Academic literature on the topic 'History of dictation'

AbstractSocrates remains one of the most prominent paternal figures of Western dialogism and phonocentric paradigm; the man who stirred up the dialectic imaginations of his days. In Plato’s Socratic dialogues, his inner voice (daimonion) sounds as a last-instance statement to cast the light on the final solution of the conversation. In the context of antiquity and following cultural tradition, Socrates was the only hearer of warning signals from inside. The rest of the voices were urging (voices of the imaginable cursed souls, saints, angels, etc.). There was no need for a “personal” dictating voice when a divine dictation was already present. According to Charles Peirce’s classification, a “voice without evident source” or a voice from the head is a dicent indexical legisign.

AbstractIn Antiquity, original writing, copying and translating took place through dictation. It is likely that (parts of) the Septuagint was (were) committed to writing in that way. Traditions concerning the translation of Buddhist Sutras into Chinese help us to picture that process. The hypothesis that someone recited the Hebrew text, one translated orally and one or more scribes wrote the translation down contributes to LXX research. It explains (1) characteristic features of the Septuagint noted by Soisalon-Soininen, and (2) phonetic errors on both the Hebrew and the Greek sides. (3) It is compatible with the notion that learned scribes were involved but it lends no support to the "targumic origin" theory.

<span>Voice recognition software allows computer users to bypass their keyboards and use their voices to enter text. While the library literature is somewhat silent about voice recognition technology, the medical and legal communities have reported some success using it. Voice recognition software was tested for dictation accuracy and usability within an agriculture library at the University of Illinois. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8.0 was found to be more accurate than speech recognition within Microsoft Office 2003. Helpful Web sites and a short history regarding this breakthrough technology are included.</span>

Abstract The transfer of railway technology within the British Empire, and particularly to India provides the focus for this paper that explores—conceptually, historiographically and substantively—what was transferred and how that transfer took place. Drawing upon the large-scale technical system literature and labor history the paper highlights various kinds and levels of transfer agents working through, albeit in an often-contested fashion, Afro-Asian labor processes as central components within the transfer process when railway construction was involved. Railway construction is then counterpoised to railway operation where the transfer process exhibited greater British dictation and adherence to British practice.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Kelley M. Turner of New York invented a telephone apparatus of very high sound sensitivity, which he called the “Dictograph.” (It should not be confused with the Dictaphone, a device used to record dictation.) Although his original idea was for a communications system with a great variety of applications, the Dictograph ultimately became one of the earliest electric eavesdropping devices, used by both police and private investigators. As such, the Dictograph played a part in some notable criminal prosecutions and was used in antiunion activity. It continued to be used in this way until it was rendered obsolescent by other technologies. The emergence of the preferred applications of the Dictograph illuminates aspects of the sociology of technology, such as the concept of “acoustic space.” It also raised issues related to the ethics and law of clandestine listening.

Pre-twentieth century Sikh tradition says that Bhāī Gurdās, the scribe of Guru Arjanās text of the Adi Granth, was troubled by a major doubt as he wrote the words the Guru dictated to him: faced with poems attributed to figures like Kabīr and Nāmdev (collectively known as bhagats in the tradition), Gurdās began to wonder whether Guru Arjan was not composing the poems himself and ascribing them to the bhagats. Realizing what was troubling Bhāī Gurdās, the Guru instructed the scribe to rise early the next morning and wait outside the tent where the dictation of the Granth took place every day. When he did, Gurdās was surprised to see the Guru conversing with a number of the ībhagats in ‘spiritual form’. The bhagats, it turned out, came to the tent every morning to ensure that their compositions were included in Guru Arjan's Granth. Gurdās was suitably impressed by the display and acknowledged without further question the authenticity of their compositions.

AbstractFrederic Jones became the Queensland Commercial Agent in the Far East in 1904. He worked assiduously to extend Queensland’s trade with Asia, often pursuing a vigorously competitive approach in his dealings with the other states. Based in Shanghai from 1906, he became the first official from Australia to serve in China. He persuaded the Commonwealth government to authorise him to provide visiting Chinese merchants and travellers with documentation that would allow them to enter without undergoing the dictation test. Foreseeing the potential for trade complementarity between Queensland and China, after his appointment concluded in December 1907 he remained in business in Shanghai.

This thesis seeks to answer the question of how Joseph Smith—History found in The Pearl of Great Price developed into a part of the canon of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When the prophet Joseph Smith first dictated the text to his scribes it seems he had not intended for the work to become scripture, but simply to follow the Lord's divine mandate to keep a record. Additionally he provided the purpose in his document to "disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts, as they transpired." The format he proposed for the Manuscript History illustrates how it was originally not purposed for scripture. The compiling of that history took the efforts of many men and women and spanned the length of almost twenty years to complete. Joseph Smith had begun the dictation to his scribe George Robinson in 1838, but it was unfinished. Joseph later began the dictation anew to his scribe James Mulholland, first having the man rewrite what he had told to Robinson and then picking up the dictation from there. While the prophet had started and stopped histories before, this particular dictation began the enduring effort. The Manuscript History was developed from the original 59 pages that were scribed by Mulholland. By the efforts of other scribes, but mostly Willard Richards, the history was completed. The official statement of Brigham Young and Orson Pratt upon its completion said nothing of extracting portions for canon. But Mulholland's work seemed destined for a different purpose than the rest of the Manuscript History. It was printed serially in the Times and Seasons, and a few apostles seemed to catch a vision of what the manuscript could do for potential converts and members of the Church. Orson Pratt was especially a proponent of communicating certain key events as illustrated in his missionary tract "Remarkable Visions." A later apostle, Franklin D. Richards, would see the benefit of using the official history to distribute the history of the restoration of the Church to others. He extracted portions from Mulholland's text that covered certain main events in Joseph's life and printed them in his missionary tract The Pearl of Great Price. This pamphlet would eventually be canonized by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1880. Joseph Smith-History's inclusion in the reclamation of revelation that occurred in 1880 was deserved. This is evidenced by examining the process of canonization and the guiding principles of canonization employed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was canonized at the same time as many other revelations and at a General Conference saturated with many important events. Consequently it is difficult to gauge the reaction to its inclusion in canon, except in how it has been used since its canonization. After its inclusion into scripture the text has become a foundational piece of literature for the Church. The impact the text has had can be seen in the culture, missionary work, and doctrine of the Church. The focus of this thesis is to map the text's journey from birth to canonization.

The study, which examines the practice of dictation in the first classes of primary schools, is divided into two parts. The first, which is purely historical, investigates the presence of dictation, as an educational practice, in ministerial programmes and scholastic journals from the Unification of Italy through to the present day. The second presents an empirical research carried out in the first classes of thirteen primary schools in order to describe, analyze and understand how and why teachers dictate. Data collected and analysed for psychogenetic research into the acquisition of written language, and research into dictation carried out by Emilia Ferreiro in Mexico in the 1980s, show how dictation is a practice that is perpetuated in schools without the teachers really being able to justify its use. Examination of the data gathered has made it possible to detect a number of limitations in the practice of dictation as observed. First of all, there is no apparent consistency between the purpose for which teachers use dictation and the methods of dictation analysed: the continual instructions that the teachers give their pupils during dictation are hard to reconcile with the aim of verifying their acquisition of the relationship between phonemes and graphemes. Secondly, the texts used for dictation are poor in terms of lexicon, syntax and morphology: this limitation is even more evident when the content used by the teachers is compared with what the children write spontaneously. Lastly, this practice, which the teachers consider as useful for “teaching how to write” – in other words, indispensable for conveying the relationship between phonemes and graphemes – proves to be of little effectiveness for children in difficulty who, at the start of the year, still have not grasped this relationship.

La thèse se situe dans le domaine de l'histoire de l'éducation, inspiré par les hypothèses de l'histoire culturelle. Son objectif principal de développer une sorte de «archéologie» de la dictée à l'école primaire pour discuter sa présence séculaire et sa persistance, aujourd'hui, comme une pratique scolaire. L'enquête est de réduire la période de 1939 à 1971. Le point de départ est due à l'introduction et l'adoption plus expressive de la nouvelle école au Rio Grande do Sul, par le décret n. 8020 du 29 Novembre 1939, qui a approuvé le «programme minimum à adopter dans les écoles primaires de l'Etat." Le cadre final est basé sur la date effective de la loi des directives et des bases de 1971 (loi n °. 5692/71) qui a aboli l'enseignement primaire. Sont adopté trois analyse porte, qui se coupent: les conceptions; les orientations; et les pratiques scolaires de la dictée. La stratégie d'analyse de la recherche est de fournir des auteurs qui ont étudié le sujet, à savoir: André Chervel, Danièle Manesse, Anne-Marie Chartier, Pierre Caspard, Antoine Prost et Patrick Cabanel; ainsi que des auteurs qui se sont consacrés à la réflexion sur la culture de l'école, notamment, Dominique Julia, Antonio Viñao Frago et Justino Magalhães, qui contribuent à la compréhension des concepts de la dictée. La recherche a rassemblé un corpus empirique de différents documents, afin d'identifier: 1) des conseils sur l'adoption et la mise en oeuvre de la dictée dans la salle de classe contenue dans les programmes éducatifs, dont certains sont développés et approuvés par décrets officiels, manuels scolaires pour la formation des enseignants et des articles produits par des enseignants et publiés dans le “Revista do Ensino/RS” [Journal of enseignement/RS]; 2) les pratiques d'écriture scolaire qui incluent la dictée comme un exercice écrit d’enseignement et/ou d'évaluation, identifiés dans des cahiers scolaires du primaire (empirique principale de la thèse); rapports dans lequel la dictée apparaît comme aspect explicitement évalué; et les souvenirs de l'école où la dictée est évoqué comme une memoire de la période de la scolarité initiale. L'étude conçoit que la dictée se compose d'une pratique si présent et insidieuse, et l'efficacité pédagogique et le contrôle de telle sorte que, dans la culture scolaire, prend un caractère de dispositif. Constate que la dictée, en effet, reste une pratique scolaire, mais cela ne signifie pas qu'il y a une continuité des pratiques. La dictée, comme l'école, a une historicité et si elle persiste comme une pratique scolaire est parce qu'elle était/est capable de se réinventer.
A tese se inscreve no campo da História da Educação, inspirada nos pressupostos da História Cultural. Tem como objetivo principal elaborar uma espécie de “arqueologia” do ditado na escola primária a fim de problematizar sua presença secular e sua persistência, na atualidade, como prática escolar. A investigação tem como recorte temporal o período de 1939 a 1971. O marco inicial deve-se à introdução e adoção mais expressiva do ideário da Escola Nova no Rio Grande do Sul, por meio do Decreto n. 8020 de 29 de novembro de 1939, que aprovou o “Programa mínimo a ser adotado nas escolas primárias do Estado”. O marco final se assenta no início da vigência da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases de 1971 (Lei n. 5692/71) que extinguiu o ensino primário. São adotados três focos de análise, que se encontram em intersecção: as concepções; as orientações; e as práticas do ditado escolar. A estratégia analítica da investigação tem como aporte autores que se debruçaram sobre a temática, a saber: André Chervel, Danièle Manesse, Anne-Marie Chartier, Pierre Caspard, Antoine Prost e Patrick Cabanel; além de autores que se dedicaram à reflexão sobre a cultura escolar, em especial, Dominique Julia, António Viñao Frago e Justino Magalhães, que contribuem para a compreensão das concepções sobre o ditado. A investigação reuniu um corpus empírico composto por diferentes documentos, com a finalidade de identificar: 1) orientações sobre a adoção e a aplicação do ditado em sala de aula contidas em programas de ensino, sendo alguns deles elaborados e aprovados por decretos oficiais, manuais de ensino destinados à formação de professores e artigos produzidos por professores e publicados na Revista do Ensino/RS; 2) práticas de escrita escolar que contemplam o ditado como exercício escrito de ensino e/ou avaliação, identificadas em cadernos escolares do ensino primário (empiria principal da tese); boletins de notas em que o ditado comparece como aspecto explicitamente avaliado; e memórias escolares nas quais o ditado é evocado como recordação do período de escolarização inicial. O estudo concebe que o ditado consiste em uma prática tão presente e insidiosa, e com uma eficácia pedagógica e de controle tal que, na cultura escolar, assume o caráter de dispositivo. Constata que o ditado, efetivamente, persiste como prática escolar, mas isso não significa que haja uma continuidade das práticas. O ditado, assim como a escola, tem uma historicidade e se persiste como prática escolar é porque foi/é capaz de se reinventar.
The thesis writes in the field of History of Education, inspired by the assumptions of Cultural History. Its main objective is to develop a kind of "archeology" of dictation in primary school to discuss their secular presence and persistence, today, as a school practice. The investigation is to cut the time period from 1939 to 1971. The starting point is due to the introduction and more expressive adoption of the New School thinking in Rio Grande do Sul, through the Decree n. 8020 of November 29, 1939, which approved the "minimum program to be adopted in state primary schools." The final point is based on the effective date of the Law of Directives and Bases 1971 (Law no. 5692/71) which abolished the primary education. Three analysis focuses were adopted, which are intersecting: the conceptions; the guidelines; and practices of the dictation in school. The analytical strategy of research is to supply authors who have studied the subject, namely: André Chervel, Danièle Manesse, Anne-Marie Chartier, Pierre Caspard, Antoine Prost and Patrick Cabanel; as well as authors who have dedicated to reflection on school culture, in particular, Dominique Julia, Antonio Viñao Frago and Justino Magalhães, which contribute to the understanding of the concepts of the saying. The research gathered empirical corpus of different documents, in order to identify: 1) guidance on the adoption and implementation of saying in the classroom contained in educational programs, some of which are developed and approved by official decrees, textbooks for the teacher qualification and articles produced by teachers and published in the “Revista do Ensino/RS” [Journal of teaching/RS]; 2) school writing practices that include the dictation as written exercise teaching and/or evaluation, identified in notebooks from primary school (main empiric of the thesis); report cards in the dictation appears as aspect explicitly evaluated; and school memories in which the dictation is evoked as a memory of the initial schooling period. The study conceives that the dictation consists of a practice so present and insidious, and pedagogical effectiveness and control such that, in the school culture, assumes the character device. Notes that the dictation, in effect, remains a school practice, but that does not mean that there is a continuity of practices. The dictation, as the school, has a historicity and if persists as school practice is because it was/is able to reinvent itself.

1. Introduction This dissertation consists of six chapters that span a very diverse set of topics. Yet, it has two unifying themes, economics and biology, that tie it together. The first four chapters present the principal findings from a project that was initiated jointly with David Cesarini and Magnus Johannesson, and that applies the twin method from behavioral genetics to economics. The last two chapters instead use a simple regression framework and evidence from biological anthropology to investigate recent claims regarding the effects of child bearing and past slave trades. 2. Genes and economics There is a small, but rapidly growing, literature studying the genetic and environmental origins of economic behavior and outcomes (Bowles et al., 2005; Beauchamp et al., 2011). Until recently, this literature focused exclusively on outcomes, and in particular income. In chapters 1-4 we instead focus on economic behavior and decision-making. Previous behavioral genetic work outside the domains of economics has changed the way that we think about a number of behavioral traits. In this literature it is typically found that i) variation is heritable ii) genetic factors are more important than family environment iii) a large fraction of variation cannot be explained by neither genes nor family environment (Turkheimer, 2000; Plomin et al., 2009). However, compared to many other disciplines, and psychology in particular, economics is lagging behind. In fact, as recently as 2009 the leading text book in behavioral genetics described economics as "still essentially untouched by genetic research" (Plomin et al., 2009, p. 353). Hopefully, the chapters in this dissertation can help to improve on this somewhat unsatisfactory state of the art. Chapters 1 and 2 study economic decision-making in the laboratory using the twin method. More specifically, we study the ultimatum and dictator games alongside risky gambles, using same-sex twin pairs as our subject pool. Given a few additional assumptions, the fact that identical twins have, in expectation, a twice as high coefficient of genetic relatedness as fraternal twins implies that we can study the genetic and environmental contributions to variation in behavior by studying twin correlations in observed choices. Chapters 3 and 4 apply the same method to actual portfolio choices associated with a far-reaching pension reform, as well as to a set of standard behavioral anomalies. Taken together, these four chapters provide strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that genes influence economic decision-making. Thus, economic behavior does not appear to be much different from other types of behavior. 3. Economics and history The last two chapters of the dissertation turn to the past, rather than genes, in an effort to evaluate recent findings regarding two important welfare outcomes. In chapter 5 we investigate Nunn’s (2008) claim that past slave trades had a negative impact on current economic performance in Africa. By extending the sample period back in time we demonstrate that this relationship was not significant in 1960. In addition, by applying Nunn’s method to an episode of large scale slave raiding in Italy, we demonstrate that there exists a similar negative relationship across Italian regions, although it becomes insignificant when geographical controls are included. Intriguingly, going back to 1960, the coefficient on slave raids for Italy also has a similar time trend to that for Africa. Taking these facts, and our reading of the historical and anthropological literature, which is much different from that of Nunn, into account we do not find much support for the hypothesis that the African slave trades had a negative impact on current economic performance. Finally, chapter 6 investigates the large and negative relationship between giving birth to a son, rather than a daughter, and maternal longevity that was documented in a Sami hunter-gatherer population from Finland (Helle et al., 2002). Using a substantially larger sample of pre-industrial Swedish Sami we find no evidence in favor of such a relationship. 4. Brasklapp Five of the chapters in this dissertation (Ch. 1-4 & 6) are slightly altered versions of previously published papers (Wallace et al., 2007; Cesarini et al., 2009 a, b; 2010; 2011). Unfortunately, the fact that earlier versions of the chapters were prepared as separate articles for five different journals means that they can at times appear both repetitive, and in terms of notation and formatting, somewhat inconsistent. I apologize to the reader for these inconveniences.

Diss. Stockholm :  Stockholm School of Economics, 2011. Introduction together with 6 papers

This study aims to examine the differences and similarities between the propaganda used by the United states and the Nazis during the second world war. The object for the analysis are movies, and what expressions of propaganda that can be seen and deciphered. This study will also try to explain why there are similarities and differences between the two countries propaganda. The tool for the analysis of the movies is based on Ralph Donald’s method to interpret propaganda used in Hollywood movies. I have made some modifications to his method in order to apply it on Nazi movies as well. The movies used in this study are the American The Great Dictator and the German Die Rothschild’s. I have narrowed it down to two movies because of the time limit of this study. Furthermore, I have presented a small, but crucial part of the previous research in the field of propaganda to suit and to strengthen my arguments and conclusions in the analysis of the movies. The reason why the research is narrow is because of the immense field of propaganda. The results from this study shows that there are similarities and also differences between the propaganda used by the Americans and the Nazis, and that this in part can be explained by the propagandas purpose to dehumanize the enemy. It can also be explained by the fact that propaganda is used to boost the morale of the Homefront during wartime.

Le discours politique du dictateur dans les champs littéraires africain et hispano-américain offre des perspectives d’étude immenses. En effet, la politique étant un milieu d’échange social, étudier les mécanismes de production du discours politique du dictateur et la construction de son sens par son auditoire est un domaine que nous avions souhaité explorer. Notre thèse a pour but de montrer justement, les mécanismes de production du discours du dictateur et comment l’auditoire élabore le travail d’encodage et de décodage de ce discours. Le but étant de mettre en évidence les différentes données qui contribuent à l’élaboration de ce sens, et de voir la participation de chacun des personnages actants à ce travail de collaboration. Nous avons abordé ce travail sous deux angles qui sont aussi ceux par lesquels se construit le sens du discours politique du dictateur dans nos œuvres corpus. Cette thèse met en lumière la construction, d’abord extra linguistique, du mécanisme de production et de construction du sens du discours du dictateur dans les champs littéraires choisis comme base pour notre étude. Et ensuite, nous avons mis les éléments langagiers qui concourent à la construction du sens. Notre méthode de recherche nous a contraint à faire appel à trois champs linguistiques sans lesquels nous n’aurions pu mener à bien cette recherche. La pragmatique nous a donc permis de faire une étude des éléments liés au contexte d’émission du discours qui rentrent en compte dans le processus d’encodage et de décodage du discours. Nous avons ensuite eu recours à la rhétorique qui nous a permis de voir comment le dictateur construit sa stratégie de discours et comment il élabore son argumentation. Et pour finir, la sémiologie nous a aidée dans la mise en évidence des moyens langagiers de construction du sens
The political speech of the dictator in the African and Spanish-American literary fields offers huge perspectives of study. Indeed, the politics being an environment of social exchange, to study the mechanisms of production of the political speech of the dictator and the constructions of its sense by his public is a domain which we had wished to explore. Our thesis aims at showing exactly, the mechanisms of production of the speech of the dictator and how the public develops the work of encoding and decoding of this speech. The purpose being to highlight the various data which contribute to the elaboration of this sense, and to see the participation of each of the characters agents in this work of collaboration. We approached this work under two angles which are also the ones by whom builds itself the sense of the political speech of the dictator in our works corpus. This thesis brings to light the construction, at first extra linguistic, of the mechanism of production and construction of the sense of the speech of the dictator in the literary fields chosen as basis as our study. And then, we put the linguistic elements which contribute to the construction of the sense. Our method of research forced to us to call on to three linguistic fields without which we would not have been able to bring to a successful conclusion this research.The pragmatics thus allowed us to make a study of elements bound to the context of broadcast of the speech which go in account into the process of encoding and decoding of the speech. We then resorted to the rhetoric which allowed us to see how the dictator built his strategy of speech and how he develops his argumentation. And to finish, the semiology helped us in the highlighting of the linguistic ways of construction of the sense

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in English.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 485-527). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11641

AbstractAround 1800, merchants, scientists and adventurers travelled to Latin America with different purposes. Their multifaceted interests in a world region, experiencing a threshold of independence from Spanish colonial rule, inspired new historical and political works about the continent’s recent past. The Enlightenment provided not only the philosophical armamentarium against corruption, but it also paved the way to a new expression of sentiments and to the loss of fear when addressing injustice. Some examples of these are Hipólito Villaroel’s list of grievances and Humboldt’s Political essay. These two authors provide some thoughts on the political landscape of New Spain (now Mexico), while the two Swiss physicians Rengger and Longchamp describe the ruthless and odd dictator Francia of independent Paraguay as a champion of anti-corruption. Finally, Argentine dictator Rosas—and his robberies as described by Rivera Indarte, Sarmiento and other anonymous authors—represent the embodiment of corruption through pure larceny, for whose crimes the Spanish colonial past apparently no longer served as a comparison.

Canada, with its vast distances, was an early adopter of communications technologies. Starting in the 1970s, Canadian artists pursued the aesthetic strategies of correspondence art, video, telecommunications, and artist-run centers. Beginning with Bill Bartlett's Brechtian credo that real communication must be interactive, and noting Robert Filliou's influential concept of the “Eternal Network,” Hank Bull tells the story of a small group of artists who tested the potentials and implications of telecommunications art. He discusses radio, slowscan video, electronic mail and fax art, referring to specific projects produced for Ars Electronica (1983), Electra (Paris, 1983) and the Venice Biennale (1986). More recently, Shanghai Fax (1996), staged by Bull, with artists Shen Fan, Ding Yi, and Shi Yong, was one of the first international group exhibitions to take place in China since the revolution. In conclusion Bull emphasizes sympathetic listening in this new territory, where unfamiliar noises clash as new rhythms sound.

The final chapter begins with accounts of captioning errors drawn from the author’s own experience of using dictation applications on his smartphone or using captioners in classrooms and meetings. After providing a short history of closed and open captioning of films and television, the chapter turns to artists and poets who have used captions to test—or satirize—the “authenticity” of received communication. The work of Liza Sylvestre, Carolyn Lazard, Robert Fitterman, and Christine Sun Kim all utilize captions to unseat the authority of the original text or communication being transcribed. The chapter also considers Darius Marder’s film The Sound of Metal, about a drummer who loses his hearing and must negotiate life between hearing and deaf worlds. The film turns captions on and off, turns sound on and off, to illustrate the complex and often frustrating experience of a late-deafened individual.

Chapter two traces the link between the Guerrilla or Foco in the early stages of the Cuban Revolution and the role of the dictation of the Muses in Romantic poetry. The chapter shows to what extent what is at issue is not simply a literary or aesthetic question, but the difficulty of confronting the void at the center of any politics. This void is not something that is offered as a motif by the arts, but the central evidence made available by the political upheavals in the Age of Revolution. Nevertheless, much of the intellectual, political, and artistic work that confronts that foundational abyss has no other aim than to cover it up. Thus, the central aim of the chapter is to bring into sharper focus the implications of a thought that is central to the history of modern aesthetics and politics, but which remains fundamentally occluded by that same archive.

The second part of the book is not divided into chapters. Rather, it is composed of sections of varying length. Its central concern is to trace the treatment of the question of the void in the writing and thought of José Lezama Lima. This entails an examination of Lezama’s reading of the history of void throughout the Western philosophical, religious, political, and artistic traditions. The central tension of this section lies in tracing Lezama’s engagement and ultimate unworking of the structure of a transcendental dictation, which informs and splits the subject, and which is the structure central to modern political and aesthetic subjectivity. Taken together, these readings can be understood as the unfolding of Lezama’s own highly idiosyncratic and baroque take on the question of the ontological difference (which he ironically and famously dismissed in his comments on Heidegger). The central insight that ensues is that of a thought on time that is beyond the forming or framing dialectic of the One and the Many. It is in this idea of a time beyond Time(s) that we find Lezama’s most radical political insights.

Minimizing the maintenance costs has become an ever growing topic in the power generation industry. Consequently, OEM’s constantly increase their efforts to exploit the full lifetime potential of capital intensive components, as for instance gas turbine rotors. More than ever, it is essential to have a closed loop from the design knowledge to solid facts about the actual condition of a gas turbine rotor in the field, in order to optimize the utilization and therefore to reduce total lifecycle costs. During initial design an iterative component design process is applied, comprising of analytical calculations and component and engine tests, to design a reliable, robust and maintenance friendly component. Individual component risk profiles (i.e. failure probability and consequences) have to be taken into account during the design phase to cover uncertainties regarding the operating regime, operating conditions and environment, resulting in the minimum expected lifetime. The lifetime of gas turbine components is limited and primarily depends on factors like the operating regime, dictating the mechanical and thermal loads, actual material properties, environmental conditions and the level of maintenance. Those parameters have a scatter and also interact with each other. As a consequence the progress of component degradation varies and the individual component lifetime isn’t known in detail at the time of the design. The purpose of a Rotor Lifecycle Management Program is to detect individual component degradation early in the lifecycle, in order to exploit the maximum rotor lifetime while ensuring safe operation. Periodic monitoring and condition assessment of the individual rotor is the first step, performed during standard type C inspections and comprising of visual inspection, dimensional and advanced non-destructive measurements. Typically the monitoring schedule is based on the operating regime and the operating history of the specific rotor. The combination of the monitoring results with validated analytical design models, extensive material data and the overall gas turbine rotor fleet experience of the OEM, allows proper planning of lifetime extension measures, such as repair and reconditioning activities. Specific repair solutions for both on-site and shop applications have been developed. A rotor lifecycle management program is a „living” program. The monitoring scope and schedule as well as the repair solutions portfolio are continuously optimized and adapted as a result of detailed analysis of operating data and inspection results of the whole global fleet.

In the 1990s, Turkmenistan’s government dismantled Soviet educational provision, replacing it with lower quality schooling. The Başkent Foundation schools represent the concerted ef- forts of teachers and sponsors to offer socially conscious education grounded in science and math with an international focus. This case study of the Başkent Foundation schools in Turkmenistan establishes the vitality of Gülen schools outside of the Turkish Republic and their key role in offering Central Asian families an important choice in secular, general education. The paper discusses the appeal of the schools’ curriculum to parents and students, and records a decade-long success both in educating students and in laying the foundations of civil society: in Turkmenistan the Gülen movement offers the only general education outside of state provision and control. This is particularly significant as most scholars deny that there is any semblance of civil society in Turkmenistan. Notes: The author has been conducting interviews and recording the influence of Başkent schools in Turkmenistan since working as Instructor at the International Turkmen-Turk University in 1997. In May 2007 she visited the schools in the capital Ashgabat, and the northern province of Daşoguz, to explore further the contribution Gülen schools are making. The recent death of Turkmenistan’s president will most likely result in major reforms in education. Documentation of how a shift at the centre of state power affects provincial Gülen schools will enrich this conference’s broader discussion of the movement’s social impact. The history of Gülen-inspired schools in Central Asia reveals as much about the Gülen movement as it does about transition in the Muslim world. While acknowledging that transition in the 21st century includes new political and global considerations, it must be viewed in a historical context that illustrates how change, renewal and questioning are longstanding in- herent to Islamic tradition. In the former Soviet Union, the Gülen movement contributed to the Muslim people’s transi- tion out of the communist experience. Since USSR fell in 1991, participants in Fethullah Gülen’s spiritual movement have contributed to its mission by successfully building schools, offering English language courses for adults, and consciously supporting nascent civil so- ciety throughout Eurasia. Not only in Turkic speaking regions, but also as far as Mongolia and Southeast Asia, the so-called “Turkish schools” have succeeded in creating sustainable systems of private schools that offer quality education to ethnically and religiously diverse populations. The model is applicable on the whole; Gülen’s movement has played a vital role in offering Eurasia’s youth an alternative to state-sponsored schooling. Recognition of the broad accomplishments of Gülen schools in Eurasia raises questions about how these schools function on a daily basis and how they have remained successful. What kind of world are they preparing students for? How do the schools differ from traditional Muslim schools (maktabs or madrasas)? Do they offer an alternative to Arab methods of learning? Success in Turkmenistan is especially notable due to the dramatic politicization of education under nationalistic socio-cultural programmes in that Central Asian country. Since the establishment of the first boarding school, named after Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, in 1991 the Gülen schools have prospered despite Turkmenistan’s extreme political conditions and severely weakened social systems. How did this network of foreign schools, connected to a faith-based movement, manage to flourish under Turkmenistan’s capricious dictator- ship? In essence, Gülen-inspired schools have been consistently successful in Turkmenistan because a secular curriculum partnered with a strong moral framework appeals to parents and students without threatening the state. This hypothesis encourages further consideration of the cemaat’s ethos and Gülen’s philosophies such as the imperative of activism (aksiyon), the compatibility of Islam and modernity, and the high value Islamic traditions assign to education. Focusing on this particular set of “Turkish schools” in Turkmenistan provides details and data from which we can consider broader complexities of the movement as a whole. In particular, the study illustrates that current transitions in the Muslim world have long, complex histories that extend beyond today’s immediate questions about Islam, modernity, or extremism.