterly 31 (2015): 306-316.Thompson, John B. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. Penguin, 2012.Weinberg, Dana Beth. “The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction.” Digital Book World. 3 Oct. 2017 <http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/self-publishing-debate-part3/>.

Sticky, messy and nauseatingly saccharine, the sensory properties of jam may be a long way from the stylized corporate polish of Australia’s multi-billion dollar film exhibition industry, yet the history of Australian cinema space will be forever indebted to the Victoria Preserving Company; one-time producer of the humblest of sweet treats. Through an analysis of Melbourne’s Jam Factory cinema complex, this article explores the unusual intersection of jam, sensory gratification and contemporary Australian cinema-going at the dawn of the 21st century. Encompassing the historic architecture of the former Victoria Preserving Company, South Yarra’s Jam Factory complex provides a gentrified gloss to an inner suburban precinct historically renowned for the manufacturing of jam and preserves. Nestled in the heart of Chapel Street, less than two blocks down from Toorak road and a stone’s throw from the nightclub precinct of Commercial road, the Jam Factory occupies an important part of Melbourne’s cultural heritage; functioning as a quintessential signifier of the city’s traversal from wholesale manufacturing during the early 1900s into the service vectors of digital media technologies and mixed-use retail entertainment destinations at the start of the new millennium. Established in 1876, the Victoria Preserving Company, AKA the ‘Jam Factory’, hosts an array of diverse retail and leisure outlets. Included amongst its tenants are Borders Books, Villa & Hut, TGI Fridays, The Pancake Parlour, a Virgin Music Mega-store, an elaborate Village Cinema megaplex, and a range of ancillary restaurants, fashion stores and cafes. According to the venue’s promotional material, “The Jam Factory of today is, in short, ‘jam packed’ with entertainment” (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). With the original building’s façade and cooling store still intact, the architectural remnants of the Victoria Preserving Factory provide a culturally significant backdrop for what is ostensibly Australia’s most noteworthy cinema venture; Village Roadshow’s megaplex cinema flagship. Replete with fifteen large format screens, including two Gold Class cinemas, a Cinema Europa enclave and an interactive games alcove, The Village Jam Factory signifies Australia’s first foray into cinema-based retail entertainment destinations. In commenting on the opening of the Jam Factory megaplex in 1998, Village Roadshow’s general manager Mr. David Herman said, “The objective was to create Australia’s first non-gambling cinema and lifestyle complex” (Catalano 6). More than any other cinema venue, the Village Jam Factory played a key role in pushing Australian film exhibition standards into the new millennium. In an era marked by competing home theatre technologies and diversified sites of media consumption, the Jam Factory’s shift from suburban cinema to lifestyle complex dramatically altered both the business and social practice of movie-going in Australia. Central to this shift was a tripartite marketing strategy which sought to capitalize on: protracted movie-going experiences; sensory stimulation; and, venue promotion. Experiential Jam The promotion of a protracted movie-going experience has been essential to the continued success of the Village Jam Factory. As I have argued elsewhere, the Australian cinema industry of the mid 1990s faced a number of significant incentives for extending the movie going experience beyond the auditorium; not the least being the steady decline of box office takings that occurred during the late 1980s (Downing). In the face of new media technologies such as the internet, DVD and Pay TV, many cinema operators were forced to look beyond the box office as a primary source of profits. To this end Village Roadshow effectively used the Jam Factory as a testing ground for the generation of ancillary leisure and retail income streams. During the mid 1990s Village actively promoted the Jam Factory as a space in which audiences could not only see a film, but also engage in a series of expanded retail activities such as shopping, dining and video-game playing. Discussing the development of multi-use cinema venues during the 1990s, Charles Acland has commented that such spaces “…do not situate conditions of spectatorship alone; they also construct relations between public and cinematic practices” (Acland 119). Sensory Jam Far from being a traditional site of film consumption, the Jam Factory set an industry precedent by becoming the nation’s first cinema venue in which audiences were encouraged to engage in an entertainment experience that was, above all, aimed at stimulating the senses. In keeping with the ‘lifestyle destination’ mantra, the Village Jam Factory provided a new generation of Australians with a multi-sensory entertainment experience that could not be emulated by home theatre technologies. Wide sweeping foyers and elaborate ticket and merchandising counters greet the eye; ‘luxury’ stadium seating with wide aisles and broad armrests offer the ‘ultimate’ in tactile comfort; digital surround sound facilities pleasure the ears and a plethora of food and beverage novelties work to gratify the senses of taste and smell. More than any other Village cinema outlet, the Jam Factory venue smacks of sugar-coated commerce. With a revenue contribution of over 18%, the Village Roadshow candy bar is the undisputed cash-cow of the enterprise (Australian Film Commission 143). Colloquially known as ‘Lollywood’, the Village confectionary counter is an over-priced explosion of colour and candy that sustains industry revenue through a deliberate appeal to the audience’s sense of taste. This sugar dependency synchronistically mirrors the former success of Henry Jones, the entrepreneur behind Australia’s IXL jam brand, who operated his famous preserving company on the site between 1895 and 1926 (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). Venue Jam Village Roadshow’s promotion of the Jam Factory venue over the actual films being screened is indicative of Australia’s primary shift towards retail entertainment based cinema complexes. Unlike the homogenous multiplex venues of the 1970s and 1980s, the Village Jam Factory Complex has been aggressively marketed as a Melbourne icon, capable of offering a unique entertainment experience. This agenda is clearly documented in the 1999 Village Roadshow annual report which, pointing towards a perceived threat of home theatre technologies, proclaimed: [In] broadening the cinema going experience … [Village] aims to create an environment of quality entertainment theming and ancillary lifestyle retailing, thus providing a consistently high level of incentive for people to leave their homes for cinema anchored destinations. (Village Roadshow 19) To this end, the Jam Factory became the physical embodiment of Village Cinemas’ corporate tagline “Where Movies Live” (Village Cinemas, n.pag.). Throughout the late 1990s, a number of similar sites proliferated across Europe, the United States and Canada. Two noteworthy examples of this trend are the Manchester Times building in the UK (initially managed by a short lived Village-Warner synergy) and the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin; previous home to the Third Reich and later, the Berlin Wall. In both of these examples a similar venue-promotion agenda is clearly at work. In reflecting the cultural specificities of their host cities, each of these venues pays a semiotic homage to the previous occupants of their space. The Manchester Times building, for example, retains much of its former architecture and reflects the nocturnal vibrancy of 19th century printing plant. Similarly, the Sony Centre offers an architectural reflection on the complexities of Berlin history and German cinema. In Melbourne, the Jam Factory’s history of jam and jam making are equally preserved. Drawing heavily on postmodern architectural styles, the Jam Factory’s interior uses South Yarra’s local history as a backdrop for a schizophrenic collage of seemingly incommensurate time/place references. From the distinctive red-brick cooling tower (located in the centre of the building) one encounters a hybrid fusion of Mediterranean pasta courts, European coffee lounges, Romanesque artwork and columns (complete with weathered-look paint and ‘crumbling’ tops), statues of Hollywood stars, as well as a dazzling gaming alcove and a series of subdued ‘luxury’ (Gold Class) cinemas. Such eclectic displays of visual hyperbole have been prefigured by Umberto Eco, whose discussion on hyperreality addresses an imagination which “… demands the real thing, and in order to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake” (Eco 8). As a relatively recent contributor to Australian cinema history, the Village Jam Factory has achieved little sustained academic attention, yet its significance must not be undervalued. As Australia’s first cinema-oriented retail entertainment destination, the Village Jam Factory has been crucial in placing Australia into the global film exhibition arena. While the pungent aromas of ripened fruit, vinegar and boiling sugar have long since been replaced by the scent of popcorn and recycled air, the legacy and architecture of jam-making has played a key role in propelling Australian film exhibition into the new millennium. References Acland, Charles. Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 2001. Catalano, Anthony. “Village to Extend Jam Factory to 14 Cinemas.” The Age 5 Aug. 1998. Chapel St Precinct. General History of Chapel Street & Surrounds. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006 http://www.chapelstreet.com.au/default.asp?mode=history>. Downing, Leanne. “More than Meets the Eye: The Suburban Cinema Megaplex as Sensory Heterotopia.” Refractory: Journal of Media and Culture 8 (2005). http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol8/downing.html>. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyper Reality. Orlando Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Village Cinemas. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006. http://www.villagecinemas.com.au/>. Village Roadshow. Annual Report. Melbourne: Village Roadshow, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Downing, Leanne. "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>. APA Style Downing, L. (Dec. 2006) "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>.

Online shopping is all the rage these days and the murderabilia industry in particular, which specializes in selling serial killer artifacts, is booming. At Spectre Studios, sculptor David Johnson sells flexible plastic action figures of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy and plans to produce a figure of Jack the Ripper in the future. Although some might think that making action figures of serial killers is tasteless, Johnson hastens to assure the potential consumer that he does have standards: “I wouldn’t do Osama bin Laden . . . I have some personal qualms about that” (Robinson). At Serial Killer Central, you can buy a range of items made by serial killers themselves, including paintings and drawings by Angelo Buono (one of the “Hillside Stranglers”) and Henry Lee Lucas. For the more discerning consumer, Supernaught.com charges a mere $300 for a brick from Dahmer’s apartment building, while a lock of Charles Manson’s hair is a real bargain at $995, shipping and handling not included. The sale of murderabilia is just a small part of the huge serial killer industry that has become a defining feature of American popular culture over the last twenty-five years. This industry is, in turn, a prime example of what Mark Seltzer has described as “wound culture,” consisting of a “public fascination with torn and open bodies and torn and opened persons, a collective gathering around shock, trauma, and the wound” (1). According to Seltzer, the serial killer is “one of the superstars of our wound culture” (2) and his claim is confirmed by the constant stream of movies, books, magazines, television shows, websites, t-shirts, and a tsunami of ephemera that has given the figure of the serial murderer an unparalleled degree of visibility and fame in the contemporary American public sphere. In a culture defined by celebrity, serial killers like Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy are the biggest stars of all, instantly recognized by the vast majority of Americans. Not surprisingly, murderabilia has been the focus of a sustained critique by the (usually self-appointed) guardians of ‘decency’ in American culture. On January 2, 2003 The John Walsh Show, the daytime television vehicle of the long-time host of America’s Most Wanted, featured an “inside look at the world of ‘murderabilia,’ which involves the sale of artwork, personal effects and letters from well-known killers” (The John Walsh Show Website). Featured guests included Andy Kahan, Director of the Mayor’s Crime Victim Assistance Office in Houston, Texas; ‘Thomas,’ who was horrified to find hair samples from “The Railroad Killer,” the individual who killed his mother, for sale on the Internet; Elmer Wayne Henley, a serial killer who sells his artwork to collectors; Joe, who runs “Serial Killer Central” and sells murderabilia from a wide range of killers, and Harold Schechter, a professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. Despite the program’s stated intention to “look at both sides of the issue,” the show was little more than a jeremiad against the murderabilia industry, with the majority of airtime being given to Andy Kahan and to the relatives of crime victims. The program’s bias was not lost on many of those who visited Joe’s Serial Killer Central site and left messages on the message board on the day The John Walsh Show aired. There were some visitors who shared Walsh’s perspective. A message from “serialkillersshouldnotprofit@aol.com,” for example, stated that “you will rot in hell with these killers,” while “Smithpi@hotmail.com” had a more elaborate critique: “You should pull your site off the net. I just watched the John Walsh show and your [sic] a fucking idiot. I hope your [sic] never a victim, because if you do [sic] then you would understand what all those people were trying to tell you. You [sic] a dumb shit.” Most visitors, however, sympathized with the way Joe had been treated on the show: “I as well [sic] saw you on the John Walsh show, you should [sic] a lot of courage going on such a one sided show, and it was shit that they wouldnt [sic] let you talk, I would have walked off.” But whether the comments were positive or negative, one thing was clear: The John Walsh Show had created a great deal of interest in the Serial Killer Central site. As one of the messages put it, “I think that anything [sic] else he [John Walsh] has put a spark in everyones [sic] curiousity [sic] . . . I have noticed that you have more hits on your page today than any others [sic].” Apparently, even the most explicit rejection and condemnation of serial killer celebrity finds itself implicated in (and perhaps even unwittingly encouraging the growth of) that celebrity. John Walsh’s attack on the murderabilia industry was the latest skirmish in a campaign that has been growing steadily since the late 1990s. One of the campaign’s initial targets was the internet trading site eBay, which was criticized for allowing serial killer-related products to be sold online. In support of such criticism, conservative victims’ rights and pro-death penalty organizations like “Justice For All” organized online petitions against eBay. In November 2000, Business Week Online featured an interview with Andy Kahan in which he argued that the online sale of murderabilia should be suppressed: “The Internet just opens it all up to millions and millions more potential buyers and gives easy access to children. And it sends a negative message to society. What does it say about us? We continue to glorify killers and continue to put them in the mainstream public. That’s not right” (Business Week). Eventually bowing to public pressure, eBay decided to ban the sale of murderabilia items in May 2001, forcing the industry underground, where it continues to be pursued by the likes of John Walsh. Apart from highlighting how far the celebrity culture around serial killers has developed (so that one can now purchase the nail clippings and hair of some killers, as if they are religious icons), focusing on the ongoing debate around the ethics of murderabilia also emphasizes how difficult it is to draw a neat line between those who condemn and those who participate in that culture. Quite apart from the way in which John Walsh’s censoriousness brought more visitors to the Serial Killer Central site, one could also argue that few individuals have done more to disseminate information about violent crime in general and serial murder in particular to mainstream America than John Walsh. Of course, this information is presented in the unimpeachably moral context of fighting crime, but controversial features of America’s Most Wanted, such as the dramatic recreations of crime, pander to the same prurient public interest in crime that the program simultaneously condemns. An ABCNews.Com article on murderabilia inadvertently highlights the difficulty of distinguishing a legitimate from an illegitimate interest in serial murder by quoting Rick Staton, one of the biggest collectors and dealers of murderabilia in the United States, who emphasizes that the people he sells to are not “ghouls and creeps [who] crawl out of the woodwork”, but rather “pretty much your average Joe Blow.” Even his family, Staton goes on to say, who profess to be disgusted by what he does, act very differently in practice: “The minute they step into this room, they are glued to everything in here and they are asking questions and they are genuinely intrigued by it . . . So it makes me wonder: Am I the one who is so abnormal, or am I pretty normal?” (ABCNews.Com). To answer Staton’s question, we need to go back to 1944, when sociologist Leo Lowenthal published an essay entitled “Biographies in Popular Magazines,” an essay he later reprinted as a chapter in his 1961 book, Literature, Popular Culture And Society, under a new title: “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Lowenthal argues that biographies in popular magazines underwent a striking change between 1901 and 1941, a change that signals the emergence of a new social type. According to Lowenthal, the earlier biographies indicate that American society’s heroes at the time were “idols of production” in that “they stem from the productive life, from industry, business, and natural sciences. There is not a single hero from the world of sports and the few artists and entertainers either do not belong to the sphere of cheap or mass entertainment or represent a serious attitude toward their art” (112-3). Sampling biographies in magazines from 1941, however, Lowenthal reaches a very different conclusion: “We called the heroes of the past ‘idols of production’: we feel entitled to call the present-day magazine heroes ‘idols of consumption’” (115). Unlike the businessmen, industrialists and scientists who dominated the earlier sample, almost every one of 1941’s heroes “is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time: either he does not belong to vocations which serve society’s basic needs (e.g., the worlds of entertainment and sport), or he amounts, more or less, to a caricature of a socially productive agent” (115). Lowenthal leaves his reader in no doubt that he sees the change from “idols of production” to “idols of consumption” as a serious decline: “If a student in some very distant future should use popular magazines of 1941 as a source of information as to what figures the American public looked to in the first stages of the greatest crisis since the birth of the Union, he would come to a grotesque result . . . the idols of the masses are not, as they were in the past, the leading names in the battle of production, but the headliners of the movies, the ball parks, and the night clubs” (116). With Lowenthal in mind, when one considers the fact that the serial killer is generally seen, in Richard Tithecott’s words, as “deserving of eternal fame, of media attention on a massive scale, of groupies” (144), one is tempted to describe the advent of celebrity serial killers as a further decline in the condition of American culture’s “mass idols.” The serial killer’s relationship to consumption, however, is too complex to allow for such a hasty judgment, as the murderabilia industry indicates. Throughout the edition of The John Walsh Show that attacked murderabilia, Walsh showed clips of Collectors, a recent documentary about the industry. Collectors is distributed by a small company named Abject Films and on their website the film’s director, Julian P. Hobbs, discusses some of the multiple connections between serial killing and consumerism. Hobbs points out that the serial killer is connected with consumerism in the most basic sense that he has become a commodity, “a merchandising phenomenon that rivals Mickey Mouse. From movies to television, books to on-line, serial killers are packaged and consumed en-masse” (Abject Films). But as Hobbs goes on to argue, serial killers themselves can be seen as consumers, making any representations of them implicated in the same consumerist logic: “Serial killers come into being by fetishizing and collecting artifacts – usually body parts – in turn, the dedicated collector gathers scraps connected with the actual events and so, too, a documentary a collection of images” (Abject Films). Along with Rick Staton, Hobbs implies that no one can avoid being involved with consumerism in relation to serial murder, even if one’s reasons for getting involved are high-minded. For example, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison in 1994, the families of his victims were delighted but his death also presented them with something of a problem. Throughout the short time Dahmer was in prison, there had been persistent rumors that he was in negotiations with both publishers and movie studios about selling his story. If such a deal had ever been struck, legal restrictions would have prevented Dahmer from receiving any of the money; instead, it would have been distributed among his victims’ families. Dahmer’s murder obviously ended this possibility, so the families explored another option: going into the murderabilia business by auctioning off Dahmer’s property, including such banal items as his toothbrush, but also many items he had used in commission of the murders, such as a saw, a hammer, the 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies, and the refrigerator where he stored the hearts of his victims. Although the families’ motives for suggesting this auction may have been noble, they could not avoid participating in what Mark Pizzato has described as “the prior fetishization of such props and the consumption of [Dahmer’s] cannibal drama by a mass audience” (91). When the logic of consumerism dominates, is anyone truly innocent, or are there just varying degrees of guilt, of implication? The reason why it is impossible to separate neatly ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ expressions of interest in famous serial killers is the same reason why the murderabilia industry is booming; in the words of a 1994 National Examiner headline: “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” Christopher Sharrett has suggested that: “Perhaps the fetish status of the criminal psychopath . . . is about recognizing the serial killer/mass murderer not as social rebel or folk hero . . . but as the most genuine representative of American life” (13). The enormous resistance to recognizing the representativeness of serial killers in American culture is fundamental to the appeal of fetishizing serial killers and their artifacts. As Sigmund Freud has explained, the act of disavowal that accompanies the formation of a fetish allows a perception (in this case, the Americanness of serial killers) to persist in a different form rather than being simply repressed (352-3). Consequently, just like the sexual fetishists discussed by Freud, although we may recognize our interest in serial killers “as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by [us] as a symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering” (351). On the contrary, we are usually, in Freud’s words, “quite satisfied” (351) with our interest in serial killers precisely because we have turned them into celebrities. It is our complicated relationship with celebrities, affective as well as intellectual, composed of equal parts admiration and resentment, envy and contempt, that provides us with a lexicon through which we can manage our appalled and appalling fascination with the serial killer, contemporary American culture’s ultimate star. References ABCNews.Com. “Killer Collectibles: Inside the World of ‘Murderabilia.” 7 Nov. 2001. American Broadcasting Company. 9 May 2003 http://www.abcnews.com>. AbjectFilms.Com. “Collectors: A Film by Julian P. Hobbs.” Abject Films. 9 May 2003 http://www.abjectfilms.com/collectors.html>. BusinessWeek Online. 20 Nov. 2000. Business Week. 9 May 2003 http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708056.htm>. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” On Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin Books, 1977. 351-7. The John Walsh Show. Ed. Click Active Media. 2 Jan. 2003. 9 May 2003 http://www.johnwalsh.tv/cgi-bin/topics/today/cgi?id=90>. Lowenthal, Leo. “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961. 109-40. National Examiner. “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” 7 Jun. 1994: 7. Pizzato, Mark. “Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure of Sacrifice.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 85-118. Robinson, Bryan. “Murder Incorporated: Denver Sculptor’s Serial Killer Action Figures Bringing in Profits and Raising Ire.” ABCNews.Com 25 Mar. 2002. American Broadcasting Company. 27 Apr. 2003 http://abcnews.com/>. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998. Sharrett, Christopher. “Introduction.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 9-20. Tithecott, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Schmid, David. "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>. APA Style Schmid, D. (Nov. 2004) "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>.

A political minimalism? That would obviously go against the grain of our current political ideology → in fact, we are in an era of political maximalisation (Roland Barthes 200, arrow in original).Barthes’ comment is found in the ‘Annex’ to his 1978 lecture course The Neutral. Despite the three decade difference I don’t things have changed that much, certainly not insofar as academic debate about the cultural and social is concerned. At conferences I regularly hear the demand that the speaker or speakers account for the ‘political intent’, ‘worth’ or ‘utility’ of their work, or observe how speakers attempt to pre-empt and disarm such calls through judicious phrasing and citing. Following his diagnosis Barthes (201-206) proceeds to write under the title ‘To Give Leave’. Here he notes the incessant demand placed upon us, as citizens, as consumers, as representative cultural subjects and as biopolitical entities and, in this context, as academics to have and to communicate our allegiances, views and opinions. Echoing the acts, (or rather the ‘non-acts’), of Melville’s Bartleby, Barthes describes the scandalous nature of suspending the obligation of holding views; the apparent immorality of suspending the obligation of being interested, engaged, opinionated, committed – even if one only ever suspends provisionally, momentarily even. For the length of a five thousand word essay perhaps. In this short, unfortunately telegraphic and quite speculative essay I want pause to consider a few gestures or figures of ‘suspension’, ‘decline’ and ‘remaining aside’. What follows is in three parts. First a comment on the nature of the ‘demand to communicate’ identified by Barthes and its links to longer running moral and practical imperatives within Western understandings of the subject, the social and the political. Second, the most substantial section but still an all too brief account of the apparent ‘passivity’ of the narrator of Imre Kertész’s novel Fatelessness and the ways in which the novel may be read as a reflection on the nature of agency and determination. Third, a very brief conclusion, the question directly; what politics or what apprehension of politics, could a reflection on stillness and its ‘political minimalism’ offer? 1.For Barthes, (in 1978), one of the factors defining the contemporary intellectual scene was the way in which “politics invades all phenomena, economic, cultural, ethical” coupled with the “radicalization” of “political behaviors” (200), perhaps most notably in the arrogance of political discourse as it assumes the place of a master discourse. Writing in 1991 Bill Readings identified a similar phenomenon. For Readings the category of the political and politically inspired critique were operating by encircling their objects within a presupposed “universal language of political significance into which one might translate everything according to its effectivity”, an approach which has the effect of always making “the political […] the bottom line, the last instance where meaning can be definitively asserted” (quoted in Clark 3) or, we may add, realized. There is, of course, much that could be said here, not least concerning the significant differences in context, (between, for example, the various forms of revolutionary Marxism, Communism and Maoism which seem to preoccupy Barthes and the emancipatory identity and cultural politics which swept through literature departments in the US and beyond in the last two decades of the twentieth century). However it is also possible to suggest that a general grammar and, moreover, a general acceptance of a telos of the political persists.Barthes' (204-206) account of ‘political maximalisation’ is accompanied by a diagnosis of its productivist virility, (be it, in 1978, on the part of the increasingly reduced revolutionary left or the burgeoning neo-liberal right). The antithesis, or, rather, the outside of such an arrangement or frame would not be another political program but rather a certain stammering, a lassitude or dilatoriness. A flaccidness even; “a devirilized image” wherein from the point of view of the (political) actor or critic, “you are demoted to the contemptible mass of the undecided of those who don’t know who to vote for: old, lost ladies whom they brutalize: vote however you want, but vote” (Barthes 204). Hence Barthes is not suggesting a counter-move, a radical refusal, a ‘No’ shouted back to the information saturated market society. What is truly scandalous he suggests, is not opposition or refusal but the ‘non-reply’. What is truly scandalous, roughish even, is the decline or deferral and so the provisional suspension of the choice (and the blackmail) of the ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the ‘this’ or the ‘that’, the ‘with us’ or ‘against us’.In Literature and Evil Georges Bataille concludes his essay on Kafka with a comment on such a decline. According to Bataille, the reason why Kafka remains an ambivalent writer for critics, (and especially for those who would seek to enrol his work to political ends), lays precisely in his constant withdrawal; “There was nothing he [Kafka] could have asserted, or in the name of which he could have spoken. What he was, which was nothing, only existed to the extent in which effective activity condemned him” (167). ‘Effective activity’ refers, contextually, to a certain form of Communism but more broadly to the rationalization or systematization intrinsic to any political program, political programs (or ideologies) as such, be they communist, liberal or libertarian. At least insofar as, as implied above, the political is taken to coincide with a certain metaphysics and morality of action and the consequent linking of freedom to work, (a factor common to communist, fascist and liberal political programs), and so to the labour of the progressive self-realization and achievement of the self, the autos or ipse (see Derrida 6-18). Be it via, for example, Marx’s account of human’s intrinsic ‘capacity for work’ (Arbeitskraft), Heidegger’s account of necessary existential (and ultimately communal) struggle (Kampf), or Weber’s diagnoses of the (Protestant/bourgeois) liberal project to realize human potentiality (see also Agamben Man without Content; François 1-64). Hence what is ‘evil’ in Kafka is not any particular deed but the deferral of deeds; his ambivalence or immorality in the eyes of certain critics being due to the question his writing poses to “the ultimate authority of action” (Bataille 153) and so to the space beyond action onto which it opens. What could this space of ‘worklessness’ or ‘unwork’ look like? This non-virile, anti-heroic space? This would not be a space of ‘inaction’, (a term still too dependent, albeit negatively, on action), but of ‘non-action’; of ‘non-productive’ or non-disclosive action. That is to say, and as a first attempt at definition, ‘action’ or ‘praxis’, if we can still call it that, which does not generate or bring to light any specific positive content. As a way to highlight the difficulties and pitfalls, (at least with certain traditions), which stand in the way of thinking such a space, we may highlight Giorgio Agamben’s comments on the widespread coincidence of a metaphysics of action with the determination of both the subject, its teleology and its orientation in the world:According to current opinion, all of man’s [sic] doing – that of the artist and the craftsman as well as that of the workman and the politician – is praxis – manifestation of a will that produces a concrete effect. When we say that man has a productive status on earth, we mean, that the status of his dwelling on the earth is a practical one […] This productive doing now everywhere determines the status of man on earth – man understood as the living being (animal) that works (laborans), and, in work, produces himself (Man without Content 68; 70-71 original emphasis).Beyond or before practical being then, that is to say before and beyond the determination of the subject as essentially or intrinsically active and engaged, another space, another dwelling. Maybe nocturnal, certainly one with a different light to that of the day; one not gathered in and by the telos of the ipse or the turning of the autos, an interruption of labour, an unravelling. Remaining still, unravelling together (see Harrison In the absence).2.Kertész’s novel Sorstalanság was first published in his native Hungary in 1975. It has been translated into English twice, in 1992 as Fateless and in 2004 as Fatelessness. Fatelessness opens in Budapest on the day before György Köves’ – the novel’s fourteen year old narrator – father has to report for ‘labour service’. It goes on to recount Köves’ own detention and deportation and the year spent in the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald and Zeitz. During this period Köves’ health declines, gradually at first and then rapidly to a moment of near death. He survives and the novel closes with his return to his home town. Köves is, as Kertész has put it in various interviews and as is made clear in the novel, a ‘non-Jewish Jew’; a non-practicing and non-believing Hungarian Jew from a largely assimilated family who neither reads nor speaks Hebrew or Yiddish. While Kertész has insisted that the novel is precisely that, a novel, a work of literature and not an autobiography, we should note that Kertész was himself imprisoned in Buchenwald and Zeitz when fourteen.Not without reservations but for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only one theme in the novel; determination and agency, or what Kertész calls ‘determinacy’. Writing in his journal Galley Boat-Log (Gályanapló) in May 1965 Kertész suggests ‘Novel of Fatelessness’ as a possible title for his work and then reflects on what he means by ‘fate’, the entry is worth quoting at length.The external determinacy, the stigma which constrains our life in a situation, an absurdity, in the given totalitarianism, thwarts us; thus, when we live out the determinacy which is doled out to us as a reality, instead of the necessity which stems from our own (relative) freedom – that is what I call fatelessness.What is essential is that our determinacy should always be in conflict with our natural views and inclinations; that is how fatelessness manifests itself in a chemically pure state. The two possible modes of protection: we transform into our determinacy (Kafka’s centipede), voluntarily so to say, and I that way attempt to assimilate our determinacy to our fate; or else we rebel against it, and so fall victim to our determinacy. Neither of these is a true solution, for in both cases we are obliged to perceive our determinacy […] as reality, whilst the determining force, that absurd power, in a way triumphs over us: it gives us a name and turns us into an object, even though we were born for other things.The dilemma of my ‘Muslim’ [Köves]: How can he construct a fate out of his own determinacy? (Galley Boat-Log 98 original emphasis).The dilemma of determinacy then; how can Köves, who is both determined by and superfluous to the Nazi regime, to wider Hungarian society, to his neighbours and to his family, gain some kind of control over his existence? Throughout Fatelessness people prove repeatedly unable to control their destinies, be it Köves himself, his father, his stepmother, his uncles, his friends from the oil refinery, or even Bandi Citrom, Köves’ mentor in the camps. The case of the ‘Expert’ provides a telescoped example. First appearing when Köves and his friends are arrested the ‘Expert’ is an imposing figure, well dressed, fluent in German and the director of a factory involved in the war effort (Fatelessness 50). Later at the brickworks, where the Jews who have been rounded up are being held prior to deportation, he appears more dishevelled and slightly less confident. Still, he takes the ‘audacious’ step of addressing a German officer directly (and receives some placatory ‘advice’ as his reward) (68-69). By the time the group arrives at the camp Köves has difficulty recognising him and without a word of protest, the ‘Expert’ does not pass the initial selection (88).Köves displays no such initiative with regard to his situation. He is reactive or passive, never active. For Köves events unfold as a series of situations and circumstances which are, he tells himself, essentially reasonable and to which he has to adapt and conform so that he may get on. Nothing more than “given situations with the new givens inherent in them” (259), as he explains near the end of the novel. As Köves' identity papers testify, his life and its continuation are the effect of arbitrary sets of circumstances which he is compelled to live through; “I am not alive on my own account but benefiting the war effort in the manufacturing industry” (29). In his Nobel lecture Kertész described Köves' situation:the hero of my novel does not live his own time in the concentration camps, for neither his time nor his language, not even his own person, is really his. He doesn’t remember; he exists. So he has to languish, poor boy, in the dreary trap of linearity, and cannot shake off the painful details. Instead of a spectacular series of great and tragic moments, he has to live through everything, which is oppressive and offers little variety, like life itself (Heureka! no pagination).Without any wilful or effective action on the part of the narrator and with only ‘the dreary trap of linearity’ where one would expect drama, plot, rationalization or stylization, Fatelessness can read as an arbitrarily punctuated series of waitings. Köves waiting for his father to leave, waiting in the customs shed, waiting at the brick works, waiting in train carriages, waiting on the ramp, waiting at roll call, waiting in the infirmary. Here is the first period of waiting described in the book, it is the day before his father’s departure and he is waiting for his father and stepmother as they go through the accounts at the family shop:I tried to be patient for a bit. Striving to think of Father, and more specifically the fact that he would be going tomorrow and, quite probably, I would not see him for a long time after that; but after a while I grew weary with that notion and then seeing as there was nothing else I could do for my father, I began to be bored. Even having to sit around became a drag, so simply for the sake of a change I stood up to take a drink of water from the tap. They said nothing. Later on, I also made my way to the back, between the planks, in order to pee. On returning I washed my hands at the rusty, tiled sink, then unpacked my morning snack from my school satchel, ate that, and finally took another drink from the tap. They still said nothing. I sat back in my place. After that, I got terribly bored for another absolute age (Fatelessness 9). It is interesting to consider exactly how this passage presages those that will come. Certainly this scene is an effect of the political context, his father and stepmother have to go through the books because of the summons to labour service and because of the racial laws on who may own and profit from a business. However, the specifically familial setting should not be overlooked, particularly when read alongside Kertész’s other novels where, as Madeleine Gustafsson writes, Communist dictatorship is “portrayed almost as an uninterrupted continuation of life in the camp – which in turn [...] is depicted as a continuation of the patriarchal dictatorship of a joyless childhood” (no pagination, see, for example, Kertész Kaddish). Time to turn back to our question; does Fatelessness provide an answer to the ‘dilemma of determinacy’? We should think carefully before answering. As Julia Karolle suggests, the composition of the novel and our search for a logic within itreveal the abuses that reason must endure in order to create any story or history about the Holocaust […]. Ultimately Kertész challenges the reader not to make up for the lack of logic in Fatelessness, but rather to consider the nature of its absence (92 original emphasis).Still, with this point in mind, (and despite what has been said above), the novel does contain a scene in which Köves appears to affirm his existence.In many respects the scene is the culmination of the novel. The camps have been liberated and Köves has returned to Budapest. Finding his father and step-mother’s apartment occupied by strangers he calls on his Aunt and Uncle Fleischmann and Uncle Steiner. The discussion which follows would repay a slower reading, however again for the sake of brevity I shall focus on only a few short excerpts. Köves suggests that everyone took their ‘steps’ towards the events which have unfolded and that prediction and retrospection are false perspectives which give the illusion of order and inevitability whereas, in reality, “everything becomes clear only gradually, sequentially over time, step-by-step” (Fatelessness 249): “They [his Uncles] too had taken their own steps. They too […] had said farewell to my father as if we had already buried him, and even later has squabbled about whether I should take the train or the suburban bus to Auschwitz” (260). Fleischmann and Steiner react angrily, claiming that such an understanding makes the ‘victims’ the ‘guilty ones’. Köves responds by saying that they do not understand him and asks they see that:It was impossible, they must try to understand, impossible to take everything away from me, impossible for me to be neither winner nor loser, for me not to be right and not to be mistaken that I was neither the cause nor effect of anything; they should try to see, I almost pleaded, that I could not swallow that idiotic bitterness, that I should merely be innocent (260-261).Karolle (93-94) suggests that Köves' discussion with his uncles marks the moment where he accepts and affirms his existence and, from this point on begins to take control of and responsibility. Hence for Karolle the end of the novel depicts an ‘authentic’ moment of self-affirmation as Köves steps forward and refuses to participate in “the factual historical narrative of Auschwitz, to forget what he knows, and to be unequivocally categorized as a victim of history” (95). In distinction to Karolle, Adrienne Kertzer argues that Köves' moment of self-affirmation is, in fact, one of self-deception. Rather than acknowledging that it was “inexplicable luck” and a “series of random acts” (Kertzer 122) which saved his life or that his near death was due to an accident of birth, Köves asserts his personal freedom. Hence – and following István Deák – Kertzer suggests that we should read Fatelessness as a satire, ‘a modern Candide’. A satire on the hope of finding meaning, be it personal or metaphysical, in such experiences and events, the closing scenes of the novel being an ironic reflection on the “desperate desire to see […] life as meaningful” (Kertzer 122). So, while Köves convinces himself of his logic his uncles say to each other “‘Leave him be! Can’t you see he only wants to talk? Let him talk! Leave him be!’ And talk I did, albeit possibly to no avail and even a little incoherently” (Fatelessness 259). Which are we to choose then? The affirmation of agency (with Karolle) or the diagnosis of determination (with Kertzer)? Karolle and Kertzer give insightful analyses, (and ones which are certainly not limited to the passages quoted above), however it seems to me that they move too quickly to resolve the ‘dilemma’ presented by Köves, if not of Fatelessness as a whole. Still, we have a little time before having to name and decide Köves’ fate. Kertész’s use of the word ‘hero’ to describe Köves above – ‘the hero of my novel…’ – is, perhaps, more than a little ironic. As Kertész asks (in 1966), how can there be a hero, how can one be heroic, when one is one’s ‘determinacies’? What sense does it make to speak of heroic actions if “man [sic] is no more than his situation”? (Galley Boat-Log 99). Köves’ time, his language, his identity, none are his. There is no place, no hidden reservoir of freedom, from which way he set in motion any efficacious action. All resources have already been corrupted. From Kertész’s journal (in 1975): “The masters of thought and ideologies have ruined my thought processes” (Galley Boat-Log 104). As Lawrence Langer has argued, the grammar of heroics, along with the linked terms ‘virtue’, ‘dignity’, ‘resistance’ ‘survival’ and ‘liberation’, (and the wider narrative and moral economies which these terms indicate and activate), do not survive the events being described. Here the ‘dilemma of determinacy’ becomes the dilemma of how to think and value the human outside or after such a grammar. How to think and value the human beyond a grammar of action and so beyond, as Lars Iyer puts it, “the equation of work and freedom that characterizes the great discourses of political modernity” (155). If this is possible. If such a grammar and equation isn’t too all pervasive, if something of the human still remains outside their economy. It may well be that our ability to read Fatelessness depends in large part on what we are prepared to forsake (see Langar 195). How to think the subject and a politics in contretemps, beyond or after the choice between determination or autonomy, passive or active, inaction or action, immoral or virtuous – if only for a moment? Kertész wonders, (in 1966), ”perhaps there is something to be savaged all the same, a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail that may be a sign of the will to live and still awakens sympathy” (Galley Boat-Log 99). Something, perhaps, which remains to be salvaged from the grammar of humanism, something that would not be reducible to context, to ‘determinacies’, and that, at the same time, does not add up to a (resurrected) agent. ‘A tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail’. The press release announcing that Kertész had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature states that “For Kertész the spiritual dimension of man lies in his inability to adapt to life” (The Swedish Academy no pagination). Despite the difficulties presented by the somewhat over-determined term ‘spiritual’, this line strikes me as remarkably perspicuous. Like Melville’s Bartleby and Bataille’s Kafka before him, Kertész’s Köves’ existence, insofar as he exists, is made up by his non-action. That is to say, his existence is defined not by his actions or his inaction, (both of which are purely reactive and functional), but rather by his irreducibility to either. As commentators and critics have remarked, (and as the quotes given from the text above hopefully illustrate), Köves has an oddly formal and neutral ‘voice’. Köves’ blank, frequently equivocal tone may be read as a sign of his immaturity, his lack of understanding and his naivety. However I would suggest that before such factors, what characterizes Köves’ mode of address is its reticence to assert or disclose. Köves speaks, he speaks endlessly, but he says nothing or almost nothing - ‘to no avail and even a little incoherently’. Hence where Karolle seeks to recover an ‘intoned self-consciousness’ and Kertzer the repressed determining context, we may find Köves' address. Where Karolle’s and Kertzer’s approaches seek in some way to repair Köves words, to supplement them with either an agency to-come or an awareness of a context and, in doing so, pull his words fully into the light, Köves, it seems to me, remains elusive. His existence, insofar as we may speak of it, lies in his ‘inability to adapt to life’. His reserves are not composed of hidden or recoverable sources of agency but in his equivocality, in the way he takes leave of and remains aside from the very terms of the dilemma. It is as if with no resources of his own, he has an echo existence. As if still remaining itself where a tiny foolishness, something ultimately comic and frail.3.Is this it? Is this what we are to be left with in a ‘political minimalism’? It would seem more resignation or failure, turning away or quietism, the conceit of a beautiful soul, than any type of recognisable politics. On one level this is correct, however any such suspension or withdrawal, this moment of stillness where we are, is only ever a moment. However it is a moment which indicates a certain irreducibility and as such is, I believe, of great significance. Great significance, (or better ‘signifyingness’), even though – and precisely because – it is in itself without value. Being outside efficacy, labour or production, being outside economisation as such, it resides only in its inability to be integrated. What purpose does it serve? None. Or, perhaps, none other than demonstrating the irreducibility of a life, of a singular existence, to any discourse, narrative, identity or ideology, insofar as such structures, in their attempt to comprehend (or apprehend) the existent and put it to use always and violently fall short. As Theodor Adorno wrote;It is this passing-on and being unable to linger, this tacit assent to the primacy of the general over the particular, which constitutes not only the deception of idealism in hypostasizing concepts, but also its inhumanity, that has no sooner grasped the particular than it reduces it to a thought-station, and finally comes all too quickly to terms with suffering and death (74 emphasis added).This moment of stillness then, of declining and remaining aside, represents, for me, the anarchical and all but silent condition of possibility for all political strategy as such (see Harrison, Corporeal Remains). A condition of possibility which all political strategy carries within itself, more or less well, more or less consciously, as a memory of the finite and corporeal nature of existence. A memory which may always and eventually come to protest against the strategy itself. Strategy itself as strategy; as command, as a calculated and calculating order. And so, and we should be clear about this, such a remaining still is a demonstration.A demonstration not unlike, for example, that of the general anonymous population in José Saramago’s remarkable novel Seeing, who ‘act’ more forcefully through non-action than any through any ends-directed action. A demonstration of the kind which Agamben writes about after those in Tiananmen Square in 1989:The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be the struggle for control of the state, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity) […] [who] cannot form a societas because they do not poses any identity to vindicate or bond of belonging for which to seek recognition (Coming Community 85-67; original emphasis).A demonstration like that which sounds through Köves when his health fails in the camps and he finds himself being wheeled on a handcart taken for dead;a snatch of speech that I was barely able to make out came to my attention, and in that hoarse whispering I recognized even less readily the voice that has once – I could not help recollecting – been so strident: ‘I p … pro … test,’ it muttered” (Fatelessness 187 ellipses in original).The inmate pushing the cart stops and pulls him up by the shoulders, asking with astonishment “Was? Du willst noch leben? [What? You still want to live?] […] and right then I found it odd, since it could not have been warranted and, on the whole, was fairly irrational (187).AcknowledgmentsMy sincere thanks to the editors of this special issue, David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, for their interest, encouragement and patience. Thanks also to Sadie, especially for her comments on the final section. ReferencesAdorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London: Verso, 1974.Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.———. The Man without Content. Stanford: Stanford U P, 1999.Barthes, Roland. The Neutral. New York: Columbia U P, 2005.Bataille, Georges. Literature and Evil. London: Marion Boyars, 1985.Clarke, Timothy. The Poetics of Singularity: The Counter-Culturalist Turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and the Late Gadamer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2005.Deák, István. "Stranger in Hell." New York Review of Books 23 Sep. 2003: 65-68.Derrida, Jacques. Rogues. 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