Journal articles on the topic 'Quasi P-frame'

The research presented in this article follows up on several aspects of Gustav Jahoda’s long and fruitful career: (1) his early fieldwork on cognitive development in Africa, particularly in the area of spatial skills; (2) his interest in cross-cultural psychology as a research method; and (3) his insistence on bringing anthropology and psychology together. The topic of our research is the development of a so-called “geocentric” frame of spatial reference. This is a cognitive style, in which individuals describe and represent small-scale table-top space in terms of large-scale geographic dimensions. We explore the development with age of geocentric language and cognition, and the relationships between the two. We also explore the many environmental and socio-cultural variables that favor the use of this frame. We demonstrate how we untangled several of these variables by using a succession of within-society group comparisons, in several societies where a geocentric frame is in common usage (Bali, Indonesia, India, and Nepal). Our research program unfolds like a detective story, where one finding that is difficult to interpret because of several confounded variables leads to another quasi-experimental group comparison that suggests another hypothesis, which is then tested in a further session of field-work. In each case, we emphasize how important it was to have extensive linguistic and ethnographic knowledge before implementing psychological tests. The research design is not cross-cultural as such (we hardly ever perform comparisons between societies), but culturally sensitive within a series of societies; in other words, as Dasen and Jahoda (1986 , p. 413) defined it, “cross-cultural developmental psychology is not just comparative: essentially it is an outlook that takes culture seriously.”

AbstractIt is known that every frame is isomorphic to the generalized Gleason algebra of an essentially unique bi-Stonian space (X, σ, τ) in which σ is T0. Let (X, σ, τ) be as above. The specialization order ≤σ, of (X, σ) is τ × τ-closed. By Nachbin's Theorem there is exactly one quasi-uniformity U on X such that ∩U = ≤σ and J(U*) = τ. This quasi-uniformity is compatible with σ and is coarser than the Pervin quasi-uniformity U of (X, σ). Consequently, τ is coarser than the Skula topology of σ and coincides with the Skula topology if and only if U = P.

Abstract. A Hamiltonian description of oblique travelling waves in a two-fluid, charge-neutral, electron-proton plasma reveals that the transverse momentum equations for the electron and proton fluids are exactly integrable in cases where the total transverse momentum flux integrals, Py(d) and Pz(d), are both zero in the de Hoffman Teller (dHT) frame. In this frame, the transverse electric fields are zero, which simplifies the transverse momentum equations for the two fluids. The integrable travelling waves for the case Py(d)=Pz(d)=0, are investigated based on the Hamiltonian trajectories in phase space, and also on the longitudinal structure equation for the common longitudinal fluid velocity component ux of the electron and proton fluids. Numerical examples of a variety of travelling waves in a cold plasma, including oscillitons, are used to illustrate the physics. The transverse, electron and proton velocity components ujy and ujz (j=e, p) of the waves exhibit complex, rosette type patterns over several periods for ux. The role of separatrices in the phase space, the rotational integral and the longitudinal structure equation on the different wave forms are discussed.

Through the Quasi-Static test on two specimens of CFRST frame (KJ)and two specimens of CFRST frame with filler walls(TKJ) in horizontal load, the paper analyses the hysteretic curves of two structures contrastively, ductility, strength and stiffness degradation, consumption energy capacity, failure mechanism and failure characteristics, and also analyses the influence of various parameters on the seismic performance and the mechanical properties. The results show that the filler walls increase the stiffness of the structure, and especially in the early loading it is more significant. It is obvious to reduce the p-Δ effect of the column at the normal using stage. The deformability of frame without filler wall is greater than that of frame with filler wall. But the damage process of frame with filler wall is a flat curve, and it meets the demand of ductile frame. Through the hysteretic curve we can know that the dissipative energy capacity of frame without filler wall is good in contrast with that of frame with filler wall. Then the ductility factor of CFRST frame with filler wall is greater than that of RC frame with filler wall. So we can conclude that the CFRST frame has wonderful superiority on bearing capability, seismic behavior and effective use of material.

In this work, quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations have been first carried out for the title reaction on a new global potential energy surface for the lowest quartet electronic state, 4A″. The average rotational alignment factor [P2(j'·k)] as a function of collision energy and the two commonly used polarization dependent generalized differential cross sections PDDCS00, PDDCS20, have been calculated in the center-of-mass (CM) frame, separately. Three angular distributions, P(θr), P(φr), and P(θr, φr) are also calculated to gain insight into the alignment and the orientation of the product molecules. Calculations show that the average rotational alignment factor on the ZH PES is almost invariant with collision energies. The distributions of P(θr) and P(φr) derived from the title reaction indicate that the product polarization is strong. Validity of the QCT calculation has been examined and proven in the comparison with the quantum-wave-packet calculation results. Comparisons with available quasi-classical trajectory results are made and discussed.

AbstractWe analyze adaptive mesh-refining algorithms in the frame of boundary element methods (BEM) and the coupling of finite elements and boundary elements (FEM-BEM). Adaptivity is driven by the two-level error estimator proposed by Ernst P. Stephan, Norbert Heuer, and coworkers in the frame of BEM and FEM-BEM or by the residual error estimator introduced by Birgit Faermann for BEM for weakly-singular integral equations. We prove that in either case the usual adaptive algorithm drives the associated error estimator to zero. Emphasis is put on the fact that the error estimators considered are not even globally equivalent to weighted-residual error estimators for which recently convergence with quasi-optimal algebraic rates has been derived.

Background. Research remains inconclusive about the most effective frame for encouraging health preventative behaviors. Aims. To examine the impact of gain- and loss-framed health messages on nutrition and physical activity (PA) knowledge in fourth-grade youth participating in the Shaping Healthy Choices Program (SHCP), a multicomponent nutrition program. Methods. Youth were recruited to participate in this 9-month quasi-experimental study and divided into 3 groups: (1) comparison (n = 50), (2) loss-framed (n = 76), and (3) gain-framed (n = 67). All youth participated in the SHCP, and the gain- and loss-framed groups also viewed weekly health messages. Paired t tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank test, ANOVA (analysis of variance), and Bonferroni for multiple comparisons were used for analysis. Results. Youth who participated in the SHCP improved nutrition knowledge (+2.0 points; P < .01) and PA knowledge (+1.8 points; P < .01). Nutrition knowledge improved in the comparison group (+1.3 points; P = .04), loss-framed group (+1.9 points; P = .01), and gain-framed group (+2.6 points; P = .01). Improvements in PA knowledge were also demonstrated in the comparison group (+1.6 points; P < .01), the loss-framed group (+1.3 points; P < .01), and the gain-framed group (+2.5 points; P = .01). There were no significant differences between groups. Youth in the loss-framed group reported a decrease in self-efficacy (−1.2; P = .05), while this was not observed in the other groups. Discussion. The SHCP improves nutrition and PA knowledge, and the positive reinforcement further strengthens some of these improvements, while loss-framed messaging can contribute to undesirable outcomes. Conclusions. Incorporating positive reinforcement through gain-framed messages can be a relatively low-cost avenue for supporting beneficial outcomes.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The problem of detecting objects on a sequence of images with a complex structure is considered. Optimal and quasi-optimal algorithms for processing multidimensional images have been synthesized and investigated. Improved detection efficiency has been obtained by adequately describing real data using doubly stochastic random fields. The possibility of describing Earth remote sensing data using doubly stochastic models is investigated. The possibility of obtaining significant gains when filtering satellite material and detecting extended objects on it due to the adaptive structure of such models and processing time sequence of multizone images as a single multidimensional dataset is shown. The gains for filtering algorithms in the error variance are about 80% comparing single frame processing, and the gains for detecting algorithms in the signal/noise ratio are about 70% comparing single frame processing.</p>

Using quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) method, the vector correlation between products and reagents for the exothermic reaction Ba + CH3I → BaI + CH3 has been studied on the extended Lond–Eyring–Polanyi–Sato (LEPS) potential energy surface (PES) at three collision energies of 1.6, 3.3, and 5.6 kcal/mol. The P(θr) distribution of the products describing the k-j' correlation and the dihedral angle distribution P(ϕr) describing k-k'-j' correlation are calculated in center-of-mass (CM) frame. Four polarization dependent generalized differential cross-sections (2π/σ)(dσ00/dωt), (2π/σ)(dσ20/dωt), (2π/σ)(dσ22+/dωt), and (2π/σ)(dσ21-/dωt) have also been presented in the CM frame as well. The results indicate that the product rotational angular momentum j' is not only aligned, but also oriented along the direction perpendicular to the scattering plane. In addition, the alignment and the orientation of the BaI product rotational angular momentum depend very sensitively on the collision energy.

Quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) method is used to study the stereo-dynamics of the title reaction on the ground 1 1A′ potential energy surface (PES). Differential cross-sections (DCSs) and alignments of the product rotational angular momentum for the reaction are reported. The influence of collision energy on the product vector properties is also studied in the present work. The distribution of angle between k and j′, P(θr), the distribution of dihedral angle denoting k-k′-j′ correlation, P(ϕr) ⋅ (2π/σ)( d σ00/ d ωt), (2π/σ)( d σ20/ d ωt), (2π/σ)( d σ22+/ d ωt) and (2π/σ)(dσ21-/dωt) have been calculated in the center of mass frame, respectively.

Quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations are performed for the reaction F + OH → HF + O based on the adiabatic potential-energy surface (PES) of the 13A″ triplet state. The reaction probability as a function of incident angle has been presented. The differential cross sections (DCSs), the distribution of angle between k and j′, P(θr) and the distribution of dihedral angle denoting k – k′ – j′ correlation, P(ϕr) have also been calculated at the different incident angles in the center-of-mass (CM) frame, respectively. The effects of reactant alignment on stereodynamics of the reaction are firstly revealed, which provides the theoretical foundation for the related experiment and enriches the theories of the stereodynamics.

Quasiclassical trajectory (QCT) calculations for the title reaction are carried out by employing the recent developed accurate potential energy surface of the 12A′ ground state. Two angular distributions, P(θr) and P(ϕr), with θr, ϕr being the polar angles of the product angular momentum, and two commonly used polarization dependent differential cross sections, (2π/σ)(dσ00/dωt) and (2π/σ)(dσ20/dωt), with ωt being the polar coordinates of the product velocity, are generated in the center-of-mass frame. It was found that the product rotational angular momentum j′ is not only aligned, but also oriented along the negative direction of y-axis. We also investigated the product state distributions in the present work, and found that the vibrational and rotational state distributions are inverted. Influences of collision energies on the product polarization and state distributions are also shown and discussed.

Quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations are performed for the reaction F + HO(0,0) → HF + O based on the adiabatic potential-energy surface (PES) of the 13 A′′ triplet state. The product molecule axial alignment factor <P2 (A · k)> as a function of collision energy, the distribution P(α) of the angle between k and A, the distribution P(β) of the dihedral angle denoting k – k′ – A correlation, and the angular distribution P(α, β) of the product rotational vectors in the form of polar plots have been calculated in the center-of-mass (CM) frame, respectively. The effects of collision energy and PES on the polarization of the product molecule HF axis vectors A are revealed, which provides the theoretical foundation for the relative experiment.

The vector correlations between products and reagents of the N (2D) + D 2 reaction are investigated by employing quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculation on the accurate DMBE potential energy surface (PES) of the 2A″ state. Stereo-dynamic quantities, including the four generalized polarization-dependent differential cross-sections (PDDCSs), the angular distribution P(θr), the dihedral-angle distribution P(φr), as well as the product rotational angular distribution in the polar form of P(θr, φr), are calculated in the center-of-mass (CM) frame. The results indicate that the product rotational angular momentum j′ not only aligns along the y-axis, but also orients to the negative direction of the y-axis. The isotope effect in the context of chemical stereo-dynamics and influences of different versions of ground-state PESs on vector correlations are shown and discussed.

Mesoscopic-scale heterogeneities in porous media cause attenuation and dispersion at seismic frequencies. Effective models are often used to account for this. We have developed a new effective poroelastic model for finely layered media, and we evaluated its impact focusing on the angle-dependent attenuation behavior. To enable this, an exact solution was obtained for the response of a periodically layered medium to a surface point load using Floquet’s theory. We compared this solution with that of the new model and the equivalent viscoelastic vertical transverse isotropic medium available from existing literature. We have observed that the quasi-P (qP) wave dispersion and attenuation was predicted with high accuracy by the new effective poroelastic model. For the quasi-S (qS) wave, the effective poroelastic model provides a perceptibly better prediction of the attenuation, resulting in closer to the exact waveforms. The qS-wave attenuation is underestimated by the effective viscoelastic model, whereas for the qP-wave, the model gives accurate predictions in all cases except for highly permeable weak-frame media.

The objective of this study was to examine the effect of relaxation progressive muscle program on exercise behavior and clinical outcomes among Patients with Hypertension in a Community Setting, in Indonesia. A quasi-experimental, two group, pre-test and post-test design was used in this study. The experimental group received relaxation progressive muscle program, whereas the control group did not receive the program. 30 subjects in the experimental group and 30 subjects in the control group completed the program, respectively. The results of this study indicated that significantly differences on exercise behavior (p = 0.000), blood pressure level (p = 0.000) and cholesterol total level (p = 0.000) between the experimental group and control group. The relaxation progressive muscle program was absolutely effective to improve the exercise behavior, blood pressure level and cholesterol total level among patients with hypertension. Further studies should be recognized by using larger groups over a longer time frame and Health care providers also should focus in promoting this program among patients with hypertension.

The objective of this study was to examine the effect of relaxation progressive muscle program on exercise behavior and clinical outcomes among Patients with Hypertension in a Community Setting, in Indonesia. A quasi-experimental, two group, pre-test and post-test design was used in this study. The experimental group received relaxation progressive muscle program, whereas the control group did not receive the program. 30 subjects in the experimental group and 30 subjects in the control group completed the program, respectively. The results of this study indicated that significantly differences on exercise behavior (p = 0.000), blood pressure level (p = 0.000) and cholesterol total level (p = 0.000) between the experimental group and control group. The relaxation progressive muscle program was absolutely effective to improve the exercise behavior, blood pressure level and cholesterol total level among patients with hypertension. Further studies should be recognized by using larger groups over a longer time frame and Health care providers also should focus in promoting this program among patients with hypertension.

<p>The observed anomaly in properties of mixing of Cd-Hg alloys in the molten state is successfully explained on the basis of the quasi-lattice model. The thermodynamic functions such as free energy of mixing, heat of mixing, entropy of mixing and chemical activity of the constituent atom of the alloys and microscopic functions like concentration-concentration fluctuation in long wavelength limit and Warren-Cowley short range order parameter of the alloys have been computed within the frame work of presented model. Most of the computed values are in good agreement with the experimental data. The pair-wise interaction energies between the species of the melt are found to depend considerably on temperature. Theoretical analysis suggests that hetero-coordination leading to the formation of complex Cd₂Hg is likely to exist but is of weakly interacting in nature.</p><p>Journal of Nepal Physical Society Vol.3(1) 2015: 60-66</p>

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The large scale topographic map generation is mostly carried out using the aerial images while the high resolution satellite data are gaining popularity because of its large swath width that enables the efficient and economic mapping even over inaccessible areas. To use the satellite data for the 3D topographic mapping, the data should be acquired in the stereo mode and they requires to be aligned for the epipolar geometry. The accurate epipolar image resampling aligns stereo images to enable a stereo display on the computer monitor where human operators can easily identify and extract 3D features, such as points of interest, contours, building layers, and roads. The pushbroom type camera, which is used by most high-resolution satellites, has quite different epipolar geometry than the frame type of aerial or terrestrial cameras. Therefore, the piecewise approach should be used instead of the fundamental matrix approach that is the standard method for the frame type cameras. Regarding the sensor model, most high-resolution satellite data use RPCs (Rational Polynomial Coefficients) of RFM (Rational Function Model) while the frame type camera use the collinearity equation. But RPCs from the satellite image providers have not been accurate enough such that GCPs (Ground Control Points) are often required for improving the RPCs accuracy. The GCPs acquisition is not an easy task over the inaccessible areas and the positional accuracy of the old geospatial data such as orthoimages and traditional maps is relatively low. Fortunately, the positional accuracy of RPCs increases than the past such as up to several meters. The major problem to achieve high accuracy of stereo geometry is to ensure that the consistency between the stereo data is less than one-pixel level. Therefore, in this study, we first utilized the relative orientation method to improve the precision between the stereo data without using any GCP. The tie points are extracted using the robust stereo matching and they are used to generate quasi-GCPs by the space intersection based on the RPCs. The quasi-GCPs are projected back to the stereo data to model and remove the inconsistency in the image space. The improved RPCs were used to accurately align the stereo data for map production.</p>

AbstractThe paper presents an investigation on crystalline, elastic and electronic structure in addition to the thermodynamic properties for a CeRu4P12 filled skutterudite device by using the full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital (FP-LMTO) method within the generalized gradient approximations (GGA) in the frame of density functional theory (DFT). For this purpose, the structural properties, such as the equilibrium lattice parameter, bulk modulus and pressure derivatives of the bulk modulus, were computed. By using the total energy variation as a function of strain we have determined the independent elastic constants and their pressure dependence. Additionally, the effect of pressure P and temperature T on the lattice parameters, bulk modulus, thermal expansion coefficient, Debye temperature and the heat capacity for CeRu4P12 compound were investigated taking into consideration the quasi-harmonic Debye model.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of dietary and exercise self-management support program on the dietary behavior, exercise behavior, and clinical outcomes of Muslim patients with poorly controlled type 2 DM in Indonesia. Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental, two group, pre-test and post-test design. The experimental group received the dietary and exercise self-management support program and usual care, whereas the control group only received the usual nursing care.Result: 35 subjects in the experimental group and 35 subjects in the control group completed the program, respectively. The findings indicated that there are significantly differences in dietary behavior (p=.00), exercise behavior (p=.00) and clinical outcomes: fasting blood glucose (FBG) (p=.00), cholesterol total level (p=.01) and systolic blood pressure (p=.00) between the experimental group and control group. However, for the BMI status (p=.84) and diastolic blood pressure (BP) (p=.32) were no significant differences between two groups. Conclusion: The dietary and exercise self-management support program was effective for improving the dietary behavior, exercise behavior, FBG, and total cholesterol level for individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus. Further studies should be replicated using larger groups over a longer time frame.

We performed the first-principles calculations on the elastic and thermal properties for chalcopyrite ZnSnX2 (X = P, As, Sb), employing the ultrasoft pseudo-potentials and generalized gradient approximation (GGA) under the frame of density functional theory. The equilibrium structural lattice constants are in good agreement with reported data. The elastic characteristics were evaluated under high-pressure condition (0–20 GPa), such as the elastic constants, bulk modulus, shear modulus, Poisson’s ratio, Zener anisotropy and compressibility index. Combining with quasi-harmonic Debye model, the thermal properties were confirmed at different temperatures (0–1200 K) and pressures (0–20 GPa), including the heat capacity, thermal expansion, Debye temperature, entropy, and Grüneisen parameter. Based on the semi-empirical relation, the hardness of materials was determined at various temperatures and pressures. Finally, the phonon spectrum curves and vibration frequencies of phonon were evaluated to confirm the thermodynamic stability of ZnSnX2. The Raman scattering spectrum and infrared absorption spectrum were simulated for chalcopyrite ZnSnX2.

Numerical work of many people on the bifurcations of uniformly travelling water waves (two-dimensional irrotational gravity waves on inviscid fluid of infinite depth) suggests that uniformly travelling water waves have a reversible Hamiltonian formulation, where the role of time is played by horizontal position in the wave frame. In this paper such a formulation is presented. Based on this viewpoint, some insights are given into bifurcations from Stokes’ family of periodic waves. It is demonstrated numerically that there is a ‘fold point’ at amplitude A0 ≈ 0.40222. Assuming non-degeneracy of the fold and existence of an associated centre manifold, this explains why a sequence of p/q-bifurcations occurs on one side of A0, with 0 < p/q [les ] ½, in the order of the rationals. Secondly, it explains why no symmetry-breaking bifurcation is observed at A0, contrary to the expectations of some. Thirdly, it explains why the bifurcation tree for periodic uniformly travelling waves looks so much like that for the area-preserving Hénon map. Fourthly, it leads to predictions of a rich variety of spatially quasi-periodic, heteroclinic and chaotic waves.

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Let <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ \Gamma &lt; {\rm{PSL}}_2( \mathbb{C}) $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> be a Zariski dense finitely generated Kleinian group. We show all Radon measures on <inline-formula><tex-math id="M2">\begin{document}$ {\rm{PSL}}_2( \mathbb{C}) / \Gamma $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> which are ergodic and invariant under the action of the horospherical subgroup are either supported on a single closed horospherical orbit or quasi-invariant with respect to the geodesic frame flow and its centralizer. We do this by applying a result of Landesberg and Lindenstrauss [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b18">18</xref>] together with fundamental results in the theory of 3-manifolds, most notably the Tameness Theorem by Agol [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b2">2</xref>] and Calegari-Gabai [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">10</xref>].</p>

Abstract Objective Our objective was to review the characteristics, current applications, and evaluation measures of conversational agents with unconstrained natural language input capabilities used for health-related purposes. Methods We searched PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and ACM Digital using a predefined search strategy. Studies were included if they focused on consumers or healthcare professionals; involved a conversational agent using any unconstrained natural language input; and reported evaluation measures resulting from user interaction with the system. Studies were screened by independent reviewers and Cohen’s kappa measured inter-coder agreement. Results The database search retrieved 1513 citations; 17 articles (14 different conversational agents) met the inclusion criteria. Dialogue management strategies were mostly finite-state and frame-based (6 and 7 conversational agents, respectively); agent-based strategies were present in one type of system. Two studies were randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 1 was cross-sectional, and the remaining were quasi-experimental. Half of the conversational agents supported consumers with health tasks such as self-care. The only RCT evaluating the efficacy of a conversational agent found a significant effect in reducing depression symptoms (effect size d = 0.44, p = .04). Patient safety was rarely evaluated in the included studies. Conclusions The use of conversational agents with unconstrained natural language input capabilities for health-related purposes is an emerging field of research, where the few published studies were mainly quasi-experimental, and rarely evaluated efficacy or safety. Future studies would benefit from more robust experimental designs and standardized reporting. Protocol Registration The protocol for this systematic review is registered at PROSPERO with the number CRD42017065917.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine if a direct, explicit method of teaching vocabulary with the Vocabulary Scenario Technique – General Education 16 Encounter (VSTGE16) protocol would yield gains in the vocabulary knowledge of fourth grade students in a general education classroom. Two research questions examined whether fourth grade students receiving VST-GE16 instruction with 16 instructor-led encounters per word, eight words taught per week for 90 min a week over 4 weeks demonstrated greater gains on a multiple-choice synonym test and a fill-in-the-blank words-in-context test than fourth grade students taught the same number of words, in the same time frame, using a vocabulary teaching method typically employed by a fourth grade teacher. Method The study was a quasi-experimental design, with a pretest and posttest multiple-choice synonym and fill-in-the-blank words-in-context measures administered. Students with complete data sets were included in the analyses (synonym, N = 38; words-in-context, N = 37). Participants in both groups were taught eight curriculum vocabulary words per week for 90 min a week across four consecutive weeks (32 words). Results An analysis of covariance on posttreatment outcomes yielded the following: The treatment group scored significantly higher on the synonym measure, F (1, 35) = 14.76, p < .001; g = 1.04, and the words-in-context measure, F (1, 34) = 43.66, p < .001; g = 1.59, than did the comparison group. Conclusions The results indicated that the VST-GE16 protocol has potential as an effective, efficient method to use when directly teaching curriculum vocabulary words to fourth grade students in general education classrooms .

We provide mass-loss rate predictions for O stars from Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. We calculate global (unified, hydrodynamic) model atmospheres of main sequence, giant, and supergiant stars for chemical composition corresponding to Magellanic Clouds. The models solve radiative transfer equation in comoving frame, kinetic equilibrium equations (also known as NLTE equations), and hydrodynamical equations from (quasi-)hydrostatic atmosphere to expanding stellar wind. The models allow us to predict wind density, velocity, and temperature (consequently also the terminal wind velocity and the mass-loss rate) just from basic global stellar parameters. As a result of their lower metallicity, the line radiative driving is weaker leading to lower wind mass-loss rates with respect to the Galactic stars. We provide a formula that fits the mass-loss rate predicted by our models as a function of stellar luminosity and metallicity. On average, the mass-loss rate scales with metallicity as Ṁ ~ Z0.59. The predicted mass-loss rates are lower than mass-loss rates derived from Hα diagnostics and can be reconciled with observational results assuming clumping factor Cc = 9. On the other hand, the predicted mass-loss rates either agree or are slightly higher than the mass-loss rates derived from ultraviolet wind line profiles. The calculated P v ionization fractions also agree with values derived from observations for LMC stars with Teff ≤ 40 000 K. Taken together, our theoretical predictions provide reasonable models with consistent mass-loss rate determination, which can be used for quantitative study of stars from Magellanic Clouds.

Abstract Three well-observed Atlantic tropical weather systems that occurred during the 2010 hurricane season are analyzed. One case was former Tropical Storm Gaston that failed to redevelop into a tropical cyclone; the other two cases were developing storms Karl and Matthew. Geostationary satellite, multisensor-derived precipitation, and dropsondes from the National Science Foundation (NSF)–NCAR Gulfstream V (GV), NASA DC-8, and the NOAA Gulfstream IV (G-IV) and WP-3D Orion (P-3) aircraft are analyzed in a system-following frame to quantify the mesoscale dynamics of these systems. Gaston featured extensive dry air surrounding an initially moist core. Vertical shear forced a misalignment of midtropospheric and lower-tropospheric circulation centers. This misalignment allowed dry air to intrude above the lower-tropospheric center and severely limited the area influenced by deep moist convection, thus providing little chance of maintaining or rebuilding the vortex in sheared flow. By contrast, Karl and Matthew developed in a moister environment overall, with moisture increasing with time in the middle and upper troposphere. Deep moist convection was quasi-diurnal prior to genesis. For Karl, deep convection was initially organized away from the lower-tropospheric circulation center, creating a misalignment of the vortex. The vortex gradually realigned over several days and genesis followed this realignment within roughly one day. Matthew experienced weaker shear, was vertically aligned through most of its early evolution, and developed more rapidly than Karl. The evolutions of the three cases are interpreted in the context of recent theories of tropical cyclone formation.

Since 1904, when Prandtl formulated the boundary-layer equations, it has been presumed that due to the viscous nature of the boundary layers the solution of the Prandtl equations should be sought in the class of continuous functions. However, there are clear mathematical reasons for discontinuous solutions to exist. Moreover, under certain conditions they represent the only possible solutions of the boundary-layer equations.In this paper we consider, as an example, an unsteady analogue of the laminar jet problem first studied by Schlichting in 1933. In Schlichting's formulation the jet emerges from a narrow slit in a flat barrier and penetrates into a semi-infinite region filled with fluid which would remain at rest if the slit were closed. Assuming the flow steady, Schlichting was able to demonstrate that the corresponding solution to the Prandtl equations may be written in an explicit analytic form. Here our concern will be with unsteady flow that is initiated when the slit is opened and the jet starts penetrating into the stagnant fluid. To study this process we begin with the numerical solution of the unsteady boundary-layer equations. Since discontinuities were expected, the equations were written in conservative form before finite differencing. The solution shows that the jet has a well-established front representing a discontinuity in the velocity field, similar to the shock waves that form in supersonic gas flows.Then, in order to reveal the ‘internal structure’ of the shock we turn to the analysis of the flow in a small region surrounding the discontinuity. With Re denoting the Reynolds number, the size of the inner region is estimated as an order Re−1/2 quantity in both longitudinal and lateral directions. We found that the fluid motion in this region is predominantly inviscid and may be treated as quasi-steady if considered in the coordinate frame moving with the jet front. These simplifications allow a simple formula for the front speed to be deduced, which proved to be in close agreement with experimental observation of Turner (J. Fluid Mech. vol. 13 (1962), p. 356).

Aims. Our aim is to search for and characterize inflows and outflows of molecular gas in four ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs; LIR > 1012L⊙) at z ∼ 0.2−0.3 and one distant quasi-stellar object (QSO) at z = 6.13. Methods. We used Herschel/PACS and ALMA Band 7 observations of the hydroxyl molecule (OH) line at rest-frame wavelength 119 μm, which in absorption can provide unambiguous evidence of inflows or outflows of molecular gas in nuclear regions of galaxies. Our study contributes to doubling the number of OH 119 μm observations of luminous systems at z ∼ 0.2−0.3, and pushes the search for molecular outflows based on the OH 119 μm transition to z ∼ 6. Results. We detect OH 119 μm high-velocity absorption wings in three of the four ULIRGs. In two cases, IRAS F20036−1547 and IRAS F13352+6402, the blueshifted absorption profiles indicate the presence of powerful and fast (∼200−500 km s−1) molecular gas outflows. Consistent with an inside-out quenching scenario, these outflows are depleting the central reservoir of star-forming molecular gas at a rate similar to that of intense star formation activity. For the starburst-dominated system IRAS 10091+4704, we detect an inverted P Cygni profile that is unique among ULIRGs and indicates the presence of a fast (∼400 km s−1) inflow of molecular gas at a rate of ∼100 M⊙ yr−1 towards the central region. Finally, we tentatively detect (∼3σ) the OH 119 μm doublet in absorption in the z = 6.13 QSO ULAS J131911+095051. The OH 119 μm feature is blueshifted with a median velocity that suggests the presence of a molecular outflow, although characterized by a modest molecular mass loss rate of ∼200 M⊙ yr−1. This value is comparable to the small mass outflow rates found in the stacking of the [C II] spectra of other z ∼ 6 QSOs and suggests that ejective feedback in this phase of the evolution of ULAS J131911+095051 has subsided.

Abstract Abstract 1968 Background: Recent advances in HSCT have resulted in improved overall and relapse-free survival and decreased incidence of serious complications. Improved survival has prompted an increased focus on enhancing HRQoL. There is an accumulating body of evidence emphasizing that physical activity (PA) may be one modifiable lifestyle factor associated with decreased negative side effects related to HSCT and improved HRQoL. We sought to summarize the available evidence related to the effects of PA participation and HRQoL in HSCT recipients. Methods: We searched electronic databases including Pubmed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and conference proceedings from American Society of Hematology and American Society of Clinical Oncology to April 1, 2012. No language or publication date limits were used. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-experimental trials with a control group comparing exercise interventions with placebo-control or standard of care in adult HSCT recipients. Exercise was defined as any form of PA that was performed on a repeated basis for a fixed time frame over a fixed time interval. Included studies were required to have a HRQoL measure as a primary (1o) or secondary (2o) outcome. Change in global HRQoL from pre to post-intervention for intervention and control groups were compared using a DerSimonian and Laird random effects model. Heterogeneity was assessed by calculating the Q- and I2 statistics. Meta-regression was performed for the following study characteristics: total number (no.) of study participants; mean age; % female; average body mass index (BMI); mean exercise duration in minutes per session; intervention length in weeks; % adherence; type of transplant (allo- or combination of allo- and auto-transplants); and whether HRQoL was a 1o or 2o outcome. Sensitivity analysis assessed the cumulative effect of studies by publication year and no. of participants. Influential analysis was conducted to determine change in pooled effect estimate by removing one study at a time. Publication bias was assessed the Begg's rank correlation and Egger's regression test and plot. Results: Of the 1606 studies originally identified, 7 studies involving 420 patients who underwent HSCT (of which 208 were assigned to exercise or PA intervention) met all inclusion criteria. One study was excluded from the final analysis as it was identified as an extreme outlier. All 6 remaining studies used the European Organization of Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30) measurement tool thus weighted mean differences (WMD) were calculated for ease of interpretation. Participation in an exercise intervention resulted in an increase in global HRQoL with a WMD of 4.72 points (95% CI: −0.04, 9.47; P = 0.05). The proportion of variability in WMD attributed to intra-study heterogeneity was 65% (95% CI: 15%, 85%; P = 0.02) and was due primarily to variation in exercise intervention protocols and study quality. Meta-regression identified that whether HRQoL was a 1o or 2o outcome significantly affected the pooled effect estimate (P=0.02). Sensitivity analysis did not reveal any important trends. Influential analysis demonstrated that the study with the most influence when removed was Baumann A, where WMD decreased to 2.86 points (95% CI: −1.25, 8.57). There was no statistical evidence of publication bias by assessment with the Egger's regression test (coefficient for bias 2.35, 95% CI −1.90 to, 6.59, P = 0.20) and Begg's rank correlation test (Z-score 0.75 with continuity correction, P = 0.45). Conclusions: This analysis summarizes the best available evidence regarding effect of exercise participation on overall self-reported HRQoL in adult HSCT recipients. The pooled estimate, after excluding outliers, showed that exercise participation resulted in a 4.72 point increase in the global HRQoL score on the EORTC QLQ-C30 measure, which was borderline statistically significant (P =0.05). This effect estimate is similar in magnitude to pivotal meta-analyses of exercise interventions in breast cancer survivors. Substantial heterogeneity existed among included trials. Larger RCTs with a strong focus on study quality and long-term effects of exercise participation should be conducted. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Background In recent years, there has been a proliferation of third-party Web-based services available to consumers to interpret raw DNA from direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Little is known about who uses these services and the downstream health implications. Identifying this hard-to-reach population of consumers for research raised questions about the most effective recruitment methods to undertake. Past studies have found that Web-based social media survey distribution can be cost-effective for targeting hard-to-reach populations, yet comparative efficacy information across platforms is limited. Objective The aim of this study was to identify the most effective Web-based strategies to identify and recruit the target population of direct-to-consumer genetic testing users who also made use of third-party interpretation services to analyze their raw genetic data. Web-based survey recruitment methods varying by social media platform and advertising method were compared in terms of cost-effectiveness and demographics of survey respondents. Methods A total of 5 Web-based survey distribution conditions were examined: 4 paid advertising services and 1 unpaid service. For the paid services, a 2x2 quasi-experimental design compared social media platforms (Facebook vs Twitter) and advertising tracking metrics (by click vs by conversion). The fifth unpaid comparison method consisted of study postings on the social media platform, Reddit, without any paid advertising. Links to identical Web-based versions of the study questionnaire were posted for 10 to 14 days for each of the distribution conditions, which allowed tracking the number of respondents that entered and completed the questionnaire by distribution condition. Results In total, 438 individuals were recruited to the study through all conditions. A nearly equivalent number of participants were recruited from paid campaigns on Facebook (n=159) and Twitter (n=167), with a smaller sample recruited on Reddit (n=112). Significantly more participants were recruited through conversion-tracking (n=222) than through click-tracking campaigns (n=104; Z=6.5, P<.001). Response rates were found to be partially driven by organic sharing of recruitment materials among social media users. Conversion tracking was more cost-effective than click tracking across paid social media platforms. Significant differences in terms of gender and age distributions were noted between the platforms and between the tracking metrics. Conclusions Web-based recruitment methods were effective at recruiting participants from a hard-to-reach population in a short time frame. There were significant differences in the effectiveness of various paid advertising techniques. Recruitment through Web-based communities also appeared to perform adequately, yet it may be limited by the number of users accessible in open community groups. Future research should evaluate the impact of organic sharing of recruitment materials because this appeared to play a substantial role in the observed effectiveness of different methods.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have continued to be a leading cause of death among adults. Civil servants constitute vital workforce, and high CVD burden in this group has implications for national productivity. Unfortunately, guided cardiovascular health education interventions are uncommon. This study assessed the effect of an educational intervention on knowledge and practice of CVD prevention among Nigerian civil servants. Quasi-experimental study design was employed among subjects in distant communities in Cross River State. Multistage technique was used to recruit 172 subjects into one control group (Ogoja) and two intervention groups (Calabar and Ikom). The first intervention group received 4-h daily, 5-day cardiovascular health education, with emphasis on burden, risk factors, and preventive measures including nutrition, stress, alcohol, medicals, exercise, and smoking. The second intervention group received the same content of education, but with the use of Food, Rest for stress management, Alcohol, Medicals, Exercise, and Smoking (FRAMES) as guide for delivery. Questionnaires were used to assess knowledge and practice at baseline and post-intervention. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Knowledge scores and practice of CVD prevention were compared between study groups using inferential statistics. Mean age was 46.3 ± 7.4 years, and no significant difference in sociodemographic characteristics was observed by comparing the study groups (p > 0.05). Baseline knowledge and practice of preventive measures were generally poor, and no significant difference was observed by comparing the groups (p > 0.05). At 12 weeks post-intervention, knowledge of CVD was higher in the intervention groups compared with the control group (p < 0.05). Unlike control group, both intervention groups had improvement in physical exercise, medical screening, and fruit consumption (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in postintervention knowledge and practice of CVD prevention by comparing both intervention groups (p > 0.05). For effective delivery of cardiovascular health education, the use of “FRAMES” is as effective as its nonuse. Further studies in other settings are recommended.

Autis diartikan sebagai anak yang suka menyendiri / asyik dengan dunianya sendiri. Gangguan yang dialami anak autis adalah keterlambatan dalam perkembangan motorik halus. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah menganalisis Pengaruh Terapi Okupasi Dengan Teknik Kolase Terhadap Perkembangan Motorik Halus Pada Anak Autis di Terapi Anak Mandiri Center Setiabudi Medan. Terapi okupasi merupakan upaya penyembuhan terhadap anak yang memiliki kelainan fisik dan mental dengan cara memberikan keaktifan kerja. sebuah teknik menempel berbagai macam unsur kedalam satu frame sehingga menghasilkan karya seni yang baru. Jenis Penelitian ini adalah analitik dengan desain Quasy Experimental dengan menggunakan metode pre test-post test one group design dengan metode pengambilan sampel adalah sampling jenuh/total sampling, jumlah sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah 11 anak. Hasil penelitian dan Hasil Uji pada taraf kepercayaan 95% didapatkan bahwa adanya pengaruh terapi okupasi dengan teknik kolase terhadap rerata perkembangan motorik halus pada 11 anak autis dalam memberi lem pada gambar ( P value =0,000), mengambil bijian (P value = 0,006), menempel bijian (P value = 0,002) dan keberhasilan dalam mengisi gambar (P value =0,004).Disarankan kepada terapis untuk menerapkan terapi okupasi dengan teknik kolase dengan menggunakan benda-benda yang bervariasi untuk pengembangan kemampuan motorik halus anak berkebutuhan khusus terutama anak autis.

<p>The increasing pervasiveness of media in society implies the ubiquitous processes of geodata-capture and real-time feedback. The concept of Geomedia considers these developments and raises the questions of geoprivacy and corporate surveillance. The aim of this study was to investigate what kinds of geolocation data are shared wittingly or unwittingly, and in what contexts. Beyond that, we ask how much individuals know about the data-sharing processes and the underlying commercial logic, and how they act upon this knowledge (whether paradoxically or not). Our study was theoretically framed by contextual privacy (Nissenbaum 2011), because we assumed that a violation of privacy is perceived differently according to the context. The quasi-experimental design (using a WiFi-capture device) combined with a questionnaire revealed the participants’ attitudes to, and awareness of, data sharing, and their understanding of geoprivacy and geomedia use. The main results show that people are aware of the underlying commercial logic, have privacy concerns and, strongly depending on contextual factors, their knowledge and capabilities, act upon this awareness. Finally, we show that smartphones covertly share a huge amount of meta and traffic data.</p>

Daily intake of fruits and vegetables provides the basis for healthy nutrition. Yet low consumption of fruits and vegetables (FV) persists among school-aged children. Framed by the Social Cognitive Theory, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of nutrition lessons combined with an active choice intervention on children’s FV consumption. Using a quasi-experimental design, 89 second graders were assigned to groups. Students in the experimental group (n=46) received four nutrition lessons combined with nine active choice sessions, while those in the control group (n=43) received active choice sessions only. Responses to pre- and post-intervention surveys that inquired FV knowledge and consumption were compared within and between groups using independent and paired t-tests. Empowered by improved knowledge, self-efficacy and the positive environment created through nutrition lessons and active choice, the experimental group showed improvement in consumption behavior compared to the control group at post-intervention: bringing FV to school and finish eating (69.7 vs. 51.2, p=.05 for fruits; 43.5 vs. 39.5, p=.41 for vegetables); like choosing FV (84.8 vs. 65.1, p=.01); like to eat more FV (80.4 vs. 62.8, p=.16); FV are healthy (100 vs. 95.3, p=.14). The magnitude of improvement is small yet consistent in every aspect of outcome measures. Combining nutrition education with the active choice component showed potential for a larger impact on behavior change among study participants. Parental support and community involvement could enhance the effectiveness of nutrition education in schools.

<p>Este ensaio visa esclarecer como Manoel de Oliveira desenvolveu o seu método universalista, ou seja, a sua tendência de buscar no particular conclusões generalizantes sobre os dilemas da condição humana perante as alterações geopolíticas sofridas por Portugal, a Europa e o mundo ao longo dos últimos oitenta anos da sua atividade. Reconstroem-se, consequentemente, as relações entre a sua preocupação com a condição humana e o impacto dos cambiantes contextos nos quais tem filmado , desde 1931. Estas dimensões compreendem o local – sobretudo através da região do Porto e do Douro –, o nacional – em relação à identidade do seu país –, o supranacional – devido à adesão de Portugal à Comunidade Europeia, em 1986 –, o transnacional – devido à história portuguesa e às explorações marítimas, bem como o global – como resultado dos efeitos da globalização que Portugal sofreu a partir dos anos noventa.</p><p>This essay analyses how Manoel de Oliveira has framed his universal method, that is, his tendency to look for generalising conclusions about the dilemma of the human condition within specific contexts during the eighty years of his filmmaking activity, by taking into consideration the geopolitical changes suffered by Portugal, Europe and the world. Accordingly, I will reconstruct the relationship between his interest in the human condition and the impact of the changing conditions in which he has produced films since 1931. The scales include the local – mainly Porto and the Douro region –, the national – with regard to his countries’ identity –, the supranational – given Portugal’s history and the maritime explorations, as well as the global – as a result of globalisation’s effects on Portugal from the 90s onwards.</p>

Abstract Context Weight-neutral approaches for health are emerging therapeutic alternatives to traditional weight-loss approaches. The existing literature base comparing these approaches has not yet been systematically evaluated by a meta-analysis. Objective This review aims to determine if weight-neutral approaches are valid alternatives to weight-loss approaches for improving physical, psychological, and behavioral health outcomes. Data Sources Embase, Scopus, PsycINFO, PubMed, CINAHL, and the University of Queensland Library databases were searched. Study Selection Peer-reviewed, experimental, or quasi-experimental studies that included weight-neutral and weight-loss arms and reported physical, psychological, or behavioral outcomes were eligible. A total of 525 studies were identified through initial database searches, with 10 included in the final analysis after exclusion criteria were applied. Data Extraction Screening and eligibility assessment of studies followed the PRISMA protocol. The following outcomes were extracted: weight, body mass index, lipid and glucose variables, blood pressure, eating behavior, self-esteem, depression, quality of life, physical activity, and diet quality. Data Analysis Studies were graded per the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) level-of-evidence tool and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics quality-evaluation tool. Effect sizes were examined as a meta-analysis of standardized and mean differences using a random-effects inverse-variance model with 95%CIs. Practice recommendations for each outcome were graded per NHMRC body-of-evidence guidelines. Conclusions Weight-neutral approaches resulted in greater improvement in bulimia (P = 0.02), but no significant differences were observed for any other outcome. Weight-neutral approaches may be as effective as weight-loss methods for improving physical, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. Limitations include inconsistent definitions of both approaches and variable time frames of follow-up.

<p>A ciclagem de nutrientes é essencial para a manutenção da produtividade dos ecossistemas florestais, principalmente sobre solos de baixa fertilidade e fortemente intemperizados. Apesar da existência de trabalhos de acúmulo e deposição de serrapilheira da vegetação da Caatinga, ainda falta muito para o conhecimento da dinâmica desse bioma. O presente trabalho teve por objetivo, avaliar o acúmulo, deposição e decomposição de serrapilheira, a fim de obter informações sobre a dinâmica das espécies vegetais de uma Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural no bioma Caatinga, no Estado da Paraíba, para propiciar futuros estudos no tocante a ciclagem de nutrientes e, avaliar a interferência da precipitação pluviométrica na sazonalidade destes eventos. Para se obter a produção de serrapilheira 20 coletores de 1,0 m x 1,0 m, com fundo da tela de náilon. Coletada mensalmente, a serrapilheira foi separada nas frações folhas, galhos, material reprodutivo e miscelânea, sendo as frações secas em estufa e posteriormente pesada. Para avaliar a quantificação do estoque de serrapilheira acumulada foi utilizada moldura metálica com dimensões de 0,5 m x 0,5 m, lançada aleatoriamente, sendo coletada mensalmente, levada ao laboratório para secagem em estufa e pesado. A deposição de serrapilheira na fração folha no ano de 2011 estimou-se em 2.079,61 kg ha^-1, representando 77,23% do total estimado para o período experimental. Conclui-se que, a produção de serrapilheira obedeceu a seguinte ordem: folhas &gt; galhos + cascas &gt; material reprodutivo &gt; miscelânea. A serrapilheira acumulada no piso florestal na área de estudo pode ser decomposta em quase sua totalidade em aproximadamente dois anos.</p><p><strong><em>Accumulation, deposition and decomposition of litter in a dynamic Caatinga vegetation in a Conservation Unit</em></strong></p><p><strong>Abstract</strong><strong>: </strong>Nutrient cycling is essential for maintaining the productivity of forest ecosystems, especially on soils of low fertility and strongly weathered. Despite the studies of accumulation and deposition of litter in the Caatinga vegetation, there is still much to our understanding of the dynamics of this biome. This study aimed to evaluate the accumulation, deposition and decomposition of litter in order to obtain information about the dynamics of plant species in a Private Reserve of Natural Heritage in Caatinga biome in the state of Paraíba, to provide future studies regarding nutrient cycling, to facilitate future studies regarding nutrient cycling, and evaluate the role of rainfall seasonality in these events. To obtain the litterfall production, we used 20 collectors of 1.0m x 1.0 m, with nylon fabric background. The collection was done monthly, the litter was separated into leaves, twigs, reproductive material and miscellaneous and were dried in an oven and then weighed. To evaluate the quantification of the stock of accumulated litter, we used a metal frame with dimensions of 0.5m x 0.5m, thrown randomly being and being collected monthly, then taken to the laboratory oven to dry and to be weighed. The deposition fraction of leaf litter in the year 2011 was estimated at 2079.61 kg ha^-1, representing 77.23% of the total estimate for the experimental period. We conclude that the litterfall followed the order: leaves &gt; bark + branches &gt; reproductive material &gt; miscellany. The litter accumulated on the forest floor in the study area can be decomposed almost completely in about two years.</p>

In this paper we derive a theory, based on quasi-degenerate perturbation theory, that governs the effect of global-scale, steady-state convection and associated static asphericities in the elastic-gravitational variables (adiabatic bulk modulus κ, density ρ, and gravitational potential ∅) on helioseismic eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions and present a formalism with which this theory can be applied computationally. The theory rests on three formal assumptions: (1) that convection is temporally steady in a frame corotating with the Sun, (2) that accurate eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions can be determined by retaining terms in the seismically perturbed equations of motion only to first order in p -mode displacement, and (3) that we are justified in retaining terms only to first order in convective velocity (this is tantamount to assuming that the convective flow is anelastic). The most physically unrealistic assumption is (1), and we view the results of this paper as the first step toward a more general theory governing the seismic effects of time-varying fields. Although the theory does not govern the seismic effects of non-stationary flows, it can be used to approximate the effects of unsteady flows on the acoustic wavefield if the flow is varying smoothly in time. The theory does not attempt to model seismic modal amplitudes since these are governed, in part, by the exchange of energy between convection and acoustic motions which is not a part of this theory. However, we show how theoretical wavefields can be computed given a description of the stress field produced by a source process such as turbulent convection. The basic reference model that will be perturbed by rotation, convection, structural asphericities, and acoustic oscillations is a spherically symmetric, nonrotating, non-magnetic, isotropic, static solar model that, when subject to acoustic oscillations, oscillates adiabatically. We call this the SNRNMAIS model. An acoustic mode of the SNRNMAIS model is denoted by k = ( n, l, m ), where n is the radial order, l is the harmonic degree, and m is the azimuthal order of the mode. The main result of the paper is the general matrix element H m'm n'n,l'l for steady-state convection satisfying the anelastic condition with static structural asphericities. It is written in terms of the radial, scalar eigenfunctions of the snrnmais model, resulting in equations (90)—(110). We prove Rayleigh’s principle in our derivation of quasi-degenerate perturbation theory which, as a by-product, yields the general matrix element. Within this perturbative method, modes need not be exactly degenerate in the SNRNMAIS solar model to couple, only nearly so. General matrix elements compose the hermitian supermatrix Z . The eigenvalues of the supermatrix are the eigenfrequency perturbations of the convecting, aspherical model and the eigenvector components of Z are the expansion coefficients in the linear combination forming the eigenfunctions in which the eigenfunctions of the SNRNMAIS solar model act as basis functions. The properties of the Wigner 3 j symbols and the reduced matrix elements composing H m'm n'n,l'l produce selection rules governing the coupling of SNRNMAIS modes that hold even for time-varying flows. We state selection rules for both quasidegenerate and degenerate perturbation theories. For example, within degenerate perturbation theory, only odd-degree s toroidal flows and even degree structural asphericities, both with s ≤ 2 l , will couple and/or split acoustic modes with harmonic degree l . In addition, the frequency perturbations caused by a toroidal flow display odd symmetry with respect to the degenerate frequency when ordered from the minimum to the maximum frequency perturbation. We consider the special case of differential rotation, the odd-degree, axisymmetric, toroidal component of general convection, and present the general matrix element and selection rules under quasi-degenerate perturbation theory. We argue that due to the spacing of modes that satisfy the selection rules, quasi-degenerate coupling can, for all practical purposes, be neglected in modelling the effect of low-degree differential rotation on helioseismic data. In effect, modes that can couple through low-degree differential rotation are too far separated in frequency to couple strongly. This is not the case for non-axisymmetric flows and asphericities where near degeneracies will regularly occur, and couplings can be relatively strong especially among SNRNMAIS modes within the same multiplet. All derivations are performed and all solutions are presented in a frame corotating with the mean solar angular rotation rate. Equation (18) shows how to transform the eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions in the corotating frame into an inertial frame. The transformation has the effect that each eigenfunction in the inertial frame is itself time varying. That is, a mode of oscillation, which is defined to have a single frequency in the corotating frame, becomes multiply periodic in the inertial frame.

Abstract Objective: To evaluate the effect of positioning on gross motor function and spasticity in spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy children with Gross Motor Function Classification System level IV and V. Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted at two Paediatric Physical Therapy Centres from November 2018 to July 2019. The study was comprised of seventy four children with quadriplegic cerebral palsy aged between 3 to 8 years. Data was obtained and gross motor functional abilities and spasticity were assessed by GMFM-88 and Modified Ashworth Scale respectively. Twenty four-hour positioning in specific seats, night positioning and standing frames for six months. The child was being positioned in 24 hours according to his challenges for the period of six months. Semi reclined positioning was performed to manage aspiration, oral leak and to develop retention. Prone positioning was done to develop righting reactions, functional sitting position was used in the treatment regime to attain better upright position and neutral pelvic standing using standing frames. SPSS 24 was used to analyse the data. Results: Paired t-test reported significant improvement in the test scores in lying position, rolling, sitting position, crawling, kneeling, standing, walking or running. n=59 subjects exhibited improvement in the spasticity before and after interventional procedures, while n=15 showed no improvement as the value of p<0.05. Conclusion: Twenty-Four-hour proper body positioning and postural techniques improved gross motor functioning in all of the five dimensions of functioning. The overall spasticity in quadriplegic cerebral palsy children was also reduced due to appropriate positioning techniques. Continuous....

"Interactivity implies two agencies in conversation, playfully and spontaneously developing a mutual discourse" -- Sandy Stone (11) I. On Interactivity The difference between interactivity as it is performed across the page and the screen, maintains Sandy Stone, is that virtual texts and virtual communities can embody a play ethic (14). Inserted like a mutation into the corporate genome, play ruptures the encyclopaedic desire to follow seamless links to a buried 'meaning' and draws us back to the surface, back into real-time conversation with the machine. Hypertext theorists see this as a tactic of resistance to homogenisation. As we move across a hypertextual reading space, we produce the text in this unfolding now, choosing pathways which form a map in the space of our own memories: where we have been, where we are, where we might yet be. Play is occupying oneself with diversions. II. Space, Time and Composition Reading in time, we create the text in the space of our own memories. Hypertext theorists maintain that the choices we make around every corner, the spontaneity and contingency involved in these choices, are the bringing into being of a (constantly replaced) electronic palimpsest, a virtual geography. The dislocation which occurs as we engage in nodal leaps draws us back to the surface, rupturing our experience of the narrative and bringing us into a blissful experience of possibility. III. War against the Line There is the danger, on the one hand, of being subsumed by the passive subject position demanded by infotainment culture and the desire it encourages to seek the satisfaction of closure by following seamless links to a buried 'meaning'. On the other hand, we risk losing efficiency and control over the unfolding interaction by entering into an exchange which disorientates us with infinite potential. We cannot wildly destratify. The questions we ask must seek to keep the conversation open. In order to establish a new discursive territory within which to understand this relationship, we should view the interface not simply as a transparency which enables interaction with the machine as 'other', but as a text, a finely-wrought behavioural map which "exists at the intersection of political and ideological boundary lands" (Selfe & Selfe 1). As we write, so are we written by the linguistic contact zones of this terrain. Hypertext is thus a process involving the active translation of modes of being into possible becomings across the interface. The geographic 'space' we translate into a hypertext "is imaginational... . We momentarily extend the linear reading act into a third dimension when we travel a link" (Tolva 4). A literal spatial representation would break from the realm of hypertext and become a virtual reality. Thus, the geographic aspect is not inherent to the system itself but is partially translated into the geometry of the medium via our experience and perception (the 'map'), a process describing our 'line of flight' as we evolve in space. Directional flows between time and its traditional subordination to space in representation implode across the present-tense of the screen and time literally surfaces. Our experience of the constantly-replaced electronic palimpsest is one of temporal surrender: "we give in to time, we give way to time, we give in with time"(Joyce 219). In other words, the subject of hypertext subverts the traditional hierarchy and writes for space, producing the 'terrain' in the unfolding now in the Deleuzian sense, not in space as desired by the State. Johnson-Eilola aligns the experience of hypertext with the Deleuzian War Machine, a way of describing the speed and range of virtual movement created when the animal body splices into the realm of technology and opens an active plane of conflict.. The War Machine was invented by the nomads -- it operates by continual deterritorialisation in a tension-limit with State science, what we might call the command-control drive associated with geometric, dynamic thought and the sedentary culture of the Line. It "exemplifies" the avant-garde mentality that hypertext theorists have been associating with the electronic writing space (Moulthrop, "No War Machine" 1). Playing outside. The State desires an end to the resistance to totalisation promulgated by contingent thought and its thermodynamic relationship to space: the speed which assumes a probabilistic, vortical motion, actually drawing smooth space itself. The war machine is thus an open system opposed to classical mechanics via its grounding in active contingencies and spatio-temporal production. The nomad reads and writes for space, creating the temporal text in the space of her own memory, giving way to time and allowing existent points to lapse before the trajectory of flight. Nomad thought is not dependent on any given theory of relationship with the medium, but works via disruption and (re)distribution, the gaps, stutterings and gasp-like expressions experienced when we enter into conversation with the hypertext. The danger is that the war machine might be appropriated by the State, at which point this light-speed communication becomes of the utmost importance in the war against space and time. As speed and efficient retrieval replace real-space across the instantaneity and immediacy of the terminal, the present-time sensory faculties of the individual are marginalised as incidental and she becomes "the virtual equivalent of the well-equipped invalid" (Virilio 5). In other words, as the frame of real-space and present-time disappears, the text of the reader/writer becomes "sutured" into the discourse of the State, the only goal to gain "complete speed, to cover territory in order for the State to subdivide and hold it through force, legislation or consent" (Virilio, qtd. in Johnson-Eilola). This is when the predetermined geometry of hypertext becomes explicit. The progressive subsumption (or "suturing") of the multiple, nomadic self into the discourse of the computer occurs when "the terms of the narrative are heightened, as each 'node' in the hypertext points outwards to other nodes [and] readers must compulsively follow links to arrive at the 'promised plenitude' at the other end of the link" (Johnson-Eilola 391). When we no longer reflect on the frame and move towards complete speed and efficiency, when we stop playing on the surface and no longer concern ourselves with diversion, the war machine has been appropriated by the State. In this case, there is no revolutionary 'outside' to confront in interaction, as all has been marshalled towards closure. Keeping the conversation open means continuously reflecting on the frame. We cannot wildly destratify and lose control entirely by moving in perpetual bewilderment, but we can see the incompleteness of the story, recognising the importance of local gaps and spaces. We can work with the idea that the "dyad of smooth/striated represents not a dialectic but a continuum" (Moulthrop, "Rhizome" 317) that can be turned more complex in its course. Contingency and play reside in the intermezzo, the "dangerous edges, fleeting, attempting to write across the boundaries between in-control and out-of-control" (Johnson-Eilola 393). The war machine exists as at once process and product, the translation between smooth-striated moving in potentia: the nomadic consciousness can recognise this process and live flux as reality itself, or consistency. In sum, we avoid subsumption and appropriation by holding open the function of the text as process in our theorising, in our teaching, in our reading and writing across the hypertextual environment. We can either view hypertext as a tool or product which lends itself to efficient, functional use (to organise information, to control and consume in an encyclopaedic fashion), or we can view it as a process which lends itself to nomadic thought and resistance to totalisation in syncopated flows, in cybernetic fits and starts. This is our much-needed rhetoric of activity. IV. An Alternative Story No matter their theoretical articulation, such claims made for hypertext are fundamentally concerned with escaping the logocentric geometry of regulated time and space. Recent explorations deploying the Deleuzian smooth/striated continuum make explicit the fact that the enemy in this literary 'war' has never been the Line or linearity per se, but "the nonlinear perspective of geometry; not the prison-house of time but the fiction of transcendence implied by the indifferent epistemological stance toward time" (Rosenberg 276). Although the rhizome, the war machine, the cyborg and the nomad differ in their particularities and composition, they all explicitly play on the dislocated, time-irreversible processes of chaos theory, thermodynamics and associated 'liberatory' topological perspectives. Rosenberg's essay makes what I consider to be a very disruptive point: hypertext merely simulates the 'smooth', contingent thought seen to be antithetical to regulated space-time and precise causality due to its fundamental investment in a regulated, controlled and (pre)determined geometry. Such a deceptively smooth landscape is technonarcissistic in that its apparent multiplicity actually prescribes to a totality of command-control. Hypertext theorists have borrowed the terms 'multilinear', 'nonlinear' and 'contingency' from physics to articulate hypertext's resistance to the dominant determinist episteme, a framework exemplified by the term 'dynamics', opposing it to "the irreversible laws characteristic of statistical approximations that govern complex events, exemplified by the term, 'thermodynamics'" (Rosenberg 269). This resistance to the time-reversible, non-contingent and totalised worldview has its ideological origins in the work of the avant-garde. Hypertext theorists are fixated with quasi-hypertextual works that were precursors to the more 'explicitly' revolutionary texts in the electronic writing space. In the works of the avant-garde, contingency is associated with creative freedom and subversive, organic logic. It is obsessively celebrated by the likes of Pynchon, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage. Hypertext theorists have reasoned from this that 'nonlinear' or 'multilinear' access to information is isomorphic with such playful freedom and its contingent, associative leaps. Theorists align this nonsequential reasoning with a certain rogue logic: the 'fluid nature of thought itself' exemplified by the explicitly geographic relationship to space-time of the Deleuzian rhizome and the notion of contingent, probabilistic 'becomings'. Hypertext participates fully in the spatio-temporal dialectic of the avant-garde. As Moulthrop observes, the problem with this is that from a topological perspective, 'linear' and 'multilinear' are identical: "lines are still lines, logos and not nomos, even when they are embedded in a hypertextual matrix" ("Rhizome" 310). The spatio-temporal dislocations which enable contingent thought and 'subversive' logic are simply not sustained through the reading/writing experience. Hypertextual links are not only reversible in time and space, but trace a detached path through functional code, each new node comprising a carefully articulated behavioural 'grammar' that the reader adjusts to. To assume that by following 'links' and engaging in disruptive nodal leaps a reader night be resisting the framework of regulated space-time and determinism is "to ignore how, once the dislocation occurs, a normalcy emerges ... as the hypertext reader acclimates to the new geometry or new sequence of lexias" (Rosenberg 283). Moreover, the searchpath maps which earlier theorists had sensed were antithetical to smooth space actually exemplify the element of transcendent control readers have over the text as a whole. "A reader who can freeze the text, a reader who is aware of a Home button, a reader who can gain an instant, transcendent perspective of the reading experience, domesticates contingencies" (Rosenberg 275). The visual and behavioural grammar of hypertext is one of transcendent control and determined response. Lines are still lines -- regulated, causal and not contingent -- even when they are 'constructed' by an empowered reader. Hypertext is thus invested (at least in part) in a framework of regularity, control and precise function. It is inextricably a part of State apparatus. The problem with this is that the War Machine, which best exemplifies the avant-garde's insurgency against sedentary culture, must be exterior to the State apparatus and its regulated grid at all times. "If we acknowledge this line of critique (which I think we must), then we must seriously reconsider any claims about hypertext fiction as War Machine, or indeed as anything en avant" (Moulthrop, "No War Machine" 5). Although hypertext is not revolutionary, it would be the goal of any avant-garde use of hypertext to find a way to sustain the experience of dislocation that would indicate liberation from the hegemony of geometry. I would like to begin to sketch the possibility of 'contingent interaction' through the dislocations inherent to alternative interfaces later in this story. For the time being, however, we must reassess all our liberation claims. If linearity and multilinearity are identical in terms of geometric relations to space-time, "why should they be any different in terms of ideology", asks Moulthrop ("Rhizome" 310). V. On Interactivity Given Rosenberg's critique against any inherently revolutionary qualities, we must acknowledge that hypermedia "marks not a terminus but a transition," Moulthrop writes ("Rhizome" 317). As a medium of exchange it is neither smooth nor striated, sophist nor socratic, 'work' nor 'text': it is undergoing an increasingly complex phase transition between such states. This landscape also gives rise to stray flows and intensities, 'Unspecified Enemies' which exist at the dangerous fissures and edges. We must accept that we will never escape the system, but we are presented with opportunities to rock the sedentary order from within. As a group of emerging electronic artists see it, the dis-articulation of the point'n'click interface is where interaction becomes reflection on the frame in fits and starts. "We believe that the computer, like everything else, is composed in conflict," explain the editors of electronic magazine I/O/D. "If we are locked in with the military and with Disney, they are locked in not just with us, but with every other stray will-to-power" (Fuller, Interview 2). Along with Adelaide-based group Mindflux, these artists produce hypertext interfaces that involve sensory apparatus and navigational skills that have been marginalised as incidental in the disabling interactive technologies of mainstream multimedia. Sound, movement, proprioception, an element of randomness and assorted other sensory circuits become central to the navigational experience. By enlisting marginalised senses, "we are not proposing to formulate a new paradigm of multimedial correctness," stresses Fuller, "but simply exploring the possibility of more complicated feedback arrangements between the user and the machine" (Fuller, qtd. in Barnet 48). The reader must encounter the 'lexias' contained in the system via the stray flows, intensities, movements, stratas and organs that are not proper to the system but shift across the interface and the surface of her body. In Fuller's electronic magazine, the reader is called upon to converse with the technology outside of the domesticated circuits of sight, dislocating the rigorous hierarchy of feedback devices which privilege the sight-machine and disable contingent interaction in a technonarcissistic fashion. The written information is mapped across a 'fuzzy' sound-based interface, sensitive at every moment to the smallest movements of the reader's fingers on the keys and mouse: the screen itself is black, its swarm of links and hotspots dead to the eye. The reader's movements produce different bleeps and beats, each new track opening different entrances and exits through the information in dependence upon the fluctuating pitch and tempo of her music. Without the aid of searchpaths and bright links, she must move in a state of perpetual readjustment to the technology, attuned not to the information stored behind the interface, but to the real-time sounds her movements produce. What we are calling play, Fuller explains, "is the difference between something that has a fixed grammar on the one hand and something that is continually and openly inventing its own logic on the other" (Fuller & Pope 4). The electronic writing space is not inherently liberatory, and the perpetual process of playing with process across the interface works to widen the 'fissures across the imperium' only for a moment. According to Fuller and Joyce, the 'process of playing with process' simply means complicating the feedback arrangements between the user's body and the machine. "We need to find a way of reading sensually ... rather than, as the interactive artist Graham Weinbren puts it, descending 'into the pit of so-called multimedia, with its scenes of unpleasant 'hotspots,' and 'menus' [that] leaves no room for the possibility of a loss of self, of desire in relation to the unfolding'" remarks Joyce (11). Interactivity which calls upon a mind folded everywhere within the body dislocates the encyclopaedic organisation of data that "preserves a point of privilege from where the eye can frame objects" by enlisting itinerant, diffuse desires in an extended period of readjustment to technology (Fuller & Pope 3). There are no pre-ordained or privileged feedback circuits as the body is seen to comprise a myriad possible elements or fragments of a desiring-machine with the potential to disrupt the flow, to proliferate. Mainstream multimedia's desire for 'informational hygiene' would have us transcend this embodied flux and bureaucratise the body into organs. Information is fed through the circuits of sight in a Pavlovian field of buttons and bright links: interactivity is misconceived as choice-making, when 'response' is a more appropriate concept. When the diffuse desire which thrives on disruption and alternative paradigms is written out in favour of informational hygiene, speed and efficient retrieval replace embodied conversation. "Disembodied [interaction] of this kind is always a con... . The entropic, troublesome flesh that is sloughed off in these fantasies of strongly male essentialism is interwoven with the dynamics of self-processing cognition and intentionality. We see computers as embodied culture, hardwired epistemology" (Fuller 2). Avant-garde hypertext deepens the subjective experience of the human-computer interface: it inscribes itself across the diffuse, disruptive desires of the flesh. Alternative interfaces are not an ideological overhaul enabled by the realm of technê, but a space for localised break-outs across the body. Bifurcations are enacted on the micro level by desiring-machines, across an interface which seeks to dislocate intentionality in conjunction with the marginalised sensory apparatus of the reader, drawing other minds, other organs into localised conversation with command-control. "The user learns kinesthetically and proprioceptively that the boundaries of self are defined less by the skin than by the [local] feedback loops connecting body and simulation in a techno-bio-integrated circuit" (Hayles 72). She oscillates between communication and control, play and restraint: not a nomad but a "human Deserter assuming the most diverse forms" (ATP, 422). VI. Desire Working from across the territory we have covered, we might say that electronic interaction 'liberates' us from neither the Line nor the flesh: at its most experimental, it is nothing less than reading embodied. References Barnet, Belinda. "Storming the Interface: Mindvirus, I/O/D and Deceptive Interaction." Artlink: Australian Contemporary Art Quarterly 17:4 (1997). Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Fuller, Matt and Simon Pope. "Warning: This Computer Has Multiple Personality Disorder." 1993. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.altx.com/wordbombs/popefuller.php>. ---, eds. I/O/D2. Undated. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.pHreak.co.uk/i_o_d/>. Hayles, Katherine N. "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" October Magazine 66 (Fall 1993): 69-91. Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. "Control and the Cyborg: Writing and Being Written in Hypertext." Journal of Advanced Composition 13:2 (1993): 381-99. Joyce, Michael. Of Two Minds: Hypertext, Pedagogy and Poetics. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995. Moulthrop, Stuart. "No War Machine." 1997. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://raven.ubalt.edu/staff/moulthrop/essays/war_machine.php>. ---. "Rhizome and Resistance: Hypertext and the Dreams of a New Culture." Hyper/Text/Theory. Ed. George P. Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 299-319. Rosenberg, Martin E. "Physics and Hypertext: Liberation and Complicity in Art and Pedagogy." Hyper/Text/Theory. Ed. George Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 268-298. Selfe, Cynthia L., and Richard J. Selfe. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." College Composition and Communication 45.4: 480-504. Stone, Allucquére Roseanne. The War of Desire and Technology. London: MIT Press, 1996. Tolva, John. "Ut Pictura Hyperpoesis: Spatial Form, Visuality, and the Digital Word." 1993. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.cs.unc.edu/~barman/HT96/P43/pictura.htm>. Virilio, Paul. "The Third Interval: A Critical Transition." Rethinking Technologies. Ed. Verena Conley. London: U of Minnesota P, 1993. 3-12. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Belinda Barnet. "In the Garden of Forking Paths: Contingency, Interactivity and Play in Hypertext." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php>. Chicago style: Belinda Barnet, "In the Garden of Forking Paths: Contingency, Interactivity and Play in Hypertext," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Belinda Barnet. (1998) In the garden of forking paths: contingency, interactivity and play in hypertext. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php> ([your date of access]).

So then: That all phenomena in our intermediate state, or quasi-state, represent this one attempt to organise, stabilise, harmonise, individualise -- or to positivise, or to become real: That only to have seeming is to express failure or intermediateness to final failure and final success; That every attempt -- that is observable -- is defeated by Continuity, or by outside forces -- or by the excluded that are continuous with the included: That our whole "existence" is an attempt by the relative to be absolute, or by the local to be the universal. -- Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned (1919) I inspire this essay with outlandish reference from the "Godfather of the paranormal" primarily because upon revision of his seminal, often "disjointed" tome The Book of the Damned, I am immediately struck by the deeply ironic reciprocity his renegade theory of Continuity shares with expansive sociocultural change effected by global communication technologies, specifically, a growing awareness of interconnections -- or links -- between all things. I am swiftly presented, upon making this observation, with Sony's latest TV ad which, rather than attempting to persuade me to buy a Sony product per se, seems considerably more interested in luring me to buy into the digital world the advertisement illustrates, blending it ambiguously into "reality", repetitively informing me that in such an environment, "we are all connected". Following suit, I make the link. But from a strictly Fortean perspective, the link was already there, acknowledged or not, since Fort's ontology of Continuity precludes locality in much the same way as, say, the graphic art of M.C. Escher. Much of what Fort catalogued as "paranormal" phenomena can be seen as signs (in the semiotic sense) of the universe's non-localised nature. Although he did not frame his own perspective in these terms, Fort's writings subtly imply an explanation of "existence" as an assemblage of continuous signs seeking affirmation via exclusion (I am because I am not what I am not), an assemblage read, interpreted and ordered by the exclusive human mind. Mysterious coincidences, apparitions, vanishings, appearances, ESP, telekinesis -- these types of apparently instantaneous phenomena were seen as manifestations of phenomenological connections or mergings where none was believed or known to exist. The role of the Fortean, therefore, has traditionally been both to acknowledge that such phenomena do occur and to elucidate their significance, to explore connections between apparently unconnected phenomena, to make new, illuminating links in an infinitely interlinked universe. Such a role is hardly incompatible, of course, with that of today's average Web surfer. In the virtual environment communication technologies seek to construct, nothing is really local because everything is continuous with, or linked to, everything else. Significantly, these links are of our own making, but were already there, and it is in this sense that the Web is the essence of Forteana electronically virtualised, accounting for cyberspace's prolific production of UFO and conspiracy lore, for example, both traditionally fields of high interest to Forteans. Jodie Dean notes that: With the Internet, conspiracy information has been turned into entertainment ... this is because of the way that the networked society turns all of its citizens into conspiracy theorists: we are all told to search for information and make links. What is interesting about the expansion of conspiracy into mass media is the way that conspiracy thinking comes to define the Zeitgeist, to be synonymous with critical thinking in the networked society. (Pilkington 25) Fortean Continuity has woven itself through much of Western popular culture since Fort's time, obviously underpinning The X-Files and its ilk but surfacing more subtly in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, for example, where it in fact formed the crux of that film's "confusing" closure: a narratively "unconnected" frog fall, a well-documented but poorly understood phenomenon to which Fort attached considerable significance. Seemingly "unconnected" events like this happen quite often, Fort discovered, and through his study of their social reception (which historically ranges from ignorance to mythic inspiration) reasoned that all phenomena and events are unexplained and unexpected -- are apparently unconnected -- until we are able to establish a context in which they might plausibly "make sense", or be possible, or real. When such a (culturally specific) context is established, often elaborately so in a culture intolerant of randomness, the phenomenon "explained" becomes awash in significance, enriching the entire environment in which it is deemed to occur, reminding us of Continuity and the creative power of explanation. Unless, of course, that explanation is primarily concerned with maintaining a dominant social power structure or paradigmatic worldview which, Fort observed, in the West tends to be interested in downplaying Continuity and promoting fragmentation, or "localisation of the universal". Further, by "excluding" the anomaly altogether (and that includes accepting its presence but maintaining its "otherness"), we only limit the scope of our own observation, leaving the most alluring links unexplored. While all this sounds rather antiquated and mystical (it was Fort's way), I still can't help but think he might have been onto something: upon review Magnolia actually contains numerous clear Fortean references (Coleman 49). Granted a context, the frogs actually make sense. "The message" is that, even if the links seem at first so obscure as to be nonexistent, we are, in a virtual environment, encouraged to make them. In such an environment, the once staunch division between "subjective construction" and "objective observation" becomes largely redundant. The Body as Media Sign This redundancy describes a culture in which the medium has become the message. We are now encouraged to make links by transcending locality via the "technological simulation of consciousness", which McLuhan saw as symptomatic of the "electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us..." (4), an age in which media technology essentially elaborates the nonsynthetic interconnective model of biological nature, a model completely inhospitable to notions of "disconnection". When our bodies and their perceptual functions become continuous with the form and information relay of technology, "we" become undeniably continuous, disembodied via the body. Fort's ontology of Continuity (which lead him to conceive the term "teleportation", probably a significant influence on the cosmology of Lovecraft) has become increasingly intrinsic to much horror and science fiction, and especially central to the filmography of Canadian auteur and master of paranoid horror, David Cronenberg. Notably prominent in his first investigation of postmodernity's mediated ontology, Videodrome (1982), the theme of Continuity permeates this often "disjointed" film, which suggests the power of mass media operates not through the message, but through an obscure function of the medium which ultimately renders the "message" redundant as the medium becomes the message. Videodrome, a snuff TV show that seduces Toronto cable station chief Max Renn (James Woods), is encoded with a subliminal signal, which induces a brain tumour that eventually transforms the viewer's reality into video hallucination (and/or vice versa). The nature of the message does not ultimately matter since this subliminal signal can function through any program, even a test pattern. Steven Shaviro notices the psychedelic, McLuhanesque joke: the boundary between "inner bodily excitation and outer objective representation" collapses as the "new regime of the image abolishes the distance required either for disinterested aesthetic contemplation or for stupefied absorption in spectacle" (141). In the addictive cybernetic feedback loop of Videodrome, the distance between the medium and the body eventually collapses -- the body becomes the medium itself, the "New Flesh", and consequently the message: a sign within the hyperreality of an information system in which there are only signs. In such an all-encompassing system of interconnected signs, in which signification becomes incontrovertibly arbitrary, borders don't so much collapse as blend into one another, forming what Cronenberg presents as eXistenZ (1999), an unresolvable "quasi-state" of virtual embodiment. In many ways an elaboration of Videodrome, eXistenZ presents a "different present" style future in which technology, biology, the synthetic, the natural, and the real are completely virtualised with the advent of synthesised, organic virtual reality technology. Consisting of "metaflesh", the game pods/consoles are living tissue requiring a human body as a power source. Connecting directly with the central nervous system via a port at the base of the spine, they become a working part of the biological body, transforming the individual's reality into a narrative game called eXistenZ, so "real" it is ultimately indistinguishable from reality itself, hence its overwhelming appeal. The content of the game is an ambiguous combination of pre-programmed information and the player's own expectations, the objective of the game being to learn why one is playing the game. Progress within the game depends upon saying the right thing to the right person/character, or doing the right thing at the right time, to receive the right information to proceed in the right direction. When progress begins to lag, the player feels an overwhelming urge to do or say something they don't "want" to as their game character temporarily takes over to ensure continuation of the game. Initially felt as artificially induced bodily impulses, these urges eventually become acceptable and naturalised as the player "becomes" their game character, adopting the prescribed attitude and behaviour required for proficiency within the game, allowing them to "do the right thing" more easily, to both "make the links" and reconfigure themselves as links. In this sense eXistenZ is a fitting parable for an increasingly interconnected media culture that equates media transgressions of the body/mind with eventual transcendence from the body/mind into a quasi-corporeal "virtual reality" of cybernetics in which the individual, like everything else that is deemed to exist, is defined as a sign of its own connection to everything else. Existence as game describes existence within a playful culture of desire in which the pursuit of happiness is equated with the pursuit of pleasurable symbols that speak for our selves, and for which a virtual reality becomes a most logical, desirable future, if not a present. Within such an environment we are all characters in the same game, a game called "existence". Our bodies are the game pods which make interaction within existence possible, the vehicular flesh that binds "us" to the gaming environment, their provision of "reality" becoming ever more indistinguishable from the contexts established by increasingly pervasive electronic media. Literality begins to fade schizophrenically in the wake of hypersignificance. As a sign of and within a media age, the body becomes both a medium for a self-reflexive message and a message for a self-reflexive medium. In other words, as eXistenZ suggests, the body is already so incorporated as both media (information system) and media image that there is nothing non-virtual about its reality, or reality in general, for that matter, hence the analogy of existence as interactive simulation, a game. The Fortean Continuity of eXistenZ, I'd suggest, describes the increasingly anarchic power, ebb and flow of signs within a postmodern, virtual environment. Interestingly, Fort ultimately saw existence itself as reliant upon the processional denial of Continuity in the pursuit of the "real", or the Truth, or some kind of localisation of the universal, something that owes no debt to or shares no phenomenological relationship with anything other than itself, something that could only ever be ... self-referential. He argued that, despite our attempts to construct such phenomena, and to define our own lived experience (and our bodies) in these terms, no such phenomena exist in any objective sense because, ultimately, the observer is the observed. Everything is a part of itself, so every attempt to become "real" is doomed to fail, since "real" for Western culture involves some degree of conceptual disconnection, if only of the "real" from the "unreal". Fort didn't miss the irony of Intermediateness, the Truth that could never be, deeply appreciating The amazing paradox of it all: That all things are trying to become the universal by excluding other things. That there is only this one process, and that it does animate all expressions, in all fields of phenomena, of that which we think of as one inter-continuous nexus. (Book of the Damned 9) If then, upon the technological realisation of Continuity, there emerges in Western popular culture a deep obsession with the growing elusiveness of Truth (or "reality") accompanied by a certain degree of "paranoia" -- a veritable Fortean revival -- might this be attributable, at least in part, to the growing inefficacy of Truth and "reality" within the virtual environment of an inherently Fortean media form? References Coleman, Loren. "When Frogs Fall..." Fortean Times 133 (2000): 49. eXistenZ. Dir. David Cronenberg. 1999. Fort, Charles. The Complete Books of Charles Fort. New York: Dover, 1974. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge, 1964. Pilkington, Mark. "Watching the Watchers." Fortean Times 134 (2000): 24-5. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Videodrome. Dir. David Cronenberg. 1982. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "The Fortean Continuity of eXistenZ within a Virtual Environment." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/continuity.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "The Fortean Continuity of eXistenZ within a Virtual Environment," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/continuity.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (2000) The Fortean continuity of eXistenZ within a virtual environment. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/continuity.php> ([your date of access]).

In the 1960s, especially in the West, art that was revelatory and art that was revealing operated at opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum. On the side of the revelatory we can think of encounters synonymous with modernism, in which an expressionist painting was revelatory of the Freudian unconscious, or a Barnett Newman the revelatory intensity of the sublime. By contrast, the impulse to reveal in 1960s art was rooted in post-Duchampian practice, implicating artists as different as Lynda Benglis and Richard Hamilton, who mined the potential of an art that was without essence. If revelatory art underscored modernism’s transcendental conviction, critically revealing work tested its discursive rules and institutional conventions. Of course, nothing in history happens as neatly as this suggests, but what is clear is how polarized the language of artistic revelation was throughout the 1960s. With the international spread of minimalism, pop art, and fluxus, provisional reveals eventually dominated art-historical discourse. Aesthetic conviction, with its spiritual undertones, was haunted by its demystification. In the words of Donald Judd: “a work needs only to be interesting” (184).That art galleries could be sites of timely socio-political issues, rather than timeless intuitions undersigned by medium specificity, is one of the more familiar origin stories of postmodernism. Few artists symbolize this shift more than Hans Haacke, whose 2019 exhibition All Connected, at the New Museum, New York, examined the legacy of his outward-looking work. Born in Germany in 1936, and a New Yorker since 1965, Haacke has been linked to the term “institutional critique” since the mid 1980s, after Mel Ramsden’s coining in 1975, and the increased recognition of kindred spirits such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Martha Rosler, Robert Smithson, Daniel Buren, and Marcel Broodthaers. These artists have featured in books and essays by the likes of Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Yve-Alain Bois, but they are also known for their own contributions to art discourse, producing hybrid conceptions of the intellectual postmodern artist as historian, critic and curator.Haacke was initially fascinated by kinetic sculpture in the early 1960s, taking inspiration from op art, systems art, and machine-oriented research collectives such as Zero (Germany), Gruppo N (Italy) and GRAV (France, an acronym of Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel). Towards the end of the decade he started to produce more overtly socio-political work, creating what would become a classic piece from this period, Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile, Part 1 (1969). Here, in a solo exhibition at New York’s Howard Wise Gallery, the artist invited viewers to mark their birthplaces and places of residence on a map. Questioning the statistical demography of the Gallery’s avant-garde attendees, the exhibition anticipated the meticulous sociological character of much of his practice to come, grounding New York art – the centre of the art world – in local, social, and economic fabrics.In the forward to the catalogue of All Connected, New Museum Director Lisa Philips claims that Haacke’s survey exhibition provided a chance to reflect on the artist’s prescience, especially given the flourishing of art activism over the last five or so years. Philips pressed the issue of why no other American art institution had mounted a retrospective of his work in three decades, since his previous survey, Unfinished Business, at the New Museum in 1986, at its former, and much smaller, Soho digs (8). It suggests that other institutions have deemed Haacke’s work too risky, generating too much political heat for them to handle. It’s a reputation the artist has cultivated since the Guggenheim Museum famously cancelled his 1971 exhibition after learning his intended work, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System as of May 1, 1971 (1971) involved research into dubious New York real estate dealings. Guggenheim director Thomas Messer defended the censorship at the time, going so far as to describe it as an “alien substance that had entered the art museum organism” (Haacke, Framing 138). Exposé was this substance Messer dare not name: art that was too revealing, too journalistic, too partisan, and too politically viscid. (Three years later, Haacke got his own back with Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Board of Trustees, 1974, exposing then Guggenheim board members’ connections to the copper industry in Chile, where socialist president Salvador Allende had just been overthrown with US backing.) All Connected foregrounded these institutional reveals from time past, at a moment in 2019 when the moral accountability of the art institution was on the art world’s collective mind. The exhibition followed high-profile protests at New York’s Whitney Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Louvre, and the British Museum. These and other arts organisations have increasingly faced pressures, fostered by social media, to end ties with unethical donors, sponsors, and board members, with activist groups protesting institutional affiliations ranging from immigration detention centre management to opioid and teargas manufacturing. An awareness of the limits of individual agency and autonomy undoubtedly defines this era, with social media platforms intensifying the encumbrances of individual, group, and organisational identities. Hans Haacke, Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile, Part 1, 1969 Hans Haacke, Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile, Part 2, 1969-71Unfinished BusinessUnderscoring Haacke’s activist credentials, Philips describes him as “a model of how to live ethically and empathetically in the world today”, and as a beacon of light amidst the “extreme political and economic uncertainty” of the present, Trump-presidency-calamity moment (7). This was markedly different to how Haacke’s previous New York retrospective, Unfinished Business, was received, which bore the weight of being the artist’s first museum exhibition in New York following the Guggenheim controversy. In the catalogue to Haacke’s 1986 exhibition, then New Museum director Marcia Tucker introduced his work as a challenge, cautiously claiming that he poses “trenchant questions” and that the institution accepts “the difficulties and contradictions” inherent to any museum staging of his work (6).Philips’s and Tucker’s distinct perspectives on Haacke’s practice – one as heroically ethical, the other as a sobering critical challenge – exemplify broader shifts in the perception of institutional critique (the art of the socio-political reveal) over this thirty-year period. In the words of Pamela M. Lee, between 1986 and 2019 the art world has undergone a “seismic transformation”, becoming “a sphere of influence at once more rapacious, acquisitive, and overweening but arguably more democratizing and ecumenical with respect to new audiences and artists involved” (87). Haacke’s reputation over this period has taken a similar shift, from him being a controversial opponent of art’s autonomy (an erudite postmodern conceptualist) to a figurehead for moral integrity and cohesive artistic experimentation.As Rosalyn Deutsche pointed out in the catalogue to Haacke’s 1986 exhibition, a potential trap of such a retrospective is that, through biographical positioning, Haacke might be seen as an “exemplary political artist” (210). With this, the specific political issues motivating his work would be overshadowed by the perception of the “great artist” – someone who brings single-issue politics into the narrative of postmodern art, but at the expense of the issues themselves. This is exactly what Douglas Crimp discovered in Unfinished Business. In a 1987 reflection on the show, Crimp argued that, when compared with an AIDS-themed display, Homo Video, staged at the New Museum at the same time, reviewers of Haacke’s exhibition tended to analyse his politics “within the context of the individual artist’s body of work … . Political issues became secondary to the aesthetic strategies of the producer” (34). Crimp, whose activism would be at the forefront of his career in subsequent years, was surprised at how Homo Video and Unfinished Business spawned different readings. Whereas works in the former exhibition tended to be addressed in terms of the artists personal and partisan politics, Haacke’s prompted reflection on the aesthetics-politics juxtaposition itself. For Crimp, the fact that “there was no mediation between these two shows”, spoke volumes about the divisions between political and activist art at the time.New York Times critic Michael Brenson, reiterating a comment made by Fredric Jameson in the catalogue for Unfinished Business, describes the timeless appearance of Haacke’s work in 1986, which is “surprising for an artist whose work is in some way about ideology and history” (Brenson). The implication is that the artist gives a surprisingly long aesthetic afterlife to the politically specific – to ordinarily short shelf-life issues. In this mode of critical postmodernism in which we are unable to distinguish clearly between intervening in and merely reproducing the logic of the system, Haacke is seen as an astute director of an albeit ambiguous push and pull between political specificity and aesthetic irreducibility, political externality and the internalist mode of art about art. Jameson, while granting that Haacke’s work highlights the need to reinvent the role of the “ruling class” in the complex, globalised socio-economic situation of postmodernism, claims that it does so as representative of the “new intellectual problematic” of postmodernism. Haacke, according Jameson, stages postmodernism’s “crisis of ‘mapping’” whereby capitalism’s totalizing, systemic forms are “handled” (note that he avoids “critiqued” or “challenged”) by focusing on their manifestation through particular (“micro-public”) institutional means (49, 50).We can think of the above examples as constituting the postmodern version of Haacke, who frames very specific political issues on the one hand, and the limitless incorporative power of appropriative practice on the other. To say this another way, Haacke, circa 1986, points to specific sites of power struggle at the same time as revealing their generic absorption by an art-world system grown accustomed to its “duplicate anything” parameters. For all of his political intent, the artistic realm, totalised in accordance with the postmodern image, is ultimately where many thought his gestures remained. The philosopher turned art critic Arthur Danto, in a negative review of Haacke’s exhibition, portrayed institutional critique as part of an age-old business of purifying art, maintaining that Haacke’s “crude” and “heavy-handed” practice is blind to how art institutions have always relied on some form of critique in order for them to continue being respected “brokers of spirit”. This perception – of Haacke’s “external” critiques merely serving to “internally” strengthen existing art structures – was reiterated by Leo Steinberg. Supportively misconstruing the artist in the exhibition catalogue, Steinberg writes that Haacke’s “political message, by dint of dissonance, becomes grating and shrill – but shrill within the art context. And while its political effectiveness is probably minimal, its effect on Minimal art may well be profound” (15). Hans Haacke, MOMA Poll, 1970 All ConnectedSo, what do we make of the transformed reception of Haacke’s work since the late 1980s: from a postmodern ouroboros of “politicizing aesthetics and aestheticizing politics” to a revelatory exemplar of art’s moral power? At a period in the late 1980s when the culture wars were in full swing and yet activist groups remained on the margins of what would become a “mainstream” art world, Unfinished Business was, perhaps, blindingly relevant to its times. Unusually for a retrospective, it provided little historical distance for its subject, with Haacke becoming a victim of the era’s propensity to “compartmentalize the interpretive registers of inside and outside and the terms corresponding to such spatial­izing coordinates” (Lee 83).If commentary surrounding this 2019 retrospective is anything to go by, politics no longer performs such a parasitic, oppositional or even dialectical relation to art; no longer is the political regarded as a real-world intrusion into the formal, discerning, longue-durée field of aesthetics. The fact that protests inside the museum have become more visible and vociferous in recent years testifies to this shift. For Jason Farrago, in his review of All Connected for the New York Times, “the fact that no person and no artwork stands alone, that all of us are enmeshed in systems of economic and social power, is for anyone under 40 a statement of the obvious”. For Alyssa Battistoni, in Frieze magazine, “if institutional critique is a practice, it is hard to see where it is better embodied than in organizing a union, strike or boycott”.Some responders to All Connected, such as Ben Lewis, acknowledge how difficult it is to extract a single critical or political strategy from Haacke’s body of work; however, we can say that, in general, earlier postmodern questions concerning the aestheticisation of the socio-political reveal no longer dominates the reception of his practice. Today, rather than treating art and politics are two separate but related entities, like form is to content, better ideas circulate, such as those espoused by Bruno Latour and Jacques Rancière, for whom what counts as political is not determined by a specific program, medium or forum, but by the capacity of any actor-network to disrupt and change a normative social fabric. Compare Jameson’s claim that Haacke’s corporate and museological tropes are “dead forms” – through which “no subject-position speaks, not even in protest” (38) – with Battistoni’s, who, seeing Haacke’s activism as implicit, asks the reader: “how can we take the relationship between art and politics as seriously as Haacke has insisted we must?”Crimp’s concern that Unfinished Business perpetuated an image of the artist as distant from the “political stakes” of his work did not carry through to All Connected, whose respondents were less vexed about the relation between art and politics, with many noting its timeliness. The New Museum was, ironically, undergoing its own equity crisis in the months leading up to the exhibition, with newly unionised staff fighting with the Museum over workers’ salaries and healthcare even as it organised to build a new $89-million Rem Koolhaas-designed extension. Battistoni addressed these disputes at-length, claiming the protests “crystallize perfectly the changes that have shaped the world over the half-century of Haacke’s career, and especially over the 33 years since his last New Museum exhibition”. Of note is how little attention Battistoni pays to Haacke’s artistic methods when recounting his assumed solidarity with these disputes, suggesting that works such as Creating Consent (1981), Helmosboro Country (1990), and Standortkultur (Corporate Culture) (1997) – which pivot on art’s public image versus its corporate umbilical cord – do not convey some special aesthetico-political insight into a totalizing capitalist system. Instead, “he has simply been an astute and honest observer long enough to remind us that our current state of affairs has been in formation for decades”.Hans Haacke, News, 1969/2008 Hans Haacke, Wide White Flow, 1967/2008 Showing Systems Early on in the 1960s, Haacke was influenced by the American critic, artist, and curator Jack Burnham, who in a 1968 essay, “Systems Esthetics” for Artforum, inaugurated the loose conceptualist paradigm that would become known as “systems art”. Here, against Greenbergian formalism and what he saw as the “craft fetishism” of modernism, Burnham argues that “change emanates, not from things, but from the way things are done” (30). Burnham thought that emergent contemporary artists were intuitively aware of the importance of the systems approach: the significant artist in 1968 “strives to reduce the technical and psychical distance between his artistic output and the productive means of society”, and pays particular attention to relationships between organic and non-organic systems (31).As Michael Fried observed of minimalism in his now legendary 1967 essay Art and Objecthood, this shift in sixties art – signalled by the widespread interest in the systematic – entailed a turn towards the spatial, institutional, and societal contexts of receivership. For Burnham, art is not about “material entities” that beautify or modify the environment; rather, art exists “in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment” (31). At the forefront of his mind was land art, computer art, and research-driven conceptualist practice, which, against Fried, has “no contrived confines such as the theatre proscenium or picture frame” (32). In a 1969 lecture at the Guggenheim, Burnham confessed that his research concerned not just art as a distinct entity, but aesthetics in its broadest possible sense, declaring “as far as art is concerned, I’m not particularly interested in it. I believe that aesthetics exists in revelation” (Ragain).Working under the aegis of Burnham’s systems art, Haacke was shaken by the tumultuous and televised politics of late-1960s America – a time when, according to Joan Didion, a “demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community” (41). Haacke cites Martin Luther King’s assassination as an “incident that made me understand that, in addition to what I had called physical and biological systems, there are also social systems and that art is an integral part of the universe of social systems” (Haacke, Conversation 222). Haacke created News (1969) in response to this awareness, comprising a (pre-Twitter) telex machine that endlessly spits out live news updates from wire services, piling up rolls and rolls of paper on the floor of the exhibition space over the course of its display. Echoing Burnham’s idea of the artist as a programmer whose job is to “prepare new codes and analyze data”, News nonetheless presents the museum as anything but immune from politics, and technological systems as anything but impersonal (32).This intensification of social responsibility in Haacke’s work sets him apart from other, arguably more reductive techno-scientific systems artists such as Sonia Sheridan and Les Levine. The gradual transformation of his ecological and quasi-scientific sculptural experiments from 1968 onwards could almost be seen as making a mockery of the anthropocentrism described in Fried’s 1967 critique. Here, Fried claims not only that the literalness of minimalist work amounts to an emphasis on shape and spatial presence over pictorial composition, but also, in this “theatricality of objecthood” literalness paradoxically mirrors (153). At times in Fried’s essay the minimalist art object reads as a mute form of sociality, the spatial presence filled by the conscious experience of looking – the theatrical relationship itself put on view. Fried thought that viewers of minimalism were presented with themselves in relation to the entire world as object, to which they were asked not to respond in an engaged formalist sense but (generically) to react. Pre-empting the rise of conceptual art and the sociological experiments of post-conceptualist practice, Fried, unapprovingly, argues that minimalist artists unleash an anthropomorphism that “must somehow confront the beholder” (154).Haacke, who admits he has “always been sympathetic to so-called Minimal art” (Haacke, A Conversation 26) embraced the human subject around the same time that Fried’s essay was published. While Fried would have viewed this move as further illustrating the minimalist tendency towards anthropomorphic confrontation, it would be more accurate to describe Haacke’s subsequent works as social-environmental barometers. Haacke began staging interactions which, however dry or administrative, framed the interplays of culture and nature, inside and outside, private and public spheres, expanding art’s definition by looking to the social circulation and economy that supported it.Haacke’s approach – which seems largely driven to show, to reveal – anticipates the viewer in a way that Fried would disapprove, for whom absorbed viewers, and the irreduction of gestalt to shape, are the by-products of assessments of aesthetic quality. For Donald Judd, the promotion of interest over conviction signalled scepticism about Clement Greenberg’s quality standards; it was a way of acknowledging the limitations of qualitative judgement, and, perhaps, of knowledge more generally. In this way, minimalism’s aesthetic relations are not framed so much as allowed to “go on and on” – the artists’ doubt about aesthetic value producing this ongoing temporal quality, which conviction supposedly lacks.In contrast to Unfinished Business, the placing of Haacke’s early sixties works adjacent to his later, more political works in All Connected revealed something other than the tensions between postmodern socio-political reveal and modernist-formalist revelation. The question of whether to intervene in an operating system – whether to let such a system go on and on – was raised throughout the exhibition, literally and metaphorically. To be faced with the interactions of physical, biological, and social systems (in Condensation Cube, 1963-67, and Wide White Flow, 1967/2008, but also in later works like MetroMobiltan, 1985) is to be faced with the question of change and one’s place in it. Framing systems in full swing, at their best, Haacke’s kinetic and environmental works suggest two things: 1. That the systems on display will be ongoing if their component parts aren’t altered; and 2. Any alteration will alter the system as a whole, in minor or significant ways. Applied to his practice more generally, what Haacke’s work hinges on is whether or not one perceives oneself as part of its systemic relations. To see oneself implicated is to see beyond the work’s literal forms and representations. Here, systemic imbrication equates to moral realisation: one’s capacity to alter the system as the question of what to do. Unlike the phenomenology-oriented minimalists, the viewer’s participation is not always assumed in Haacke’s work, who follows a more hermeneutic model. In fact, Haacke’s systems are often circular, highlighting participation as a conscious disruption of flow rather than an obligation that emanates from a particular work (148).This is a theatrical scenario as Fried describes it, but it is far from an abandonment of the issue of profound value. In fact, if we accept that Haacke’s work foregrounds intervention as a moral choice, it is closer to Fried’s own rallying cry for conviction in aesthetic judgement. As Rex Butler has argued, Fried’s advocacy of conviction over sceptical interest can be understood as dialectical in the Hegelian sense: conviction is the overcoming of scepticism, in a similar way that Geist, or spirit, for Hegel, is “the very split between subject and object, in which each makes the other possible” (Butler). What is advanced for Fried is the idea of “a scepticism that can be remarked only from the position of conviction and a conviction that can speak of itself only as this scepticism” (for instance, in his attempt to overcome his scepticism of literalist art on the basis of its scepticism). Strong and unequivocal feelings in Fried’s writing are informed by weak and indeterminate feeling, just as moral conviction in Haacke – the feeling that I, the viewer, should do something – emerges from an awareness that the system will continue to function fine without me. In other words, before being read as “a barometer of the changing and charged atmosphere of the public sphere” (Sutton 16), the impact of Haacke’s work depends upon an initial revelation. It is the realisation not just that one is embroiled in a series of “invisible but fundamental” relations greater than oneself, but that, in responding to seemingly sovereign social systems, the question of our involvement is a moral one, a claim for determination founded through an overcoming of the systemic (Fry 31).Haacke’s at once open and closed works suit the logic of our algorithmic age, where viewers have to shift constantly from a position of being targeted to one of finding for oneself. Peculiarly, when Haacke’s online digital polls in All Connected were hacked by activists (who randomized statistical responses in order to compel the Museum “to redress their continuing complacency in capitalism”) the culprits claimed they did it in sympathy with his work, not in spite of it: “we see our work as extending and conversing with Haacke’s, an artist and thinker who has been a source of inspiration to us both” (Hakim). This response – undermining done with veneration – is indicative of the complicated legacy of his work today. Haacke’s influence on artists such as Tania Bruguera, Sam Durant, Forensic Architecture, Laura Poitras, Carsten Höller, and Andrea Fraser has less to do with a particular political ideal than with his unique promotion of journalistic suspicion and moral revelation in forms of systems mapping. It suggests a coda be added to the sentiment of All Connected: all might not be revealed, but how we respond matters. Hans Haacke, Large Condensation Cube, 1963–67ReferencesBattistoni, Alyssa. “After a Contract Fight with Its Workers, the New Museum Opens Hans Haacke’s ‘All Connected’.” Frieze 208 (2019).Bishara, Hakim. “Hans Haacke Gets Hacked by Activists at the New Museum.” Hyperallergic 21 Jan. 2010. <https://hyperallergic.com/538413/hans-haacke-gets-hacked-by-activists-at-the-new-museum/>.Brenson, Michael. “Art: In Political Tone, Works by Hans Haacke.” New York Times 19 Dec. 1988. <https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/19/arts/artin-political-tone-worksby-hans-haacke.html>.Buchloh, Benjamin. “Hans Haacke: Memory and Instrumental Reason.” Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry. Cambridge: MIT P, 2000.Burnham, Jack. “Systems Esthetics.” Artforum 7.1 (1968).Butler, Rex. “Art and Objecthood: Fried against Fried.” Nonsite 22 (2017). <https://nonsite.org/feature/art-and-objecthood>.Carrion-Murayari, Gary, and Massimiliano Gioni (eds.). Hans Haacke: All Connected. New York: Phaidon and New Museum, 2019.Crimp, Douglas. “Strategies of Public Address: Which Media, Which Publics?” In Hal Foster (ed.), Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 1. Washington: Bay P, 1987.Danto, Arthur C. “Hans Haacke and the Industry of Art.” In Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn (eds.), The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste. London: Routledge, 1987/1998.Didion, Joan. The White Album. London: 4th Estate, 2019.Farago, Jason. “Hans Haacke, at the New Museum, Takes No Prisoners.” New York Times 31 Oct. 2019. <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/arts/design/hans-haacke-review-new-museum.html>.Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood.” Artforum 5 (June 1967).Fry, Edward. “Introduction to the Work of Hans Haacke.” In Hans Haacke 1967. Cambridge: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2011.Glueck, Grace. “The Guggenheim Cancels Haacke’s Show.” New York Times 7 Apr. 1971.Gudel, Paul. “Michael Fried, Theatricality and the Threat of Skepticism.” Michael Fried and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2018.Haacke, Hans. Hans Haacke: Framing and Being Framed: 7 Works 1970-5. Halifax: P of the Nova Scotia College of Design and New York: New York UP, 1976.———. “Hans Haacke in Conversation with Gary Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni.” Hans Haacke: All Connected. New York: Phaidon and New Museum, 2019.Haacke, Hans, et al. “A Conversation with Hans Haacke.” October 30 (1984).Haacke, Hans, and Brian Wallis (eds.). Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, Mass: MIT P, 1986.“Haacke’s ‘All Connected.’” Frieze 25 Oct. 2019. <https://frieze.com/article/after-contract-fight-its-workers-new-museum-opens-hans-haackes-all-connected>.Judd, Donald. “Specific Objects.” Complete Writings 1959–1975. Halifax: P of the Nova Scotia College of Design and New York: New York UP, 1965/1975.Lee, Pamela M. “Unfinished ‘Unfinished Business.’” Hans Haacke: All Connected. New York: Phaidon P Limited and New Museum, 2019.Ragain, Melissa. “Jack Burnham (1931–2019).” Artforum 19 Mar. 2019. <https://www.artforum.com/passages/melissa-ragain-on-jack-burnham-78935>.Sutton, Gloria. “Hans Haacke: Works of Art, 1963–72.” Hans Haacke: All Connected. New York: Phaidon P Limited and New Museum, 2019.Tucker, Marcia. “Director’s Forward.” Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, Mass: MIT P, 1986.

Introduction The short film Noah (2013) depicts the contemporary story of an adolescent relationship breakdown and its aftermath. The film tells the story by showing events entirely as they unfold on the computer screen of Noah, the film’s teenaged protagonist. All of the characters, including Noah, appear on film solely via technological mediation.Although it is a fictional representation, Noah has garnered a lot of acclaim within an online public for the authenticity and realism of its portrayal of computer-mediated life (Berkowitz; Hornyak; Knibbs; Warren). Judging by the tenor of a lot of this commentary, the film has keyed in to a larger cultural anxiety around issues of communication and relationships online. Many reviewers and interested commentators have expressed concern at how closely Noah’s distracted, frenetic and problematic multitasking resembles their own computer usage (Beggs; Berkowitz; Trumbore). They frequently express the belief that it was this kind of behaviour that led to the relationship breakdown depicted in the film, as Noah proves to be “a lot better at opening tabs than at honest communication” (Knibbs para. 2).I believe that the cultural resonance of the film stems from the way in which the film is an implicit attempt to assess the nature of contemporary online persona. By understanding online persona as a particular kind of “hybrid object” or “quasi-object”—a combination of both human and technological creation (Latour We Have)—the sense of the overall problems, as well as the potential, of online persona as it currently exists, is traceable through the interactions depicted within the film. By understanding social relationships as constituted through dynamic interaction (Schutz), I understand the drama of Noah to stem principally from a tension in the operation of online persona between a) the technological automation of presentation that forms a core part of the nature of contemporary online persona, and b) the need for interaction in effective relationship development. However, any attempt to blame this tension on an inherent tendency in technology is itself problematised by the film’s presentation of an alternative type of online persona, in a Chatroulette conversation depicted in the film’s second half.Persona and Performance, Mediation and DelegationMarshall (“Persona Studies” 163) describes persona as “a new social construction of identity and public display.” This new type of social construction has become increasingly common due to a combination of “changes in work, transformation of our forms of social connection and networking via new technologies, and consequent new affective clusters and micropublics” (Marshall “Persona Studies” 166). New forms of “presentational” media play a key role in the construction of persona by providing the resources through which identity is “performed, produced and exhibited by the individual or other collectives” (Marshall “Persona Studies” 160).In this formulation of persona, it is not clear how performance and presentation interlink with the related concepts of production and exhibition. Marshall’s concept of “intercommunication” suggests a classificatory scheme for these multiple registers of media and communication that are possible in the contemporary media environment. However, Marshall’s primary focus has so far been on the relationship between existing mediated communication forms, and their historical transformation (Marshall “Intercommunication”). Marshall has not as yet made clear the theoretical link between performance, presentation, production and exhibition. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can provide this theoretical link, and a way of understanding persona as it operates in an online context: as online persona.In ANT, everything that exists is an object. Objects are performative actors—the associations between objects produce the identity of objects and the way they perform. The performative actions of objects, equally, produce the nature of the associations between them (Latour Reassembling). Neither objects nor associations have a prior existence outside of their relationship to each other (Law).For Latour, the semiotic distinction between “human” and “non-human” is itself an outcome of the performances of objects and their associations. There are also objects, which Latour calls “quasi-objects” or “hybrids,” that do not fit neatly on one side of the human/non-human divide or the other (Latour We Have). Online persona is an example of such a hybrid or quasi-object: it is a combination of both human creation and technological mediation.Two concepts formulated by Latour provide some qualitative detail about the nature of the operation of Actor-Networks. Firstly, Latour emphasises that actors are also “mediators.” This name emphasises that when an actor acts to create a connection between two or more other objects, it actively transforms the way that objects encounter the performance of other objects (Latour Reassembling). This notion of mediation resembles Hassan’s definition of “media” as an active agent of transferral (Hassan). But Latour emphasises that all objects, not just communication technologies, act as mediators. Secondly, Latour describes how an actor can take on the actions originally performed by another actor. He refers to this process as “delegation.” Delegation, especially delegation of human action to a technological delegate, can render action more efficient in two ways. It can reduce the effort needed for action, causing “the transformation of a major effort into a minor one.” It can also reduce the time needed to exert effort in performing an action: the effort need not be ongoing, but can be “concentrated at the time of installation” (Latour “Masses” 229-31).Online persona, in the terminology of ANT, is a constructed, performative presentation of identity. It is constituted through a combination of human action, ongoing mediation of present human action, and the automation, through technological delegation, of previous actions. The action of the film Noah is driven by the changes in expected and actual interaction that these various aspects of persona encourage.The Problems and Potential of Online PersonaBy relaying the action entirely via a computer screen, the film Noah is itself a testament to how encounters with others solely via technological mediation can be genuinely meaningful. Relaying the action in this way is in fact creatively productive, providing new ways of communicating details about characters and relationships through the layout of the screen. For instance, the film introduces the character of Amy, Noah’s girlfriend, and establishes her importance to Noah through her visual presence as part of a photo on his desktop background at the start of the film. The film later communicates the end of the relationship when the computer boots up again, but this time with Amy’s photo notably absent from the background.However, the film deviates from a “pure” representation of a computer screen in a number of ways. Most notably, the camera frame is not static, and moves around the screen in order to give the viewer the sense that the camera is simulating Noah’s eye focus. According to the directors, the camera needed to show viewers where the focus of the action was as the story progressed. Without this indication of where to focus, it was hard to keep viewers engaged and interested in the story (Paulas).Within the story of the film itself, the sense of drama surrounding Noah’s actions similarly stem from the exploration of the various aspects of what it is and is not possible to achieve in the performance of persona – both the positive and the negative consequences. At the start of the film, Noah engages in a Skype conversation with his girlfriend Amy. While Noah is indeed “approximating being present” (Berkowitz para. 3) for the initial part of this conversation, once Noah hears an implication that Amy may want to break up with him, the audience sees his eye movements darting between Amy’s visible face in Skype and Amy’s Facebook profile, and nowhere else.It would be a mistake to think that this double focus means Noah is not fully engaging with Amy. Rather, he is engaging with two dimensions of Amy’s available persona: her Facebook profile, and her Skype presence. Noah is fully focusing on Amy at this point of the film, but the unitary persona he experiences as “Amy” is constructed from multiple media channels—one dynamic and real-time, the other comparatively stable and static. Noah’s experience of Amy is multiplexed, a unitary experience constructed from multiple channels of communication. This may actually enhance Noah’s affective involvement with Amy.It is true that at the very start of the Skype call, Noah is focusing on several unrelated activities, not just on Amy. The available technological mediators enable this division of attention. But more than that, the available technological mediators also assume in their functioning that the user’s attention can be and should be divided. Thus some of the distractions Noah experiences at this time are of his own making (e.g. the simple game he plays in a browser window), while others are to some degree configured by the available opportunity to divide one’s attention, and the assumption of others that the user will do so. One of the distractions faced by Noah comes in the form of repeated requests from his friend “Kanye East” to play the game Call of Duty. How socially obligated is Noah to respond to these requests as promptly as possible, regardless of what other important things (that his friend doesn’t know about) he may be doing?Unfortunately, and for reasons which the audience never learns, the Skype call terminates abruptly before Noah can fully articulate his concerns to Amy. With a keen eye, the audience can see that the image of Amy froze not long after Noah started talking to her in earnest. She did indeed appear to be having problems with her Skype, as her later text message suggested. But there’s no indication why Amy decided, as described in the same text message, to postpone the conversation after the Skype call failed.This is a fairly obvious example of the relatively common situation in which one actor unexpectedly refuses to co-operate with the purposes of another (Callon). Noah’s uncertainty at how to address this non-cooperation leads to the penultimate act of the film when he logs in to Amy’s Facebook account. In order to fully consider the ethical issues involved, a performative understanding of the self and of relationships is insufficient. Phenomenological understandings of the self and social relationships are more suited to ethical considerations.Online Persona and Social RelationshipsIn the “phenomenological sociology” of Alfred Schutz, consciousness is inescapably temporal, constantly undergoing slight modification by the very process of progressing through time. The constitution of a social relationship, for Schutz, occurs when two (and only two) individuals share a community of space and time, simultaneously experiencing the same external phenomena. More importantly, it also requires that these two individuals have an ongoing, mutual and simultaneous awareness of each other’s progress and development through time. Finally, it requires that the individuals be mutually aware of the very fact that they are aware of each other in this ongoing, mutual and simultaneous way (Schutz).Schutz refers to this ideal-typical relationship state as the “We-relationship,” and the communal experience that constitutes it as “growing older together.” The ongoing awareness of constantly generated new information about the other is what constitutes a social relationship, according to Schutz. Accordingly, a lack of such information exchange will lead to a weaker social bond. In situations where direct interaction does not occur, Schutz claimed that individuals would construct their knowledge of the other through “typification”: pre-learned schemas of identity of greater or lesser generality, affixed to the other based on whatever limited information may be available.In the film, when Amy is no longer available via Skype, an aspect of her persona is still available for interrogation. After the failed Skype call, Noah repeatedly refreshes Amy’s Facebook profile, almost obsessively checking her relationship status to see if it has changed from reading “in a relationship.” In the process he discovers that, not long after their aborted Skype conversation, Amy has changed her profile picture—from one that had an image of the two of them together, to one that contains an image of Amy only. He also in the process discovers that someone he does not know named “Dylan Ramshaw” has commented on all of Amy’s current and previous profile pictures. Dylan’s Facebook profile proves resistant to interrogation—Noah’s repeated, frustrated attempts to click on Dylan’s profile picture to bring up more detail yields no results. In the absence of an aspect of persona that undergoes constant temporal change, any new information attained—a profile picture changed, a not-previously noticed regular commenter discovered—seems to gain heightened significance in defining not just the current relationship status with another, but the trajectory which that relationship is taking. The “typification” that Noah constructs of Amy is that of a guilty, cheating girlfriend.The penultimate act of the film occurs when Noah chooses to log in to Amy’s Facebook account using her password (which he knows), “just to check for sketchy shit,” or so he initially claims to Kanye East. His suspicions appear to be confirmed when he discovers that private exchanges between Amy and Dylan which indicate that they had been meeting together without Noah’s knowledge. The suggestion to covertly read Amy’s private Facebook messages comes originally from Kanye East, when he asks Noah “have you lurked [covertly read] her texts or anything?” Noah’s response strongly suggests the normative uncertainty that the teenaged protagonist feels at the idea; his initial response to Kanye East reads “is that the thing to do now?” The operation of Facebook in this instance has two, somewhat contradictory, delegated tasks: let others feel connected to Amy and what she’s doing, but also protect Amy’s privacy. The success of the second goal interferes with Noah’s desire to achieve the first. And so he violates her privacy.The times that Noah’s mouse hovers and circles around a button that would send a message from Amy’s account or update Amy’s Facebook profile are probably the film’s most cringe-inducing moments. Ultimately Noah decides to update Amy’s relationship status to single. The feedback he receives to Amy’s account immediately afterwards seems to confirm his suspicions that this was what was going to happen anyway: one friend of Amy’s says “finally” in a private message, and the suspicious “Dylan” offers up a shoulder to cry on. Apparently believing that this reflects the reality of their relationship, Noah leaves the status on Amy’s Facebook profile as “single.”The tragedy of the film is that Noah’s assumptions were quite incorrect. Rather than reflecting their updated relationship status, the change revealed to Amy that he had violated her privacy. Dylan’s supposedly over-familiar messages were perfectly acceptable on the basis that Dylan was not actually heterosexual (and therefore a threat to Noah’s role as boyfriend), but gay.The Role of Technology: “It’s Complicated”One way to interpret the film would be to blame Noah’s issues on technology per se. This is far too easy. Rather, the film suggests that Facebook was to some degree responsible for Noah’s relationship issues and the problematic way in which he tried to address them. In the second half of the film, Noah engages in a very different form of online interaction via the communication service known as Chatroulette. This interaction stands in sharp contrast to the interactions that occurred via Facebook.Chatroulette is a video service that pairs strangers around the globe for a chat session. In the film, Noah experiences a fairly meaningful moment on Chatroulette with an unnamed girl on the service, who dismisses Facebook as “weird and creepy”. The sheer normative power of Facebook comes across when Noah initially refuses to believe the unnamed Chatroulette girl when she says she does not have a Facebook profile. She suggests, somewhat ironically, that the only way to have a real, honest conversation with someone is “with a stranger, in the middle of the night”, as just occurred on Chatroulette.Besides the explicit comparison between Facebook and Chatroulette in the dialogue, this scene also provides an implicit comparison between online persona as it is found on Facebook and as it is found on Chatroulette. The style of interaction on each service is starkly different. On Facebook, users largely present themselves and perform to a “micro-public” of their “friends.” They largely engage in static self-presentations, often “interacting” only through interrogating the largely static self-presentations of others. On Chatroulette, users interact with strangers chosen randomly by an algorithm. Users predominantly engage in dialogue one-on-one, and interaction tends to be a mutual, dynamic affair, much like “real life” conversation.Yet while the “real-time” dialogue possible on Chatroulette may seem more conducive to facilitating Schutz’ idea of “growing older together,” the service also has its issues. The randomness of connection with others is problematic, as the film frankly acknowledges in the uncensored shots of frontal male nudity that Noah experiences in his search for a chat partner. Also, the problematic lack of a permanent means of staying in contact with each other is illustrated by a further tragic moment in the film when the session with the unnamed girl ends, with Noah having no means of ever being able to find her again.ConclusionIt is tempting to dismiss the problems that Noah encounters while interacting via mediated communication with the exhortation to “just go out and live [… ] life in the real world” (Trumbore para. 4), but this is also over-simplistic. Rather, what we can take away from the film is that there are trade-offs to be had in the technological mediation of self-presentation and communication. The questions that we need to address are: what prompts the choice of one form of technological mediation over another? And what are the consequences of this choice? Contemporary persona, as conceived by David Marshall, is motivated by the commodification of the self, and by increased importance of affect in relationships (Marshall “Persona Studies”). In the realm of Facebook, the commodification of the self has to some degree flattened the available interactivity of the online self, in favour of what the unnamed Chatroulette girl derogatorily refers to as “a popularity contest.”The short film Noah is to some degree a cultural critique of dominant trends in contemporary online persona, notably of the “commodification of the self” instantiated on Facebook. By conceiving of online persona in the terms of ANT outlined here, it becomes possible to envision alternatives to this dominant form of persona, including a concept of persona as commodification. Further, it is possible to do this in a way that avoids the trap of blaming technology for all problems, and that recognises both the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of constructing online persona. The analysis of Noah presented here can therefore provide a guide for more sophisticated and systematic examinations of the hybrid-object “online persona.”References Beggs, Scott. “Short Film: The Very Cool ‘Noah’ Plays Out Madly on a Teenager’s Computer Screen.” Film School Rejects 11 Sep. 2013. 3 Mar. 2014. Callon, M. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? Ed. John Law. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 196–223. Berkowitz, Joe. “You Need to See This 17-Minute Film Set Entirely on a Teen’s Computer Screen.” Fast Company 10 Sep. 2013. 1 Mar. 2014. Hassan, Robert. Media, Politics and the Network Society. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2004. Hornyak, Tim. “Short Film ‘Noah’ Will Make You Think Twice about Facebook—CNET.” CNET 19 Sep. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Knibbs, Kate. “‘Have You Lurked Her Texts?’: How the Directors of ‘Noah’ Captured the Pain of Facebook-Era Dating.” Digital Trends 14 Sep. 2013. 9 Feb. 2014. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford University Press, 2005. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993. Latour, Bruno. “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts.” Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. 225–58. Law, John. “After ANT: Complexity, Naming and Topology.” Actor-Network Theory and After. Ed. John Law and John Hassard. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. 1–14. Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153–170. Marshall, P. David. “The Intercommunication Challenge: Developing a New Lexicon of Concepts for a Transformed Era of Communication.” ICA 2011: Proceedings of the 61st Annual ICA Conference. Boston, MA: Intrenational Communication Association, 2011. 1–25. Paulas, Rick. “Step inside the Computer Screen of ‘Noah.’” VICE 18 Jan. 2014. 8 Feb. 2014. Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. London, UK: Heinemann, 1972. Trumbore, Dave. “Indie Spotlight: NOAH - A 17-Minute Short Film from Patrick Cederberg and Walter Woodman.” Collider 2013. 2 Apr. 2014. Warren, Christina. “The Short Film That Takes Place Entirely inside a Computer.” Mashable 13 Sep.2013. 9 Feb. 2014. Woodman, Walter, and Patrick Cederberg. Noah. 2013.

Bracketed by a quotation from famed 1950s West German soccer coach S. Herberger and the word "Ende", the running length of the 1998 film Run Lola Run, directed by Tom Tykwer, is 9 minutes short of the official duration of a soccer match. Berlin has often been represented, in visual art and in cinematic imagery, as the modern metropolis: the Expressionist and Dadaist painters, Walter Ruttmann, Fritz Lang and Rainer Werner Fassbinder all depicted it as the modernising city. Since the '60s artists have staged artworks and performances in the public space of the city which critiqued the cold war order of that space, its institutions, and the hysterical attempt by the German government to erase a divided past after 1990. Run Lola Run depicts its setting, Berlin, as a cyberspace obstacle course or environment usually associated with interactive video and computer games. The eerie emptiness of the Berlin of Run Lola Run -- a fantasy projected onto a city which has been called the single biggest construction site in Europe -- is necessary to keep the protagonist Lola moving at high speed from the West to the East part of town and back again -- another fantasy which is only possible when the city is recast as a virtual environment. In Run Lola Run Berlin is represented as an idealised space of bodily and psychic mobility where the instantaneous technology of cyberspace is physically realised as a utopia of speed. The setting of Run Lola Run is not a playing field but a playing level, to use the parlance of video game technology. Underscored by other filmic devices and technologies, Run Lola Run emulates the kinetics and structures of a virtual, quasi-interactive environment: the Berlin setting of the film is paradoxically rendered as an indeterminate, but also site specific, entertainment complex which hinges upon the high-speed functioning of multiple networks of auto-mobility. Urban mobility as circuitry is performed by the film's super-athletic Lola. Lola is a cyber character; she recalls the 'cyberbabe' Lara Croft, heroine of the Sega Tomb Raider video game series. In Tomb Raider the Croft figure is controlled and manipulated by the interactive player to go through as many levels of play, or virtual environments, as possible. In order for the cyber figure to get to the next level of play she must successfully negotiate as many trap and puzzle mechanisms as possible. Speed in this interactive virtual game results from the skill of an experienced player who has practiced coordinating keyboard commands with figure movements and who is familiar with the obstacles the various environments can present. As is the case with Lara Croft, the figure of Lola in Run Lola Run reverses the traditional gender relations of the action/adventure game and of 'damsel in distress' narratives. Run Lola Run focusses on Lola's race to save her boyfriend from a certain death by obtaining DM 100,000 and delivering it across town in twenty minutes. The film adds the element of the race to the game, a variable not included in Tomb Raider. Tykwer repeats Lola's trajectory from home to the location of her boyfriend Manni thrice in the film, each time ending her quest with a different outcome. As in a video game, Lola can therefore be killed as the game unwinds during one turn of play, and on the next attempt she, and also we as viewers or would-be interactive players, would have learned from her previous 'mistakes' and adjust her actions accordingly. The soundtrack of Run Lola Run underscores the speed and mobility of Berlin by means of the fast/slow/fast rhythm of the film, which proceeds primarily at the pace of techno music. This quick rhythm is syncopated with pauses in the forward-moving action brought on by Lola's superhuman screams or by the death of a protagonist. These events mark the end of one turn of 'play' and the restart of Lola's route. Tykwer visually contrasts Lola's linear mobility and her physical and mental capacity for speed with her boyfriend Manni's centripetal fixity, a marker of his helplessness, throughout the film. Manni, a bagman-in-training for a local mafioso, has to make his desperate phone calls from a single phone booth in the borough of Charlottenburg after he bungles a hand-off of payment money by forgetting it on the U-Bahn (the subway). In a black and white flashback sequence, viewers learn about Manni's ill-fated trip to the Polish border with a shipment of stolen cars. In contrast to his earlier mobility, Manni becomes entrapped in the phone booth as a result of his ineptitude. A spiral store sign close to the phone booth symbolizes Manni's entrapment. Tykwer contrasts this circular form with the lines and grids Lola transverses throughout the film. Where at first Lola is also immobilised after her moped is stolen by an 'unbelieveably fast' thief, her quasi-cybernetic thought process soon restores her movement. Tykwer visualizes Lola's frantic thinking in a series of photographic portraits which indicates her consideration of who she can contact to supply a large sum of money. Lola not only moves but thinks with the fast, even pace of a computer working through a database. Tykwer then repeats overhead shots of gridded pavement which Lola follows as she runs through the filmic frame. The grid, emblem of modernity and structure of the metropolis, the semiconductor, and the puzzles of a virtual environment, is necessary for mobility and speed, and is performed by the figure of Lola. The grid is also apparent in the trajectories of traffic of speeding bikes, subway trains,and airplanes passing overhead, which all parallel Lola's movements in the film. The city/virtual environment is thus an idealised nexus of local, national and global lines of mobility and communication.: -- OR -- Tykwer emphasised the arbitrariness of the setting of Run Lola Run, insisting it could easily have been set in any other urban centre such as New York City or Beijing. At no point does the film make explicit that the space of action is Berlin; in fact the setting of the film is far less significant than the filmic self-reflexivity Tykwer explores in Run Lola Run. Berlin becomes a postmodernist filmic text in which earlier films by Lang, Schlöndorff, von Sternberg and Wenders are cited in intertextual fashion. It is not by chance that the protagonist of Run Lola Run shares the name of Marlene Dietrich's legendary character in von Sternberg's The Blue Angel. The running, late-20th-century Lola reconnects with and gains power from the originary Lola Lola as ur-Star of German cinema. The high overhead shots of Run Lola Run technologically exceed those used by Lang in M in 1931 but still quote his filmic text; the spiral form, placed in a shop window in M, becomes a central image of Run Lola Run in marking the immobile spot that Manni occupies. Repeated several times in the film, Lola's scream bends events, characters and chance to her will and slows the relentless pace of the narrative. This vocal punctuation recalls the equally willful vocalisations of Oskar Matzerath in Schlöndorff's Tin Drum (1979). Tykwer's radical expansions and compressions of time in Run Lola Run rely on the temporal exploitation of the filmic medium. The film stretches 20 minutes of 'real time' in the lives of its two protagonists into the 84 minutes of the film. Tykwer also distills the lives of the film's incidental or secondary characters into a few still images and a few seconds of filmic time in the 'und dann...' [and then...] sequences of all three episodes. For example, Lola's momentary encounter with an employee of her father's bank spins off into two completely different life stories for this woman, both of which are told through four or five staged 'snapshots' which are edited together into a rapid sequence. The higher-speed photography of the snapshot keeps up the frenetic pace of Run Lola Run and causes the narrative to move forward even faster, if only for a few seconds. Tykwer also celebrates the technology of 35 mm film in juxtaposing it to the fuzzy imprecision of video in Run Lola Run. The viewer not only notes how scenes shot on video are less visually beautiful than the 35 mm scenes which feature Lola or Manni, but also that they seem to move at a snail's pace. For example, the video-shot scene in Lola's banker-father's office also represents the boredom of his well-paid but stagnant life; another video sequence visually parallels the slow, shuffling movement of the homeless man Norbert as he discovers Manni's forgotten moneybag on the U-Bahn. Comically, he breaks into a run when he realises what he's found. Where Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire made beautiful cinematographic use of Berlin landmarks like the Siegessäule in black and white 35 mm, Tykwer relegates black and white to flashback sequences within the narrative and rejects the relatively meandering contemplation of Wenders's film in favour of the linear dynamism of urban space in Run Lola Run. -- OR -- Tykwer emphasised the arbitrariness of the setting of Run Lola Run, insisting it could easily have been set in any other urban centre such as New York City or Beijing. Nevertheless he establishes the united Berlin as the specific setting of the film. While Run Lola Run does not explicitly indicate that the space of action is Berlin, viewers are clear of the setting: a repeated establishing shot of the Friedrichstrasse U-Bahn stop, a central commuting street near the Brandenburg Gate in the former East Berlin which has undergone extensive reconstruction since 1990, begins each episode of the film. The play between the locality of Berlin and its role as the universal modernist metropolis is a trope of German cinema famously deployed by Fritz Lang in M, where the setting is also never explicitly revealed but implied by means of the use of the Berlin dialect in the dialogue of the film1. The soundtrack of Run Lola Run underscores the speed and mobility of Berlin by means of the fast/slow/fast rhythm of the film which proceeds primarily at the pace of techno music. Techno is also closely identified with the city of Berlin through its annual Techno Festival, which seems to grow larger with each passing year. Quick techno rhythm is syncopated with pauses in the forward-moving action brought on by Lola's superhuman screams or by the death of a protagonist. Berlin is also made explicit as Tykwer often stages scenes at clearly-marked street intersections which identify particular locations or boroughs thoughout east and west Berlin. The viewer notes that Lola escapes her father's bank during one episode and faces Unter den Linden; several scenes unfold on the banks of the river Spree; Lola sprints between the Altes Museum and the Berlin Cathedral. Manni's participation in a car-theft ring points to the Berlin-focussed activity of actual Eastern European and Russian crime syndicates; the film features an interlude at the Polish border where Manni delivers a shipment of stolen Mercedes to underworld buyers, which has to do with the actual geographic proximity of Berlin to Eastern European countries. Tykwer emphasised the arbitrariness of the setting of Run Lola Run, insisting it could easily have been set in any other urban centre such as New York City or Beijing. Nevertheless he establishes the united Berlin as the specific setting of the film. While Run Lola Run does not explicitly indicate that the space of action is Berlin, viewers are clear of the setting: a repeated establishing shot of the Friedrichstrasse U-Bahn stop, a central commuting street near the Brandenburg Gate in the former East Berlin which has undergone extensive reconstruction since 1990, begins each episode of the film. The play between the locality of Berlin and its role as the universal modernist metropolis is a trope of German cinema famously deployed by Fritz Lang in M, where the setting is also never explicitly revealed but implied by means of the use of the Berlin dialect in the dialogue of the film1. The soundtrack of Run Lola Run underscores the speed and mobility of Berlin by means of the fast/slow/fast rhythm of the film which proceeds primarily at the pace of techno music. Techno is also closely identified with the city of Berlin through its annual Techno Festival, which seems to grow larger with each passing year. Quick techno rhythm is syncopated with pauses in the forward-moving action brought on by Lola's superhuman screams or by the death of a protagonist. Berlin is also made explicit as Tykwer often stages scenes at clearly-marked street intersections which identify particular locations or boroughs thoughout east and west Berlin. The viewer notes that Lola escapes her father's bank during one episode and faces Unter den Linden; several scenes unfold on the banks of the river Spree; Lola sprints between the Altes Museum and the Berlin Cathedral. Manni's participation in a car-theft ring points to the Berlin-focussed activity of actual Eastern European and Russian crime syndicates; the film features an interlude at the Polish border where Manni delivers a shipment of stolen Mercedes to underworld buyers, which has to do with the actual geographic proximity of Berlin to Eastern European countries. Yet the speed of purposeful mobility is demanded in the contemporary united and globalised Berlin; lines of action or direction must be chosen and followed and chance encounters become traps or interruptions. Chance must therefore be minimised in the pursuit of urban speed, mobility, and commications access. In the globalised Berlin, Tykwer compresses chance encounters into individual snapshots of visual data which are viewed in quick succession by the viewer. Where artists such Christo and Sophie Calle had investigated the initial chaos of German reunification in Berlin, Run Lola Run rejects the hyper-contemplative and past-obsessed mood demanded by Christo's wrapping of the Reichstag, or Calle's documentation of the artistic destructions of unification3. Run Lola Run recasts Berlin as a network of fast connections, lines of uninterrupted movement, and productive output. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that Tykwer's idealised and embodied representation of Berlin as Lola has been politically appropriated as a convenient icon by the city's status quo: an icon of the successful reconstruction and rewiring of a united Berlin into a fast global broadband digital telecommunications network4. Footnotes See Edward Dimendberg's excellent discussion of filmic representations of the metropolis in "From Berlin to Bunker Hill: Urban Space, Late Modernity, and Film Noir in Fritz Lang's and Joseph Losey's M." Wide Angle 19.4 (1997): 62-93. This is despite the fact that the temporal parameters of the plot of Run Lola Run forbid the aimlessness central to spazieren (strolling). See Walter Benjamin, "A Berlin Chronicle", in Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken, 1986. 3-60. See Sophie Calle, The Detachment. London: G+B Arts International and Arndt & Partner Gallery, n.d. The huge success of Tykwer's film in Germany spawned many red-hair-coiffed Lola imitators in the Berlin populace. The mayor of Berlin sported Lola-esque red hair in a poster which imitated the one for the film, but legal intercession put an end to this trendy political statement. Brian Pendreigh. "The Lolaness of the Long-Distance Runner." The Guardian 15 Oct. 1999. I've relied on William J. Mitchell's cultural history of the late 20th century 'rebuilding' of major cities into connection points in the global telecommunications network, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge: MIT P, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Claudia Mesch. "Racing Berlin: The Games of Run Lola Run." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php>. Chicago style: Claudia Mesch, "Racing Berlin: The Games of Run Lola Run," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Claudia Mesch. (2000) Racing Berlin: the games of Run Lola run. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/speed.php> ([your date of access]).

For once I want to be the car crash, Not always just the traffic jam. Hit me hard enough to wake me, And lead me wild to your dark roads. (Snow Patrol: “Headlights on Dark Roads”, Eyes Open, 2006) I didn’t know about the online dating site rsvp.com.au until a woman who I was dating at the time showed me her online profile. Apparently ‘everyone does rsvp’. Well, ‘everyone’ except me. (Before things ended I never did ask her why she listed herself as ‘single’ on her profile…) Forming relationships in our era of post-institutional modes of sociality is problematic. Some probably find such ‘romantically’ orientated ‘meet up’ sites to be a more efficient option for sampling what is available. Perhaps others want some loving on the side. In some ways these sites transform romance into the online equivalent of the logistics dock at your local shopping centre. ‘Just-in-time’ relationships rely less on social support structures of traditional institutions such as the family, workplace, and so on, including ‘love’ itself, and more on a hit and miss style of dating, organised like a series of car crashes and perhaps even commodified through an eBay-style online catalogue (see Crawford 83-88). Instead of image-commodities there are image-people and the spectacle of post-romance romance as a debauched demolition derby. Is romance still possible if it is no longer the naïve and fatalistic realisation of complementary souls? I watched Paul Thomas Anderson’s third film Punch-Drunk Love with the above rsvp.com.au woman. She interpreted it in a completely different manner to me. I shall argue (as I did with her) that the film captures some sense of romance in a post-romance world. The film was billed as a comedy/romance or comedy/drama, but I did not laugh either with or at the film. The story covers the trials of two people ‘falling in love’. Lena Leonard (Emma Watson) orchestrates an encounter with Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) after seeing a picture of him with his seven sisters. The trajectory of the romance is defined less by the meeting of two people, than the violence of contingency and of the world arrayed by the event of love. Contingency is central to complexity theory. Contingency is not pure chance, rather it exists as part of the processual material time of the event that defines events or a series of events as problematic (Deleuze, The Logic of Sense 52-53). To problematise events and recognise the contingencies they inculcate is to refuse the tendency to colonise the future through actuarial practices, such as ‘risk management’ and insurance or the probabilistic ‘Perfect Match’ success of internet dating sites (mirroring ‘Dexter’ from the 1980s dating television game show). Therefore, through Punch-Drunk Love I shall problematise the event of love so as to resuscitate the contingencies of post-romance romance. It is not surprising Punch-Drunk Love opens with a car crash for the film takes romance on a veritable post-Crash detour. Crash – novel and film – serves as an exploration of surfaces and desire in a world at the intersection of the accident. Jean Baudrillard, in his infamous essay on Crash (novel), dwells on the repositioning of the accident: [It] is no longer at the margin, it is at the heart. It is no longer the exception to a triumphal rationality, it has become the Rule, it has devoured the Rule. … Everything is reversed. It is the Accident that gives form to life, it is the Accident, the insane, that is the sex of life. (113) After the SUV rolls over in Punch-Drunk Love’s opening scene, a taxi van pauses long enough for an occupant to drop off a harmonium. A harmonium is a cross between an organ and a piano, but much smaller than both. It is a harmony machine. It breathes and wheezes to gather potentiality consonant sound waves of heterogeneous frequencies to produce a unique musicality of multiplicative resonance. No reason is given for the harmonium in the workings of the film’s plot. Another accident without any explanation, like the SUV crash, but this time it is an accidental harmony-machine. The SUV accident is a disorganising eruption of excess force, while the accidental harmony-machine is a synthesising organisation of force. One produces abolition, while the other produces a multiplicative affirmation. These are two tendencies that follow two different relations to the heterogeneous materialism of contingency. Punch-Drunk Love captures the contingency at the heart of post-romance romance. Instead of the layers of expectation habituated into institutional engagements of two subjects meeting, there is the accident of the event of love within which various parties are arrayed with various affects and desires. I shall follow Alain Badiou’s definition of the event of love, but only to the point where I shall shift the perspective from love to romance. Badiou defines love by initially offering a series of negative definitions. Firstly, love is not a fusional concept, the ‘two’ that is ‘one’. That is because, as Badiou writes, “an ecstatic One can only be supposed beyond the Two as a suppression of the multiple” (“What Is Love?” 38). Secondly, nor is love the “prostration of the Same on the alter of the Other.” Badiou argues that it is not an experience of the Other, but an “experience of the world [i.e. multiple], or of the situation, under the post-evental condition that there were Two” (“What Is Love?” 39). Lastly, the rejection of the ‘superstructural’ or illusory conception of love, that is, to the base of desire and sexual jealously (Badiou, “What Is Love?” 39). For Badiou love is the production of truth. The truth is that the Two, and not only the One, are at work in the situation. However, from the perspective of romance, there is no post-evental truth procedure for love as such. In Deleuze’s terminology, from the perspective of post-romance the Two serves an important role as the ‘quasi-cause’ of love (The Logic of Sense 33), or for Badiou it is the “noemenal possibility [virtualite]” (“What Is Love?” 51). The event of the Two, and, therefore, of love, is immanent to itself. However, this does not capture the romantic functioning of love swept up in the quasi-cause of the Two. Romance is the differential repetition of the event of love to-come and thus the repetition of the intrinsic irreducible wonder at the heart of the event. The wonder at love’s heart is the excess of potentiality, the excitement, the multiplicity, the stultifying surprise. To resuscitate the functioning of love is to disagree with Badiou’s axiom that there is an absolute disjunction between the (nominalist) Two. The Two do actually share a common dimension and that is the radical contingency at the heart of love. Love is not as a teleological destiny of the eternal quasi-cause, but the fantastic impossibility of its contingent evental site. From Badiou’s line of argument, romance is precisely the passage of this “aleatory enquiry” (“What is Love?” 45), of “the world from the point of view of the Two, and not an enquiry of each term of the Two about the other” (49). Romance is the insinuation of desire into this dynamic of enquiry. Therefore, the functioning of romance is to produce a virtual architecture of wonder hewn from seeming impossibility of contingency. It is not the contingency in itself that is impossible (the ‘chaosmos’ is a manifold of wonderless-contingency), but that contingency might be repeated as part of a material practice that produces love as an effect of differentiating wonder. Or, again, not that the encounter of love has happened, but that precisely it might happen again and again. Romance is the material and embodied practice of producing wonder. The materiality of romance needs to be properly outlined and to do this I turn to another of Badiou’s texts and the film itself. To explicate the materialism of romance is to begin outlining the problematic of romance where the material force of Lena and Barry’s harmony resonates in the virtuosic co-production of new potentialities. The practice of romance is evidenced in the scene where Lena and Barry are in Hawaii and Lena is speaking to Barry’s sister while Barry is watching her. A sense of wonder is produced not in the other person but of the world as multiplicity produced free from the burden of Barry’s sister, hence altering the material conditions of the differential repetition of contingency. The materialism in effect here is, to borrow from Michel Foucault, an ‘incorporeal materialism’ (169), and pertains to the virtual evental dimension of love. In his Handbook of Inaesthetics, Badiou sets up dance and theatre as metaphors for thought. “The essence of dance,” writes Badiou, “is virtual, rather than actual movement” (Handbook of Inaesthetics 61), while theatre is an “assemblage” (72) which in part is “the circulation of desire between the sexes” (71). If romance is the deliberate care for the event of love and its (im)possible contingency, then the dance of love requires the theatre of romance. To include music with dance is to malign Badiou’s conception of dance by polluting it with some elements of what he calls ‘theatre’. To return to the Hawaii scene, Barry is arrayed as an example of what Badiou calls the ‘public’ of theatre because he is watching Lena lie to his sister about his whereabouts, and therefore completes the ‘idea’ of theatre-romance as a constituent element (Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics 74). There is an incorporeal (virtual) movement here of pure love in the theatre of romance that repotentialises the conditions of the event of love by producing a repeated and yet different contingency of the world. Wonder triggered by a lie manifest of a truth to-come. According to Badiou, the history of dance is “governed by the perpetual renewal of the relation between vertigo and exactitude. What will remain virtual, what will be actualized, and precisely how is the restraint going to free the infinite?” (Handbook of Inaesthetics 70). Importantly, Badiou suggests that theatrical production “is often the reasoned trial of chances” (Handbook of Inaesthetics 74). Another way to think the materiality of romance is as the event of love, but without Badiou’s necessary declaration of love (“What Is Love?” 45). Even though the ‘truth’ of the Two acts as quasi-cause, love as such remains a pure (‘incorporeal’) Virtuality. As a process, there is no “absolute disappearance or eclipse” that belongs to the love-encounter (“What Is Love?” 45), thus instead producing a rhythmic or, better, melodic heterogeneous tension between the love-dance and romance-theatre. The rhythm-melody of the virtual-actual cascade is distributed around aleatory contingencies as the event of love is differentially repeated and is therefore continually repotentialised and exhausted at the same time. A careful or graceful balance needs to be found between potentiality and exhaustion. The film contains many examples of this (re)potentialising tension, including when Lena achieves the wonder of the ‘encounter’ by orchestrating a meeting. Similarly, Barry feigns a ‘business trip’ to Hawaii to meet up with Lena. This is proceeded by the increased urgency of Barry’s manipulation of the frequent flyer miles reward to meet with up with Lena. The tension is affective – both anxious and exciting – and belongs to the lived duration of contingency. In the same way as an actual material dance floor (or ‘theatre’ here) is repeated across multiple incorporeal dimensions of music’s virtuality through the repotentialisation of the dancer’s body, the multiple dimensions of love are repeated across the virtuality of the lovers’ actions through the repotentialisation of the conditions of the event of love. Punch-Drunk Love frames this problematic of romance by way of a second movement that follows the trajectory of the main character Barry. Barry is a depressive with an affect regulation problem. He flies into a rage whenever a childhood incident is mentioned and becomes anxious or ‘scared’ (as one sister described him) when in proximity to Lena. He tries to escape from the oppressive intimacy of his family. He plays with ‘identity’ in a childlike manner by dressing up as a businessman and wearing the blue suit. His small business is organised around selling plungers used to unblock toilets to produce flow. Indeed, Barry is defined by the blockages and flows of desire. His seven-sister over-Oedipalised familial unit continually operates as an apparatus of capture, a phone-sex pervert scam seeks to overcode desire in libidinal economy that becomes exploited in circuits of axiomatised shame (like an online dating site?), and a consumer rewards program that offers the dream of a frequent-flyer million-miles (line of) flight out of it all. ‘Oedipal’ in the expanded sense Deleuze and Guattari give the term as a “displaced or internalised limit where desire lets itself be caught. The Oedipal triangle is the personal and private territoriality that corresponds to all of capitalism’s efforts at social reterritorialisation” (266). Barry says he wants to ‘diversify’ his business, which is not the same thing as ‘expanding’ or developing an already established commercial interest. He does not have a clear idea of what domain or type of business he wants to enter into when diversifying. When he speaks to business contacts or service personnel on the phone he attempts to connect with them on a level of intimacy that is uncomfortably inappropriate for impersonal phone conversations. The inappropriate intimacy comes back to haunt him, of course, when a low-level crook attempts to extort money from him after Barry calls a phone sex line. The romance between Lena and Barry develops through a series of accident-contingencies that to a certain extent ‘unblocks’ Barry and allows him to connect with Lena (who also changes). Apparent contingencies that are not actually contingencies need to be explained as such (‘dropping car off’, ‘beat up bathrooms’, ‘no actual business in Hawaii’, ‘phone sex line’, etc.). Upon their first proper conversation a forklift in Barry’s business crashes into boxes. Barry calls the phone sex line randomly and this leads to the severe car crash towards the end of the film. The interference of Barry’s sisters occurs in an apparently random unexpected manner – either directly or indirectly through the retelling of the ‘gayboy’ story. Lastly, the climatic meeting in Hawaii where the two soon-to-be-lovers are framed by silhouette, their bodies meet not in an embrace but a collision. They emerge as if emitted from the throngs of the passing crowd. Barry has his hand extended as if they were going to shake and there is an audible grunt when their bodies collide in an embrace. To love is to endure the violence of a creative temporality, such as the production of harmony from heterogeneity. As Badiou argues, love cannot be a fusional relation between the two to make the one, nor can it be the relation of the Same to the Other, this is because the differential repetition of the conditions of love through the material practice of romance already effaces such distinctions. This is the crux of the matter: The maximum violence in the plot of Punch-Drunk Love is not born by Lena, even though she ends up in hospital, but by Barry. (Is this merely a masculinist reading of traditional male on male violence? Maybe, and perhaps why rsvp.com.au woman read it different to me.) What I am trying to get at is the positive or creative violence of the two movements within the plot – of the romance and of Barry’s depressive social incompetence – intersect in such a way to force Barry to renew himself as himself. Barry’s explosive fury belongs to the paradox of trying to ‘mind his own business’ while at the same time ‘diversifying’. The moments of violence directed against the world and the ‘glass enclosures’ of his subjectivity are transversal actualisations of the violence of love (on function of ‘glass’ in the film see King). (This raises the question, perhaps irrelevant, regarding the scale of Badiou’s conception of truth-events. After Foucault and Deleuze, why isn’t ‘life’ itself a ‘truth’ event (for Badiou’s position see Briefings on Existence 66-68)? For example, are not the singularities of Barry’s life also the singularities of the event of love? Is the post-evental ‘decision’ supposed to always axiomatically subtract the singular truth-supplement from the stream of singularities of life? Why…?) The violence of love is given literal expression in the film in the ‘pillow talk’ dialogue between Barry and Lena: Barry: I’m sorry, I forgot to shave. Lena: Your face is so adorable. Your skin and your cheek… I want to bite it. I want to bite on your cheek and chew on it, you’re so fucking cute. Barry: I’m looking at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fucking smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze you, you’re so pretty… Lena: I wanna chew your face off and scoop out your eyes. I wanna eat them and chew them and suck on them… Barry: [nodding] Ok…yes, that’s funny… Lena: Yeah… Barry: [still nodding] This’s nice. What dismayed or perhaps intrigued Baudrillard about Crash was its mixing of bodies and technologies in a kind of violent eroticism where “everything becomes a hole to offer itself to the discharge reflex” (112). On the surface this exchange between Barry and Lena is apparently an example of such violent eroticism. For Baudrillard the accident is a product of the violence of technology in the logistics of bodies and signs which intervene in relations in such a way to render perversity impossible (as a threshold structuration of the Symbolic) because ‘everything’ becomes perverse. However, writer and director of Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Anderson, produces a sense of the wondrous (‘Punch-Drunk’) violence that is at the heart of love. This is not because of the actual violence of individual characters; in the film this only serves as a canvas of action to illustrate the intrinsic violence of contingency. Lena and Barry’s ‘pillow talk’ not so much as a dance but a case of the necessary theatre capturing the violence and restraint of love’s virtual dance. ‘Violence’ (in the sense it is used above) also describes the harmonic marshalling of the heterogeneous materiality of sound affected by the harmonium. The ‘violence’ of the harmonium is decisively expressed through the coalescence of the diegetic and nondiegetic soundtracks at the end of the film when Barry plays the harmonium concurrently with Jon Brion’s score for the film. King notes, the “diegetic and nondiegetic music playing together is a moment of cinematic harmony; Barry, Lena, and the harmonium are now in sync” (par. 19). The notes of music connect different diegetic and nondiegetic series which pivot around new possibilities. As Deleuze writes about the notes played at a concert, they are “pure Virtualities that are actualized in the origins [of playing], but also pure Possibilities that are attained in vibrations or flux [of sound]” (The Fold 91). Following Deleuze further (The Fold 146-157), the horizontal melodic movement of romance forms a diagonal or transversal line with the differentially repeated ‘harmonic’ higher unity of love. The unity is literally ‘higher’ to the extent it escapes the diegetic confines of the film itself. For Deleuze “harmonic unity is not that of infinity, but that which allows the existent to be thought of as deriving from infinity” (The Fold 147, ital. added). While Barry is playing the harmonium in this scene Lena announces, “So here we go.” These are the final words of the film. In Badiou’s philosophy this is a declaration of the truth of love. Like the ‘higher’ non/diegetic harmony of the harmonium, the truth of love “composes, compounds itself to infinity. It is thus never presented integrally. All knowledge [of romance] relative to this truth [of the Two, as quasi-cause] thus disposes itself as an anticipation” (“What is Love?” 49). Romance is therefore lived as a vertiginous state of anticipation of love’s harmony. The materiality of romance does not simply consist of two people coming together and falling in love. The ‘fall’ functions as a fatalistic myth used to inscribe bodies within the eschatological libidinal economies of ‘romantic comedies’. To anneal Baudrillard’s lament, perversity obviously still has a positive Symbolic function on the internet, especially online dating sites where anticipation can be modulated through the probabilistic manipulation of signs. In post-romance, the ‘encounter’ of love necessarily remains, but it is the contingency of this encounter that matters. The main characters in Punch-Drunk Love are continually arrayed through the contingencies of love. I have linked this to Badiou’s notion of the event of love, but have focused on what I have called the materiality of romance. The materiality of romance requires more than a ‘fall’ induced by a probabilistic encounter, and yet it is not the declaration of a truth. The post-evental truth procedure of love is impossible in post-romance romance because there is no ‘after’ or ‘supplement’ to an event of love; there is only the continual rhythm of romance and anticipation of the impossible. It is not a coincidence that the Snow Patrol lyrics that serve above as an epigraph resonate with Deleuze’s comment that a change in the situation of Leibnizian monads has occurred “between the former model, the closed chapel with imperceptible openings… [to] the new model invoked by Tony Smith [of] the sealed car speeding down the dark highway” (The Fold 157). Post-Crash post-romance romance unfolds like the driving-monad in an aleatory pursuit of accidents. That is, to care for the event of love is not to announce the truth of the Two, but to pursue the differential repetition of the conditions of love’s (im)possible contingency. This exquisite and beautiful care is required for the contingency of love to be maintained. Hence, the post-romance problematic of romance thus posited as the material practice of repeating the wonder at the heart of love. References Badiou, Alain. Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology. Trans. Norman Madrasz. Albany, New York: State U of New York P, 2006. ———. Handbook of Inaesthetics. Trans. Alberto Toscano. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 2005. ———. “What Is Love?” Umbr(a) 1 (1996): 37-53. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. Crawford, Kate. Adult Themes: Rewriting the Rules of Adulthood. Sydney: Macmillan, 2006. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. ———. The Logic of Sense. Trans. Mark Laster and Charles Stivale. European Perspectives. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. Foucault, Michel. “Theatricum Philosophicum.” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. D. F. Bouchard. New York: Cornell UP, 1977. 165-96. King, Cubie. “Punch Drunk Love: The Budding of an Auteur.” Senses of Cinema 35 (2005). Citation reference for this article MLA Style Fuller, Glen. "Punch-Drunk Love: A Post-Romance Romance." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/03-fuller.php>. APA Style Fuller, G. (Jun. 2007) "Punch-Drunk Love: A Post-Romance Romance," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/03-fuller.php>.

Introduction As street protests and clashes between citizens and authorities in places as different as Ferguson, Missouri and Hong Kong in autumn 2014 demonstrate, everyday life in many parts of the world is characterised by conflicting and competing sets of cultural norms, values, and practices. The idea that groups create cultures that stand in contrast to “mainstream” or “dominant culture” is nothing new—sociology’s earliest scholars sought cultural explanations for social “dysfunctions” such as anomie and deviance. Yet our interest in this article is not about the problems that marginalised and non-normative groups face, but rather with the cultures that are created as part of dealing with those problems. Milton Yinger begins his 1982 book, Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down, by contrasting multiple perspectives on countercultures. Some thinkers have characterised countercultures as not only a mundane feature of social life, but as a necessary one: Countercultures and the many types of intentional communities they commonly create are not social aberrations. For thousands of years there have been attempts to provide alternatives for the existing social order in response to the perennial grounds for dissent: hierarchy and privilege […,] disgust with hedonism and consumerism […, and] a decline in the quality of life. (Yinger, Countercultures 1) Others, however, have discursively delegitimised countercultures by characterising them as something in between naiveté and unschooled arrogance. Speaking specifically about hippies in the 1960s, Bell argued that the so-called counter-culture was a children’s crusade that sought to eliminate the line between fantasy and reality and act out in life its impulses under a banner of liberation. It claimed to mock bourgeois prudishness, when it was only flaunting the closet behavior of its liberal parents. It claimed to be new and daring when it was only repeating in more raucous form […] the youthful japes of a Greenwich Village bohemia of a half century before. It was less a counter-culture than a counterfeit culture. (xxvi-xxvii) If Bell is at all right, then perhaps countercultures may be better understood as subcultures, a term that may not require the idea of opposition (but see Gelder; Williams, Subcultural). To tease this distinction out, we want to consider the value of the counterculture concept for the study of oppositional subcultures. Rather than uncritically assuming what counter means, we take a more analytical view of how “counter,” as similar to other terms such as “resistant” and “oppositional,” has been articulated by social scientists. In doing this, we focus our attention on scholarly works that have dealt explicitly with group cultures “that sharply contradict the dominant norms and values of the society of which that group is a part” (Yinger, Countercultures 3). The Relationship between Counterculture and Subculture Many scholars point to the Chicago School of sociology as developing the first clear articulation of subcultural groups that differed clearly from mainstream society (see for example, Gelder and Thornton; Hannerz, E.; Williams, Youth). Paul G. Cressey, Frederic Thrasher, and later William Foote Whyte each provide exemplary empirical studies of marginal groups that were susceptible to social problems and therefore more likely to develop cultures that were defined as problematic for the mainstream. Robert Merton argued that marginalised groups formed as individuals tried to cope with the strain they experienced by their inability to access the cultural means (such as good education and good jobs) needed to achieve mainstream cultural goals (primarily, material success and social status), but Albert Cohen and others subsequently argued that such groups often reject mainstream culture in favour of a new, alternative culture instead. Within a few years, conceptual distinctions among these alternative cultures were necessary, with counterculture and subculture being disambiguated in American sociology. Yinger originally employed the term contraculture but eventually switched to the more common counterculture. Subculture became most often tied either to the study of religious and ethnic enclaves (Mauss) or to deviance and delinquency (Arnold), while counterculture found its currency in framing the cultures of more explicitly political groups and movements (see for example, Cushman; George and Starr). Perhaps the clearest analytical distinction between the terms suggested that subculture refer to ascribed differences based upon socio-economic status, ethnicity, religion (and so on) in relation to the mainstream, whereas counterculture should refer to groups rooted in an explicit rejection of a dominant culture. This is similar to the distinction that Ken Gelder makes between subcultures based upon marginalisation versus non-normativity. Counterculture became best used wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture. (Yinger, Contraculture 629) Even at that time, however, such a neat distinction was problematic. Sociologist Howard S. Becker demonstrated that jazz musicians, for example, experienced a problem shared in many service occupations, namely that their clients did not possess the ability to judge properly the value of the service rendered, yet nevertheless sought to control it. As a consequence, a subculture emerged based on the opposition of “hip” musicians to their “square” employers’ cultural sensibilities. Yet Becker framed their experiences as subcultural rather than countercultural, as deviant rather than political (Becker 79-100). Meanwhile, the political connotations of “counterculture” were solidifying during the 1960s as the term became commonly used to describe aspects of the civil rights movement in the US, hippie culture, and the anti-Vietnam or peace movement. By the end of the 1960s, subculture and counterculture had become analytically distinct terms within sociology. Cultural Studies and the Class-ification of Counterculture The reification of subculture and counterculture as ontologically distinct phenomena was more or less completed in the 1970s through a series of publications on British youth cultures and subcultures (see Hall and Jefferson; Hebdige; Mungham and Pearson). The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in particular expended a great deal of collective mental energy theorising the material base upon which cultures—and in particular spectacular youth subcultures such as mods and punk—exist. As with Marxist analyses of culture more generally, class was considered a key analytic variable. In the definitive theoretical statement on subculture, Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, and Roberts argued that “the most fundamental groups are the social classes, and the major cultural configurations will be […] ‘class cultures’” (13). Subcultures were thus seen as ideological reactions to the material conditions experienced and made meaningful within working class “parent culture.” This is what made youth subcultures sub—a part of the working-class—as well as cultural—the process of expressing their structural position. Given the Marxist orientation, it should go without saying that subcultures, as working-class youth cultures, were seen as naturally in a state of conflict with bourgeois culture. But that approach didn’t account well for counter-currents that emerged from within the middle-class, whose relationship with the means of production was markedly different, and so the concept of counterculture was appropriated to describe a distinctly middle-class phenomenon. The idea that counterculture represented an overtly political response from within the dominant culture itself fitted with work by Theodore Roszak and Frank Musgrove, and later Yinger (Countercultures) and Ulf Hannerz, who each defined counterculture through its political and activist orientations stemming from a crisis within the middle-class. To further differentiate the concepts, the CCCS dismissed the collective aspect of middle-class resistance (see Clarke et al., 58-9, for a list of phenomena they considered exemplary of middle-class counterculture), describing it as more “diffuse, less group-oriented, [and] more individualised” than its working-class counterpart, the latter “clearly articulated [as] ‘near’ or ‘quasi’-gangs” (Clarke et al. 60). And whereas subcultures were centred on leisure-time activities within working-class environments, countercultures were concerned with a blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure. This conceptualisation was problematic at best, not least because it limits counterculture to the middle-class and subculture to the working class. It also gave considerably more agency and consequence to middle-class youths. It seemed that countercultures, with their individualist tendencies, offered individuals and groups choices about what and how to resist, as well as some expectations for social change, while subculturalists, locked within an unfortunate class position, could only resist dominant culture “at the profoundly superficial level of appearances” (Hebdige 17). Beyond the Limits of Class Cultures By 1980 cultural studies scholars had begun disassembling the class-basis of subcultures (see for example, G. Clarke; McRobbie; Griffin). Even though many studies still focused on stylised forms of opposition, subcultural scholarship increasingly emphasised subcultures such as punk as reflecting a more explicitly politicised resistance against the dominant or mainstream culture. Some scholars suggested that “mainstream culture” was used as a contrastive device to exaggerate the distinctiveness of those who self-identity as different (see U. Hannerz; Copes and Williams), while others questioned what subcultures could be seen as existing independently from, or in assumed opposition to (see Blackman; Thornton). In such cases, we can see a move toward reconciling the alleged limits of subculture as a countercultural concept. Instead of seeing subcultures as magical solutions and thus inevitably impotent, more recent research has considered the agency of social actors to overcome social divisions such as race, gender, and class. On the dance floor in particular, youth culture was theorised as breaking free of its class-binding shackles. Along with this break came the rhetorical distancing from CCCS’s definitions of subculture. The attempted development of “post-subculture” studies around the Millennium focused on consumptive behaviours among certain groups of youths and concluded that consumption rather than opposition had become a hallmark of youth culture broadly (see Bennett, Popular; Huq; Muggleton). For these scholars, the rave and club cultures of the 1990s, and others since, represent youth culture as hedonistic and relatively apolitical. “Post-subculture” studies drew in part on Steve Redhead’s postmodern approach to youth culture as found in The Clubcultures Reader and its companion text, From Subcultures to Clubcultures (Redhead). These texts offered a theoretical alternative to the CCCS’s view of oppositional subcultures and recognition that subcultural style could no longer be understood as a representation of ideological strain among working-class youths. Carried forward in volumes by David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl,,among others, “post-subcultural” scholarship criticised prior subcultural research for having objectified/reified mainstream/subcultural boundaries and authenticities, echoing Gary Clarke’s remark that the sharp distinction between us and them “rests upon [subculturalists’] consideration of the rest of society as being straight, incorporated in a consensus, and willing to scream undividedly loud in any moral panic” (71). Instead, the mixtures of punk, mod, skinhead and/or hippy styles among club-goers signalled “entirely new ways of understanding how young people perceive the relationship between music taste and visual style…revealing the infinitely malleable and interchangeable nature of the latter as these are appropriated and realised by individuals as aspects of consumer choice” (Bennett, Subcultures 613). Reincorporating the Counter into Subculture Studies The postmodern focus on cultural fluidity, individuality, and consumption highlights to some extent the agency that individuals have to make choices about the cultures in which they participate. To be sure, the postmodern and post-subculture critiques of class-based subculture studies were quite influential in the development of more recent subcultural scholarship, though not necessarily as they were intended. Much of the theoretical rhetoric of post-subculture scholarship (over-)emphasised heterogeneity, contingency, and play, which drew attention away from the collective identities and practices that continue to characterise many subcultures and groups. Fortunately, other scholars over the last decade have been critical of that approach’s failure to deal with perennial concerns related to participation in alternative cultural groups, including consumption (Buckingham), voice (Bae and Ivashkevich), education (Tuck and Yang), and group affiliation (Pilkington), among others. We want to follow this trajectory by explicitly reiterating the continuing significance of the “counter” aspects of subcultures. Two trends in social theory are exemplary in this reiteration. The first trend is a growing interest in re-theorizing resistance to refer to “a contribution to progressive transformations and radical changes in social and cultural structures” (Johansson and Lalander) rather than to a set of styles and practices through which working-class youth impotently rage against the machine. Resistance is qualitatively different from rebellion, which is often framed in terms of unconscious or irrational behaviour (Raby); resistance is first and foremost intentional. Subcultures articulate resistance to mainstream/dominant culture and may be measured across several continua, including passive to active, micro to macro, covert to overt, individual to collective, and local to global (see Williams, Resistance; E. Hannerz). Participants in countercultures see themselves as being more critically aware of what is happening in the world than the average person, believe that they act on that critical awareness in their thoughts, words, and/or deeds, and electively detach themselves from “involuntary or unconscious commitments” (Leary 253) to mainstream culture, refusing to uncritically follow the rules. The concept of resistance thus gives some momentum to attempts to clarify the extent to which members of alternative cultures intentionally break with the mainstream. The links between resistance and counterculture are explicitly dealt with in recent scholarship on music subcultures. Graham St John’s work on electronic dance music culture (EDMC), for example, offers a complex analysis of resistant practices that he conceptualizes as countercultural. Participation in EDMC is seen as more than simple hedonism. Rather, EDMC provides the scripts necessary for individuals to pursue freedom from various forms of perceived oppression in everyday life. At a more macro level, Madigan Fichter’s study of counterculture in Romania similarly frames resistance and political dissent as key variables in the articulation of a counterculture. Some recent attempts at invoking counterculture seem less convincing. Noting that counterculture is a relatively “unpopular term in social scientific research,” Hjelm, Kahn-Harris, and LeVine nevertheless proceed to theorize heavy metal as countercultural by drawing on the culture’s “transgressive” (14) qualities and “antagonistic […] attempts to shock and provoke [as well as] those occasions when metal, by its very presence, is shocking” (15). Other studies have similarly articulated “countercultures” in terms of behaviours that transgress mainstream sensibilities (see for example, Arthur and Sherman; Kolind). It is debatable at best, however, whether hedonism, transgression, or provocation are sufficient qualities for counterculture without concomitant cultural imperatives for both resistance and social change. This leads into a brief comment on a second trend, which is the growing interconnectedness of social theories that attend to subcultures on the one hand and “new” social movements (NSMs) on the other. “Traditional” social movements, such as the civil rights and labour movements, have been typically organised by and for people excluded in some way from full rights to participate in society, for example the rights to political participation or basic economic protection. NSMs, however, often involve people who already enjoy full rights as members of society, but who reject political and economic processes that injure them or others, such as marginalised groups, animals, or the environment. Some movements are contentious in nature, such as the Occupy-movement, and thus quite clearly antagonistic toward mainstream political-economy. NSM theories (see Pichardo), however, also theorize the roles of culture and collective identity in supporting both opposition to dominant processes and strategies for alternative practices. Other NSMs foster lifestyles that, through the minutiae of everyday practice, promote a ground-up reaction to dominant political-economic practices (see Haenfler, Johnson, and Jones). Both contentious and lifestyle movements are relatively diffuse and as such align with traditional conceptualisations of both subculture and counterculture. NSM theory and subcultural theories are thus coming together in a moment where scholars are seeking distinctly cultural understandings of collective lifestyles of resistance and social change. Conclusion Recent attempts to rephrase subcultural theory have combined ideas of the Birmingham and Chicago Schools with more contemporary approaches such as social constructivism and new social movements theory. Together, they recognise a couple of things. First, culture is not the determining structure it was once theorised to be. The shift in understanding subcultural groups as rooted in ascribed characteristics—being naturally different due to class, ethnicity, age, or to location (Park; Cohen; Clarke et al.)—to one in which subcultures are intentional articulations created by people, highlights the agency of individuals and groups to create culture. The break with realist/objectivist notions of culture offers promising opportunities for understanding resistance and opposition more generally. Second, the “counter” continues to be relevant in the study of subcultures. Subcultural participation these days is characterised as much or more by non-normativity than by marginalisation. As such, subcultures represent intentional protests against something outside themselves. Of course, we do not mean to suggest this is always and everywhere the case. Subcultural homogeneity was never really real, and concepts like “the mainstream” and “dominant culture” on the one hand, and “counterculture” and “opposition” on the other, are dialectically constructed. The “sub” in subculture refers both to a subset of meanings within a larger parent or mainstream culture (meanings which are unproblematic within the subculture) and to a set of meanings that explicitly rejects that which they oppose (E. Hannerz). In this regard, “sub” and “counter” can come together in new analyses of opposition, whether in terms of symbols (as cultural) or actions (as social). References Arnold, David O., ed. The Sociology of Subcultures. Berkeley, CA: Glendessary P, 1970. Arthur, Damien, and Claire Sherman. “Status within a Consumption-Oriented Counterculture: An Ethnographic Investigation of the Australian Hip Hop Culture.” Advances in Consumer Research 37 (2010): 386-392. Bae, Michelle S., and Olga Ivanshkevich. “If We Can’t Talk about This, We’ll Talk about Something Else: Shifting Issues to Keep the Counter-Discourse Alive.” Girls, Cultural Productions, and Resistance. Eds. Michelle S. Bae and Olga Ivanshkevich New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 65-80. Becker, Howard S. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press, 1963. Bennett, Andy. “Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship between Youth, Style, and Musical Taste.” Sociology 33.3 (1999): 599-617. ---. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Blackman, Shane J. Youth: Positions and Oppositions—Style, Sexuality, and Schooling. Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1995. Buckingham, David. “Selling Youth: The Paradoxical Empowerment of the Young Consumer.” Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media. Eds. David Buckingham, Sara Bragg, and Mary Jane Kehily. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 202-221. Clarke, Gary. “Defending Ski-Jumpers: A Critique of Theories of Youth Subcultures.” On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Eds. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin. London: Routledge, 1990. 68-80. Clarke, John, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts. “Subcultures, Cultures, and Class.” Resistance through Rituals. Eds. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. London: Routledge, 1976. 9-74. Cohen, Albert. Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. New York: Free Press, 1955. Copes, Heith, and J. Patrick Williams. “Techniques of Affirmation: Deviant Behavior, Moral Commitment, and Subcultural Identity.” Deviant Behavior 28.2 (2007): 247-272. Cressey, Paul G. The Taxi-Dance Hall. New York: Greenwood P, 1932. Cushman, Thomas. Notes From Underground: Rock Music Counterculture in Russia. New York: Albany State U of New York P, 1995. Fichter, Madigan. “Rock ’n’ Roll Nation: Counterculture and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1975.” Nationalities Papers 29.4 (2011): 567-585. Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton, eds. The Subcultures Reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2005. George, Paul S., and Jerold M. Starr. “Beat Politics: New Left and Hippie Beginnings in the Postwar Counterculture." Cultural Politics: Radical Movements in Modern History. Eds. Jerold M. Starr and Lee A. McClung. New York: Praeger 1985. 189-234. Griffin, Christine. “‘What Time Is Now?’: Researching Youth and Culture beyond the ‘Birmingham School’.” Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media. Eds. David Buckingham, Sara Bragg, and Mary Jane Kehily. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 21-36. Haenfler, Ross, Brett Johnson, and Ellis Jones. “Lifestyle Movements: Exploring the Intersection of Lifestyle and Social Movements.” Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 11.1 (2012):1-20. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance through Rituals. London: Routledge, 1976. Hannerz, Erik. Performing Punk: Subcultural Authentications and the Positioning of the Mainstream. Ph.D. Thesis, Uppsala: Uppsala U, 2013. Hannerz, Ulf. Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. Hebdige. Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979. Huq, Rupa. Beyond Subculture. Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World. London: Routledge, 2006. Johansson, Thomas, and Philip Lalander. "Doing Resistance: Youth and Changing Theories of Resistance." Journal of Youth Studies 15.8 (2012): 1078-1088. Kolind, Torsten. “Young People, Drinking and Social Class. Mainstream and Counterculture in the Everyday Practice of Danish Adolescents.” Journal of Youth Studies 14.3 (2011): 295-314. Leary, Timothy. Flashbacks. New York: Penguin, 1983. Mauss, Armand L. “Sociological Perspectives on the Mormon Subculture.” Annual Review of Sociology 10 (1984): 437-460. McRobbie, Angela. “Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique.” Screen Education 34 (1980): 37-49. Merton, Robert. “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review 3.5 (1938): 672-682. Muggleton, David. Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Muggleton, David, and Rupert Weinzierl, eds. The Post-Subcultures Reader Oxford: Berg, 2003. Mungham, Geoff, and Geoff Pearson, eds. Working Class Youth Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. Musgrove, Frank. Ecstasy and Holiness. Counter Culture and the Open Society. London: Methuen, 1974. Park, Robert E. 1915. “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment.” American Journal of Sociology, 20.5 (1915): 577-612. Pichardo, Nelson A. “New Social Movements: A Critical Review.” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 411-430. Pilkington, Hilary. 2014. “‘My Whole Life Is Here:’ Tracing Journeys through Skinhead.” Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media. Eds. David Buckingham, Sara Bragg, and Mary Jane Kehily. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 71-87. Raby, Rebecca. “What Is Resistance?” Journal of Youth Studies 8.2 (2005): 151-171. Redhead, Steve, ed. The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. ---. Subcultures to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture. Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. St John, Graham. Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures. Oakville: Equinox, 2009. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity, 1995 Thrasher, Frederic. The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1927. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang, eds. Youth Resistance Research and Theories of Change. New York: Routledge, 2014. Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1943. Williams, J. Patrick. 2007. “Youth Subcultural Studies: Sociological Traditions and Core Concepts.” Sociology Compass 1.2 (2007): 572-593. ---. “The Multidimensionality of Resistance in Youth-Subcultural Studies.” Resistance Studies Magazine 2.1 (2009): 20-33. ---. Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts. Cambridge, UK: Polity P, 2011 Yinger, J. Milton. “Contraculture and Subculture.” American Sociological Review 25.5 (1960): 625-635. ---. Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: Free Press, 1982.

Introduction: Artist Villages in Beijing Many of the most renowned sites of Beijing are found in the inner-city districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng: for instance, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Lama Temple, the National Theatre, the Central Opera Academy, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Imperial College, and the Confucius Temple. However, in the past decade a new attraction has been added to the visitor “must-see” list in Beijing. The 798 Art District originated as an artist village within abandoned factory buildings at Dashanzi, right between the city’s Central Business District and the open outer rural space on Beijing’s north-east. It is arguably the most striking symbol of China’s contemporary art scene. The history of the 798 Art District is by now well known (Keane), so this paper will provide a short summary of its evolution. Of more concern is the relationship between the urban fringe and what Howard Becker has called “art worlds.” By art worlds, Becker refers to the multitude of agents that contribute to a final work of art: for instance, people who provide canvasses, frames, and art supplies; critics and intermediaries; and the people who run exhibition services. To the art-world list in Beijing we need to add government officials and developers. To date there are more than 100 artist communities or villages in Beijing; almost all are located in the city’s outskirts. In particular, a high-powered art centre outside the city of Beijing has recently established a global reputation. Songzhuang is situated in outer Tongzhou District, some 30 kilometres east of Tiananmen Square. The Beijing Municipal Government officially classifies Songzhuang as the Capital Art District (CAD) or “the Songzhuang Original Art Cluster.” The important difference between 798 and Songzhuang is that, whereas the former has become a centre for retail and art galleries, Songzhuang operates as an arts production centre for experimental art, with less focus on commercial art. The destiny of the artistic communities is closely related to urban planning policies that either try to shut them down or protect them. In this paper I will take a close look at three artist villages: Yuanmingyuan, 798, and Songzhuang. In tracing the evolution of the three artist villages, I will shed some light on artists’ lives in city fringes. I argue that these outer districts provide creative industries with a new opportunity for development. This is counter to the conventional wisdom that central urban areas are the ideal locality for creative industries. Accordingly, this argument needs to be qualified: some types of creative work are more suitable to rural and undeveloped areas. The visual art “industry” is one of these. Inner and Outer Worlds Urban historians contend that innovation is more likely to happen in inner urban areas because of intensive interactions between people (Jacobs). City life has been associated with the development of creative industries and economic benefits brought about by the interaction of creative classes. In short, the argument is that cities, or, more specifically, urban areas are primary economic entities (Montgomery) whereas outer suburbs are uncreative and dull (Florida, "Cities"). The conventional wisdom is that talented creative people are attracted to the creative milieu in cities: universities, book shops, cafes, museums, theatres etc. These are both the hard and the soft infrastructure of modern cities. They illustrate diversified built forms, lifestyles and experiences (Lorenzen and Frederiksen; Florida, Rise; Landry; Montgomery; Leadbeater and Oakley). The assumption that inner-city density is the cradle of creative industries has encountered critique. Empirical studies in Australia have shown that creative occupations are found in relatively high densities in urban fringes. The point made in several studies is that suburbia has been neglected by scholars and policy makers and may have potential for future development (Gibson and Brennan-Horley; Commission; Collis, Felton, and Graham). Moreover, some have argued that the practice of constructing inner city enclaves may be leading to homogenized and prescriptive geographies (Collis, Felton, and Graham; Kotkin). As Jane Jacobs has indicated, it is not only density of interactions but diversity that attracts and accommodates economic growth in cities. However, the spatiality of creative industries varies across different sectors. For example, media companies and advertising agencies are more likely to be found in the inner city, whereas most visual artists prefer working in the comparatively quiet and loosely-structured outskirts. Nevertheless, the logic embodied in thinking around the distinctions between “urbanism” and “suburbanism” pays little attention to this issue, although both schools acknowledge the causal relationship between locality and creativity. According to Drake, empirical evidence shows that the function of locality is not only about encouraging interactions between SMEs (small to medium enterprises) within clusters which can generate creativity, but also a catalyst for individual creativity (Drake). Therefore for policy makers in China, the question here is how to plan or prepare a better space to accommodate creative professionals’ needs in different sectors while making the master plan. This question is particularly urgent to the Chinese government, which is undertaking a massive urbanization transition throughout the country. In placing a lens on Beijing, it is important to note the distinctive features of its politics, forms of social structure, and climate. As Zhu has described it, Beijing has spread in a symmetrical structure. The reasons have much to do with ancient history. According to Zhu, the city which was planned in the era of Genghis Khan was constituted by four layers or enclosures, with the emperor at the centre, surrounded by the gentry and other populations distributed outwards according to wealth, status, and occupation. The outer layer accommodated many lower social classes, including itinerant artists, musicians, and merchants. This ”outer city” combined with open rural space. The system of enclosures is carried on in today’s city planning of Beijing. Nowadays Beijing is most commonly described by its ring roads (Mars and Hornsby). However, despite the existing structure, new approaches to urban policy have resulted in a great deal of flux. The emergence of new landscapes such as semi-urbanized villages, rural urban syndicates (chengxiang jiehebu), and villages-within-cities (Mars and Hornsby 290) illustrate this flux. These new types of landscapes, which don’t correspond to the suburban concept that we find in the US or Australia, serve to represent and mediate the urban-rural relationship in China. The outer villages also reflect an old tradition of “recluse” (yin shi), which since the Wei and Jin Dynasties allowed intellectuals to withdraw themselves from the temporal world of the city and live freely in the mountains. The Lost Artistic Utopia: Yuanmingyuan Artist Village Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Ming Dynasty summer palace, is located in Haidian District in the north-west of Beijing. Haidian has transformed from an outer district of Beijing into one of its flourishing urban districts since the mid-1980s. Haidian’s success is largely due to the electronics industry which developed from spin-offs from Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1980s. This led to the rapid emergence of Zhongguancun, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. However there is another side of Haidian’s transformation. As the first graduates came out of Chinese Academies of the Arts following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), creative lifestyles became available. Some people quit jobs at state-owned institutions and chose to go freelance, which was unimaginable in China under the former regime of Mao Zedong. By 1990, the earliest “artist village” emerged around the Yuanmingyuan accommodating artists from around China. The first site was Fuyuanmen village. Artists living and working there proudly called their village “West Village” in China, comparing it to the Greenwich Village in New York. At that time they were labelled as “vagabonds” (mangliu) since they had no family in Beijing, and no stable job or income. Despite financial difficulties, the Yuanmingyuan artist village was a haven for artists. They were able to enjoy a liberating and vigorous environment by being close to the top universities in Beijing[1]. Access to ideas was limited in China at that time so this proximity was a key ingredient. According to an interview by He Lu, the Yuanmingyuan artist village gave artists a sense of belonging which went far beyond geographic identification as a marginal group unwelcomed by conservative urban society. Many issues arose along with the growth of the artist village. The non-traditional lifestyle and look of these artists were deemed abnormal by many of the general public; the way of their expression and behaviour was too extreme to be accepted by the mainstream in what was ultimately a political district; they were a headache for local police who saw them as troublemakers; moreover, their contact with the western world was a sensitive issue for the government at that time. Suddenly, the village was closed by the government in 1993. Although the Yuanmingyuan artist village existed for only a few years, it is of significance in China’s contemporary art history. It is the birth place of the cynical realism movement as well as the genesis of Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Mingjun, now among the most successful Chinese contemporary artists in global art market. The Starting Point of Art Industry: 798 and Songzhuang After the Yuanmingyuan artist village was shut down in 1993, artists moved to two locations in the east of Beijing to escape from the government and embrace the free space they longed for. One was 798, an abandoned electronic switching factory in Beijing’s north-east urban fringe area; the other was Songzhuang in Tongzhou District, a further twenty kilometres east. Both of these sites would be included in the first ten official creative clusters by Beijing municipal government in 2006. But instead of simply being substitutes for the Yuanmingyuan artist village, both have developed their own cultures, functioning and influencing artists’ lives in different ways. Songzhuang is located in Tongzhou which is an outer district in Beijing’s east. Songzhuang was initially a rural location; its livelihood was agriculture and industry. Just before the closing down of the Yuanmingyuan village, several artists including Fang Lijun moved to this remote quiet village. Through word of mouth, more artists followed their steps. There are about four thousand registered artists currently living in Songzhuang now; it is already the biggest visual art community in Beijing. An artistic milieu and a local sense of place have grown with the increasing number of artists. The local district government invests in building impressive exhibition spaces and promoting art in order to bring in more tourists, investors and artists. Compared with Songzhuang, 798 enjoys a favourable location along the airport expressway, between the capital airport and the CBD of Beijing. The unused electronics plant was initially rented as classrooms by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s. Then several artists moved their studios and workshops to the area upon eviction from the Yuanmingyuan village. Until 2002 the site was just a space to rent cheap work space, a factor that has stimulated many art districts globally (Zukin). From that time the resident artists began to plan how to establish a contemporary art district in China. Led by Huang Rui, a leading visual artist, the “798 collective” launched arts events and festivals, notably a “rebuilding 798” project of 2003. More galleries, cafés, bars, and restaurants began to set up, culminating in a management takeover by the Chaoyang District government with the Seven Stars Group[2] prior to the Beijing Olympics. The area now provides massive tax revenue to the local and national government. Nonetheless, both 798 and Songzhuang face problems which reflect the conflict between artists’ attachment to fringe areas and the government’s urbanization approach. 798 can hardly be called an artist production village now due to the local government’s determination to exploit cultural tourism. Over 50 percent of enterprises and people working in 798 now identify 798 as a tourism area rather than an art or “creative” cluster (Liu). Heavy commercialization has greatly disappointed many leading artists. The price for renting space has gone beyond the affordability of artists, and many have chosen to leave. In Songzhuang, the story is similar. In addition to rising prices, a legal dispute between artists and local residents regarding land property rights in 2008 drove some artists out of Songzhuang because they didn’t feel it was stable anymore (Smith). The district’s future as a centre of original art runs up against the aspirations of local officials for more tax revenue and tourist dollars. In the Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industries Cluster Design Plan (cited in Yang), which was developed by J.A.O Design International Architects and Planners Limited and sponsored by the Songzhuang local government in 2007, Songzhuang is designed as an “arts capital incorporated with culture, commerce and tourism.” The down side of this aspiration is that more museums, galleries, shopping centres, hotels, and recreation infrastructure will inevitably be developed in order to capitalise on Songzhuang’s global reputation. Concluding Reflections In reflecting on the recent history of artist villages in Beijing, we might conclude that rural locations are not only a cheap place for artists to live but also a space to showcase their works. More importantly, the relation of artists and outlying district has evolved into a symbiotic relationship. They interact and grow together. The existence of artists transforms the locale and the locale in turn reinforces the identity of artists. In Yuanmingyuan the artists appreciated the old “recluse” tradition and therefore sought spiritual liberation after decades of suppression. The outlying location symbolized freedom to them and provided distance from the world of noisy interaction. But isolation of artists from the local community and the associated constant conflict with local villagers deepened estrangement; these events brought about the end of the dream. In contrast, at 798 and Songzhuang, artists not only regarded the place as their worksite but also engaged with the local community. They communicated with local people and co-developed projects to transform the local landscape. Local communities changed; they started to learn about the artistic world while gaining economic benefits in many ways, such as house renting, running small grocery stores, providing art supplies and even modelling. Their participation into the “art worlds” (Becker) contributed to a changing cultural environment, in turn strengthening the brand of these artist villages. In many regards there were positive externalities for both artists and the district, although as I mentioned in relation to Songzhuang, tensions about land use have never completely been resolved. Today, the fine arts in China have gone far beyond the traditional modes of classics, aesthetics, liberation or rebellion. Art is also a business which requires the access to the material world in order to produce incomes and make profits. It appears that many contemporary artists are not part of a movement of rebellion (except several artists, such as Ai Weiwei), adopting the pure spirit of art as their life-time mission, as in the Yuanmingyuan artist village. They still long for recognition, but they are also concerned with success and producing a livelihood. The boundary between inner urban and outer urban areas is not as significant to them as it once was for artists from a former period. While many artists enjoy the quiet and space of the fringe and rural areas to work; they also require urban space to exhibit their works and earn money. This factor explains the recent emergence of Caochangdi and other artist villages in the neighbouring area around the 798. These latest artist villages in the urban fringe still have open and peaceful spaces and can be accessed easily due to convenient transportation. Unfortunately, the coalition of business and government leads to rapid commercialization of place which is not aligned with the basic need of artists, which is not only a free or affordable place but also a space for creativity. As mentioned above, 798 is now so commercialized that it is too crowded and expensive for artists due to the government’s overdevelopment; whereas the government’s original intention was to facilitate the development of 798. Furthermore, although artists are a key stakeholder in the government’s agenda for visual art industry, it is always the government’s call when artists’ attachment to rural space comes into conflict with Beijing government’s urbanization plan. Hence the government decides which artist villages should be sacrificed to give way to urban development and which direction the reserved artist villages or art clusters should be developed. The logic of government policy causes an absolute distinction between cities and outlying districts. And the government’s enthusiasm for “urbanization” leads to urbanized artist villages, such as the 798. A vicious circle is formed: the government continuously attempts to have selected artist villages commercialized and transformed into urbanized or quasi-urbanized area and closes other artist villages. One of the outcomes of this policy is that in the government created creative clusters, many artists do not stay, and move away into rural and outlying areas because they prefer to work in non-urban spaces. To resolve this dilemma, greater attention is required to understand artists needs and ways to combine urban convenience and rural tranquillity into their development plans. This may be a bridge too far, however. Reference Becker, Howard Saul. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary, updated and expanded ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2008. Collis, Christy, Emma Felton, and Phil Graham. "Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice." The Information Society: An International Journal 26.2 (2010): 104–12. Commission, Outer London. The Mayor's Outer London Commission: Report. London: Great London Authority, 2010. Drake, Graham. "'This Place Gives Me Space': Place and Creativity in the Creative Industries." Geoforum 34.4 (2003): 511–24. Florida, Richard. "Cities and the Creative Class." The Urban Sociology Reader. Eds. Jan Lin and Christopher Mele. London: Routledge, 2005. 290–301. ———. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Gibson, Chris, and Chris Brennan-Horley. "Goodbye Pram City: Beyond Inner/Outer Zone Binaries in Creative City Research." Urban Policy and Research 24.4 (2006): 455–71. Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969. Keane, Michael. "The Capital Complex: Beijing's New Creative Clusters." Creative Economies, Creative Cities: Asian-European Perspectives. Ed. Lily Kong and Justin O'Connor. London: Springer, 2009. 77–95. Kotkin, Joel. "The Protean Future of American Cities." New Geographer 7 Mar. 2011. 27 Mar. 2011 ‹http://blogs.forbes.com/joelkotkin/2011/03/07/the-protean-future-of-american-cities/›. Landry, Charles. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan Publications, 2000. Leadbeater, Charles, and Kate Oakley. The Independents: Britain's New Cultural Entrepreneurs. London: Demos, 1999. Liu, Mingliang. "Beijing 798 Art Zone: Field Study and Follow-Up Study in the Context of Market." Chinese National Academy of Arts, 2010. Lorenzen, Mark, and Lars Frederiksen. "Why Do Cultural Industries Cluster? Localization, Urbanization, Products and Projects." Creative Cities, Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development. Ed. Philip Cooke and Luciana Lazzeretti. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008. 155-79. Mars, Neville, and Adrian Hornsby. The Chinese Dream: A Society under Construction. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2008. Montgomery, John. The New Wealth of Cities: City Dynamics and the Fifth Wave. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Smith, Karen. "Heart of the Art." Beijing: Portrait of a City. Ed. Alexandra Pearson and Lucy Cavender. Hong Kong: The Middle Kingdom Bookworm, 2008. 106–19. Yang, Wei, ed. Songzhuang Arts 2006. Beijing: Hunan Fine Arts Press, 2007. Zhu, Jianfei. Chinese Spatial Strategies Imperial Beijing, 1420-1911. Routledge Curzon, 2004. Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995. [1] Most prestigious Chinese universities are located in the Haidian District of Beijing, such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, etc. [2] Seven Star Group is the landholder of the area where 798 is based.

Anyone contemplating the role of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in literary and cultural studies must concede that the phrase is rarely used—even by its most devout practitioners, who usually think of themselves engaged in something called “critique.” What, then, are the terminological differences between “critique” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion”? What intellectual worlds do these specific terms conjure up, and how do these worlds converge or diverge? And what is the rationale for preferring one term over the other?The “hermeneutics of suspicion” is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. In spite of their obvious differences, he argued, these thinkers jointly constitute a “school of suspicion.” That is to say, they share a commitment to unmasking “the lies and illusions of consciousness;” they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths (Ricoeur 356). Ricoeur’s term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields, yet it never really took hold in literary studies. Why has a field that has devoted so much of its intellectual energy to interrogating, subverting, and defamiliarising found so little use for Ricoeur’s phrase?In general, we can note that hermeneutics remains a path not taken in Anglo-American literary theory. The tradition of hermeneutical thinking is rarely acknowledged (how often do you see Gadamer or Ricoeur taught in a theory survey?), let alone addressed, assimilated, or argued over. Thanks to a lingering aura of teutonic stodginess, not to mention its long-standing links with a tradition of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics was never able to muster the intellectual edginess and high-wattage excitement generated by various forms of poststructuralism. Even the work of Gianni Vattimo, one of the most innovative and prolific of contemporary hermeneutical thinkers, has barely registered in the mainstream of literary and cultural studies. On occasion, to be sure, hermeneutics crops up as a synonym for a discredited model of “depth” interpretation—the dogged pursuit of a hidden true meaning—that has supposedly been superseded by more sophisticated forms of thinking. Thus the ascent of poststructuralism, it is sometimes claimed, signaled a turn away from hermeneutics to deconstruction and genealogy—leading to a focus on surface rather than depth, on structure rather than meaning, on analysis rather than interpretation. The idea of suspicion has fared little better. While Ricoeur’s account of a hermeneutics of suspicion is respectful, even admiring, critics are understandably leery of having their lines of argument reduced to their putative state of mind. The idea of a suspicious hermeneutics can look like an unwarranted personalisation of scholarly work, one that veers uncomfortably close to Harold Bloom’s tirades against the “School of Resentment” and other conservative complaints about literary studies as a hot-bed of paranoia, kill-joy puritanism, petty-minded pique, and defensive scorn. Moreover, the anti-humanist rhetoric of much literary theory—its resolute focus on transpersonal and usually linguistic structures of determination—proved inhospitable to any serious reflections on attitude, disposition, or affective stance.The concept of critique, by contrast, turns out to be marred by none of these disadvantages. An unusually powerful, flexible and charismatic idea, it has rendered itself ubiquitous and indispensable in literary and cultural studies. Critique is widely seen as synonymous with intellectual rigor, theoretical sophistication, and intransigent opposition to the status quo. Drawing a sense of intellectual weightiness from its connections to the canonical tradition of Kant and Marx, it has managed, nonetheless, to retain a cutting-edge sensibility, retooling itself to fit the needs of new fields ranging from postcolonial theory to disability studies. Critique is contagious and charismatic, drawing everything around it into its field of force, marking the boundaries of what counts as serious thought. For many scholars in the humanities, it is not just one good thing but the only conceivable thing. Who would want to be associated with the bad smell of the uncritical? There are five facets of critique (enumerated and briefly discussed below) that characterise its current role in literary and cultural studies and that have rendered critique an exceptionally successful rhetorical-cultural actor. Critique, that is to say, inspires intense attachments, serves as a mediator in numerous networks, permeates disciplines and institutional structures, spawns conferences, essays, courses, and book proposals, and triggers countless imitations, translations, reflections, revisions, and rebuttals (including the present essay). While nurturing a sense of its own marginality, iconoclasm, and outsiderdom, it is also exceptionally effective at attracting disciples, forging alliances, inspiring mimicry, and ensuring its own survival. In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” Bruno Latour remarks that critique has been so successful because it assures us that we are always right—unlike those naïve believers whose fetishes we strive to expose (225–48). At the same time, thanks to its self-reflexivity, the rhetoric of critique is more tormented and self-divided than such a description would suggest; it broods constantly over the shame of its own success, striving to detect signs of its own complicity and to root out all possible evidence of collusion with the status quo.Critique is negative. Critique retains the adversarial force of a suspicious hermeneutics, while purifying it of affective associations by treating negativity as an essentially philosophical or political matter. To engage in critique is to grapple with the oversights, omissions, contradictions, insufficiencies, or evasions in the object one is analysing. Robert Koch writes that “critical discourse, as critical discourse, must never formulate positive statements: it is always ‘negative’ in relation to its object” (531). Critique is characterised by its “againstness,” by its desire to take a hammer, as Latour would say, to the beliefs of others. Faith is to be countered with vigilant skepticism, illusion yields to a sobering disenchantment, the fetish must be defetishised, the dream world stripped of its befuddling powers. However, the negativity of critique is not just a matter of fault-finding, scolding, and censuring. The nay-saying critic all too easily calls to mind the Victorian patriarch, the thin-lipped schoolmarm, the glaring policeman. Negating is tangled up with a long history of legislation, prohibition and interdiction—it can come across as punitive, arrogant, authoritarian, or vitriolic. In consequence, defenders of critique often downplay its associations with outright condemnation. It is less a matter of refuting particular truths than of scrutinising the presumptions and procedures through which truths are established. A preferred idiom is that of “problematising,” of demonstrating the ungroundedness of beliefs rather than denouncing errors. The role of critique is not to castigate, but to complicate, not to engage in ideas’ destruction but to expose their cultural construction. Barbara Johnson, for example, contends that a critique of a theoretical system “is not an examination of its flaws and imperfections” (xv). Rather, “the critique reads backwards from what seems natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal in order to show that these things have their history” and to show that the “start point is not a (natural) given, but a (cultural) construct, usually blind to itself” (Johnson xv–xvi). Yet it seems a tad disingenuous to describe such critique as free of negative judgment and the examination of flaws. Isn’t an implicit criticism being transmitted in Johnson’s claim that a cultural construct is “usually blind to itself”? And the adjectival chain “natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal” strings together some of the most negatively weighted words in contemporary criticism. A posture of detachment, in other words, can readily convey a tacit or implicit judgment, especially when it is used to probe the deep-seated convictions, primordial passions, and heart-felt attachments of others. In this respect, the ongoing skirmishes between ideology critique and poststructuralist critique do not over-ride their commitment to a common ethos: a sharply honed suspicion that goes behind the backs of its interlocutors to retrieve counter-intuitive and uncomplimentary meanings. “You do not know that you are ideologically-driven, historically determined, or culturally constructed,” declares the subject of critique to the object of critique, “but I do!” As Marcelo Dascal points out, the supposedly non-evaluative stance of historical or genealogical argument nevertheless retains a negative or demystifying force in tracing ideas back to causes invisible to the actors themselves (39–62).Critique is secondary. A critique is always a critique of something, a commentary on another argument, idea, or object. Critique does not vaunt its self-sufficiency, independence, and autotelic splendor; it makes no pretense of standing alone. It could not function without something to critique, without another entity to which it reacts. Critique is symbiotic; it does its thinking by responding to the thinking of others. But while secondary, critique is far from subservient. It seeks to wrest from a text a different account than it gives of itself. In doing so, it assumes that it will meet with, and overcome, a resistance. If there were no resistance, if the truth were self-evident and available for all to see, the act of critique would be superfluous. Its goal is not the slavish reconstruction of an original or true meaning but a counter-reading that brings previously unfathomed insights to light. The secondariness of critique is not just a logical matter—critique presumes the existence of a prior object—but also a temporal one. Critique comes after another text; it follows or succeeds another piece of writing. Critique, then, looks backward and, in doing so, it presumes to understand the past better than the past understands itself. Hindsight becomes insight; from our later vantage point, we feel ourselves primed to see better, deeper, further. The belatedness of critique is transformed into a source of iconoclastic strength. Scholars of Greek tragedy or Romantic poetry may mourn their inability to inhabit a vanished world, yet this historical distance is also felt as a productive estrangement that allows critical knowledge to unfold. Whatever the limitations of our perspective, how can we not know more than those who have come before? We moderns leave behind us a trail of errors, finally corrected, like a cloud of ink from a squid, remarks Michel Serres (48). There is, in short, a quality of historical chauvinism built into critique, making it difficult to relinquish a sense of in-built advantage over those lost souls stranded in the past. Critique likes to have the last word. Critique is intellectual. Critique often insists on its difference from everyday practices of criticism and judgment. While criticism evaluates a specific object, according to one definition, “critique is concerned to identify the conditions of possibility under which a domain of objects appears” (Butler 109). Critique is interested in big pictures, cultural frameworks, underlying schema. It is a mode of thought well matched to the library and seminar room, to a rhythm of painstaking inquiry rather than short-term problem-solving. It “slows matters down, requires analysis and reflection, and often raises questions rather than providing answers” (Ruitenberg 348). Critique is thus irresistibly drawn toward self-reflexive thinking. Its domain is that of second-level observation, in which we reflect on the frames, paradigms, and perspectives that form and inform our understanding. Even if objectivity is an illusion, how can critical self-consciousness not trump the available alternatives? This questioning of common sense is also a questioning of common language: self-reflexivity is a matter of form as well as content, requiring the deployment of what Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb call “difficult language” that can undermine or “un-write” the discourses that make up our world (1–14). Along similar lines, Paul Bove allies himself with a “tradition that insists upon difficulty, slowness, complex, often dialectical and highly ironic styles,” as an essential antidote to the “prejudices of the current regime of truth: speed, slogans, transparency, and reproducibility” (167). Critique, in short, demands an arduous working over of language, a stoic refusal of the facile phrase and ready-made formula. Yet such programmatic divisions between critique and common sense have the effect of relegating ordinary language to a state of automatic servitude, while condescending to those unschooled in the patois of literary and critical theory. Perhaps it is time to reassess the dog-in-the-manger attitude of a certain style of academic argument—one that assigns to scholars the vantage point of the lucid and vigilant thinker, while refusing to extend this same capacity to those naïve and unreflecting souls of whom they speak.Critique comes from below. Politics and critique are often equated and conflated in literary studies and elsewhere. Critique is iconoclastic in spirit; it rails against authority; it seeks to lay bare the injustices of the law. It is, writes Foucault, the “art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intractability” (194). This vision of critique can be traced back to Marx and is cemented in the tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Critique conceives of itself as coming from below, or being situated at the margins; it is the natural ally of excluded groups and subjugated knowledges; it is not just a form of knowledge but a call to action. But who gets to claim the mantle of opposition, and on what grounds? In a well-known essay, Nancy Fraser remarks that critical theory possesses a “partisan though not uncritical identification” with oppositional social movements (97). As underscored by Fraser’s judicious insertion of the phrase “not uncritical,” critique guards its independence and reserves the right to query the actions and attitudes of the oppressed as well as the oppressors. Thus the intellectual’s affiliation with a larger community may collide with a commitment to the ethos of critique, as the object of a more heartfelt attachment. A separation occurs, as Francois Cusset puts it, “between academics questioning the very methods of questioning” and the more immediate concerns of the minority groups with which they are allied (157). One possible strategy for negotiating this tension is to flag one’s solidarity with a general principle of otherness or alterity—often identified with the utopian or disruptive energies of the literary text. This strategy gives critique a shot in the arm, infusing it with a dose of positive energy and ethical substance, yet without being pinned down to the ordinariness of a real-world referent. This deliberate vagueness permits critique to nurture its mistrust of the routines and practices through which the everyday business of the world is conducted, while remaining open to the possibility of a radically different future. Critique in its positive aspects thus remains effectively without content, gesturing toward a horizon that must remain unspecified if it is not to lapse into the same fallen state as the modes of thought that surround it (Fish 446).Critique does not tolerate rivals. Declaring itself uniquely equipped to diagnose the perils and pitfalls of representation, critique often chafes at the presence of other forms of thought. Ruling out the possibility of peaceful co-existence or even mutual indifference, it insists that those who do not embrace its tenets must be denying or disavowing them. In this manner, whatever is different from critique is turned into the photographic negative of critique—evidence of an irrefutable lack or culpable absence. To refuse to be critical is to be uncritical; a judgment whose overtones of naiveté, apathy, complacency, submissiveness, and sheer stupidity seem impossible to shrug off. In short, critique thinks of itself as exceptional. It is not one path, but the only conceivable path. Drew Milne pulls no punches in his programmatic riff on Kant: “to be postcritical is to be uncritical: the critical path alone remains open” (18).The exceptionalist aura of critique often thwarts attempts to get outside its orbit. Sociologist Michael Billig, for example, notes that critique thinks of itself as battling orthodoxy, yet is now the reigning orthodoxy—no longer oppositional, but obligatory, not defamiliarising, but oppressively familiar: “For an increasing number of younger academics,” he remarks, “the critical paradigm is the major paradigm in their academic world” (Billig 292). And in a hard-hitting argument, Talal Asad points out that critique is now a quasi-automatic stance for Western intellectuals, promoting a smugness of tone that can be cruelly dismissive of the deeply felt beliefs and attachments of others. Yet both scholars conclude their arguments by calling for a critique of critique, reinstating the very concept they have so meticulously dismantled. Critique, it seems, is not to be abandoned but intensified; critique is to be replaced by critique squared. The problem with critique, it turns out, is that it is not yet critical enough. The objections to critique are still very much part and parcel of the critique-world; the value of the critical is questioned only to be emphatically reinstated.Why do these protestations against critique end up worshipping at the altar of critique? Why does it seem so exceptionally difficult to conceive of other ways of arguing, reading, and thinking? We may be reminded of Eve Sedgwick’s comments on the mimetic aspect of critical interpretation: its remarkable ability to encourage imitation, repetition, and mimicry, thereby ensuring its own reproduction. It is an efficiently running form of intellectual machinery, modeling a style of thought that is immediately recognisable, widely applicable, and easily teachable. Casting the work of the scholar as a never-ending labour of distancing, deflating, and diagnosing, it rules out the possibility of a different relationship to one’s object. It seems to grow, as Sedgwick puts it, “like a crystal in a hypersaturated solution, blotting out any sense of the possibility of alternative ways of understanding or things to understand” (131).In this context, a change in vocabulary—a redescription, if you will—may turn out to be therapeutic. It will come as no great surprise if I urge a second look at the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur’s phrase, I suggest, can help guide us through the interpretative tangle of contemporary literary studies. It seizes on two crucial parts of critical argument—its sensibility and its interpretative method—that deserve more careful scrutiny. At the same time, it offers a much-needed antidote to the charisma of critique: the aura of ethical and political exemplarity that burnishes its negativity with a normative glow. Thanks to this halo effect, I’ve suggested, we are encouraged to assume that the only alternative to critique is a full-scale surrender to complacency, quietism, and—in literary studies—the intellectual fluff of aesthetic appreciation. Critique, moreover, presents itself as an essentially disembodied intellectual exercise, an austere, even abstemious practice of unsettling, unmaking, and undermining. Yet contemporary styles of critical argument are affective as well as analytical, conjuring up distinctive dispositions and relations to their object. As Amanda Anderson has pointed out in The Way We Argue Now, literary and cultural theory is saturated with what rhetoricians call ethos—that is to say, imputations of motive, character, or attitude. We need only think of the insouciance associated with Rortyan pragmatism, the bad-boy iconoclasm embraced by some queer theorists, or the fastidious aestheticism that characterises a certain kind of deconstructive reading. Critical languages, in other words, are also orientations, encouraging readers to adopt an affectively tinged stance toward their object. Acknowledging the role of such orientations in critical debate does not invalidate its intellectual components, nor does it presume to peer into, or diagnose, an individual scholar’s state of mind.In a related essay, I scrutinise some of the qualities of a suspicious or critical reading practice: distance rather than closeness; guardedness rather than openness; aggression rather than submission; superiority rather than reverence; attentiveness rather than distraction; exposure rather than tact (215–34). Suspicion, in this sense, constitutes a muted affective state—a curiously non-emotional emotion of morally inflected mistrust—that overlaps with, and builds upon, the stance of detachment that characterises the stance of the professional or expert. That this style of reading proves so alluring has much to do with the gratifications and satisfactions that it offers. Beyond the usual political or philosophical justifications of critique, it also promises the engrossing pleasure of a game-like sparring with the text in which critics deploy inventive skills and innovative strategies to test their wits, best their opponents, and become sharper, shrewder, and more sophisticated players. In this context, the claim that contemporary criticism has moved “beyond” hermeneutics should be treated with a grain of salt, given that, as Stanley Fish points out, “interpretation is the only game in town” (446). To be sure, some critics have backed away from the model of what they call “depth interpretation” associated with Marx and Freud, in which reading is conceived as an act of digging and the critic, like a valiant archaeologist, excavates a resistant terrain in order to retrieve the treasure of hidden meaning. In this model, the text is envisaged as possessing qualities of interiority, concealment, penetrability, and depth; it is an object to be plundered, a puzzle to be solved, a secret message to be deciphered. Instead, poststructuralist critics are drawn to the language of defamiliarising rather than discovery. The text is no longer composed of strata and the critic does not burrow down but stands back. Instead of brushing past surface meanings in pursuit of hidden truth, she dwells in ironic wonder on these surface meanings, seeking to “denaturalise” them through the mercilessness of her gaze. Insight, we might say, is achieved by distancing rather than by digging. Recent surveys of criticism often highlight the rift between these camps, underscoring the differences between the diligent seeker after buried truth and the surface-dwelling ironist. From a Ricoeur-inflected point of view, however, it is their shared investment in a particular ethos—a stance of knowingness, guardedness, suspicion and vigilance—that turns out to be more salient and more striking. Moreover, these approaches are variously engaged in the dance of interpretation, seeking to go beyond the backs of texts or fellow-actors in order to articulate non-obvious and often counter-intuitive truths. In the case of poststructuralism, we can speak of a second-order hermeneutics that is less interested in probing the individual object than the larger frameworks and conditions in which it is embedded. What the critic interprets is no longer a self-contained poem or novel, but a broader logic of discursive structures, reading formations, or power relations. Ricoeur’s phrase, moreover, has the singular advantage of allowing us to by-pass the exceptionalist tendencies of critique: its presumption that whatever is not critique can only be assigned to the ignominious state of the uncritical. As a less prejudicial term, it opens up a larger history of suspicious reading, including traditions of religious questioning and self-scrutiny that bear on current forms of interpretation, but that are occluded by the aggressively secular connotations of critique (Hunter). In this context, Ricoeur’s own account needs to be supplemented and modified to acknowledge this larger cultural history; the hermeneutics of suspicion is not just the brain-child of a few exceptional thinkers, as his argument implies, but a widespread practice of interpretation embedded in more mundane, diffuse and variegated forms of life (Felski 220).Finally, the idea of a suspicious hermeneutics does not invalidate or rule out other interpretative possibilities—ranging from Ricoeur’s own notion of a hermeneutics of trust to more recent coinages such as Sedgwick’s “restorative reading,” Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” or Timothy Bewes’s “generous reading.” Literary studies in France, for example, is currently experiencing a new surge of interest in hermeneutics (redefined as a practice of reinvention rather than exhumation) as well as a reinvigorated phenomenology of reading that elucidates, in rich and fascinating detail, its immersive and affective dimensions (see Citton; Macé). This growing interest in the ethos, aesthetics, and ethics of reading is long overdue. Such an orientation by no means rules out attention to the sociopolitical resonances of texts and their interpretations. It is, however, no longer willing to subordinate such attention to the seductive but sterile dichotomy of the critical versus the uncritical.ReferencesAnderson, Amanda. The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.Asad, Talal. “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 20–63. Bewes, Timothy. “Reading with the Grain: A New World in Literary Studies.” Differences 21.3 (2010): 1–33.Billig, Michael. “Towards a Critique of the Critical.” Discourse and Society 11.3 (2000): 291–92. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.Bove, Paul. Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. Butler, Judith. “The Sensibility of Critique: Response to Asad and Mahmood.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 101–136.Citton, Yves. Lire, interpréter, actualiser: pourqoi les études littéraires? Paris: Editions Amsterdam, 2007. Culler, Jonathan and Kevin Lamb, “Introduction.” Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. Ed. Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 1–14. Cusset, Francois. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Trans. Jeff Fort. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008.Dascal, Marcelo. “Critique without Critics?” Science in Context 10.1 (1997): 39–62.Felski, Rita. “Suspicious Minds.” Poetics Today 32.2 (2011): 215–34.Fish, Stanley. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1989.Foucault, Michel. “What is Critique?” The Political. Ed. David Ingram. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 191–211. Fraser, Nancy. “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender.” New German Critique 35 (1985): 97–131. Hunter, Ian. Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994.Johnson, Barbara. “Translator’s Introduction.” Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination. London: Continuum, 2004. vii–xxxv. Koch, Robert. “The Critical Gesture in Philosophy.” Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art. Ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Cambridge: MIT, 2002. 524–36. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–48.Macé, Marielle. Facons de lire, manières d’être. Paris: Gallimard, 2011. Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.Milne, Drew. “Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique.” Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 1–22. Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. Ruitenberg, Claudia. “Don’t Fence Me In: The Liberation of Undomesticated Critique.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 38.3 (2004): 314–50. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You.” Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 123–52. Serres, Michel and Bruno Latour. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Trans. Roxanne Lapidus. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.Vattimo, Gianni. Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy. Trans. David Webb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.