Journal articles on the topic 'Super-short forms'

The aim of the present study was to optimize an orally disintegrating tablet of ibuprofen (~100mg) using Musa acuminata (dehydrated banana powder) as a natural super disintegrant. In this work, dehydrated banana powder was used as pharmaceutical excipient because of natural origin and high nutrition properties for paediatric formulation. These tablets were prepared by direct compression technique and compared with formulations made by using synthetic super disintegrants Croscarmellose sodium, micro crystalline cellulose and Cross povidone. FTIR studies of formulations have shown no interactions between drug and excipients. In vitro disintegration and in vitro dissolution profiles were shown that comparative disintegration properties of dehydrated banana powder to that of commonly used synthetic super disintegrants. Short term stability study indicated that formulations were stable for three months. It can be concluded that dehydrated banana powder can be used as natural super disintegrant effectively in paediatric dosage forms and also shows promise as a nutritional pharmaceutical excipient.

AbstractLamkang is a Trans-Himalayan language spoken in the Chandel District of Manipur, India by under 10,000 ethnically Naga people. Due to a complex person indexation system in Lamkang clauses, multiple prefixes with the shape C- are attached to a verb stem creating lexemes with the shape CCCCVC. To make such forms pronounceable, speakers insert super-short vowel-like segments between the C- prefixes. Combining acoustic analysis with speakers’ intuitions about syllable structure, we examine the nature of these segments, arguing that an accurate phonetic description of Lamkang vowels must include these super-short vowels, as well as long and short vowels, which are phonemically distinct. We call these super-short vowels excrescent, following the terminology discussed in Hall (2011. Vowel epenthesis. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth V. Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The blackwell companion to phonology, 1576–1596. Oxford: Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781444335262.wbctp0067: 1584). The excrescent vowel is a type of epenthetic vowel, sometimes also called “intrusive”, and is typified by its short duration and centralized quality distinct from lexical vowels. It is unstressed and has the phonetic effect of helping to transition between consonants. We show that the excrescent vowels in Lamkang have formant structures that barely resemble the characteristic formant profiles of the short and long vowels. While excrescent vowels are not contrastive, they are phonologically relevant because they have just enough sonority to form nuclei of CiVCii syllables where Cii is often ambisyllabic with the following syllable. The Lamkang data show that while any language-specific phonotactic constraints must reference the syllable, what constitutes a syllable must include the possibility of excrescent vowels as nuclei.

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP)/Ti super hybrid laminates are newly developed structural materials with excellent properties. But they are restricted in aircraft manufacturing because of their poor machining quality and short tool life. The machining quality and tool life are determined by machining ways, tool materials, drill point forms and drilling sequence. Spiral milling, drilling from Ti side, using the PCD tools and carbide drills with special point angle can improve the quality of hole and prolong tool life.

Based on the traditional Mn13, the super-high manganese steel Mn18 was melted by means of adjusting the amount of C, Mn, adding a certain amount of alloying elements Cr, Mo etc and modification. The results show that with low-impact energy abrasive wear for 60 minutes, the wear resistance of super-high manganese steel Mn18 was greatly improved by contrast with that of Mn13, and the hardness of wear surface was increased slowly with the elapse of the wear time. However, under the high impact energy, the wear resistance of Mn18 is 1.5 times as high as that of Mn13, and the hardness of wear surface was increased to HB440 in a short time. The main wear forms were: cutting, gouging wear and plastic deformation. Typical TEM morphologies of subsurface wear structure consist mostly of high density dislocations, deformation bands.

Recursive relations for objects of statistical interest have long been important for computation, and they remain so even with hugely improved computing power. Such recursions are frequently derived by exploiting relations between generating functions. For example, the top-order zonal polynomials that occur in much distribution theory under normality can be recursively related to other (easily computed) symmetric functions (power-sum and elementary symmetric functions; Ruben, 1962, Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33, 542–570; Hillier, Kan, and Wang, 2009, Econometric Theory 25, 211–242). Typically, in a recursion of this type the kth object of interest, dk, say, is expressed in terms of all lower order dj’s. In Hillier et al. (2009) we pointed out that, in the case of top-order zonal polynomials and other invariant polynomials of multiple matrix argument, a fixed length recursion can be deduced. We refer to this as a short recursion. The present paper shows that the main results in Hillier et al. (2009) can be generalized and that short recursions can be obtained for a much larger class of objects/generating functions. As applications, we show that short recursions can be obtained for various problems involving quadratic forms in noncentral normal vectors, including moments, product moments, and expectations of ratios of powers of quadratic forms. For this class of problems, we also show that the length of the recursion can be further reduced by an application of a generalization of Horner’s method (cf. Brown, 1986, SIAM Journal on Scientific and Statistical Computing 7, 689–695), producing a super-short recursion that is significantly more efficient than even the short recursion.

Wear-resistant, super hard ceramic composites based on cubic boron nitride (cBN) are of great interest to industry. However, cBN is metastable under sintering conditions at normal pressure and converts into the soft hexagonal BN (hBN). Therefore, efforts are being made to avoid this process. Besides short sintering times, the use of coated cBN-particles is a way to minimize this process. Therefore, the thermal stability of TiN coated cBN powders in high purity argon and nitrogen atmospheres up to temperatures of 1600 °C was investigated by thermogravimetry, X-ray phase analysis, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The TiN coating was prepared by the atomic layer deposition (ALD)-method. The investigations showed that the TiN layer reacts in Ar at T ≥ 1200 °C with the cBN and forms a porous TiB2 layer. No reaction takes place in nitrogen up to temperatures of 1600 °C. Nevertheless, the 20 and 50 nm thin coatings also undergo a recrystallization process during heat treatment up to temperatures of 1600 °C.

Synapses are complex because they perform multiple functions, including at least six mechanistically different forms of plasticity. Here, I comment on recent developments regarding these processes. (i) Short-term potentiation (STP), a Hebbian process that requires small amounts of synaptic input, appears to make strong contributions to some forms of working memory. (ii) The rules for long-term potentiation (LTP) induction in CA3 have been clarified: induction does not depend obligatorily on backpropagating sodium spikes but, rather, on dendritic branch-specific N -methyl- d -aspartate (NMDA) spikes. (iii) Late LTP, a process that requires a dopamine signal (and is therefore neoHebbian), is mediated by trans-synaptic growth of the synapse, a growth that occurs about an hour after LTP induction. (iv) LTD processes are complex and include both homosynaptic and heterosynaptic forms. (v) Synaptic scaling produced by changes in activity levels are not primarily cell-autonomous, but rather depend on network activity. (vi) The evidence for distance-dependent scaling along the primary dendrite is firm, and a plausible structural-based mechanism is suggested. Ideas about the mechanisms of synaptic function need to take into consideration newly emerging data about synaptic structure. Recent super-resolution studies indicate that glutamatergic synapses are modular (module size 70–80 nm), as predicted by theoretical work. Modules are trans-synaptic structures and have high concentrations of postsynaptic density-95 (PSD-95) and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptor. These modules function as quasi-independent loci of AMPA-mediated transmission and may be independently modifiable, suggesting a new understanding of quantal transmission. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Integrating Hebbian and homeostatic plasticity.’

This conceptual paper presents a literature review of language landscape studies on the interaction of multilingualism, multiculturalism, and globalization in the reality of English learning education (ESL). Language has a great influence on human life through the forms of expression it conveys. Likewise in the social life of the wider community in general. In addition, language also plays an important role. In addition, the central government has rules and guidelines that affect local governments. The same applies to government language policies. Language policy is followed by language planning, which leads to social change. The areas of language policy include education, economics, politics, regional languages ​​and literature, and law. All of that is inseparable from the language policies regulated by the governments of each country or region that use the language environment in the public sphere. Therefore, English cannot be used without another language, although it is subject to national and regional language policies. As a result, the use of English in public places requires the use of language equivalents in multilingual public forms, both in historical and cultural contexts, such as signage. However, because the unit of analysis in the linguistic landscape is the symbol, it provides the linguistic context of a particular region (roads, villages, buildings, countries, and environments), the linguistic landscape in this social conception, or the diversity of populations. English cannot be the only language used to represent signs. In the public sphere, taking into account the rise of bilingualism, the dominance of the national language, and a common language policy. However, the diversity of English is still growing. In short, English as used in this study of the linguistic landscape in the public sphere is a contradiction between language practice and language policy, and public understanding. Keywords: Language Policy, Linguistic Landscape, Era of Super Diversity, Foreign Languages (English).

The Chalkan and Alyutor languages are not related, however their current conditions are simlar, meaning that they exist in comparable sociolin- guistic environments of uneven bi- and triligualism. The writing systems of the- se unwritten languages are still being developed, which is being further compli- cated by the influence of the writing norms of the dominant languages. The handwritten and published materials in Chalkan and Alyutor demonstrate the variety in graphic forms of national texts. The choice of graphemes for the spe- cific sounds of national speech is also a major issue. For the Alyutor writing system, the graphic representations of the super-short vowel [ә], the fricative [ɣ], the glottal stop [ʔ] and the epiglottal stop [ʕ] have not yet been developed. In the following article, we present the analysis of three versions of Alyutor writing systems developed by native Alyutor speakers M. I. Popov, M. V. Nu- tayulgin, A. A. Sorokin. The problem of graphic variety of the written form of the Chalkan languages stems from the following two reasons: the absence of graphemes for specific Chalkan sounds ғ [ɣі], җ [ʒ”], қ [q], њ [n’] and the in- fluence of the Standard Altai orthographic norms.

In a number of publications about biophysical experiments on the transfer of a charge to DNA, it is assumed that charge is transferred via a super-exchange mechanism at short distances of 2–3 nucleotide pairs, and in long fragments the charge forms a polaron that moves along the chain under the influence of temperature fluctuations. Using numerical simutation, we investigate the dynamics of a polaron of small radius in a homogeneous chain plaiced in constant electric field at a finite temperature. It is shown that there is no charge transfer by the polaron mechanism, i.e. there is no sequential movement of the polaron from site to site, in chains with parameter valuess corresponding to homogeneous adenine DNA fragments. The “polaron or delocalized state” check is based on the control of the average characteristics: the delocalization parameter, the position of the maximum probability, and the maximum modulus displacement. The dynamics of individual trajectories is also considered. Without electric field, there is a mode of switching between the states "stationary polaron – delocalized state", and a new polaron arises at a random site of the chain. In the chain placed in field with constant intensity, the averaged charge moves in the direction of the field, but the transfer occurs in a delocalized state.

The influence of ultra-short laser modification on the surface morphology and possible chemical alteration of poly-lactic acid (PLA) matrix in respect to the optimization of cellular and antibacterial behavior were investigated in this study. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) morphological examination of the processed PLA surface showed the formation of diverse hierarchical surface microstructures, generated by irradiation with a range of laser fluences (F) and scanning velocities (V) values. By controlling the laser parameters, diverse surface roughness can be achieved, thus influencing cellular dynamics. This surface feedback can be applied to finely tune and control diverse biomaterial surface properties like wettability, reflectivity, and biomimetics. The triggering of thermal effects, leading to the ejection of material with subsequent solidification and formation of raised rims and 3D-like hollow structures along the processed zones, demonstrated a direct correlation to the wettability of the PLA. A transition from superhydrophobic (θ > 150°) to super hydrophilic (θ < 20°) surfaces can be achieved by the creation of grooves with V = 0.6 mm/s, F = 1.7 J/cm2. The achieved hierarchical architecture affected morphology and thickness of the processed samples which were linked to the nature of ultra-short laser-material interaction effects, namely the precipitation of temperature distribution during material processing can be strongly minimized with ultrashort pulses leading to non-thermal and spatially localized effects that can facilitate volume ablation without collateral thermal damage The obtained modification zones were analyzed employing Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), and optical profilometer. The modification of the PLA surface resulted in an increased roughness value for treatment with lower velocities (V = 0.6 mm/s). Thus, the substrate gains a 3D-like architecture and forms a natural matrix by microprocessing with V = 0.6 mm/s, F = 1.7 J/cm2, and V = 3.8 mm/s, F = 0.8 J/cm2. The tests performed with Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) demonstrated that the ultra-short laser surface modification altered the cell orientation and promoted cell growth. The topographical design was tested also for the effectiveness of bacterial attachment concerning chosen parameters for the creation of an array with defined geometrical patterns.

Sorghum has valuable biological features and great potential for use. Grain sorghum is characterized with super adaptability, good resistance to air and soil droughts and high temperatures, therefore it can become one of the promising crops in crop rotations. The developed varieties should be early-maturing and large-kernelled. The current paper has presented the study results of the collection nursery of grain sorghum samples of the world breeding. The trials were carried out in the laboratory for grain sorghum breeding and seed production of the FSBSI “Agricultural Research Center “Donskoy” in 2019–2021. According to the study results, there was established that, depending on the year, early-maturing forms made up 39.6–74.4 % of the studied collection. The samples ‘No.2-13’, ‘D577/19’, ‘F7 Pioner 88 x 412 Feterita rannyaya’ and the varieties ‘Kinelskoe 63’, ‘Kamyshinskoe 64’, ‘Kamyshinskoe 75’ were characterized by a short vegetation period (up to 90 days). In 2021, there were 44.8 % of the collection samples with ‘number of kernels per panicle’ from 1001 to 1500 pcs. When compared with the standard variety ‘Zernogradskoe 88’ (1532 pcs.), there were identified eight samples exceeding it in ‘kernel percentage per panicle’. There was found out that the largest part of the collection samples was characterized by a mean and large ‘1000-kernel weight’ (64.1–72.4 % and 16.8–25.5 %, respectively). A very large ‘1000-kernel weight’ (>40 g) through three years was established for the samples ‘Avans’, ‘Atlant’, ‘No.61–13’, ‘Spur Feterita’, ‘Redhull Feterita’, ‘Feterita’. There have been selected the forms with a complex of valuable traits for their further use in breeding work. The purpose of the current study was to research the collection material of various breeding according to such traits as ‘number of kernels per panicle’, ‘1000-kernel weight’, ‘length of a vegetation period’, which have a greater effect on grain sorghum productivity and to identify valuable sources due to these traits.

ABSTRACT Short-period super-Earth-sized planets are common. Explaining how they form near their present orbits requires understanding the structure of the inner regions of protoplanetary discs. Previous studies have argued that the hot inner protoplanetary disc is unstable to the magnetorotational instability (MRI) due to thermal ionization of potassium, and that a local gas pressure maximum forms at the outer edge of this MRI-active zone. Here we present a steady-state model for inner discs accreting viscously, primarily due to the MRI. The structure and MRI-viscosity of the inner disc are fully coupled in our model; moreover, we account for many processes omitted in previous such models, including disc heating by both accretion and stellar irradiation, vertical energy transport, realistic dust opacities, dust effects on disc ionization, and non-thermal sources of ionization. For a disc around a solar-mass star with a standard gas accretion rate ($\dot{M}\, \sim \, 10^{-8}$ M⊙ yr−1) and small dust grains, we find that the inner disc is optically thick, and the accretion heat is primarily released near the mid-plane. As a result, both the disc mid-plane temperature and the location of the pressure maximum are only marginally affected by stellar irradiation, and the inner disc is also convectively unstable. As previously suggested, the inner disc is primarily ionized through thermionic and potassium ion emission from dust grains, which, at high temperatures, counteract adsorption of free charges on to grains. Our results show that the location of the pressure maximum is determined by the threshold temperature above which thermionic and ion emission become efficient.

Abstract. Total lightning (TL) data has been found to provide valuable information about the internal dynamics of a thunderstorm allowing conclusions about its further development as well as indicating potential of thunderstorm-related severe weather at the ground. This paper investigates electrical discharge correlations of strokes and flashes with respect to the temporal evolution of thunderstorms in case studies as well as by statistical means. The recently developed algorithm li-TRAM (tracking and monitoring of lightning-cells, Meyer et al., 2012) has been employed to track and monitor thunderstorms based on three-dimensionally resolved TL lightning data provided as stroke events by the European lightning location network LINET. From statistical investigation of 863 suited thunderstorm life-cycles the cell area turned out to correlate well with (a) the total discharge rate, (b) the in-cloud (IC) discharge rate, and (c) the mean IC discharge height per lightning-cell as identified by li-TRAM. All three parameter correlations consistently show an abrupt change in discharge characteristics around a cell area of 170 km2. Statistical investigations supported by the comparison of three case studies – selected to represent a single storm, a multi-cell and a supercell – strongly suggest that the correlation functions include the temporal evolution as well as the storm type. With the help of volumetric radar data, it can also be suggested that the well defined break observed at 170 km2 marks the region, where the transition occurs from short-lived and rather simple structured single storm cells to better organized, more persistent, and more complex structured thunderstorm forms, e.g. multi-cells and super-cells. All three storm-types experience similar discharge characteristics during their growing and dissipating phases. However, while the poorly organized and short-lived cells preferentially remain small during a short mature phase, mainly the more persistent thunderstorm types develop to sizes above 170 km2 during a pronounced mature stage. At that stage they exhibit on average higher discharge rates at higher altitudes as compared with matured single-cells. With the maximum stroke distance set to 10 km and a flash duration set to 1 s the parameterisation functions found for the stroke rate as function of the cell area has been transformed to a flash rate. The presented study suggests that, with respect to the storm type, stroke and flash correlations can be parameterized. There is also strong evidence, that parameterization functions include the time parameter, so that altogether TL stroke information has good potential to pre-estimate the further evolution (nowcast) of a currently observed storm in an object-oriented thunderstorm nowcasting approach.

Цель статьи - показать, как трансформация образов супергероя в американском кинематографе отражает изменения исторических и культурных ценностей в сознании людей в течении относительно небольшого временного отрезка с начала XX - по начало XXI вв. Если первая половина XX века породила мифологизированных героев с четким делением на добрых и злых, соответствующих параметрам бинарности, в которых нуждалось западное общество, в связи с мировыми войнами, то во второй половине XX века, распространяющаяся на весь западный мир постмодернистская парадигма, с идеей множественности истин, множества возможностей для раскрытия подвижного креативного потенциала приводит к появлению амбивалентного героя - трикстера. Постмодернистская парадигма задает определенный игровой контекст: постмодернистская игра ведется с любыми условностями, формами, стилями, дискурсами. Поэтому такой супергерой уже не только спаситель, он вмещает в себе противоречия, совмещающие в себе разные образы героев и антигероев. На этом трансформация образа супергероя не завершается: появляются супергерои с исключительно отрицательными качествами, противостоят которым простые люди. Кроме постмодернистских тенденций, важным фактором, повлиявшим на эволюцию супергероя, явилась конкурентная борьба за читателя и зрителя между двумя крупнейшими компаниями по производству комиксов DC и Marvel. В статье использовались методы анализа, интерпретации, структурно-функциональный и компаративистский, показан процесс эволюции супергероического образа в американском кинематографе под влиянием современных постмодернистских установок и коммерческих проектов кампаний, специализирующихся в производстве супергероики. The purpose of the article is to show how the transformation of superhero images in American cinema reflects changes in historical and cultural values in the minds of people over a relatively short period of time (from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st centuries). If the first half of the XX century gave birth to mythologized heroes with a clear division into good and evil, corresponding to the parameters of binary that Western society needed in connection with world wars, then in the second half of the XX century, spreading to the entire Western world the postmodern paradigm, with the idea of a plurality of truths, of a multitude of possibilities for revealing a mobile creative potential, leads to the emergence of an ambivalent hero - a trick-ster. The postmodern paradigm sets a certain game context: the postmodern game is played with any conventions, forms, styles, discourses. Therefore, such a superhero is no longer only a savior, he contains contradictions that combine different images of heroes and antiheroes. The transformation of the superhero image does not end there: superheroes appear with extremely negative qualities, which are opposed by ordinary people. In addition to postmodern tendencies, an important factor that influenced the evolution of the super-hero was the competition for reader and viewer between the two largest comic companies DC and Marvel. The article used methods of analysis, interpretation, structural-functional and comparative, shows the process of evolution of the super-heroic image in American cinema under the influence of modern postmodern attitudes and commercial projects of campaigns specializing in the production of superheroics.

In the work of Franz Kafka, there is an intertwining of two poetics — one is the poetics of details, which are of the realistic type, while the other is the poetics of the surreal. At the linguistic level, the poetics of detail is very precisely emphasized, with numerous linguistic expressions and descriptions that are carved as if they were a diamond. However, the intertwining is not a mixture, but rather a penetration of one poetics into the other. The poetics of detailing, no matter how thorough, in the end, is still not enough. Kafka points out that language as such is not quite ready to express directly and indirectly our thoughts, feelings, and anything related to our inner states. The poetics of the surreal and the super-real merged into the poetics of detail and made realistic poetics not only magical but also gave itself, as a surreal poetics, a basis, and a reference. The reader has found themself between the text, between the words, not always finding their way in every part. References elude, and what remains is a deconstructionist game between different forms of referentiality. The poetics of realism supports the poetics of the surreal, and the poetics of the surreal gives meaning to the poetics of realism. Penetration and intertwining remain as threads of textual fabric that the reader needs to unravel, revealing the laws of the text and adding their own threads. Kafka raised many a question, out of which many have been given answers to through a careful deconstructionist reading of the novel itself and the short story, which is simultaneously a part of the novel and a part that functions independently. Such is the entirety of Kafka’s opus, metaphorically speaking — an image that should be carefully observed, because in some corners lies the author’s intention, or a sign that had been looked for in order to uncover literature and the literary in the secret.

Abstract The prognosis and treatment of both major forms of advanced childhood B-NHL (BL and DLBCL) is similar with short and intensive multi-agent chemotherapy (Cairo/Patte et al., Blood, 2007 and Patte/Cairo et al., Blood, 2007). Despite both BL and DLBCL being germinal center derived, our recent cytogenetic results of BL vs DLBCL in the FAB LMB 96 study have demonstrated significant differences in secondary chromosomal aberrations in BL vs DLBCL and a differential prognosis based on secondary cytogenetic findings (Poirel/Cairo/Patte, Blood, 2003a). Thus, we sought to identify genes that could uniquely differentiate childhood BL vs DLBCL and discover potential genetic mechanisms of differential molecular pathogenesis and to determine the signal pathways that contribute to the genetic disparity between these two histological types of childhood B-NHL. Nine BL (7 patient samples and 2 cell lines, Raji and Ramos) and 3 DLBCL (1 patient sample and 2 cell lines, Pfeiffer and DB) were compared. Total RNA was isolated, reverse transcribed to cDNA biotinylated cRNA and hybridized to Affymetrix U133A_2 as we have previously described (Jiang/Cairo et al., Journal of Immunology, 2004). Data were analyzed using Agilent GeneSpring 7.3. Signal intensities were compared using one way ANOVA and Welch Test for statistical analysis. Two-fold changes between BL and DLBCL were considered as significant (p<0.05). KEGG Pathways were evaluated for the genes identified. There were 120 genes over-expressed and 217 genes under-expressed in BL vs DLBCL. BL expressed significantly higher level of Ki-67 (a measure of lymphoma-cell proliferation) than DLBCL (2.68F). BL also expressed higher level of the pro-apoptotic gene, p53 compared to DLBCL (1.46F). Over-expressed genes in BL vs DLBCL included TNFSF10 (11.87F), RHOQ (3.16F), PIP5K1B (5.22F) among many others. The genes significantly under-expressed in BL vs DLBCL included PIGL (0.45F), Inositol (myo)-1 (or 4)-monophosphatase 1 (IMPA1; 0.28F), cAMP-dependent regulatory type I, alpha protein kinase (PRKAR1A; 0.37F) among many others. TNFSF10 induces apoptosis in transformed and tumor cells and is known to participate in pathways including cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and induction of apoptosis through DR3 and DR4/5 death receptors. PIP5K1B is involved in the Rho signaling pathway and PIGL catalyzes the second step of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) biosynthesis. Since activation of IL3R-mediated cAMP-dependent protein kinase leads to increased cell survival, we searched gene expression profiles in BL vs DLBCL that were involved in IL signaling pathways. The genes that were identified to be over-expressed in BL vs DLBCL included IL2RG (2.24F), IL8RB, IL18 receptor accessory protein (IL18RAP), IL18, IL18R1, and IL1R2 (natural log values of 11.11, 22.95, 2.16, 1.73 and 11.84, respectively in BL vs non-detectable values in DLBCL). Taken together, since IL1, IL2, IL8, and IL18 all belong to IL1 super family, these results suggest significant involvement of TNF (TRAIL) and IL1 super family via cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and activation of the Rho signaling pathway in Burkitt vs DLBCL lymphomagenesis.

Abstract DNA methylation Canyons (DMC in short, also referred to as DNA methylation Valleys) are long unmethylated regions (UMR) over 3.5kb, in the mammalian genome. DMCs are associated with homeotic genes and can be classified into active DMCs marked by H3K4me3 and repressive DMCs marked by H3K27me3. We performed high resolution in situ HiC on human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) and differentiated red blood cell (RBC) progenitors derived from HSPC. We found that DMCs over 7.3kb form significant 3D micro-compartment interactions with each other. These interactions are extremely long range and can occur between two loci separated by 60Mb. Thus, we name these DMCs over 7.3kb as Grand DNA methylation Canyon (GDMC). GDMCs are repressive DMCs and bear the highest level of H3K27me3 in the HSPC compared with the remaining UMRs under 7.3kb. Additionally, we found that the interacting GDMCs is organized by Polycomb mediated long range interaction but not cohesion loop extrusion. We also found GDMC interactions disappear in differentiated RBC progenitors derived from HSPC. This suggests a function of GDMC interactions in stem cell maintenance. We thus set out to test the function of GDMC interactions in stem cell self-renewal by deleting GDMC loci. We found one GDMC that lacks genes and transcription activity and enhancer activity marked by H3K4me3 and H3K27ac, is interacting with a repressive part (covered by H3K27me3) of the HOXA cluster only in HSPC. This GDMC is thus named "Geneless Canyon"- GLC in short. By deleting GLC, we found that HSPC self-renewal is impaired significantly. Moreover, expression of active HOXA9 and HOXA10 gene adjacent to the repressive part of HOXA cluster also decreased after deletion. When we checked the 3D genomic interactions around the HOXA region after deletion, we found the long range interactions with GLC disappear, and the enhancer interactions with active HOXA cluster gene promoters are also weakened. This suggests that GDMC interactions can act as the scaffold for the enhancer-promoter interactions to maintain active gene expression.In the detailed examination of regulatory elements in GLC, we found that CTCF binding sites are at the boundary of neighboring Lamin associated domain (LAD) and GLC (Figure 1A). The CTCFs are forming cohesion extrusion loops to include the whole LAD region. Deletion of the CTCF sites also result in the loss of HOXA9 and HOXA10 expression as well as the compromise of self-renewal. Since HOXA9-10 genes are important transcriptional factors for leukemias carrying NPM1c+ and MLL-X mutations. We thus performed CTCF deletions in cell lines with OCI-AML3 and MV4:11 as leukemia cell line models carrying NPM1c+ and MLL-X mutations. We surprisingly found the NPM1c+ cell leukemia cell line display the growth arrest with CTCF deletion, while the MLL-X cell line MV4:11 don't display such effect (Figure 1B). We perform in situ HiC on OCI-AML3 and MV4:11 and found in OCI-AML3 cells GLC forms interaction with HOXA9-HOTTIP regions, while in MV4:11 cells there is no such interaction (Figure 1C).Further examination on epigenomic profiles identified that GLC is activated as super enhancer in OCI-AML3 cells with the loss of Polycomb binding. This indicates that NPM1c+ leukemia may utilize the GLC region as enhancer to boost active gene expression in from HOXA9 to Hottip, with a different mechanism than HSPC. Gene expression analysis after the CTCF deletion further validates that after the CTCF deletion the expression of HOXA9, HOXA10 and HOXA11 is decreased. Interestingly, GLC is also hypermethylated in the OCI_AML3 cells. Thus, we have discovered an important DNA methylation Canyon that regulates the hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal via the structural organization of HOXA region that act as the scaffold for the enhancer-promoter interaction. This Canyon can also act as a super enhancer to activate the HOXA expression in the NPM1c+ leukemia. This suggests the versatile roles of Polycomb targeted Canyon in normal hematopoiesis and leukemia development. Figure. 1 Figure. 1. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Abstract Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) is a B-cell malignancy with aberrant activation of the B-cell receptor (BCR) pathway. Despite durable remissions with targeted therapies (e.g., ibrutinib) in CLL, it remains an incurable disease. Epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation and dysregulation of chromatin regulators have been shown to contribute to the neoplastic phenotype and the differential biologic behavior of tumor cells, including leukemia. An additional layer of epigenetic complexity in cancer cells is the acquisition of super-enhancer regions enriched at genes with known oncogenic function including MYC and BCL2. Super-enhancers in multiple myeloma cells and other tumors have been found strongly enriched for binding of BRD4, a member of the human bromodomain and extraterminal (BET) domain family of proteins which includes BRD2, BRD3, BRD4, and the testis-specific member BRDT. BRD4 binds to acetylated lysines on histones and regulates the expression of important oncogenes (e.g., MYC and BCL2). We investigated the therapeutic benefit of BET inhibition in cell culture and in vivo disease models of leukemia/lymphoma using PLX51107, a novel BRD4 inhibitor with unique binding mode. Results: We report that BRD4 is significantly overexpressed in CLL patient-derived B-cells compared to B-cells from healthy donors on both transcript and protein level (p < .001). RNA-seq analysis of 55 CLL patients revealed expression of various BRD4 isoforms with marked abundance of BRD4-long and BRD4-short. Next we sought to investigate the anti-tumor activity of PLX51107 in multiple malignant B-cell lines and patient-derived CLL cells. PLX51107 inhibited cell growth in MEC1, OCI-Ly2 and OCI-Ly6 (p < .001) dose-dependently with IC50 of 1.0 ± 0.09, 1.2 ± 0.05, 1.8 ± 0.05 μM, respectively. Notably, PLX51107 antagonized CpG-induced increase in cell proliferation of primary CLL cells (p < .01) which was consistent with the downmodulation of MYC and MCL1 along with the accumulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 and IκBα (p < .005). Furthermore, the efficacy of PLX51107 to disrupt survival signaling from the microenvironment was investigated under co-culture conditions with two different bone marrow stroma cell lines, wherein PLX51107 treatment significantly induced cytotoxicity in B-CLL cells (p < .01) without affecting stromal cell viability. By employing microarray analysis we identified possible novel targets of BRD4 in CLL. Validation of those targets is currently ongoing. Particularly, Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) and phospholipase C gamma 2 (PLCG2) were markedly decreased with PLX51107 treatment (p < .005), thereby signifying potential therapeutic effect(s) for dual targeting of BRD4 and BCR-associated kinases to achieve deeper and durable responses in relapsed/refractory B-cell malignancies. Lastly, anti-tumor effects of BRD4 inhibition were evaluated in vivo using Eμ-TCL1 and cMYC/TCL1 adoptive transfer models of leukemia and lymphoma, respectively. In the Eμ-TCL1 engraftment model of aggressive CLL, PLX51107 treatment resulted in prolonged survival (p < .001) accompanied with decreased disease burden, lymphocyte infiltration and proliferation when compared to vehicle-treated mice. Next, the cMYC/TCL1 adoptive transfer mouse model was used to evaluate BRD4 inhibition in a highly penetrant, malignant leukemia/lymphoma phenotype analogous to high grade lymphoma wherein PLX51107 prolonged survival (p < .0001), decreased peripheral lymphocyte counts and neoplastic cell infiltration and proliferation in both spleen and lymph nodes. Conclusion: Collectively our findings reveal BRD4 as a valid and novel target for epigenetic therapy directed against core transcriptional programs in malignant/proliferating B-cells and provide support for use of PLX51107 as an effective treatment in clinical trials for relapsed/refractory CLL patients and related aggressive forms of B-cell malignancies, with the ultimate goal of improving the outcome of these patients. Disclosures Byrd: Acerta Pharma BV: Research Funding.

Abstract Despite considerable advances in defining the somatic driver mutations underlying myeloid malignancies, including the myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), a significant heritable component for these diseases remains poorly understood. While common genetic variant association studies have been valuable, they fail to explain the majority of heritable variation. We reasoned that rare variant association studies could provide a valuable complementary approach to identify additional inherited risk factors. We therefore utilized exome sequencing data from 166,953 UK Biobank participants and performed a gene-based burden analysis for germline genetic variants conferring risk for acquiring a myeloid malignancy. CTR9, which encodes a key component of the PAF1 transcription elongation complex, was among the significant genes identified (SKAT-O p-value = 5.47x10 -7). The deleterious variants in CTR9 collectively exhibit a 9.6 (95%CI = 4.86-19.04) increased odds of acquiring a myeloid malignancy and this risk was largely driven by the MPNs. We replicated this association in an independent cohort of 211 MPN patients using external controls. We could show through structural and biochemical analyses that the identified deleterious variants perturbed assembly of the PAF1 complex but did not display dominant negative activity. Given that increased hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) self-renewal has been shown to predispose to the risk of acquiring MPNs, we sought to define whether CTR9 perturbation could alter HSC self-renewal or function. We achieved predominantly heterozygous loss-of-function in human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) by titrating Cas9 ribonucleoprotein delivery with several independent guide RNAs. Partial loss of CTR9 in HSPCs resulted in expansion of phenotypic long-term HSCs (LT-HSCs) and more differentiated short-term HSCs (ST-HSCs). We additionally could show through single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) that there was an expansion of molecularly defined HSCs upon partial loss of CTR9. The observed increase in HSCs appeared paradoxical, given that the PAF1 complex has been suggested to be crucial for HSC maintenance. To explore how the observed HSC expansion with CTR9 perturbation may arise, as well as given known interactions between the PAF1 complex and the competing transcriptional super elongation complex (SEC), we examined whether SEC target genes in HSCs, such as mid to posterior HOXA genes, may be activated with partial CTR9 loss. Remarkably, we observed a significant enrichment for hematopoietic SEC target genes upon CTR9 perturbation in HSCs by gene set enrichment analysis (normalized enrichment score = 3.29, p-value &lt; 0.001). In light of these findings suggesting that SEC activity may be increased with partial CTR9 loss-of-function, as occurs in individuals harboring myeloid malignancy variants, we sought to functionally validate these observations. Using the inhibitors of the SEC, including SR-0813 that targets MLLT3 or with an inhibitor of CDK9, we noted rescue of the CTR9-mediated expansion of phenotypic LT- and ST-HSCs without a significant impact on the bulk HSPC population. To further elucidate underlying mechanisms, we performed immunoprecipitation of PAF1 or SEC component MLLT3 in HSPCs with control or CTR9 editing. While we continued to pull down all PAF1 complex components with PAF1, we also noted pulldown of MLLT3, which increased with CTR9 editing. MLLT3 immunoprecipitation revealed selective pulldowns of PAF1 and CDC73, which also increased with CTR9 editing. These findings show how PAF1 complex components PAF1 and CDC73 interact with and stimulate SEC activity. Our findings reveal how CTR9 usually restricts this activity and constrains transcriptional elongation to limit HSC self-renewal. We functionally validated these findings through selective editing of different PAF1 complex components in HSPCs: we observed reduced HSCs upon editing of PAF1 and CDC73, but increases with editing of other PAF1 complex components. Our findings collectively demonstrate a mechanism by which a previously undefined myeloid malignancy predisposition occurs. We demonstrate that CTR9 loss-of-function stimulates SEC activity and thereby results in HSC expansion to confer risk for acquiring MPNs and other myeloid malignancies. Disclosures Armstrong: Neomorph Inc: Consultancy, Current holder of individual stocks in a privately-held company; Imago Biosciences: Consultancy; Vitae/Allergan Pharma: Consultancy; Cyteir Therapeutics: Consultancy; C4 Therapeutics: Consultancy; OxStem Oncology: Consultancy; Accent Therapeutics: Consultancy; Mana Therapeutics: Consultancy; Janssen: Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding; Syndax: Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Research Funding. Sankaran: Ensoma: Consultancy; Forma: Consultancy; Cellarity: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy; Branch Biosciences: Consultancy.

The Danes and the Origin of the Danish KingdomOn the Research Programme “From Tribe to State in Denmark”Since the 1970’s, the ethnogenesis of the Danes and the origin of the Danish kingdom have attracted increased interest among Danish archaeologists. Marked changes over time observed in a growing source material form a new basis of interpretation. In written sources, the Danish realm does not appear until the Viking Age. The formation of the kingdom is traditionally placed as late as the 10th century (Jelling and all that). But prehistorians have raised the question whether the formation of the kingdom was not a much longer course. Some scholars believe that we have to study the periods preceding the Viking Age to be able to understand the development, at least from the 3rd century. In Scandinavia, this covers the Late Roman Iron Age, the Migration and Merovingian periods, as well as the early Viking Age. In a Continental perspective, it parallels the Late Antiquity (3rd-6th centuries) and the Early Middle Ages (6th-10th centuries).In 1984, the Danish Research Council launched the research programme “From Tribe to State in Denmark” which aimed to understand the formation of the Danish kingdom by studying the interaction between economic, social, and political circumstances from the Roman Period to the Viking Age. This paper presents a short synthesis of my work in the programme.Two themes have been brought into focus:1) The ethnogenesis of the Nordic peoples: the formation of the tribes that appear in the few and problematic written sources of the first millennium AD, in casu the Danes;2) The making of the Nordic kingdoms: in this case Denmark.A problem with this kind of long-term research is the inherent teleological perspective, revealed in the programme title. It is essential for me to emphasise that the early Danish kingdom was not a self-evident formation but the result of a series of concrete historical circumstances. There have been alternative possibilities at several occasions.In Scandinavia, the period is prehistoric. However, in South Scandinavia it deserves to be labelled protohistoric. Scandinavian archaeologists often forget or ignore the fact that in large parts of Europe, the first millennium AD is a historical period. The Scandinavian development is too often evaluated in isolation from the rest of Europe, in spite of the fact that the material culture demonstrates that interaction with continental as well as insular powers was continuously influencing Scandinavia. Necessarily, a relevant approach to Scandinavian late prehistory includes a historical dimension and a European perspective. South Scandinavian societies were over time linked to different realms in Europe. The Danish development was certainly part of a common west European trajectory.The best possibility of interpreting the archaeological record of South Scandinavia is by analogy with historians’ interpretations of other more or less contemporary Germanic peoples, based on descriptions in the written sources. Long-term studies of Scandinavian societies in the first millennium AD has laid new ground on which scholars have to build their image of the making of a Danish kingdom. The paper briefly describes some of the results and focuses on changes in the material that I find significant.Rural settlement: Great progress in the study of Iron Age and Early Mediaeval farming suggests economic growth, a development from subsistence economy to a production of a surplus, from collective forms of farming to individually run farmsteads, from small family farmsteads to large farms and manors. It is the surplus created by this expansion that could carry the late Viking and high medieval Danish kingdom with its administration, military power, church, towns, etc.Trade and exchange: Prestige-goods exchange dominated in the beginning of the period. Goods came from various parts of Europe. The connections to central and east Europe were broken in the sixth century, not to be reopened until the Viking Age. This explains the dominating position held by West European material culture in the development of South Scandinavia. Thus, South Scandinavia became part of the commercial zone of West Europe, certainly an important element in the making of the Danish kingdom. In the Viking Age, the rapid urbanisation demonstrates that Denmark gained great profit from its key position in the North Sea-Baltic trade network.Central places and early towns: Complex settlements appeared already in the Late Roman Iron Age, e.g. Gudme/Lundeborg, Funen. Further central sites appeared, and the number of central places grew rapidly. By the year 700, they are found in virtually every settlement area of South Scandinavia. The sites were not simple trading stations, as most were labelled a few years ago, but many also fulfilled important political, social, and religious functions; some were also manorial residences. The resident elite based their power on the mobilisation of the rural surplus; at the same time, one can say that the stimulus to produce a rural surplus was probably caused by an increasing demand from the elite at the centres.In the Viking Age, urbanisation began, which meant that the old central places lost their position and were replaced by towns like Hedeby, Ribe, and Århus. Excavations show that urbanisation started in the 8th century, a little later than the famous emporia Quentovic, Dorestad, Hamwic, and Ipswic.So today, it must be concluded that at the threshold to the Viking Age, South Scandinavian societies had a more advanced economic system and a more complex social organisation than believed only 20 years ago.Warfare: The dated indications of war cluster in two periods, the 3rd to 5th centuries, and the 10th to 11th centuries. The early period could be characterised as one of tribal warfare, in which many polities were forced to join larger confederations through the pressure of endemic warfare and conquests. In the archaeological record, indicators of war seem to disappear after AD 500, not to reappear in large numbers until the Viking Age. Was this period a Pax Danorum? Indeed, the silent archaeological record could indicate that the Danes had won hegemony in South Scandinavia. This phase can be understood as a period of consolidation between an early phase of tribal warfare and a later phase in which the territorial defence of a Danish kingdom becomes visible in the record.Wars with the Carolingian empire in the 9th century are the first wars in Denmark to be mentioned in the written record. However, archaeology demonstrates the presence of serious military threats in the centuries before, e.g. the first dykes at Danevirke. The strategic localisation of the period’s defence works reveals that threats were met with both navy and army. According to the texts, the 9th century wars are clearly national wars, either wars of conquest on a large scale between kingdoms, or civil wars, which for a large part seem to be triggered by an aggressive Frankish diplomacy.The two phases of warfare mirror two different military political situations: in the Late Roman and Migration Periods they are tribal wars and conflicts over resource control; in the Late Merovingian Period and the Viking Age they concern a Danish kingdom’s territorial defence.Religious changes: The conversion is often considered a major turning point in Scandinavian history; and in a way it was, of course. But the importance of Christianisation is heavily overestimated. The conversion was simply a step in a process that started long before. The paganism of the Scandinavians must not mislead us into believing that they were barbarians.A great change in cult practice took place around AD 500 when the use of bogs and lakes for offerings rapidly decreased. Instead, religious objects are found hoarded in settlement contexts, sometimes in the great halls of the magnates. This indicates that the elite had taken control of religion in a new way. The close link between cult and elite continued uninterrupted after Christianisation; churches were built by the magnates and on their ground. Therefore, we have a kind of cult-site continuity. From the Migration Period, the archaeological material demonstrates a close link between cult and magnates. This is certainly one important element in the formation of a Danish kingdom.Political development: Analyses of material culture reveal that South Scandinavia in the Early Iron Age consisted of many small regions, and based on sources like Tacitus and Ptolemy, one can guess that they correspond to tribal areas. In the Late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, the formation of a South Scandinavian super-region can be discerned, but still subdivided into a small number of distinguishable culture zones, and, again, on the basis of written sources (Jordanes and Procopius), one can guess that small tribes had joined into larger confederations precisely as on the Continent. In my opinion, a Danish kingdom appeared not later than the sixth century. Based on the well-studied material culture of the early Merovingian Period, one can assume that it had its core area in Central Denmark - South Jutland, Funen, and Zealand – with a close periphery of North Jutland, South Halland, Scania, Blekinge, and Bornholm. Probably more loosely attached to the Danish hegemony was a more distant periphery in South Sweden.So the Danish kingdom already had a history when it first appeared in the Frankish sources at the end of the 8th century. Danish involvement in European politics is first clearly observable in 777 and again in 782. Obviously, the Danish kingdom was a political and military actor on the North European scene long before the Viking Age.In the light of all these arguments, three phases can be described:– Roman Iron Age: Tribal societies with chieftains or small kings.– Late Roman Iron Age, Migration Period, and early Merovingian Period: A process of amalgamation started and warfare characterises the period. The result is the formation of tribal confederations. Written sources speak in favour of the Danes as the people who eventually won hegemony over South Scandinavia.– Late Merovingian Period and Viking Age: A process began in which royal agents replaced local chieftains. The last area to be integrated under direct Danish royal rule, in the reign of Sven Forkbeard, was probably Scania. Thus Medieval Denmark appeared.Final remarks: As a result of archaeological achievements in the last decades, a number of traditional views about Scandinavian late prehistory appear less likely, or rather erroneous. It is an underestimation that the pagans were unable of organisation and that a formation of a Danish kingdom is unthinkable before the late Viking Age. Unfortunately, the ethnogenesis of the Danes is beyond the reach of study, but a rough hypothesis may be formulated. The Danes were once one of several tribes somewhere in South Scandinavia. Events outside the Scandinavian scene were of fundamental importance for the possibility of the Danish gens to grow in power in the Late Roman and Migration Periods. Already before the Merovingian Period, the Danes won hegemony between the Baltic and the North Sea. A Danish kingdom could probably be based on this key position. Its survival was by no means a matter of course. In their continued efforts to secure the Danish position, capable kings established the borders of high medieval Denmark in the course of the Viking Age.Ulf NäsmanInstitutionen för humaniora och ­samhällsvetenskap Högskolan i Kalmar

Este estudo teórico/prático versa sobre a violência doméstica, problema de âmbito mundial. No Brasil conforme muitas pesquisas, tal violência tem inúmeras motivações, sobretudo cultural. A cidade de Arraias-TO não é exceção, sendo este tipo de violência fato recorrente naqueles lares, cidade objeto do estudo. Buscou-se evidenciar de forma sintética a problemática em nível mundial, nacional e por fim, em uma esfera mais detalhada, nos lares arraianos. O objetivo deste estudo foi compreender a violência doméstica a partir da aplicação e efetividade da Lei Maria da Penha correlacionando os fatos ao perfil educacional/profissional dos agressores e vítimas nos casos registrados na cidade de Arraias e verificar o quanto tal perfil interfere nos índices de violência praticada contra mulheres, bem ainda a recorrência dos fatos frente aos índices de retratações das ofendidas. Para tanto, se utilizou de fundamentação teórica, bem como da pesquisa de campo, com análise de 100% dos casos registrados nos últimos três anos na delegacia daquela circunscrição. Foram observados os boletins de ocorrências realizados pela aquela Unidade Policial a fim de se visualizar a aplicação e efetividade da lei. A análise recaiu ainda nos seguintes documentos: autos de procedimentos criminais, autos de inquéritos policias e autos de requerimento de medida protetiva para que assim fosse diagnosticado o fenômeno para prognosticar pontos onde devam ser direcionadas as ações visando minimizar essa espécie de violência naquela cidade. Foi utilizado o método explicativo-descritiva com vistas a tornar o problema inteligível.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Educação; perfil dos atores; violência contra a mulher.ABSTRACTThis practical-theoretic study is about domestic violence, worldwide problem. In Brazil as many searches, this kind of violence has numerous motivations, mainly cultural. The city of Arraias in the state of Tocantins, object of the study is no exception, this kind of violence happen often in their local homes. We tried to show in a short way the problematic in a global and national levels and at the end with a more detailed structure, the homes of the people that lives in the city quoted. Since the objective of this research was to understand the domestic violence from the application and effectiveness of the Maria da Penha Law correlating facts with the way of education and the many profiles of education degrees or professionals from the victims and their aggressors that interfere in the index of violence against women, and even the recurrence facts compared to the retractions' indexes from the victims. For this, we used theoretical bases as well as field research, analyzing 100 % of the cases reported in the last three years in that District Police Station. Occurrence Bulletins were observed from that Police Unit in order to view the application and the law effectivity. Furthermore, this analysis was taken from the following documents: notices of criminal proceedings, notices of police inquiries and notices of measure protective application, so that the phenomenon was diagnosed to detect points where actions should be directed to minimize this kind of violence in that city. We used the descriptive- explicative method in order to make the problem intelligible.KEYWORDS: Education; profile of actors; violence against women. RESUMENEste estudio teórico / prácticos ofertas con la violencia doméstica, problema mundial. En Brasil la mayor cantidad de encuestas, este tipo de violencia tiene muchas razones, principalmente culturales. La ciudad de Arraias no es la excepción, siendo tal la violencia hecho recurrente en esas casas, ciudad objeto de estudio. La investigación buscó destacar resume los problemas globales, nacionales y, por último, a un nivel más detallado, en Arraianos casas. El objetivo de este estudio fue comprender la violencia doméstica de la aplicación y la eficacia de la Ley Maria da Penha correlación de los hechos a los perfiles educativos y profesionales de los delincuentes y las víctimas en los casos reportados en la ciudad de Arraias y comprobar la cantidad de un perfil tan interfiere en los índices de violencia contra las mujeres, e incluso la recurrencia de eventos en comparación con las tasas de retracciones del ofendido. Con este fin, hemos utilizado los fundamentos teóricos, así como la investigación de campo, con el análisis del 100% de los casos registrados en los últimos tres años en la estación de policía de la ciudad. Los boletines de ocurrencia llevadas a cabo por una unidad de la policía fueron observados con el fin de ver la aplicación y la eficacia de la ley. El análisis se encuentra todavía en los documentos como registros de las actuaciones penales, avisos de investigaciones policiales y comunicaciones de medida de protección de la aplicación para que se le diagnosticó el fenómeno de predecir los lugares en los que han de ser dirigidas las acciones para minimizar este tipo de violencia en esta ciudad. Se utilizó el método descriptivo-explicativa para hacer problema inteligible.PALABRAS CLAVE: Educación; Perfil de los actores; violencia contra las mujeres. Referências AZEVEDO, Maria Amélia. Violência física contra a mulher: dimensão possível da condição feminina, braço forte do machismo, face oculta da família patriarcal ou efeito perverso da educação diferenciada? In: ______. Mulheres espancadas: a violência denunciada. São Paulo: Cortez, 1985. p. 45-75.BARROS, Gabriela dos Santos. Análise da violência doméstica e familiar contra a mulher no contexto da aplicação da Lei Maria da Penha. In: Âmbito Jurídico, Rio Grande, XV, n. 105, out 2012. Disponível em: . Acesso em maio 2014.BATANETE, Diana Horta Oliveira. Violência Doméstica. Coimbra, 2005. Disponível em: < http://www4.fe.uc.pt/fontes/trabalhos/2004007.pdf>. Acesso 02 maio 2014.BRASIL. Lei 11.340. Brasília, 07 ago. 2006. Acesso em: 10 abr. 2014. BRASIL. Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional: Lei nº 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996. 8. ed. - Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados, Edições Câmara, 2013.45 p. Disponível em: < http://www010.dataprev.gov.br/sislex/paginas/42/1996/9394.htm>. Acesso em: 10 abr. 2014.CUNHA, R. S.; PINTO, R. B. Violência Doméstica: Lei Maria da Penha (Lei nº. 11.340/2006) comentada artigo por artigo. São Paulo: Revista dos Tribunais, 2007.DAY, Vivian P. et al. Violência doméstica e suas diferentes manifestações. Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, v. 25, abr. 2003, p.1-21. Disponível em: < http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0101-81082003000400003&script=sci_abstract&tlng=pt >. Acesso em: 05 abr. 2014.FRANK, Stefanie. A violência contra a mulher por parceiro íntimo em artigos científicos: Uma revisão sistemática do período 2003-2007. Florianópolis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2009. Disponível em: < https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/93305/272104.pdf?sequence=1 >. Acesso em: 12 maio 2014.GRAEFF, Frederico Guilherme. De onde vem a violência: Os cientistas entram em conflito: o homem é violento por natureza ou a sociedade é que o faz assim? Super Interessante, dez. 1988. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 12 maio 2014.MOTA, Jurema Corrêa. Violência contra a mulher praticada pelo parceiro íntimo: estudo em um serviço de atenção especializado. Rio de janeiro: 2004. Disponível em: < http://arca.icict.fiocruz.br/bitstream/icict/4914/2/726.pdf >. Acesso em: 25 maio 2014.NILO, O. O que é violência. 6. ed. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2004.PULEO, Alicia Garcia. Filosofia e gênero: da memória do passado ao projeto de futuro. São Paulo, Coordenadoria Especial da Mulher, v. 8, 2004, pp. 13-34. Disponível em: < http://www5.uva.es/catedraestudiosgenero/spip.php?article36>. Acesso em: 20 abr. 2014.SAFFIOTI, H. Gênero, patriarcado e violência. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2004._____. Violência de Gênero no Brasil Contemporâneo. IN: H.I.B. Saffioti e M.M. Vargas, Mulher Brasileira é Assim. Rio de Janeiro: Rosa dos Ventos, 1995, p. 151-185. SCHRAIBER, Lilia Blima; D'OLIVEIRA, Ana Flávia P L; COUTO, Márcia Thereza. Violência e saúde: estudos científicos recentes. Saúde Pública, São Paulo, n. 40, p.112-120, ago. 2006. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 10 abr. 2014.______. Violência contra mulheres: interfaces com a saúde. Saúde Pública, v. 03, n. 05, p. 11-26, ago. 1999. Disponível em:< http://www.scielo.br/pdf/icse/v3n5/03.pdf >. Acesso em: 20 mai. 2014.ULLMANN, Reinholdo Aluysio. Amor e sexo na Grécia Antiga. Porto alegre. EDIPUCRS, 2007. Disponível em:Url: http://opendepot.org/2710/ Abrir em (para melhor visualização em dispositivos móveis - Formato Flipbooks):Issuu / Calameo

AbstractA review of the results obtained for the birefringence of different supermolecular structures of three polymorphic forms of polypropylene is presented. All known lamellar super-molecular formations of the monoclinic, hexagonal and triclinic phases are included. The observed morphology varies among negative hedrite and oval structures with axial symmetry, spherulites and typical dendrites. An attempt to explain the observed variety of the various structures’ birefringence is made in terms of the mutual orientation of the polarizability ellipsoid and crystallographic axes in the lamellar surfaces.For the α phase, the orientation of the axes of the polarizability ellipsoid relative to the orientation of the unit cell is determined. The axis Nm coincides with the a axis, the fastest growth direction. The hedritic structures, grown by branching homoepitaxy, have negative birefringence. The spherulites differ in intensity and sign of birefringence because of cross-hatching.For the β phase, the crystallographic axis b coincides with Ne, the short axis of the rotational polarizability ellipsoid. The hedritic structures can grow by the screw dislocation mechanism. Spherulites grow by an epitaxy mechanism. Both structures show negative birefringence.The long axis Ng of the polarizability ellipsoid of the γ phase coincides with the b axis. The short molecules of the γ phase are inclined 40° towards the lamellar surface. The a and b axes do not lie in the lamellar surface. The axes of the polarizability ellipsoid are also inclined towards the lamellar surface. The preferred fast growth direction of the branching lamellae is the b* direction which coincides with Ng', the longest axis in the projection of the optical indicatrix on the lamellar surface. Thus the positive birefringence of the branching lamellae in the mixed α-γ spherulites increases more than in the monoclinic positive spherulites.

The credibility of short-term undergraduate research as a paradigm for effective learning within Medicine has been recognized. With a view to strengthening this paradigm and enhancing research-teaching linkages, this study explores whether particular types of research supervisor are pre-disposed to providing supportive learning environments. Correspondingly, a novel solution is offered to addressing clinical governance concerns about failings in preparing students for a supercomplex world. While recommendations for addressing these concerns have previously focused on curriculum delivery and assessment, this study affords a fresh perspective through consideration of research supervisor attributes, behaviours and experiences. Using statistical analyses of response data from a large cohort of experienced research supervisors who completed an online survey, evidence is found to suggest that staff involvement in personal research ought to enhance student learning through research. In turn, the supervisor factors which are most supportive of this effect may vary according to how we measure higher forms of learning. Supervisors are advised to design successive follow-on research projects to facilitate cross-disciplinary research. In preparing medical graduates for survival in a super-complex world, more needs to be done, however, to investigate why supervisors who see their students more regularly are more likely to provide cross-disciplinary research opportunities. By contrast, potential to engage in risk-taking behaviours and maintain or progress to an advanced stage of learning may originate more precisely with the student.

Personality is of great lay, clinical, and research interest with important functional implications. The field has largely settled on five- or six-factor models as being largely sufficient for descriptive purposes, at least in W.E.I.R.D settings and, as such, numerous measures have been created of varying length and breadth. For a number of reasons, however, super-short forms have come to be quite popular in research endeavors with a number created in the past 20 years. The goal of the present study was to compare the time with completion and general psychometric properties of these measures, as well as examine their convergence with one another and with longer measures in an online community sample ( N = 494). Generally, the psychometric properties of the measures varied considerably in terms of internal consistency and convergence with one another. The brief measures demonstrated mostly adequately convergence with longer measures. Despite this convergence, longer measures were found to contain considerably more variance that was not accounted for by brief measures. We consider the advantages and disadvantages of these measures and suggest that longer measures be prioritized whenever possible.

IL-15 is one of the important biologics considered for vaccine adjuvant and treatment of cancer. However, a short half-life and poor bioavailability limit its therapeutic potential. Herein, we have structured IL-15 into a chimeric protein to improve its half-life enabling greater bioavailability for longer periods. We have covalently linked IL-15 with IgG2 base to make the IL-15 a stable chimeric protein, which also increased its serum half-life by 40 fold. The dimeric structure of this kind of IgG based biologics has greater stability, resistance to proteolytic cleavage, and less frequent dosing schedule with minimum dosage for achieving the desired response compared to that of their monomeric forms. The structured chimeric IL-15 naturally forms a dimer, and retains its affinity for binding to its receptor, IL-15Rβ. Moreover, with the focused action of the structured chimeric IL-15, antigen-presenting cells (APC) would transpresent chimeric IL-15 along with antigen to the T cell, that will help the generation of quantitatively and qualitatively better antigen-specific memory T cells. In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate the biological activity of chimeric IL-15 with respect to its ability to induce IL-15 signaling and modulating CD8+ T cell response in favor of memory generation. Thus, a longer half-life, dimeric nature, and anticipated focused transpresentation by APCs to the T cells will make chimeric IL-15 a super-agonist for memory CD8+ T cell responses.

Fluvastatin sodium is a novel compound used as cholesterol lowering agent which acts through the inhibition of 3- hydroxyl-3- methyl glutaryl- coenzyme A (HMG-Co A) reductase. It has short biological half life (1-3h) in humans required a dosing frequency of 20 to 40mg twice a day. Due to its short variable biological half life it has been developed to a sustained gastroretentive system with a natural and synthetic polymer and to study how far the natural mucilage improves the sustained activity. Floating tablets were prepared by direct compression method using in combination of natural mucilage and synthetic polymer. Prior to the preparation of tablets the physical mixtures were subjected to FT IR studies and pre compression parameters. After preparation of tablets they were subjected to various tests like swollen index, drug content, In vitro dissolution and release kinetics with pcp disso software etc. The tablets prepared by direct compression shown good in thickness, hardness and uniformity in drug content, the prepared tablets floated more than 12h except FS1 and FS2 shows 9 and 11h. Swollen index studies shows with increase in concentration of polymer the swelling increases the diffusion path length by which the drug molecule may have to travel and cause lag time. In vitro results shows that on increasing the amount of hibiscus polymer the sustain activity is increased because of its integrity and forms a thick swollen mass and reduces the erosion property of the HypromelloseK100M, kinetic studies shows that FS 1, FS2, FS3 followed the Korsmeyer peppas model and the rest FS 4, FS 5, FS6 follows the zero order respectively. Based on n value indicating that the drug release followed super case II transport mechanism due to the erosion of the polymer.

We study a new structural model of high energies with high frequencies but short wave-lengths of an atomic world of wave-structured from the primary stages of the Universe to the Super Unified Gaussian Energy Group “SU(11)⊃ SU(6) × SU(5) × U(1)” beyond the Standard Model of Physics or GUT of SU(5)⊃ SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). In this new structural model having infinite number of various symmetry groups, can be explained mathematically as: “SU (11) ⊃ SU (6) × SU (5) × U (1); SU (23) ⊃ SU (12) × SU (11) × U (1); SU (47) ⊃ SU (24) × SU (23) × U (1)”; so on. There may be created various new unknown particle-likes in wave status are caused for variety of lives with electromagnetic force-field of various frequencies formed consciousness. The analogy may be illustrated with an example that there exists various water-waves in different forms of wave-lengths are found in the ocean of earth where short wave lengths of water are very much related to the gradually increasing various long wave-lengths of water. There may be created electromagnetic force-fields with several short wave-lengths of “Invisible Rays” together with “Fluxes of Rays” or “Packets of New Energy” by the energy groups of SU(6), SU(12), SU(24),...,etc. simultaneously in their respective framework of “SU(6) × U(1); SU (12) × U(1); SU(24) × U(1)”; ......etc. with strengthen current and may also new unknown bosons of SU(6) are tightly binding by the lepton-likes were formed a large number of “New Unknown Particle-Likes” in wave status which are directly or indirectly linked to the formation of matter elements constituted by quarks for the existences of Life, Consciousness, Sense Datum and all other Biological Phenomena etc. and are given many more answers to the unsolvable questions about the mysterious universe regarding variety of lives etc. Thus we found a new world of primary atoms or elements in the wave status of energies maintain the theory of Quantum-Entanglement of Wave-Wave duality other than the existing secondary material worlds and hence opened a “Pandora Box” for our future generations. These new unknown Atomic-Worlds and Energy Packages with various short wave lengths creates consciousness etc. are now essential for the discussion.

In a 2016 article published in this journal (Roig–Marín, 2016), I argued that the coinage of cyber-blends reflects our blended digital/physical relationships in today's world. The current pandemic has put a halt to our everyday lives and all forms of physical contact, and so technologies and digital experiences now play a more conspicuous role than ever. We have gone online and got used to vocabulary whose usage prior to COVID-19 was very limited (e.g. quarantine and pandemic) or known to very few (coronavirus, super-spreader, or the abbreviations PPE ‘personal protective equipment’ or WFH ‘working from home’), while coming to terms with the implications of others such as self-isolation, lockdown, or social distancing (which should be better called physical distancing as social closeness, albeit non-physically, is very much needed to get through these difficult times). Short pieces on coroneologisms have attested to the rise of many new lexical formations, mostly blends. According to Thorne (2020; also cited in CBC, 2020), more than 1,000 new words – both non-specialised and technical terminology – have been created during the current pandemic. Journalists and Twitter users are particularly prone to coin words displaying a high level of linguistic ingenuity; yet, the circulation of that lexis may be very limited. The present note overviews some of the most widely spread vocabulary related to our new COVID-19 reality, coming from the laity rather than from medical or scientific professionals. Alongside terms like social distancing and lockdown, less technical and more playful vocabulary has transcended linguistic boundaries. Particular attention will be paid to examples from European languages whose word-stocks share a common Latinate substratum, likewise central to scientific communication.

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Abstract Research Question Did a 15-min patrol delivery over 1 day reduce serious violent crime in large hot spots (mean size = 2 km × 2 km), without displacing such crimes to nearby areas? Data We tracked daily official crime reports in a sample of 21 high-crime Bedfordshire (UK) Lower-layer Super Output areas (LSOAs). We measured time spent by two-person police foot patrols in those areas with daily GPS data from handheld devices given to officers working on overtime. We also counted proactively initiated arrests. Methods We used a crossover randomised controlled trial on the 21 “hot spot” LSOAs, each of which was randomly assigned daily to be either in a treatment condition of 15-min of patrol (as one of seven each day) or a control condition of no patrol (as one of 14 each day) for each of 90 days. We used an intention-to-treat framework to analyse the impact of patrols on the outcome measures overall, on consecutive days of assignment to the same condition, and in 100-m ‘buffer’ zones around each hot spot. Findings We found that on treatment days the hot spots had 44% lower Cambridge crime harm index scores from serious violence than on control days, as well as 40% fewer incidents across all public crimes against personal victims. Statistically significant differences in lower prevalence, counts and harm of both non-domestic violent crime and robbery and other non-domestic crimes against personal victims were also found. We found no evidence of either displacement of serious crime into a 100-m buffer zone, nor any evidence of residual deterrence on no-patrol days following patrol days. We did find evidence of a cumulative effect: the largest differences in crime harm on control days were found in treatment days that came after 3 days of consecutive patrol in the same LSOA. Conclusions Even minimal amounts of foot patrol can prevent serious violent crime across a large area, and repeated patrols over several days help even more. Our findings suggest that, to reduce both violent and other forms of crime, uniformed officers need to patrol hot spots for short amounts of times on consecutive days.

The move from analog distribution to online digital delivery is common in the contemporary mediascape. Music is in the midst of an ipod driven paradigm shift (Levy), television and movie delivery is being reconfigured (Johnson), and newspaper and magazines are confronting the reality of the world wide web and what it means for business models and ideas of journalism (Beecher). In the midst of this change, the book publishing industry remains defiant. While embracing digital production technologies, the vast majority of book content is still delivered in material form, printed and shipped the old-fashioned way—despite the efforts of many technology companies over the last decade. Even the latest efforts from corporate giants such as Sony and Amazon (who appear to have solved many of the technical hurdles of electronic reading devices) have had little visible impact. The idea of electronic books, or e-books, remains the domain of geeky early adopters (“Have”). The reasons for this are manifold, but, arguably, a broader uptake of e-books has not occurred because cultural change is much more difficult than technological change and book readers have yet to be persuaded to change their cultural habits. Electronic reading devices have been around for as long as there have been computers with screens, but serious attempts to replicate the portability, readability, and convenience of a printed book have only been with us for a decade or so. The late 1990s saw the release of a number of e-book devices. In quick succession, the likes of the Rocket e-Book, the SoftBook and the Franklin eBookman all failed to catch on. Despite this lack of market penetration, software companies began to explore the possibilities—Microsoft’s Reader software competed with a similar product from Adobe, some publishers became content providers, and a niche market of consumers began reading e-books on personal digital assistants (PDAs). That niche was sufficient for e-reading communities and shopfronts to appear, with a reasonable range of titles becoming available for purchase to feed demand that was very much driven by early adopters. But the e-book market was and remains small. For most people, books are still regarded as printed paper objects, purchased from a bookstore, borrowed from a library, or bought online from companies like Amazon.com. More recently, the introduction of e-ink technologies (EPDs) (DeJean), which allow for screens with far more book-like resolution and contrast, has provided the impetus for a new generation of e-book devices. In combination with an expanded range of titles (and deals with major publishing houses to include current best-sellers), there has been renewed interest in the idea of e-books. Those who have used the current generation of e-ink devices are generally positive about the experience. Except for some sluggishness in “turning” pages, the screens appear crisp, clear and are not as tiring to read as older displays. There are a number of devices that have embraced the new screen technologies (mobileread) but most attention has been paid to three devices in particular—mainly because their manufacturers have tried to create an ecosystem that provides content for their reading devices in much the same way that Apple’s itunes store provides content for ipods. The Sony Portable Reader (Sonystyle) was the first electronic ink device to be produced by a mainstream consumers electronics company. Sony ties the Reader to its Connect store, which allows the purchase of book titles via a computer; titles are then downloaded to the Reader in the same way that an mp3 player is loaded with music. Sony’s most prominent competition in the marketplace is Amazon’s Kindle, which does not require users to have a computer. Instead, its key feature is a constant wireless connection to Amazon’s growing library of Kindle titles. This works in conjunction with US cellphone provider Sprint to allow the purchase of books via wireless downloads wherever the Sprint network exists. The system, which Amazon calls “whispernet,” is invisible to readers and the cost is incorporated into the price of books, so Kindle users never see a bill from Sprint (“Frequently”). Both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle are available only in limited markets; Kindle’s reliance on a cellphone network means that its adoption internationally is dependent on Amazon establishing a relationship with a cellphone provider in each country of release. And because both devices are linked to e-bookstores, territorial rights issues with book publishers (who trade publishing rights for particular global territories in a colonial-era mode of operation that seems to ignore the reality of global information mobility (Thompson 74–77)) contribute to the restricted availability of both the Sony and Amazon products. The other mainstream device is the iRex Iliad, which is not constrained to a particular online bookstore and thus is available internationally. Its bookstore ecosystems are local relationships—with Dymocks in Australia, Borders in the UK, and other booksellers across Europe (iRex). All three devices use EPDs and share similar specifications for the actual reading of e-books. Some might argue that the lack of a search function in the Sony and the ability to write on pages in the Iliad are quite substantive differences, but overall the devices are distinguished by their availability and the accessibility of book titles. Those who have used the devices extensively are generally positive about the experience. Amazon’s Customer Reviews are full of positive comments, and the sense from many commentators is that the systems are a viable replacement for old-fashioned printed books (Marr). Despite the good reviews—which suggest that the technology is actually now good enough to compete with printed books—the e-book devices have failed to catch on. Amazon has been hesitant to state actual sales figures, leaving it to so-called analysts to guess with the most optimistic suggesting that only 30 to 50,000 have sold since launch in late 2007 (Sridharan). By comparison, a mid-list book title (in the US) would expect to sell a similar number of copies. The sales data for the Sony Portable Reader (which has been on the market for nearly two years) and the iRex iliad are also elusive (Slocum), suggesting that they have not meaningfully changed the landscape. Tellingly, despite the new devices, the e-book industry is still tiny. Although it is growing, the latest American data show that the e-book market has wholesale revenues of around $10 million per quarter (or around $40 million per year), which is dwarfed by the $35 billion in revenues regularly earned annually in the US printed book industry ("Book"). It’s clear that despite the technological advances, e-books have yet to cross the chasm from early adopter to mainstream usage (see IPDF). The reason for this is complex; there are issues of marketing and distribution that need to be considered, as well as continuing arguments about screen technologies, appropriate publishing models, and digital rights management. It is beyond the scope of this article to do justice to those issues. Suffice to say, the book industry is affected by the same debates over content that plague other media industries (Vershbow). But, arguably, the key reason for the minimal market impact is straightforward—technological change is relatively easy, but cultural change is much more difficult. The current generation of e-book devices might be technically very close to being a viable replacement for print on paper (and the next generation of devices will no doubt be even better), but there are bigger cultural hurdles to be overcome. For most people, the social practice of reading books (du Gay et al 10) is inextricably tied with printed objects and a print culture that is not yet commonly associated with “technology” (perhaps because books, as machines for reading (Young 160), have become an invisible technology (Norman 246)). E. Annie Proulx’s dismissive suggestion that “nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever” (1994) is commonly echoed when book buyers consider the digital alternative. Those thoughts only scratch the surface of a deeply embedded cultural practice. The centuries since Gutenberg’s printing press and the vast social and cultural changes that followed positioned print culture as the dominant cultural mode until relatively recently (Eisenstein; Ong). The emerging electronic media forms of the twentieth century displaced that dominance with many arguing that the print age was moved aside by first radio and television and now computers and the Internet (McLuhan; Postman). Indeed, there is a subtext in that line of thought, one that situates electronic media forms (particularly screen-based ones) as the antithesis of print and book culture. Current e-book reading devices attempt to minimise the need for cultural change by trying to replicate a print culture within an e-print culture. For the most part, they are designed to appeal to book readers as a replacement for printed books. But it will take more than a perfect electronic facsimile of print on paper to persuade readers to disengage with a print culture that incorporates bookshops, bookclubs, writing in the margins, touching and smelling the pages and covers, admiring the typesetting, showing off their bookshelves, and visibly identifying with their collections. The frequently made technical arguments (about flashing screens and reading in the bath (Randolph)) do not address the broader apprehension about a cultural experience that many readers do not wish to leave behind. It is in that context that booklovers appear particularly resistant to any shift from print to a screen-based format. One only has to engage in a discussion about e-books (or lurk on an online forum where one is happening) to appreciate how deeply embedded print culture is (Hepworth)—book readers have a historical attachment to the printed object and it is this embedded cultural resistance that is the biggest barrier for e-books to overcome. Although e-book devices in no way resemble television, print culture is still deeply suspicious of any screen-based media and arguments are often made that the book as a physical object is critical because “different types of media function differently, and even if the content is similar the form matters quite a lot” (Weber). Of course, many in the newspaper industry would argue that long-standing cultural habits can change very rapidly and the migration of eyeballs from newsprint to the Internet is a cautionary tale (see Auckland). That specific format shift saw cultural change driven by increased convenience and a perception of decreased cost. For those already connected to the Internet, reading newspapers online represented zero marginal cost, and the range of online offerings dwarfed that of the local newsagency. The advantage of immediacy and multimedia elements, and the possibility of immediate feedback, appeared sufficient to drive many away from print towards online newspapers.For a similar shift in the e-book realm, there must be similar incentives for readers. At the moment, the only advantages on offer are weightlessness (which only appeals to frequent travellers) and convenience via constant access to a heavenly library of titles (Young 150). Amazon’s Kindle bookshop can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere there is a Sprint network coverage (Nelson). However, even this advantage is not so clear-cut—there is a meagre range of available electronic titles compared to printed offerings. For example, Amazon claims 130,000 titles are currently available for Kindle and Sony has 50,000 for its Reader, figures that are dwarfed by Amazon’s own printed book range. Importantly, there is little apparent cost advantage to e-books. The price of electronic reading devices is significant, amounting to a few hundred dollars to which must be added the cost of e-books. The actual cost of those titles is also not as attractive as it might be. In an age where much digital content often appears to be free, consumers demand a significant price advantage for purchasing online. Although some e-book titles are priced more affordably than their printed counterparts, the cost of many seems strangely high given the lack of a physical object to print and ship. For example, Amazon Kindle titles might be cheaper than the print version, but the actual difference (after discounting) is not an order of magnitude, but of degree. For example, Randy Pausch’s bestselling The Last Lecture is available for $12.07 as a paperback or $9.99 as a Kindle edition (“Last”). For casual readers, the numbers make no sense—when the price of the reading device is included, the actual cost is prohibitive for those who only buy a few titles a year. At the moment, e-books only make sense for heavy readers for whom the additional cost of the reading device will be amortised over a large number of books in a reasonably short time. (A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the break-even point for the Kindle was the purchase of 61 books (Arends).) Unfortunately for the e-book industry, not is only is that particular market relatively small, it is the one least likely to shift from the embedded habits of print culture. Arguably, should e-books eventually offer a significant cost benefit for consumers, uptake would be more dramatic. However, in his study of cellphone cultures, Gerard Goggin argues against purely fiscal motivations, suggesting that cultural change is driven by other factors—in his example, new ways of communicating, connecting, and engaging (205–211). The few market segments where electronic books have succeeded are informative. For example, the market for printed encyclopedias has essentially disappeared. Most have reinvented themselves as CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs and are sold for a fraction of the price. Although cost is undoubtedly a factor in their market success, added features such as multimedia, searchability, and immediacy via associated websites are compelling reasons driving the purchase of electronic encyclopedias over the printed versions. The contrast with the aforementioned e-book devices is apparent with encyclopedias moving away from their historical role in print culture. Electronic encyclopedias don’t try to replicate the older print forms. Rather they represent a dramatic shift of book content into an interactive audio-visual domain. They have experimented with new formats and reconfigured content for the new media forms—the publishers in question simply left print culture behind and embraced a newly emerging computer or multimedia culture. This step into another realm of social practices also happened in the academic realm, which is now deeply embedded in computer-based delivery of research and pedagogy. Not only are scholarly journals moving online (Thompson 320–325), but so too are scholarly books. For example, at the Macquarie University Library, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of electronic books in the collection. The library purchased 895 e-books in 2005 and 68,000 in 2007. During the same period, the number of printed books purchased remained relatively stable with about 16,000 bought annually (Macquarie University Library). The reasons for the dramatic increase in e-book purchases are manifold and not primarily driven by cost considerations. Not only does the library have limited space for physical storage, but Macquarie (like most other Universities) emphasises its e-learning environment. In that context, a single e-book allows multiple, geographically dispersed, simultaneous access, which better suits the flexibility demanded of the current generation of students. Significantly, these e-books require no electronic reading device beyond a standard computer with an internet connection. Users simply search for their required reading online and read it via their web browser—the library is operating in a pedagogical culture that assumes that staff and students have ready access to the necessary resources and are happy to read large amounts of text on a screen. Again, gestures towards print culture are minimal, and the e-books in question exist in a completely different distributed electronic environment. Another interesting example is that of mobile phone novels, or “keitai” fiction, popular in Japan. These novels typically consist of a few hundred pages, each of which contains about 500 Japanese characters. They are downloaded to (and read on) cellphones for about ten dollars apiece and can sell in the millions of copies (Katayama). There are many reasons why the keitai novel has achieved such popularity compared to the e-book approaches pursued in the West. The relatively low cost of wireless data in Japan, and the ubiquity of the cellphone are probably factors. But the presence of keitai culture—a set of cultural practices surrounding the mobile phone—suggests that the mobile novel springs not from a print culture, but from somewhere else. Indeed, keitai novels are written (often on the phones themselves) in a manner that lends itself to the constraints of highly portable devices with small screens, and provides new modes of engagement and communication. Their editors attribute the success of keitai novels to how well they fit into the lifestyle of their target demographic, and how they act as community nodes around which readers and writers interact (Hani). Although some will instinctively suggest that long-form narratives are doomed with such an approach, it is worthwhile remembering that, a decade ago, few considered reading long articles using a web browser and the appropriate response to computer-based media was to rewrite material to suit the screen (Nielsen). However, without really noticing the change, the Web became mainstream and users began reading everything on their computers, including much longer pieces of text. Apart from the examples cited, the wider book trade has largely approached e-books by trying to replicate print culture, albeit with an electronic reading device. Until there is a significant cost and convenience benefit for readers, this approach is unlikely to be widely successful. As indicated above, those segments of the market where e-books have succeeded are those whose social practices are driven by different cultural motivations. It may well be that the full-frontal approach attempted to date is doomed to failure, and e-books would achieve more widespread adoption if the book trade took a different approach. The Amazon Kindle has not yet persuaded bookloving readers to abandon print for screen in sufficient numbers to mark a seachange. Indeed, it is unlikely that any device positioned specifically as a book replacement will succeed. Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a mobility culture, as part of the burgeoning range of social activities revolving around a connected, convergent mobile device. Reading should be understood as an activity that doesn’t begin with a particular device, but is done with whatever device is at hand. In much the same way that other media producers make content available for a number of platforms, book publishers should explore the potential of the new mobile devices. Over 45 million smartphones were sold globally in the first three months of 2008 (“Gartner”)—somewhat more than the estimated shipments of e-book reading devices. As well as allowing a range of communications possibilities, these convergent devices are emerging as key elements in the new digital mediascape—one that allows users access to a broad range of media products via a single pocket-sized device. Each of those smartphones makes a perfectly adequate e-book reading device, and it might be useful to pursue a strategy that embeds book reading as one of the key possibilities of this growing mobility culture. The casual gaming market serves as an interesting example. While hardcore gamers cling to their games PCs and consoles, a burgeoning alternative games market has emerged, with a different demographic purchasing less technically challenging games for more informal gaming encounters. This market has slowly shifted to convergent mobile devices, exemplified by Sega’s success in selling 300,000 copies of Super Monkey Ball within 20 days of its release for Apple’s iphone (“Super”). Casual gamers do not necessarily go on to become hardcore games, but they are gamers nonetheless—and today’s casual games (like the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball) are yesterday’s hardcore games of choice. It might be the same for reading. The availability of e-books on mobile platforms may not result in more people embracing longer-form literature. But it will increase the number of people actually reading, and, just as casual gaming has attracted a female demographic (Wallace 8), the instant availability of appropriate reading material might sway some of those men who appear to be reluctant readers (McEwan). Rather than focus on printed books, and book-like reading devices, the industry should re-position e-books as an easily accessible content choice in a digitally converged media environment. This is more a cultural shift than a technological one—for publishers and readers alike. Situating e-books in such a way may alienate a segment of the bookloving community, but such readers are unlikely to respond to anything other than print on paper. Indeed, it may encourage a whole new demographic—unafraid of the flickering screen—to engage with the manifold attractions of “books.” References Arends, Brett. “Can Amazon’s Kindle Save You Money?” The Wall St Journal 24 June 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121431458215899767.html? mod=rss_whats_news_technology>. Auckland, Steve. “The Future of Newspapers.” The Independent 13 Nov. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1963543.ece>. Beecher, Eric. “War of Words.” The Monthly, June 2007: 22–26. 25 June 2008 . “Book Industry Trends 2006 Shows Publishers’ Net Revenues at $34.59 Billion for 2005.” Book Industry Study Group. 22 May 2006 ‹http://www.bisg.org/news/press.php?pressid=35>. 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Hani, Yoko. “Cellphone Bards Make Bestseller Lists.” Japan Times Online Sep. 2007. 20 June 2008 ‹http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070923x4.html>. “Have you Changed your mind on Ebook Readers?” Slashdot. 25 June 2008 ‹http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/08/2317250>. Hepworth, David. “The Future of Reading or the Sinclair C5.” The Word 17 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/future-reading-or-sinclair-c5>. IPDF (International Digital Publishing Forum) Industry Statistics. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm>. iRex Technologies Press. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.irextechnologies.com/about/press>. Johnson, Bobbie. “Vince Cerf, AKA the Godfather of the Net, Predicts the End of TV as We Know It.” The Guardian 27 Aug. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/27/news.google>. 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E-book Reader Matrix, Mobileread Wiki. 30 May 2008 ‹http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix>. Nelson, Sara. “Warming to Kindle.” Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007. 31 Jan. 2008 ‹http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6510861.htm.html>. Nielsen, Jakob. “Concise, Scannable and Objective, How to Write for the Web.” 1997. ‹20 June 2008 ‹http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>. Norman, Don. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1998. Ong, Walter. Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1988. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin, 1986. Proulx, E. Annie. “Books on Top.” The New York Times 26 May 1994. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/23/specials/proulx-top.html>. Randolph, Eleanor. “Reading into the Future.” The New York Times 18 June 2008. 19 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18wed3.html?>. Slocum, Mac. “The Pitfalls of Publishing’s E-Reader Guessing Game.” O’Reilly TOC. June 2006. 24 June 2008 ‹http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/the-pitfalls-of-publishings-er.html>. Sridharan, Vasanth. “Goldman: Amazon Sold up to 50,000 Kindles in Q1.” Silicon Alley Insider 19 May 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/how_many_kindles_sold_last_quarter_>. “Super Monkey Ball iPhone's Super Sales.” Edge OnLine. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.edge-online.com/news/super-monkey-ball-iphones-super-sales>. Thompson, John B. Books in the Digital Age. London: Polity, 2005. Vershbow, Ben. “Self Destructing Books.” if:book. May 2005. 4 Oct. 2006 ‹http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/05/selfdestructing_books.html>. Wallace, Margaret, and Brian Robbins. 2006 Casual Games White Paper. IDGA. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.igda.org/casual/IGDA_CasualGames_Whitepaper_2006.pdf>. Weber, Jonathan. “Why Books Resist the Rise of Novel Technologies.” The Times Online 23 May 2006. 25 June 2008 ‹http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article724510.ece> Young, Sherman. The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book. Sydney: UNSW P, 2007.

No man [...] can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true. (Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter – as seen and pondered by Tony Soprano at Bowdoin College, The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5: “College”)The fictitious is a particular and varied source of insight into the everyday world. The idea of seriality—with its variations of the serial, series, seriated—is very much connected to our patterns of entertainment. In this essay, I want to begin the process of testing what values and meanings can be drawn from the idea of seriality into comprehending the play of persona in contemporary culture. From a brief overview of the intersection of persona and seriality as well as a review of the deployment of seriality in popular culture, the article focuses on the character/ person-actor relationship to demonstrate how seriality produces persona. The French term for character—personnage—will be used to underline the clear relations between characterisation, person, and persona which have been developed by the recent work by Lenain and Wiame. Personnage, through its variation on the word person helps push the analysis into fully understanding the particular and integrated configuration between a public persona and the fictional role that an actor inhabits (Heinich).There are several qualities related to persona that allow this movement from the fictional world to the everyday world to be profitable. Persona, in terms of origins, in and of itself implies performance and display. Jung, for instance, calls persona a mask where one is “acting a role” (167); while Goffman considers that performance and roles are at the centre of everyday life and everyday forms and patterns of communication. In recent work, I have use persona to describe how online culture pushes most people to construct a public identity that resembles what celebrities have had to construct for their livelihood for at least the last century (“Persona”; “Self”). My work has expanded to an investigation of how online persona relates to individual agency (“Agency”) and professional postures and positioning (Barbour and Marshall).The fictive constructions then are intensified versions of what persona is addressing: the fabrication of a role for particular directions and ends. Characters or personnages are constructed personas for very directed ends. Their limitation to the study of persona as a dimension of public culture is that they are not real; however, when one thinks of the actor who takes on this fictive identity, there is clearly a relationship between the real personality and that of the character. Moreover, as Nayar’s analysis of highly famous characters that are fictitious reveals, these celebrated characters, such as Harry Potter or Wolverine, sometime take on a public presence in and of themselves. To capture this public movement of a fictional character, Nayar blends the terms celebrity with fiction and calls these semi-public/semi-real entities “celefiction”: the characters are famous, highly visible, and move across media, information, and cultural platforms with ease and speed (18-20). Their celebrity status underlines their power to move outside of their primary text into public discourse and through public spaces—an extra-textual movement which fundamentally defines what a celebrity embodies.Seriality has to be seen as fundamental to a personnage’s power of and extension into the public world. For instance with Harry Potter again, at least some of his recognition is dependent on the linking or seriating the related books and movies. Seriality helps organise our sense of affective connection to our popular culture. The familiarity of some element of repetition is both comforting for audiences and provides at least a sense of guarantee or warranty that they will enjoy the future text as much as they enjoyed the past related text. Seriality, though, also produces a myriad of other effects and affects which provides a useful background to understand its utility in both the understanding of character and its value in investigating contemporary public persona. Etymologically, the words “series” and seriality are from the Latin and refer to “succession” in classical usage and are identified with ancestry and the patterns of identification and linking descendants (Oxford English Dictionary). The original use of the seriality highlights its value in understanding the formation of the constitution of person and persona and how the past and ancestry connect in series to the current or contemporary self. Its current usage, however, has broadened metaphorically outwards to identify anything that is in sequence or linked or joined: it can be a series of lectures and arguments or a related mark of cars manufactured in a manner that are stylistically linked. It has since been deployed to capture the production process of various cultural forms and one of the key origins of this usage came from the 19th century novel. There are many examples where the 19th century novel was sold and presented in serial form that are too numerous to even summarise here. It is useful to use Dickens’ serial production as a defining example of how seriality moved into popular culture and the entertainment industry more broadly. Part of the reason for the sheer length of many of Charles Dickens’ works related to their original distribution as serials. In fact, all his novels were first distributed in chapters in monthly form in magazines or newspapers. A number of related consequences from Dickens’ serialisation are relevant to understanding seriality in entertainment culture more widely (Hayward). First, his novel serialisation established a continuous connection to his readers over years. Thus Dickens’ name itself became synonymous and connected to an international reading public. Second, his use of seriality established a production form that was seen to be more affordable to its audience: seriality has to be understood as a form that is closely connected to economies and markets as cultural commodities kneaded their way into the structure of everyday life. And third, seriality established through repetition not only the author’s name but also the name of the key characters that populated the cultural form. Although not wholly attributable to the serial nature of the delivery, the characters such as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or David Copperfield along with a host of other major and minor players in his many books become integrated into everyday discourse because of their ever-presence and delayed delivery over stories over time (see Allen 78-79). In the same way that newspapers became part of the vernacular of contemporary culture, fictional characters from novels lived for years at a time in the consciousness of this large reading public. The characters or personnages themselves became personalities that through usage became a way of describing other behaviours. One can think of Uriah Heep and his sheer obsequiousness in David Copperfield as a character-type that became part of popular culture thinking and expressing a clear negative sentiment about a personality trait. In the twentieth century, serials became associated much more with book series. One of the more successful serial genres was the murder mystery. It developed what could be described as recognisable personnages that were both fictional and real. Thus, the real Agatha Christie with her consistent and prodigious production of short who-dunnit novels was linked to her Belgian fictional detective Hercule Poirot. Variations of these serial constructions occurred in children’s fiction, the emerging science fiction genre, and westerns with authors and characters rising to related prominence.In a similar vein, early to mid-twentieth century film produced the film serial. In its production and exhibition, the film serial was a déclassé genre in its overt emphasis on the economic quality of seriality. Thus, the film serial was generally a filler genre that was interspersed before and after a feature film in screenings (Dixon). As well as producing a familiarity with characters such as Flash Gordon, it was also instrumental in producing actors with a public profile that grew from this repetition. Flash Gordon was not just a character; he was also the actor Buster Crabbe and, over time, the association became indissoluble for audiences and actor alike. Feature film serials also developed in the first half-century of American cinema in particular with child actors like Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland often reprising variations of their previous roles. Seriality more or less became the standard form of delivery of broadcast media for most of the last 70 years and this was driven by the economies of production it developed. Whether the production was news, comedy, or drama, most radio and television forms were and are variation of serials. As well as being the zenith of seriality, television serials have been the most studied form of seriality of all cultural forms and are thus the greatest source of research into what serials actually produced. The classic serial that began on radio and migrated to television was the soap opera. Although most of the long-running soap operas have now disappeared, many have endured for more than 30 years with the American series The Guiding Light lasting 72 years and the British soap Coronation Street now in its 64th year. Australian nighttime soap operas have managed a similar longevity: Neighbours is in its 30th year, while Home and Away is in its 27th year. Much of the analyses of soap operas and serials deals with the narrative and the potential long narrative arcs related to characters and storylines. In contrast to most evening television serials historically, soap operas maintain the continuity from one episode to the next in an unbroken continuity narrative. Evening television serials, such as situation comedies, while maintaining long arcs over their run are episodic in nature: the structure of the story is generally concluded in the given episode with at least partial closure in a manner that is never engaged with in the never-ending soap opera serials.Although there are other cultural forms that deploy seriality in their structures—one can think of comic books and manga as two obvious other connected and highly visible serial sources—online and video games represent the other key media platform of serials in contemporary culture. Once again, a “horizon of expectation” (Jauss and De Man 23) motivates the iteration of new versions of games by the industry. New versions of games are designed to build on gamer loyalties while augmenting the quality and possibilities of the particular game. Game culture and gamers have a different structural relationship to serials which at least Denson and Jahn-Sudmann describe as digital seriality: a new version of a game is also imagined to be technologically more sophisticated in its production values and this transformation of the similitude of game structure with innovation drives the economy of what are often described as “franchises.” New versions of Minecraft as online upgrades or Call of Duty launches draw the literal reinvestment of the gamer. New consoles provide a further push to serialisation of games as they accentuate some transformed quality in gameplay, interaction, or quality of animated graphics. Sports franchises are perhaps the most serialised form of game: to replicate new professional seasons in each major sport, the sports game transforms with a new coterie of players each year.From these various venues, one can see the centrality of seriality in cultural forms. There is no question that one of the dimensions of seriality that transcends these cultural forms is its coordination and intersection with the development of the industrialisation of culture and this understanding of the economic motivation behind series has been explored from some of the earliest analyses of seriality (see Hagedorn; Browne). Also, seriality has been mined extensively in terms of its production of the pleasure of repetition and transformation. The exploration of the popular, whether in studies of readers of romance fiction (Radway), or fans of science fiction television (Tulloch and Jenkins; Jenkins), serials have provided the resource for the exploration of the power of the audience to connect, engage and reconstruct texts.The analysis of the serialisation of character—the production of a public personnage—and its relation to persona surprisingly has been understudied. While certain writers have remarked on the longevity of a certain character, such as Vicky Lord’s 40 year character on the soap opera One Life to Live, and the interesting capacity to maintain both complicated and hidden storylines (de Kosnik), and fan audience studies have looked at the parasocial-familiar relationship that fan and character construct, less has been developed about the relationship of the serial character, the actor and a form of twinned public identity. Seriality does produce a patterning of personnage, a structure of familiarity for the audience, but also a structure of performance for the actor. For instance, in a longitudinal analysis of the character of Fu Manchu, Mayer is able to discern how a patterning of iconic form shapes, replicates, and reiterates the look of Fu Manchu across decades of films (Mayer). Similarly, there has been a certain work on the “taxonomy of character” where the serial character of a television program is analysed in terms of 6 parts: physical traits/appearance; speech patterns, psychological traits/habitual behaviours; interaction with other characters; environment; biography (Pearson quoted in Lotz).From seriality what emerges is a particular kind of “type-casting” where the actor becomes wedded to the specific iteration of the taxonomy of performance. As with other elements related to seriality, serial character performance is also closely aligned to the economic. Previously I have described this economic patterning of performance the “John Wayne Syndrome.” Wayne’s career developed into a form of serial performance where the individual born as Marion Morrison becomes structured into a cultural and economic category that determines the next film role. The economic weight of type also constructs the limits and range of the actor. Type or typage as a form of casting has always been an element of film and theatrical performance; but it is the seriality of performance—the actual construction of a personnage that flows between the fictional and real person—that allows an actor to claim a persona that can be exchanged within the industry. Even 15 years after his death, Wayne remained one of the most popular performers in the United States, his status unrivalled in its close definition of American value that became wedded with a conservative masculinity and politics (Wills).Type and typecasting have an interesting relationship to seriality. From Eisenstein’s original use of the term typage, where the character is chosen to fit into the meaning of the film and the image was placed into its sequence to make that meaning, it generally describes the circumscribing of the actor into their look. As Wojcik’s analysis reveals, typecasting in various periods of theatre and film acting has been seen as something to be fought for by actors (in the 1850s) and actively resisted in Hollywood in 1950 by the Screen Actors Guild in support of more range of roles for each actor. It is also seen as something that leads to cultural stereotypes that can reinforce the racial profiling that has haunted diverse cultures and the dangers of law enforcement for centuries (Wojcik 169-71). Early writers in the study of film acting, emphasised that its difference from theatre was that in film the actor and character converged in terms of connected reality and a physicality: the film actor was less a mask and more a sense of “being”(Kracauer). Cavell’s work suggested film over stage performance allowed an individuality over type to emerge (34). Thompson’s semiotic “commutation” test was another way of assessing the power of the individual “star” actor to be seen as elemental to the construction and meaning of the film role Television produced with regularity character-actors where performance and identity became indissoluble partly because of the sheer repetition and the massive visibility of these seriated performances.One of the most typecast individuals in television history was Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek: although the original Star Trek series ran for only three seasons, the physical caricature of Spock in the series as a half-Vulcan and half-human made it difficult for the actor Nimoy to exit the role (Laws). Indeed, his famous autobiography riffed on this mis-identity with the forceful but still economically powerful title I am Not Spock in 1975. When Nimoy perceived that his fans thought that he was unhappy in his role as Spock, he published a further tome—I Am Spock—that righted his relationship to his fictional identity and its continued source of roles for the previous 30 years. Although it is usually perceived as quite different in its constitution of a public identity, a very similar structure of persona developed around the American CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With his status as anchor confirmed in its power and centrality to American culture in his desk reportage of the assassination and death of President Kennedy in November 1963, Cronkite went on to inhabit a persona as the most trusted man in the United States by the sheer gravitas of hosting the Evening News stripped across every weeknight at 6:30pm for the next 19 years. In contrast to Nimoy, Cronkite became Cronkite the television news anchor, where persona, actor, and professional identity merged—at least in terms of almost all forms of the man’s visibility.From this vantage point of understanding the seriality of character/personnage and how it informs the idea of the actor, I want to provide a longer conclusion about how seriality informs the concept of persona in the contemporary moment. First of all, what this study reveals is the way in which the production of identity is overlaid onto any conception of identity itself. If we can understand persona not in any negative formulation, but rather as a form of productive performance of a public self, then it becomes very useful to see that these very visible public blendings of performance and the actor-self can make sense more generally as to how the public self is produced and constituted. My final and concluding examples will try and elucidate this insight further.In 2013, Netflix launched into the production of original drama with its release of House of Cards. The series itself was remarkable for a number of reasons. First among them, it was positioned as a quality series and clearly connected to the lineage of recent American subscription television programs such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, Madmen, The Wire, Deadwood, and True Blood among a few others. House of Cards was an Americanised version of a celebrated British mini-series. In the American version, an ambitious party whip, Frank Underwood, manoeuvres with ruthlessness and the calculating support of his wife closer to the presidency and the heart and soul of American power. How the series expressed quality was at least partially in its choice of actors. The role of Frank Underwood was played by the respected film actor Kevin Spacey. His wife, Clare, was played by the equally high profile Robin Warren. Quality was also expressed through the connection of the audience of viewers to an anti-hero: a personnage that was not filled with virtue but moved with Machiavellian acuity towards his objective of ultimate power. This idea of quality emerged in many ways from the successful construction of the character of Tony Soprano by James Gandolfini in the acclaimed HBO television series The Sopranos that reconstructed the very conception of the family in organised crime. Tony Soprano was enacted as complex and conflicted with a sense of right and justice, but embedded in the personnage were psychological tropes and scars, and an understanding of the need for violence to maintain influence power and a perverse but natural sense of order (Martin).The new television serial character now embodied a larger code and coterie of acting: from The Sopranos, there is the underlying sense and sensibility of method acting (see Vineberg; Stanislavski). Gandolfini inhabited the role of Tony Soprano and used the inner and hidden drives and motivations to become the source for the display of the character. Likewise, Spacey inhabits Frank Underwood. In that new habitus of television character, the actor becomes subsumed by the role. Gandolfini becomes both over-determined by the role and his own identity as an actor becomes melded to the role. Kevin Spacey, despite his longer and highly visible history as a film actor is overwhelmed by the televisual role of Frank Underwood. Its serial power, where audiences connect for hours and hours, where the actor commits to weeks and weeks of shoots, and years and years of being the character—a serious character with emotional depth, with psychological motivation that rivals the most visceral of film roles—transforms the actor into a blended public person and the related personnage.This blend of fictional and public life is complex as much for the producing actor as it is for the audience that makes the habitus real. What Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood inhabit is a blended persona, whose power is dependent on the constructed identity that is at source the actor’s production as much as any institutional form or any writer or director connected to making House of Cards “real.” There is no question that this serial public identity will be difficult for Kevin Spacey to disentangle when the series ends; in many ways it will be an elemental part of his continuing public identity. This is the economic power and risk of seriality.One can see similar blendings in the persona in popular music and its own form of contemporary seriality in performance. For example, Eminem is a stage name for a person sometimes called Marshall Mathers; but Eminem takes this a step further and produces beyond a character in its integration of the personal—a real personnage, Slim Shady, to inhabit his music and its stories. To further complexify this construction, Eminem relies on the production of his stories with elements that appear to be from his everyday life (Dawkins). His characterisations because of the emotional depth he inhabits through his rapped stories betray a connection to his own psychological state. Following in the history of popular music performance where the singer-songwriter’s work is seen by all to present a version of the public self that is closer emotionally to the private self, we once again see how the seriality of performance begins to produce a blended public persona. Rap music has inherited this seriality of produced identity from twentieth century icons of the singer/songwriter and its display of the public/private self—in reverse order from grunge to punk, from folk to blues.Finally, it is worthwhile to think of online culture in similar ways in the production of public personas. Seriality is elemental to online culture. Social media encourage the production of public identities through forms of repetition of that identity. In order to establish a public profile, social media users establish an identity with some consistency over time. The everydayness in the production of the public self online thus resembles the production and performance of seriality in fiction. Professional social media sites such as LinkedIn encourage the consistency of public identity and this is very important in understanding the new versions of the public self that are deployed in contemporary culture. However, much like the new psychological depth that is part of the meaning of serial characters such as Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Slim Shady in Eminem, or Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, social media seriality also encourages greater revelations of the private self via Instagram and Facebook walls and images. We are collectively reconstituted as personas online, seriated by the continuing presence of our online sites and regularly drawn to reveal more and greater depths of our character. In other words, the online persona resembles the new depth of the quality television serial personnage with elaborate arcs and great complexity. Seriality in our public identity is also uncovered in the production of our game avatars where, in order to develop trust and connection to friends in online settings, we maintain our identity and our patterns of gameplay. At the core of this online identity is a desire for visibility, and we are drawn to be “picked up” and shared in some repeatable form across what we each perceive as a meaningful dimension of culture. Through the circulation of viral images, texts, and videos we engage in a circulation and repetition of meaning that feeds back into the constancy and value of an online identity. Through memes we replicate and seriate content that at some level seriates personas in terms of humour, connection and value.Seriality is central to understanding the formation of our masks of public identity and is at least one valuable analytical way to understand the development of the contemporary persona. This essay represents the first foray in thinking through the relationship between seriality and persona.ReferencesBarbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. “The Academic Online Constructing Persona.” First Monday 17.9 (2012).Browne, Nick. “The Political Economy of the (Super)Text.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9.3 (1984): 174-82. Cavell, Stanley. “Reflections on the Ontology of Film.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Wojcik and Pamela Robertson. London: Routledge, 2004 (1979). 29-35.Dawkins, Marcia Alesan. “Close to the Edge: Representational Tactics of Eminem.” The Journal of Popular Culture 43.3 (2010): 463-85.De Kosnik, Abigail. “One Life to Live: Soap Opera Storytelling.” How to Watch Television. Ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 355-63.Denson, Shane, and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann. “Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games.” Journal of Computer Game Culture 7.1 (2013): 1-32.Dixon, Wheeler Winston. “Flash Gordon and the 1930s and 40s Science Fiction Serial.” Screening the Past 11 (2011). 20 May 2014.Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1973.Hagedorn, Roger “Technology and Economic Exploitation: The Serial as a Form of Narrative Presentation.” Wide Angle 10. 4 (1988): 4-12.Hayward, Jennifer Poole. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.Heinrich, Nathalie. “Personne, Personnage, Personalité: L'acteur a L'ère De Sa Reproductibilité Technique.” Personne/Personnage. Eds. Thierry Lenain and Aline Wiame. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2011. 77-101.Jauss, Hans Robert, and Paul De Man. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Brighton: Harvester, 1982.Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.Jung, C. G., et al. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.Kracauer, Siegfried. “Remarks on the Actor.” Movie Acting, the Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004 (1960). 19-27.Leonard Nimoy & Pharrell Williams: Star Trek & Creating Spock. Ep. 12. Reserve Channel. December 2013. Lenain, Thierry, and Aline Wiame (eds.). Personne/Personnage. Librairie Philosophiques J. VRIN, 2011.Lotz, Amanda D. “House: Narrative Complexity.” How to Watch TV. Ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 22-29.Marshall, P. David. “The Cate Blanchett Persona and the Allure of the Oscar.” The Conversation (2014). 4 April 2014.Marshall, P. David “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-70.Marshall, P. David. “Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum.” Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 369-71.Marshall, P. David. “The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48.Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.Martin, Brett. Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. London: Faber and Faber, 2013.Mayer, R. “Image Power: Seriality, Iconicity and the Mask of Fu Manchu.” Screen 53.4 (2012): 398-417.Nayar, Pramod K. Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society, and Celebrity Culture. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2009.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Not Spock. Milbrae, California: Celestial Arts, 1975.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Spock. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 1995.Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Stanislavski, Constantin. Creating a Role. New York: Routledge, 1989 (1961).Thompson, John O. “Screen Acting and the Commutation Test.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004 (1978). 37-48.Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.Vineberg, Steve. Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style. New York; Toronto: Schirmer Books, 1991.Wills, Garry. John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. “Typecasting.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004. 169-89.

Introduction "Doesn't that wreck your records?" This is one of the first things I generally get asked when someone watches me at work in my home or while spinning at a party. It reminds me of a different but related question I once asked someone who worked at Rotate This!, a particularly popular Toronto DJ refuge, a few days after I had bought my first turntable: DJO: "How do you stop that popping and crackling sound your record gets when you scratch back and forth on the same spot for a while?" CLERK: "You buy two copies of everything, one you keep at home all wrapped-up nice and never use, and the other you mess with." My last $150 had just managed to pay for an old Dual direct drive record player. The precious few recently-released records I had were gifts. I nodded my head and made my way over to the rows of disks which I flipped through to make it look like I was maybe going to buy something. Lp cover after lp cover stared back at me all with names I had absolutely never heard of before, organised according to a hyper- hybridised classification scheme that completely escaped my dictionary-honed alphabetic expectations. Worst of all, there seemed to be only single copies of everything left! A sort of outsider's vertigo washed over me, and 3 minutes after walking into unfamiliar territory, I zipped back out onto the street. Thus was to begin my love/hate relationship with the source of all DJ sounds, surliness and misinformation--the independent record shop. My query had (without my planning) boldly pronounced my neophyte status. The response it solicited challenged my seriousness. How much was I willing to invest in order to ride "the wheels of steel"? Sequence 1 Will Straw describes the meteoric rise to prominence of the CD format, If the compact disk has emerged as one of the most dazzlingly effective of commodity forms, this has little to do with its technical superiority to the vinyl record (which we no longer remember to notice). Rather, the effectiveness has to do with its status as the perfect crossover consumer object. As a cutting-edge audiophile invention, it seduced the technophilic, connoisseurist males who typically buy new sound equipment and quickly build collections of recordings. At the same time, its visual refinement and high price rapidly rendered it legitimate as a gift. In this, the CD has found a wide audience among the population of casual record buyers.(61) Straw's point has to do with the fate of musical recordings within contemporary commodity culture. In the wake of a late 70's record industry slump, music labels turned their attention toward the recapturing of casual record sales (read: aging baby boomers). The general shape of this attempt revolved around a re-configuring of the record- shopping experience dedicated towards reducing "the intimidation seen as endemic to the environment of the record store."(59) The CD format, along with the development of super-sized, general interest (all-genre) record outlets has worked (according to Straw) to streamline record sales towards more-predictable patterns, all the while causing less "selection stress."(59) Re-issues and compilations, special-series trademarks, push-button listening stations, and maze-like display layouts, combined with department store-style service ("Can I help you find anything?") all work towards eliminating the need for familiarity with particular music "scenes" in order to make personally gratifying (and profit engendering) musical choices. Straw's analysis is exemplary in its dissatisfaction with treating the arena of personal musical choice as unaffected by any constraints apart from subjective matters of taste. Straw's evaluation also isolates the vinyl record as an object eminently ready (post-digital revolution) for subcultural appropriation. Its displacement by the CD as the dominant medium for collecting recorded music involved the recasting of the turntable as outdated and inferior, thereby relegating it to the dusty attic, basement or pawn shop (along with crates upon crates upon crates of records). These events set the stage for vinyl's spectacular rise from the ashes. The most prominent feature of this re-emergence has to do not simply with possession of the right kind of stuff (the cachet of having a music collection difficult for others to borrow aside), but with what vinyl and turntable technology can do. Bridge In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige claims that subcultures are, cultures of conspicuous consumption...and it is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its "secret identity" and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is basically the way in which commodities are used in subculture which mark the subculture off from more orthodox cultural formations.(103 Hebdige borrows the notion of bricolage from Levi Strauss in order to describe the particular kind of use subcultures make of the commodities they appropriate. Relationships of identity, difference and order are developed from out of the minds of those who make use of the objects in question and are not necessarily determined by particular qualities inherent to the objects themselves. Henceforth a safety pin more often used for purposes like replacing missing buttons or temporarily joining pieces of fabric can become a punk fashion statement once placed through the nose, ear or torn Sex Pistols tee-shirt. In the case of DJ culture, it is the practice of mixing which most obviously presents itself as definitive of subcultural participation. The objects of conspicuous consumption in this case--record tracks. If mixing can be understood as bricolage, then attempts "to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code"(18) by such a practice are not in vain. Granting mixing the power of meaning sets a formidable (semiotic) framework in place for investigating the practice's outwardly visible (spectacular) form and structure. Hebdige's description of bricolage as a particularly conspicuous and codified type of using, however, runs the risk of privileging an account of record collecting and mixing which interprets it entirely on the model of subjective expression.(1.) What is necessary is a means of access to the dialogue which takes place between a DJ and her records as such. The contents of a DJ's record bag (like Straw's CD shopping bag) are influenced by more that just her imagination, pocket book and exposure to different kinds of music. They are also determined in an important way by each other. Audio mixing is not one practice, it is many, and the choice to develop or use one sort of skill over another is intimately tied up with the type and nature of track one is working with. Sequence 2 The raw practice of DJing relies heavily on a slider integral to DJ mixers known as the _cross-fader_(ital). With the standard DJ set up, when the cross-fader is all the way to the left, the left turntable track plays through the system; vice versa when the fader is all the way to the right. In between is the "open" position which allows both inputs to be heard simultaneously. The most straightforward mixing technique, "cutting," involves using this toggle to quickly switch from one source to another--resulting in the abrupt end of one sound- flow followed by its instantaneous replacement. This technique can be used to achieve a variety of different effects--from the rather straightforward stringing together of the final beat of a four bar sequence from one track with a strong downbeat from something new in order to provide continuous, but sequential musical output, to the thoroughly difficult practice of "beat juggling," where short excerpts of otherwise self-contained tracks ("breaks") are isolated and then extended indefinitely through the use of two copies of the same record (while one record plays, the DJ spins the other back to the downbeat of the break in question, which is then released in rhythm). In both cases timing and rhythm are key. These features of the practice help to explain DJ predilections for tracks which make heavy, predictable use of their rhythm sections. "Blending" is a second technique which uses the open position on the cross-fader to mix two inputs into a live sonic collage. Tempo, rhythm and "density" of source material have an enormous impact on the end result. While any two tracks can be layered in this way, beats that are not synchronized are quick to create cacophony, and vocals also tend to clash dramatically. Melodic lines in general pose certain challenges here since these are in particular keys and have obvious starts and finishes. This is one reason why tracks produced specifically for DJing often have such long, minimal intros and exits. This makes it much easier to create "natural" sounding blends. Atmospheric sounds, low-frequency hums, speech samples and repetitive loops with indeterminate rhythm structures are often used for these segments in order to allow drawn-out, subtle transitions when moving between tracks. If an intro contains a fixed beat (as is the case often with genres constructed specifically for non-stop dancing like house, techno and to some extent drum and bass), then those who want seamless blends need to "beat match" if they want to maintain a dancer's groove. The roots of this technique go back to disco and demand fairly strict genre loyalty in order to insure that a set's worth of tracks all hover around the same tempo, defined in beats-per- minute, or BPMs. The basic procedure involves finding the downbeat of the track one wishes to mix through a set of headphones, releasing that beat in time with the other record while making fine tempo- adjustments via the turntable's pitch control to the point where the track coming through the earphones and the track being played over the system are in synch. The next step is "back-spinning" or "needle dropping" to the start of the track to be mixed, then releasing it again, this time with the cross-fader open. Volume levels can then be adjusted in order to allow the new track to slowly take prominence (the initial track being close to its end at this point) before the cross-fader is closed into the new position and the entire procedure is repeated. Scratching is perhaps the most notorious mixing technique and involves the most different types of manipulations. The practice is most highly developed in hip hop (and related genres like drum and bass) and is used both as an advanced cutting technique for moving between tracks as well as a sonic end-in-itself. It's genesis is attributed to a South Bronx DJ known as Grand Wizard Theodore who was the first (1977) to try to make creative use of the sound associated with moving a record needle back and forth over the same drumbeat, a phenomena familiar to DJs used to cueing-up downbeats through headphones. This trick is now referred to as the "baby scratch," and it along with an ever-increasing host of mutations and hybrids make- up the skills that pay the bills for hip hop DJs. In the case of many of these techniques, the cross-fader is once again used heavily in order to remove unwanted elements of particular scratches from the mix, as well as adding certain staccato and volume-fading effects. Isolated, "pure" sounds are easiest to scratch with and are therefore highly sought after by this sort of DJ--a pastime affectionately referred to as "digging in the crates." Sources of such sounds are extremely diverse, but inevitably revolve around genre's which use minimal orchestration (like movie-soundtracks), accentuated rhythms with frequent breakdowns (like funk or jazz), or which eschew musical form all together (like sound-effects, comedy and children's records). Exit To answer the question which started this investigation, in the end, how wrecked my records get depends a lot on what I'm using them for. To be sure, super-fast scratching patterns and tricks that use lots of back-spinning like beat-juggling will eventually "burn" static into spots on one's records. But with used records costing as little as $1 for three, and battle records (2.) widely available, the effect of this feature of the technology on the actual pursuit of the practice is negligible. And most techniques don't noticeably burn records at all, especially if a DJ's touch is light enough to allow for minimal tone-arm weight (a parameter which controls a turntable's groove-tracking ability). This is the kind of knowledge which comes from interaction with objects. It is also the source of a great part of the subcultural bricoleur's stylistic savvy. Herein lies the essence of the intimidating power of the indie record shop--its display of intimate, physical familiarity with the hidden particularities of the new vinyl experience. Investigators confronted with such familiarity need to find ways to go beyond analyses which stop at the level of acknowledgment of the visible logic displayed by spectacular subcultural practices if they wish to develop nuanced accounts of subcultural life. Such plumbing of the depths often requires listening in the place of observing--whether to first-hand accounts collected through ethnography or to the subtle voice of the objects themselves. (1.) An example of such an account: "DJ-ing is evangelism; a desire to share songs. A key skill is obviously not just to drop the popular, well-known songs at the right part of the night, but to pick the right new releases, track down the obscurer tunes and newest imports, get hold of next month's big tune this month; you gather this pile, this tinder, together, then you work the records, mix them, drop them, cut them, scratch them, melt them, beat them all together until they unite. Voilà; disco inferno." Dave Haslam, "DJ Culture," p. 169. (2.) Records specifically designed by and for scratch DJs and which consist of long strings of scratchable sounds. References Haslam, David. "DJ Culture." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997 Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Melvin and Co. Ltd.. 1979 Straw, Will. "Organized Disorder: The Changing Space of the Record Shop." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997

Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. —Marshall McLuhan. What is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action upon them. —Henri Bergson. Introduction: Subjective Maps as ‘Contact Zones’ Maps feature heavily in a variety of media; they appear in textbooks, on television, in print, and on the screens of our handheld devices. The production of cartographic texts is a process that is imbued with power relations and bound up with the production and reproduction of social life (Pinder 405). Mapping involves choices as to what information is and is not included. In their organisation, categorisation, modeling, and representation maps show and they hide. Thus “the idea that a small number of maps or even a single (and singular) map might be sufficient can only apply in a spatialised area of study whose own self-affirmation depends on isolation from its context” (Lefebvre 85–86). These isolations determine the way we interpret the physical, biological, and social worlds. The map can be thought of as a schematic for political systems within a confined set of spatial relations, or as a container for political discourse. Mapping contributes equally to the construction of experiential realities as to the representation of physical space, which also contains the potential to incorporate representations of temporality and rhythm to spatial schemata. Thus maps construct realities as much as they represent them and coproduce space as much as the political identities of people who inhabit them. Maps are active texts and have the ability to promote social change (Pickles 146). It is no wonder, then, that artists, theorists and activists alike readily engage in the conflicted praxis of mapping. This critical engagement “becomes a method to track the past, embody memories, explain the unexplainable” and manifest the latent (Ibarra 66). In this paper I present a short case study of Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies a new media art project that aims to model a citizen driven effort to participate in a critical form of cartography, which challenges dominant representations of the city-space. I present a critical textual analysis of the maps produced in the workshops, the artist statements relating to these works used in the exhibition setting, and statements made by the participants on the project’s blog. This “praxis-logical” approach allows for a focus on the project as a space of aggregation and the communicative processes set in motion within them. In analysing such projects we could (and should) be asking questions about the functions served by the experimental concepts under study—who has put it forward? Who is utilising it and under what circumstances? Where and how has it come into being? How does discourse circulate within it? How do these spaces as sites of emergent forms of resistance within global capitalism challenge traditional social movements? How do they create self-reflexive systems?—as opposed to focusing on ontological and technical aspects of digital mapping (Renzi 73). In de-emphasising the technology of digital cartography and honing in on social relations embedded within the text(s), this study attempts to complement other studies on digital mapping (see Strom) by presenting a case from the field of politically oriented tactical media. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has been selected for analysis, in this exploration of media as “zone.” It goes some way to incorporating subjective narratives into spatial texts. This is a three-step process where participants tapped into spatial subjectivities by data collection or environmental sensing led by personal reflection or ethnographic enquiry, documenting and geo-tagging their findings in the map. Finally they engaged an imaginative or ludic process of synthesising their data in ways not inherent within the traditional conventions of cartography, such as the use of sound and distortion to explicate the intensity of invisible phenomena at various coordinates in the city-space. In what follows I address the “zone” theme by suggesting that if we apply McLuhan’s notion of media as environment together with Henri Bergson’s assertion that visibility and tangibility constitutes the potential for action to digital maps, projects such as Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies constitute a “contact zone.” A type of zone where groups come together at the local level and flows of discourse about art, information communication, media, technology, and environment intersect with local histories and cultures within the cartographic text. A “contact zone,” then, is a site where latent subjectivities are manifested and made potentially politically potent. “Contact zones,” however, need not be spaces for the aggrieved or excluded (Renzi 82), as they may well foster the ongoing cumulative politics of the mundane capable of developing into liminal spaces where dominant orders may be perforated. A “contact zone” is also not limitless and it must be made clear that the breaking of cartographic convention, as is the case with the project under study here, need not be viewed as resistances per se. It could equally represent thresholds for public versus private life, the city-as-text and the city-as-social space, or the zone where representations of space and representational spaces interface (Lefebvre 233), and culture flows between the mediated and ideated (Appadurai 33–36). I argue that a project like Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies demonstrates that maps as urban text form said “contact zones,” where not only are media forms such as image, text, sound, and video are juxtaposed in a singular spatial schematic, but narratives of individual and collective subjectivities (which challenge dominant orders of space and time, and city-rhythm) are contested. Such a “contact zone” in turn may not only act as a resource for citizens in the struggle of urban design reform and a democratisation of the facilities it produces, but may also serve as a heuristic device for researchers of new media spatiotemporalities and their social implications. Critical Cartography and Media Tactility Before presenting this brief illustrative study something needs to be said of the context from which Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies has arisen. Although a number of Web 2.0 applications have come into existence since the introduction of Google Maps and map application program interfaces, which generate a great deal of geo-tagged user generated content aimed at reconceptualising the mapped city-space (see historypin for example), few have exhibited great significance for researchers of media and communications from the perspective of building critical theories relating to political potential in mediated spaces. The expression of power through mapping can be understood from two perspectives. The first—attributed largely to the Frankfurt School—seeks to uncover the potential of a society that is repressed by capitalist co-opting of the cultural realm. This perspective sees maps as a potential challenge to, and means of providing emancipation from, existing power structures. The second, less concerned with dispelling false ideologies, deals with the politics of epistemology (Crampton and Krygier 14). According to Foucault, power was not applied from the top down but manifested laterally in a highly diffused manner (Foucault 117; Crampton and Krygier 14). Foucault’s privileging of the spatial and epistemological aspects of power and resistance complements the Frankfurt School’s resistance to oppression in the local. Together the two perspectives orient power relative to spatial and temporal subjectivities, and thus fit congruently into cartographic conventions. In order to make sense of these practices the post-oppositional character of tactical media maps should be located within an economy of power relations where resistance is never outside of the field of forces but rather is its indispensable element (Renzi 72). Such exercises in critical cartography are strongly informed by the critical politico-aesthetic praxis of political/art collective The Situationist International, whose maps of Paris were inherently political. The Situationist International incorporated appropriated texts into, and manipulated, existing maps to explicate city-rhythms and intensities to construct imaginative and alternate representations of the city. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies adopts a similar approach. The artists’ statement reads: We build our subjective maps by combining different methods: photography, film, and sound recording; […] to explore the visible and invisible […] city; […] we adopt psycho-geographical approaches in exploring territory, defined as the study of the precise effects of the geographical environment, consciously developed or not, acting directly on the emotional behaviour of individuals. The project proposals put forth by workshop participants also draw heavily from the Situationists’s A New Theatre of Operations for Culture. A number of Situationist theories and practices feature in the rationale for the maps created in the Bangalore Subjective Cartographies workshop. For example, the Situationists took as their base a general notion of experimental behaviour and permanent play where rationality was approached on the basis of whether or not something interesting could be created out of it (Wark 12). The dérive is the rapid passage through various ambiences with a playful-constructive awareness of the psychographic contours of a specific section of space-time (Debord). The dérive can be thought of as an exploration of an environment without preconceptions about the contours of its geography, but rather a focus on the reality of inhabiting a place. Détournement involves the re-use of elements from recognised media to create a new work with meaning often opposed to the original. Psycho-geography is taken to be the subjective ambiences of particular spaces and times. The principles of détournement and psycho-geography imply a unitary urbanism, which hints at the potential of achieving in environments what may be achieved in media with détournement. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies carries Situationist praxis forward by attempting to exploit certain properties of information digitalisation to formulate textual representations of unitary urbanism. Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies is demonstrative of a certain media tactility that exists more generally across digital-networked media ecologies and channels this to political ends. This tactility of media is best understood through textual properties awarded by the process and logic of digitalisation described in Lev Manovich’s Language of New Media. These properties are: numerical representation in the form of binary code, which allows for the reification of spatial data in a uniform format that can be stored and retrieved in-silico as opposed to in-situ; manipulation of this code by the use of algorithms, which renders the scales and lines of maps open to alteration; modularity that enables incorporation of other textual objects into the map whilst maintaining each incorporated item’s individual identity; the removal to some degree of human interaction in terms of the translation of environmental data into cartographic form (whilst other properties listed here enable human interaction with the cartographic text), and the nature of digital code allows for changes to accumulate incrementally creating infinite potential for refinements (Manovich 49–63). The Subjective Mapping of Bangalore Bangalore is an interesting site for such a project given the recent and rapid evolution of its media infrastructure. As a “media city,” the first television sets appeared in Bangalore at some point in the early 1980s. The first Internet Service Provider (ISP), which served corporate clients only, commenced operating a decade later and then offered dial-up services to domestic clients in the mid-1990s. At present, however, Bangalore has the largest number of broadband Internet connections in India. With the increasing convergence of computing and telecommunications with traditional forms of media such as film and photography, Bangalore demonstrates well what Scott McQuire terms a media-architecture complex, the core infrastructure for “contact zones” (vii). Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies was a workshop initiated by French artists Benjamin Cadon and Ewen Cardonnet. It was conducted with a number of students at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in November and December 2009. Using Metamap.fr (an online cartographic tool that makes it possible to add multimedia content such as texts, video, photos, sounds, links, location points, and paths to digital maps) students were asked to, in groups of two or three, collect and consult data on ‘felt’ life in Bangalore using an ethnographic, transverse geographic, thematic, or temporal approach. The objective of the project was to model a citizen driven effort to subvert dominant cartographic representations of the city. In doing so, the project and this paper posits that there is potential for such methods to be adopted to form new literacies of cartographic media and to render the cartographic imaginary politically potent. The participants’ brief outlined two themes. The first was the visible and symbolic city where participants were asked to investigate the influence of the urban environment on the behaviours and sensations of its inhabitants, and to research and collect signifiers of traditional and modern worlds. The invisible city brief asked participants to consider the latent environment and link it to human behaviour—in this case electromagnetic radiation linked to the cities telecommunications and media infrastructure was to be specifically investigated. The Visible and Symbolic City During British rule many Indian cities functioned as dual entities where flow of people and commodities circulated between localised enclaves and the centralised British-built areas. Mirroring this was the dual mode of administration where power was shared between elected Indian legislators and appointed British officials (Hoselitz 432–33). Reflecting on this diarchy leads naturally to questions about the politics of civic services such as the water supply, modes of public communication and instruction, and the nature of the city’s administration, distribution, and manufacturing functions. Workshop participants approached these issues in a variety of ways. In the subjective maps entitled Microbial Streets and Water Use and Reuse, food and water sources of street vendors are traced with the aim to map water supply sources relative to the movements of street vendors operating in the city. Images of the microorganisms are captured using hacked webcams as makeshift microscopes. The data was then converted to audio using Pure Data—a real-time graphical programming environment for the processing audio, video and graphical data. The intention of Microbial Streets is to demonstrate how mapping technologies could be used to investigate the flows of food and water from source to consumer, and uncover some of the latencies involved in things consumed unhesitatingly everyday. Typographical Lens surveys Russell Market, an older part of the city through an exploration of the aesthetic and informational transformation of the city’s shop and street signage. In Ethni City, Avenue Road is mapped from the perspective of local goldsmiths who inhabit the area. Both these maps attempt to study the convergence of the city’s dual function and how the relationship between merchants and their customers has changed during the transition from localised enclaves, catering to the sale of particular types of goods, to the development of shopping precincts, where a variety of goods and services can be sought. Two of the project’s maps take a spatiotemporal-archivist approach to the city. Bangalore 8mm 1940s uses archival Super 8 footage and places digitised copies on the map at the corresponding locations of where they were originally filmed. The film sequences, when combined with satellite or street-view images, allow for the juxtaposition of present day visions of the city with those of the 1940s pre-partition era. Chronicles of Collection focuses on the relationship between people and their possessions from the point of view of the object and its pathways through the city in space and time. Collectors were chosen for this map as the value they placed on the object goes beyond the functional and the monetary, which allowed the resultant maps to access and express spatially the layers of meaning a particular object may take on in differing contexts of place and time in the city-space. The Invisible City In the expression of power through city-spaces, and by extension city-texts, certain circuits and flows are ossified and others rendered latent. Raymond Williams in Politics and Letters writes: however dominant a social system may be, the very meaning of its domination involves a limitation or selection of the activities it covers, so that by definition it cannot exhaust all social experience, which therefore always potentially contains space for alternative acts and alternative intentions which are not yet articulated as a social institution or even project. (252) The artists’ statement puts forward this possible response, an exploration of the latent aesthetics of the city-space: In this sense then, each device that enriches our perception for possible action on the real is worthy of attention. Even if it means the use of subjective methods, that may not be considered ‘evidence’. However, we must admit that any subjective investigation, when used systematically and in parallel with the results of technical measures, could lead to new possibilities of knowledge. Electromagnetic City maps the city’s sources of electromagnetic radiation, primarily from mobile phone towers, but also as a by-product of our everyday use of technologies, televisions, mobile phones, Internet Wi-Fi computer screens, and handheld devices. This map explores issues around how the city’s inhabitants hear, see, feel, and represent things that are a part of our environment but invisible, and asks: are there ways that the intangible can be oriented spatially? The intensity of electromagnetic radiation being emitted from these sources, which are thought to negatively influence the meditation of ancient sadhus (sages) also features in this map. This data was collected by taking electromagnetic flow meters into the suburb of Yelhanka (which is also of interest because it houses the largest milk dairy in the state of Karnataka) in a Situationist-like derive and then incorporated back into Metamap. Signal to Noise looks at the struggle between residents concerned with the placement of mobile phone towers around the city. It does so from the perspectives of people who seek information about their placement concerned about mobile phone signal quality, and others concerned about the proximity of this infrastructure to their homes due to to potential negative health effects. Interview footage was taken (using a mobile phone) and manipulated using Pure Data to distort the visual and audio quality of the footage in proportion to the fidelity of the mobile phone signal in the geographic area where the footage was taken. Conclusion The “contact zone” operating in Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies, and the underlying modes of social enquiry that make it valuable, creates potential for the contestation of new forms of polity that may in turn influence urban administration and result in more representative facilities of, and for, city-spaces and their citizenry. Robert Hassan argues that: This project would mean using tactical media to produce new spaces and temporalities that are explicitly concerned with working against the unsustainable “acceleration of just about everything” that our present neoliberal configuration of the network society has generated, showing that alternatives are possible and workable—in ones job, home life, family life, showing that digital [spaces and] temporality need not mean the unerring or unbending meter of real-time [and real city-space] but that an infinite number of temporalities [and subjectivities of space-time] can exist within the network society to correspond with a diversity of local and contextual cultures, societies and polities. (174) As maps and locative motifs begin to feature more prominently in media, analyses such as the one discussed in this paper may allow for researchers to develop theoretical approaches to studying newer forms of media. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. “Bangalore: Subjective Cartographies.” 25 July 2011 ‹http://bengaluru.labomedia.org/page/2/›. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911. Crampton, Jeremy W., and John Krygier. “An Introduction to Critical Cartography.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geography 4 (2006): 11–13. Chardonnet, Ewen, and Benjamin Cadon. “Semaphore.” 25 July 2011 ‹http://semaphore.blogs.com/semaphore/spectral_investigations_collective/›. Debord, Guy. “Theory of the Dérive.” 25 July 2011 ‹http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm›. Foucault, Michel. Remarks on Marx. New York: Semitotext[e], 1991.Hassan, Robert. The Chronoscopic Society: Globalization, Time and Knowledge in the Networked Economy. New York: Lang, 2003. “Historypin.” 4 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.historypin.com/›. Hoselitz, Bert F. “A Survey of the Literature on Urbanization in India.” India’s Urban Future Ed. Roy Turner. Berkeley: U of California P, 1961. 425-43. Ibarra, Anna. “Cosmologies of the Self.” Elephant 7 (2011): 66–96. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Lovink, Geert. Dark Fibre. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. “Metamap.fr.” 3 Mar. 2011 ‹http://metamap.fr/›. McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is the Massage. London: Penguin, 1967. McQuire, Scott. The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space. London: Sage, 2008. Pickles, John. A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-Coded World. London: Routledge, 2004. Pinder, David. “Subverting Cartography: The Situationists and Maps of the City.” Environment and Planning A 28 (1996): 405–27. “Pure Data.” 6 Aug. 2011 ‹http://puredata.info/›. Renzi, Alessandra. “The Space of Tactical Media” Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times. Ed. Megan Boler. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008. 71–100. Situationist International. “A New Theatre of Operations for Culture.” 6 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk/index.php/urbanism/reading-the-situationist-city/›. Strom, Timothy Erik. “Space, Cyberspace and the Interface: The Trouble with Google Maps.” M/C Journal 4.3 (2011). 6 Aug. 2011 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/370›. Wark, McKenzie. 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. Williams, Raymond. Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review. London: New Left, 1979.

0. IntroductionIf we follow the line of much literature surrounding airports and urban mobility, the emphasis often falls on the fact that these spaces are designed to handle the mega-scale and super-human pace of mass transit. Airports have rightly been associated with velocity, as zones of rapid movement managed by enormous processing systems that guide bodies and things in transit (Pascoe; Pearman; Koolhaas; Gordon; Fuller & Harley). Yet this emphasis tends to ignore the spectrum of tempos and flows that are at play in airport terminals — from stillness to the much exalted hyper-rapidity of mobilized publics in the go-go world of commercial aviation.In this photo essay I'd like to pull a different thread and ask whether it's possible to think of aeromobility in terms of “uneven, differential mobility” (Bissell 280). What would it mean to consider waiting and stillness as forms of bodily engagement operating over a number of different scales and temporalities of movement and anticipation, without privileging speed over stillness? Instead of thinking mobility and stillness as diametrically opposed, can we instead conceive of them as occupying a number of different spatio-temporal registers in a dynamic range of mobility? The following is a provisional "visual ethnography" constructed from photographs of air terminal light boxes I have taken over the last five years (in Amsterdam, London, Chicago, Frankfurt, and Miami). Arranged into a "taxonomy of differentiality", each of these images comes from a slightly different angle, mode or directionality. Each view of these still images displayed in billboard-scale light-emitting devices suggests that there are multiple dimensions of visuality and bodily experience at play in these image-objects. The airport is characterized by an abundance of what appears to be empty space. This may be due to the sheer scale of mass transport, but it also arises from a system of active and non-active zones located throughout contemporary terminals. This photo series emphasises the "emptiness" of these overlooked left-over spaces that result from demands of circulation and construction.1. We Move the WorldTo many travellers, airport gate lounges and their surrounding facilities are loaded with a variety of contradictory associations and affects. Their open warehouse banality and hard industrial sterility tune our bodies to the vast technical and commercial systems that are imbricated through almost every aspect of contemporary everyday life.Here at the departure gate the traveller's body comes to a moment's rest. They are granted a short respite from the anxious routines of check in, body scans, security, information processing, passport scanning, itineraries, boarding procedures and wayfaring the terminal. The landside processing system deposits them at this penultimate point before final propulsion into the invisible airways that pipe them into their destination. We hear the broadcasting of boarding times, check-in times, name's of people that break them away from stillness, forcing people to move, to re-arrange themselves, or to hurry up. Along the way the passenger encounters a variety of techno-spatial experiences that sit at odds with the overriding discourse of velocity, speed and efficiency that lie at the centre of our social understanding of air travel. The airline's phantasmagorical projections of itself as guarantor and enabler of mass mobilities coincides uncomfortably with the passenger's own wish-fulfilment of escape and freedom.In this we can agree with the designer Bruce Mau when he suggests that these projection systems, comprised of "openings of every sort — in schedules, in urban space, on clothes, in events, on objects, in sightlines — are all inscribed with the logic of the market” (Mau 7). The advertising slogans and images everywhere communicate the dual concept that the aviation industry can deliver the world to us on time while simultaneously porting us to any part of the world still willing to accept Diners, VISA or American Express. At each point along the way these openings exhort us to stop, to wait in line, to sit still or to be patient. The weird geographies depicted by the light boxes appear like interpenetrating holes in space and time. These travel portals are strangely still, and only activated by the impending promise of movement.Be still and relax. Your destination is on its way. 2. Attentive AttentionAlongside the panoramic widescreen windows that frame the choreography of the tarmac and flight paths outside, appear luminous advertising light boxes. Snapped tightly to grid and locked into strategic sightlines and thoroughfares, these wall pieces are filled with a rotating menu of contemporary airport haiku and ersatz Swiss graphic design.Mechanically conditioned air pumped out of massive tubes creates the atmosphere for a very particular amalgam of daylight, tungsten, and fluorescent light waves. Low-oxygen-emitting indoor plants are no match for the diesel-powered plant rooms that maintain the constant flow of air to every nook and cranny of this massive processing machine. As Rem Koolhaas puts it, "air conditioning has launched the endless building. If architecture separates buildings, air conditioning unites them" (Koolhaas). In Koolhaas's lingo, these are complex "junkspaces" unifying, colliding and coalescing a number of different circulatory systems, temporalities and mobilities.Gillian Fuller reminds us there is a lot of stopping and going and stopping in the global circulatory system typified by air-terminal-space.From the packing of clothes in fixed containers to strapping your belt – tight and low – stillness and all its requisite activities, technologies and behaviours are fundamental to the ‘flow’ architectures that organize the motion of the globalizing multitudes of today (Fuller, "Store" 63). It is precisely this functional stillness organised around the protocols of store and forward that typifies digital systems, the packet switching of network cultures and the junkspace of airports alike.In these zones of transparency where everything is on view, the illuminated windows so proudly brought to us by J C Decaux flash forward to some idealized moment in the future. In this anticipatory moment, the passenger's every fantasy of in-flight service is attended to. The ultimate in attentiveness (think dimmed lights, soft pillows and comfy blankets), this still image is captured from an improbable future suspended behind the plywood and steel seating available in the moment —more reminiscent of park benches in public parks than the silver-service imagined for the discerning traveller.3. We Know ChicagoSelf-motion is itself a demonstration against the earth-binding weight of gravity. If we climb or fly, our defiance is greater (Appleyard 180).The commercial universe of phones, cameras, computer network software, financial instruments, and an array of fancy new gadgets floating in the middle of semi-forgotten transit spaces constitutes a singular interconnected commercial organism. The immense singularity of these claims to knowledge and power loom solemnly before us asserting their rights in the Esperanto of "exclusive rollover minutes", "nationwide long distance", "no roaming charges" and insider local knowledge. The connective tissue that joins one part of the terminal to a commercial centre in downtown Chicago is peeled away, revealing techno-veins and tendrils reaching to the sky. It's a graphic view that offers none of the spectacular openness and flights of fancy associated with the transit lounges located on the departure piers and satellites. Along these circulatory ribbons we experience the still photography and the designer's arrangement of type to attract the eye and lure the body. The blobby diagonals of the telco's logo blend seamlessly with the skyscraper's ribbons of steel, structural exoskeleton and wireless telecommunication cloud.In this plastinated anatomy, the various layers of commercially available techno-space stretch out before the traveller. Here we have no access to the two-way vistas made possible by the gigantic transparent tube structures of the contemporary air terminal. Waiting within the less travelled zones of the circulatory system we find ourselves suspended within the animating system itself. In these arteries and capillaries the flow is spread out and comes close to a halt in the figure of the graphic logo. We know Chicago is connected to us.In the digital logic of packet switching and network effects, there is no reason to privilege the go over the stop, the moving over the waiting. These light box portals do not mirror our bodies, almost at a complete standstill now. Instead they echo the commercial product world that they seek to transfuse us into. What emerges is a new kind of relational aesthetics that speaks to the complex corporeal, temporal, and architectural dimensions of stillness and movement in transit zones: like "a game, whose forms, patterns and functions develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts” (Bourriaud 11). 4. Machine in the CaféIs there a possible line of investigation suggested by the fact that sound waves become visible on the fuselage of jet planes just before they break the sound barrier? Does this suggest that the various human senses are translatable one into the other at various intensities (McLuhan 180)?Here, the technological imaginary contrasts itself with the techno alfresco dining area enclosed safely behind plate glass. Inside the cafes and bars, the best businesses in the world roll out their biggest guns to demonstrate the power, speed and scale of their network coverage (Remmele). The glass windows and light boxes "have the power to arrest a crowd around a commodity, corralling them in chic bars overlooking the runway as they wait for their call, but also guiding them where to go next" (Fuller, "Welcome" 164). The big bulbous plane sits plump in its hangar — no sound barriers broken here. It reassures us that our vehicle is somewhere there in the network, resting at its STOP before its GO. Peeking through the glass wall and sharing a meal with us, this interpenetrative transparency simultaneously joins and separates two planar dimensions — machinic perfection on one hand, organic growth and death on the other (Rowe and Slutsky; Fuller, "Welcome").Bruce Mau is typical in suggesting that the commanding problem of the twentieth century was speed, represented by the infamous image of a US Navy Hornet fighter breaking the sound barrier in a puff of smoke and cloud. It has worked its way into every aspect of the design experience, manufacturing, computation and transport.But speed masks more than it reveals. The most pressing problem facing designers and citizens alike is growth — from the unsustainable logic of infinite growth in GDP to the relentless application of Moore's Law to the digital networks and devices that define contemporary society in the first world. The shift of emphasis from speed to growth as a time-based event with breaking points and moments of rupture has generated new possibilities. "Growth is nonlinear and unpredictable ... Few of us are ready to admit that growth is constantly shadowed by its constitutive opposite, that is equal partners with death” (Mau 497).If speed in part represents a flight from death (Virilio), growth invokes its biological necessity. In his classic study of the persistence of the pastoral imagination in technological America, The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx charted the urge to idealize rural environments at the advent of an urban industrialised America. The very idea of "the flight from the city" can be understood as a response to the onslaught of technological society and it's deathly shadow. Against the murderous capacity of technological society stood the pastoral ideal, "incorporated in a powerful metaphor of contradiction — a way of ordering meaning and value that clarifies our situation today" (Marx 4). 5. Windows at 35,000 FeetIf waiting and stillness are active forms of bodily engagement, we need to consider the different layers of motion and anticipation embedded in the apprehension of these luminous black-box windows. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg notes that the Old Norse derivation of the word window “emphasizes the etymological root of the eye, open to the wind. The window aperture provides ventilation for the eye” (103).The virtual windows we are considering here evoke notions of view and shelter, open air and sealed protection, both separation from and connection to the outside. These windows to nowhere allow two distinct visual/spatial dimensions to interface, immediately making the visual field more complex and fragmented. Always simultaneously operating on at least two distinct fields, windows-within-windows provide a specialized mode of spatial and temporal navigation. As Gyorgy Kepes suggested in the 1940s, the transparency of windows "implies more than an optical characteristic; it implies a broader spatial order. Transparency means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations" (Kepes 77).The first windows in the world were openings in walls, without glass and designed to allow air and light to fill the architectural structure. Shutters were fitted to control air flow, moderate light and to enclose the space completely. It was not until the emergence of glass technologies (especially in Holland, home of plate glass for the display of commercial products) that shielding and protection also allowed for unhindered views (by way of transparent glass). This gives rise to the thesis that windows are part of a longstanding architectural/technological system that moderates the dual functions of transparency and separation. With windows, multi-dimensional planes and temporalities can exist in the same time and space — hence a singular point of experience is layered with many other dimensions. Transparency and luminosity "ceases to be that which is perfectly clear and becomes instead that which is clearly ambiguous" (Rowe and Slutsky 45). The light box air-portals necessitate a constant fluctuation and remediation that is at once multi-planar, transparent and "hard to read". They are informatic.From holes in the wall to power lunch at 35,000 feet, windows shape the manner in which light, information, sights, smells, temperature and so on are modulated in society. "By allowing the outside in and the inside out, [they] enable cosmos and construction to innocently, transparently, converge" (Fuller, "Welcome" 163). Laptop, phone, PDA and light box point to the differential mobilities within a matrix that traverses multiple modes of transparency and separation, rest and flight, stillness and speed.6. Can You Feel It?Increasingly the whole world has come to smell alike: gasoline, detergents, plumbing, and junk foods coalesce into the catholic smog of our age (Illich 47).In these forlorn corners of mobile consumption, the dynamic of circulation simultaneously slows and opens out. The surfaces of inscription implore us to see them at precisely the moment we feel unseen, unguided and off-camera. Can you see it, can you feel it, can you imagine the unimaginable, all available to us on demand? Expectation and anticipation give us something to look forward to, but we're not sure we want what's on offer.Air travel radicalizes the separation of the air traveller from ground at one instance and from the atmosphere at another. Air, light, temperature and smell are all screened out or technologically created by the terminal plant and infrastructure. The closer the traveller moves towards stillness, the greater the engagement with senses that may have been ignored by the primacy of the visual in so much of this circulatory space. Smell, hunger, tiredness, cold and hardness cannot be screened out.In this sense, the airplanes we board are terminal extensions, flying air-conditioned towers or groundscrapers jet-propelled into highways of the air. Floating above the horizon, immersed in a set of logistically ordained trajectories and pressurized bubbles, we look out the window and don't see much at all. Whatever we do see, it's probably on the screen in front of us which disconnects us from one space-time-velocity at the same time that it plugs us into another set of relations. As Koolhaas says, junkspace is "held together not by structure, but by skin, like a bubble" (Koolhaas). In these distended bubbles, the traveler momentarily occupies an uncommon transit space where stillness is privileged and velocity is minimized. The traveler's body itself is "engaged in and enacting a whole kaleidoscope of different everyday practices and forms" during the course of this less-harried navigation (Bissell 282).7. Elevator MusicsThe imaginary wheel of the kaleidoscope spins to reveal a waiting body-double occupying the projected territory of what appears to be a fashionable Miami. She's just beyond our reach, but beside her lies a portal to another dimension of the terminal's vascular system.Elevators and the networks of shafts and vents that house them, are to our buildings like veins and arteries to the body — conduits that permeate and structure the spaces of our lives while still remaining separate from the fixity of the happenings around them (Garfinkel 175). The terminal space contains a number of apparent cul-de-sacs and escape routes. Though there's no background music piped in here, another soundtrack can be heard. The Muzak corporation may douse the interior of the elevator with its own proprietary aural cologne, but at this juncture the soundscape is more "open". This functional shifting of sound from figure to ground encourages peripheral hearing, providing "an illusion of distended time", sonically separated from the continuous hum of "generators, ventilation systems and low-frequency electrical lighting" (Lanza 43).There is another dimension to this acoustic realm: “The mobile ecouteur contracts the flows of information that are supposed to keep bodies usefully and efficiently moving around ... and that turn them into functions of information flows — the speedy courier, the networking executive on a mobile phone, the scanning eyes of the consumer” (Munster 18).An elevator is a grave says an old inspector's maxim, and according to others, a mechanism to cross from one world to another. Even the quintessential near death experience with its movement down a long illuminated tunnel, Garfinkel reminds us, “is not unlike the sensation of movement we experience, or imagine, in a long swift elevator ride” (Garfinkel 191).8. States of SuspensionThe suspended figure on the screen occupies an impossible pose in an impossible space: half falling, half resting, an anti-angel for today's weary air traveller. But it's the same impossible space revealed by the airport and bundled up in the experience of flight. After all, the dimension this figures exists in — witness the amount of activity in his suspension — is almost like a black hole with the surrounding universe collapsing into it. The figure is crammed into the light box uncomfortably like passengers in the plane, and yet occupies a position that does not exist in the Cartesian universe.We return to the glossy language of advertising, its promise of the external world of places and products delivered to us by the image and the network of travel. (Remmele) Here we can go beyond Virilio's vanishing point, that radical reversibility where inside and outside coincide. Since everybody has already reached their destination, for Virilio it has become completely pointless to leave: "the inertia that undermines your corporeity also undermines the GLOBAL and the LOCAL; but also, just as much, the MOBILE and the IMMOBILE” (Virilio 123; emphasis in original).In this clinical corner of stainless steel, glass bricks and exit signs hangs an animated suspension that articulates the convergence of a multitude of differentials in one image. Fallen into the weirdest geometry in the world, it's as if the passenger exists in a non-place free of all traces. Flows and conglomerates follow one another, accumulating in the edges, awaiting their moment to be sent off on another trajectory, occupying so many spatio-temporal registers in a dynamic range of mobility.ReferencesAppleyard, Donald. "Motion, Sequence and the City." The Nature and Art of Motion. Ed. Gyorgy Kepes. New York: George Braziller, 1965. Adey, Peter. "If Mobility Is Everything Then It Is Nothing: Towards a Relational Politics of (Im)mobilities." Mobilities 1.1 (2006): 75–95. Bissell, David. “Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities.” Mobilities 2.2 (2007): 277-298.Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Paris: Les Presses du Reel, 2002. Classen, Constance. “The Deodorized City: Battling Urban Stench in the Nineteenth Century.” Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism. Ed. Mirko Zardini. Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2005. 292-322. Friedberg, Anne. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge: MIT P, 2006. Fuller, Gillian, and Ross Harley. Aviopolis: A Book about Airports. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2005. Fuller, Gillian. "Welcome to Windows: Motion Aesthetics at the Airport." Ed. Mark Salter. Politics at the Airport. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2008. –––. "Store Forward: Architectures of a Future Tense". Ed. John Urry, Saolo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring. Air Time Spaces: Theory and Method in Aeromobilities Research. London: Routledge, 2008. 63-75.Garfinkel, Susan. “Elevator Stories: Vertical Imagination and the Spaces of Possibility.” Up Down Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks. Ed. Alisa Goetz. London: Merrell, 2003. 173-196. Gordon, Alastair. Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure. New York: Metropolitan, 2004.Illich, Ivan. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of Stuff. Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1985. Kepes, Gyorgy. Language of Vision. New York: Dover Publications, 1995 (1944). Koolhass, Rem. "Junkspace." Content. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.btgjapan.org/catalysts/rem.html›.Lanza, Joseph. "The Sound of Cottage Cheese (Why Background Music Is the Real World Beat!)." Performing Arts Journal 13.3 (Sep. 1991): 42-53. McLuhan, Marshall. “Is It Natural That One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another.” McLuhan: Hot and Cool. Ed. Gerald Emanuel Stearn. Middlesex: Penguin, 1967. 172-182. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. London: Oxford U P, 1964. Mau, Bruce. Life Style. Ed. Kyo Maclear with Bart Testa. London: Phaidon, 2000. Munster, Anna. Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics. New England: Dartmouth, 2006. Pascoe, David. Airspaces. London: Reaktion, 2001. Pearman, Hugh. Airports: A Century of Architecture. New York: Abrams, 2004. Remmele, Mathias. “An Invitation to Fly: Poster Art in the Service of Civilian Air Travel.” Airworld: Design and Architecture for Air Travel. Ed. Alexander von Vegesack and Jochen Eisenbrand. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2004. 230-262. Rowe, Colin, and Robert Slutsky. Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal. Perspecta 8 (1963): 45-54. Virilio, Paul. City of Panic. Trans. Julie Rose. Oxford: Berg, 2005.

Are male porn stars full-fledged citizens? Recent political developments make this question more than rhetorical. The Bush Justice Department, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, has targeted the porn industry, beginning with its prosecution of Extreme Associates. More recently, the President requested an increase in the FBI’s 2005 budget for prosecuting obscenity, one of the few budget increases for the Bureau outside of its anti-terrorism program (Schmitt A1). To be sure, the concept of “citizen” is itself vexed. Citizenship, when obtained or granted, ostensibly legitimates a subject and opens up pathways to privilege: social, political, economic, etc. Yet all citizens do not seem to be created equal. “There is, in the operation of state-defined rules and in common practices an assumption of moral worth in which de facto as opposed to de jure rights of citizenship are defined as open to those who are deserving or who are capable of acting responsibly,” asserts feminist critic Linda McDowell. “The less deserving and the less responsible are defined as unworthy of or unfitted for the privileges of full citizenship” (150). Under this rubric, a citizen must measure up to a standard of “moral worth”—an individual is not a full-fledged citizen merely on the basis of birth or geographical placement. As McDowell concludes, “citizenship is not an inclusive but an exclusive concept” (150). Thus, in figuring out how male porn stars stand in regard to the question of citizenship, we must ask who determines “moral worth,” who distinguishes the less from the more deserving, and how people have come to agree on the “common practices” of citizenship. Many critics writing about citizenship, including McDowell, Michael Warner, Lauren Berlant, Russ Castronovo, Robyn Wiegman, Michael Moon, and Cathy Davidson (to name only a few) have located the nexus of “moral worth” in the body. In particular, the ability to make the body abstract, invisible, and non-identifiable has been the most desirable quality for a citizen to possess. White men seem ideally situated for such acts of “decorporealization,” and the white male body has been installed as the norm for citizenship. Conversely, women, people of color, and the ill and disabled, groups that are frequently defined by their very embodiment, find themselves more often subject to regulation. If the white male body is the standard, however, for “moral worth,” the white male porn star would seem to disrupt such calculations. Clearly, the profession demands that these men put their bodies very much in evidence, and the most famous porn stars, like John C. Holmes and Ron Jeremy, derive much of their popularity from their bodily excess. Jeremy’s struggle for “legitimacy,” and the tenuous position of men in the porn industry in general, demonstrate that even white males, when they cannot or will not aspire to abstraction and invisibility, will lose the privileges of citizenship. The right’s attack on pornography can thus be seen as yet another attempt to regulate and restrict citizenship, an effort that forces Jeremy and the industry that made him famous struggle for strategies of invisibility that will permit some mainstream acceptance. In American Anatomies, Robyn Wiegman points out that the idea of democratic citizenship rested on a distinct sense of the abstract and non-particular. The more “particular” an individual was, however, the less likely s/he could pass into the realm of citizen. “For those trapped by the discipline of the particular (women, slaves, the poor),” Wiegman writes, “the unmarked and universalized particularity of the white masculine prohibited their entrance into the abstraction of personhood that democratic equality supposedly entailed” (49). The norm of the “white masculine” caused others to signify “an incontrovertible difference” (49), so people who were visibly different (or perceived as visibly different) could be tyrannized over and regulated to ensure the purity of the norm. Like Wiegman, Lauren Berlant has written extensively about the ways in which the nation recognizes only one “official” body: “The white, male body is the relay to legitimation, but even more than that, the power to suppress that body, to cover its tracks and its traces, is the sign of real authority, according to constitutional fashion” (113). Berlant notes that “problem citizens”—most notably women of color—struggle with the problem of “surplus embodiment.” They cannot easily suppress their bodies, so they are subjected to the regulatory power of a law that defines them and consequently opens their bodies up to violation. To escape their “surplus embodiment,” those who can seek abstraction and invisibility because “sometimes a person doesn’t want to seek the dignity of an always-already-violated body, and wants to cast hers off, either for nothingness, or in a trade for some other, better model” (114). The question of “surplus embodiment” certainly has resonance for male porn stars. Peter Lehman has argued that hardcore pornography relies on images of large penises as signifiers of strength and virility. “The genre cannot tolerate a small, unerect penis,” Lehman asserts, “because the sight of the organ must convey the symbolic weight of the phallus” (175). The “power” of male porn stars derives from their visibility, from “meat shots” and “money shots.” Far from being abstract, decorporealized “persons,” male porn stars are fully embodied. In fact, the more “surplus embodiment” they possess, the more famous they become. Yet the very display that makes white male porn stars famous also seemingly disqualifies them from the “legitimacy” afforded the white male body. In the industry itself, male stars are losing authority to the “box-cover girls” who sell the product. One’s “surplus embodiment” might be a necessity for working in the industry, but, as Susan Faludi notes, “by choosing an erection as the proof of male utility, the male performer has hung his usefulness, as porn actor Jonathan Morgan observed, on ‘the one muscle on our body we can’t flex’” (547). When that muscle doesn’t work, a male porn star doesn’t become an abstraction—he becomes “other,” a joke, swept aside and deemed useless. Documentary filmmaker Scott J. Gill recognizes the tenuousness of the “citizenship” of male porn stars in his treatment of Ron Jeremy, “America’s most famous porn star.” The film, Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001), opens with a clear acknowledgment of Jeremy’s body, as one voiceover explains how his nickname, “the Hedgehog,” derives from the fact that Jeremy is “small, fat, and very hairy.” Then, Gill intercuts the comments of various Jeremy fans: “An idol to an entire generation,” one young man opines; “One of the greatest men this country has ever seen,” suggests another. This opening scene concludes with an image of Jeremy, smirking and dressed in a warm-up suit with a large dollar sign necklace, standing in front of an American flag (an image repeated at the end of the film). This opening few minutes posit the Hedgehog as super-citizen, embraced as few Americans are. “Everyone wants to be Ron Jeremy,” another young fan proclaims. “They want his life.” Gill also juxtaposes “constitutional” forms of legitimacy that seemingly celebrate Jeremy’s bodily excess with the resultant discrimination that body actually engenders. In one clip, Jeremy exposes himself to comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who then sardonically comments, “All men are created equal—what bullshit!” Later, Gill employs a clip of a film in which Jeremy is dressed like Ben Franklin while in a voiceover porn director/historian Bill Margold notes that the Freeman decision “gave a birth certificate to a bastard industry—it legitimized us.” The juxtaposition thus posits Jeremy as a “founding father” of sorts, the most recognizable participant in an industry now going mainstream. Gill, however, emphasizes the double-edged nature of Jeremy’s fame and the price of his display. Immediately after the plaudits of the opening sequence, Gill includes clips from various Jeremy talk show appearances in which he is denounced as “scum” and told “You should go to jail just for all the things that you’ve helped make worse in this country” and “You should be shot.” Gill also shows a clearly dazed Jeremy in close-up confessing, “I hate myself. I want to find a knife and slit my wrists.” Though Jeremy does not seem serious, this comment comes into better focus as the film unfolds. Jeremy’s efforts to go “legit,” to break into mainstream film and leave his porn life behind, keep going off the tracks. In the meantime, Jeremy must fulfill his obligations to his current profession, including getting a monthly HIV test. “There’ll be one good thing about eventually getting out of the porn business,” he confesses as Gill shows scenes of a clearly nervous Jeremy awaiting results in a clinic waiting room, “to be able to stop taking these things every fucking month.” Gill shows that the life so many others would love to have requires an abuse of the body that fans never see. Jeremy is seeking to cast off that life, “either for nothingness, or in a trade for some other, better model.” Behind this “legend” is unseen pain and longing. Gill emphasizes the dichotomy between Jeremy (illegitimate) and “citizens” in his own designations. Adam Rifkin, director of Detroit Rock City, in which Jeremy has a small part, and Troy Duffy, another Jeremy pal, are referred to as “mainstream film directors.” When Jeremy returns to his home in Queens to visit his father, Arnold Hyatt is designated “physicist.” In fact, Jeremy’s father forbids his son from using the family name in his porn career. “I don’t want any confusion between myself and his line of work,” Hyatt confesses, “because I’m retired.” Denied his patronym, Jeremy is truly “illegitimate.” Despite his father’s understanding and support, Jeremy is on his own in the business he has chosen. Jeremy’s reputation also gets in the way of his mainstream dreams. “Sometimes all this fame can hurt you,” Jeremy himself notes. Rifkin admits that “People recognize Ron as a porn actor and immediately will ask me to remove him from the final cut.” Duffy concurs that Jeremy’s porn career has made him a pariah for some mainstream producers: “Stigma attached to him, and that’s all anybody’s ever gonna see.” Jeremy’s visibility, the “stigma” that people have “seen,” namely, his large penis and fat, hairy body, denies him the abstract personhood he needs to go “legitimate.” Thus, whether through the concerted efforts of the Justice Department or the informal, personal angst of a producer fearing a backlash against a film, Jeremy, as a representative of an immoral industry, finds himself subject to regulation. Indeed, as his “legitimate” filmography indicates, Jeremy has been cut out of more than half the films he has appeared in. The issue of “visibility” as the basis for regulation of hardcore pornography has its clearest articulation in Potter Stewart’s famous proclamation “I know it when I see it.” But as Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong report in The Brethren, Stewart was not the only Justice who used visibility as a standard. Byron White’s personal definition was “no erect penises, no intercourse, no oral or anal sodomy” (193). William Brennan, too, had what his clerks called “the limp dick standard” (194). Erection, what Lehman has identified as the conveyance of the phallus, now became the point of departure for regulation, transferring, once again, the phallus to the “law.” When such governmental regulation failed First Amendment ratification, other forms of societal regulation kicked in. The porn industry has accommodated itself to this regulation, as Faludi observes, in its emphasis on “soft” versions of product for distribution to “legitimate” outlets like cable and hotels. “The version recut for TV would have to be entirely ‘soft,’” Faludi notes, “which meant, among other things, no erect penises and no semen” (547). The work of competent “woodsmen” like Jeremy now had to be made invisible to pass muster. Thus, even the penis could be conveyed to the viewer, a “fantasy penis,” as Katherine Frank has called it, that can be made to correlate to that viewer’s “fantasized identity” of himself (133-4). At the beginning of Porn Star, during the various homages paid to Jeremy, one fan draws a curious comparison: “There’s Elvis, and then there’s Ron.” Elvis’s early career had certainly been plagued by criticism related to his bodily excess. Musicologist Robert Fink has recently compared Presley’s July 2, 1956, recording of “Hound Dog” to music for strip tease, suggesting that Elvis used such subtle variations to challenge the law that was constantly impinging on his performances: “The Gray Lady was sensitive to the presence of quite traditional musical erotics—formal devices that cued the performer and audience to experience their bodies sexually—but not quite hep enough to accept a male performer recycling these musical signifiers of sex back to a female audience” (99). Eventually, though, Elvis stopped rebelling and sought respectability. Writing to President Nixon on December 21, 1970, Presley offered his services to help combat what he perceived to be a growing cultural insurgency. “The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc., do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it, The Establishment,” Presley confided. “I call it America and I love it” (Carroll 266). In short, Elvis wanted to use his icon status to help reinstate law and order, in the process demonstrating his own patriotism, his value and worth as a citizen. At the end of Porn Star, Jeremy, too, craves legitimacy. Whereas Elvis appealed to Nixon, Jeremy concludes by appealing to Steven Spielberg. Elvis received a badge from Nixon designating him as “special assistant” for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Presumably Jeremy invests his legitimacy in a SAG card. Kenny Dollar, a Jeremy friend, unironically summarizes the final step the Hedgehog must take: “It’s time for Ron to go on and reach his full potential. Let him retire his dick.” That Jeremy must do the latter before having a chance for the former illustrates how “surplus embodiment” and “citizenship” remain inextricably entangled and mutually exclusive. References Berlant, Lauren. “National Brands/National Body: Imitation of Life.” Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text. Ed. Hortense Spillers. New York: Routledge, 1991: 110-140. Carroll, Andrew, ed. Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Castronovo, Russ and Nelson, Dana D., eds. Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1999. Fink, Robert. “Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon.” Rock Over the Edge: Transformations in Popular Music Culture. Eds. Roger Beebe, Denise Fulbrook, and Ben Saunders. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002: 60-109. Frank, Katherine. G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Gill, Scott J., dir. Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. New Video Group, 2001. Lehman, Peter. Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. McDowell, Linda. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Moon, Michael and Davidson, Cathy N., eds. Subjects and Citizens: From Oroonoko to Anita Hill. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Schmitt, Richard B. “U. S. Plans to Escalate Porn Fight.” The Los Angeles Times 14 February 2004. A1. Wiegman, Robyn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Woodward, Bob and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. MLA Style Russell, David. "The Tumescent Citizen: The Legend of Ron Jeremy." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/01_citizen.php>. APA Style Russell, D. (2004 Oct 11). The Tumescent Citizen: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/01_citizen.php>

There is no diagram that does not also include, besides the points it connects up, certain relatively free or unbounded points, points of creativity, change and resistance, and it is perhaps with these that we ought to begin in order to understand the whole picture. (Deleuze, “Foucault” 37) Monty Cantsin: Why do we use a pervert software robot to exploit our collective consensual mind? Letitia: Because we want the thief to be a digital entity. Monty Cantsin: But isn’t this really blasphemic? Letitia: Yes, but god – in our case a meta-cocktail of authorship and copyright – can not be trusted anymore. (Amazon Noir, “Dialogue”) In 2006, some 3,000 digital copies of books were silently “stolen” from online retailer Amazon.com by targeting vulnerabilities in the “Search inside the Book” feature from the company’s website. Over several weeks, between July and October, a specially designed software program bombarded the Search Inside!™ interface with multiple requests, assembling full versions of texts and distributing them across peer-to-peer networks (P2P). Rather than a purely malicious and anonymous hack, however, the “heist” was publicised as a tactical media performance, Amazon Noir, produced by self-proclaimed super-villains Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico, and Ubermorgen.com. While controversially directed at highlighting the infrastructures that materially enforce property rights and access to knowledge online, the exploit additionally interrogated its own interventionist status as theoretically and politically ambiguous. That the “thief” was represented as a digital entity or machinic process (operating on the very terrain where exchange is differentiated) and the emergent act of “piracy” was fictionalised through the genre of noir conveys something of the indeterminacy or immensurability of the event. In this short article, I discuss some political aspects of intellectual property in relation to the complexities of Amazon Noir, particularly in the context of control, technological action, and discourses of freedom. Software, Piracy As a force of distribution, the Internet is continually subject to controversies concerning flows and permutations of agency. While often directed by discourses cast in terms of either radical autonomy or control, the technical constitution of these digital systems is more regularly a case of establishing structures of operation, codified rules, or conditions of possibility; that is, of guiding social processes and relations (McKenzie, “Cutting Code” 1-19). Software, as a medium through which such communication unfolds and becomes organised, is difficult to conceptualise as a result of being so event-orientated. There lies a complicated logic of contingency and calculation at its centre, a dimension exacerbated by the global scale of informational networks, where the inability to comprehend an environment that exceeds the limits of individual experience is frequently expressed through desires, anxieties, paranoia. Unsurprisingly, cautionary accounts and moral panics on identity theft, email fraud, pornography, surveillance, hackers, and computer viruses are as commonplace as those narratives advocating user interactivity. When analysing digital systems, cultural theory often struggles to describe forces that dictate movement and relations between disparate entities composed by code, an aspect heightened by the intensive movement of informational networks where differences are worked out through the constant exposure to unpredictability and chance (Terranova, “Communication beyond Meaning”). Such volatility partially explains the recent turn to distribution in media theory, as once durable networks for constructing economic difference – organising information in space and time (“at a distance”), accelerating or delaying its delivery – appear contingent, unstable, or consistently irregular (Cubitt 194). Attributing actions to users, programmers, or the software itself is a difficult task when faced with these states of co-emergence, especially in the context of sharing knowledge and distributing media content. Exchanges between corporate entities, mainstream media, popular cultural producers, and legal institutions over P2P networks represent an ongoing controversy in this respect, with numerous stakeholders competing between investments in property, innovation, piracy, and publics. Beginning to understand this problematic landscape is an urgent task, especially in relation to the technological dynamics that organised and propel such antagonisms. In the influential fragment, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” Gilles Deleuze describes the historical passage from modern forms of organised enclosure (the prison, clinic, factory) to the contemporary arrangement of relational apparatuses and open systems as being materially provoked by – but not limited to – the mass deployment of networked digital technologies. In his analysis, the disciplinary mode most famously described by Foucault is spatially extended to informational systems based on code and flexibility. According to Deleuze, these cybernetic machines are connected into apparatuses that aim for intrusive monitoring: “in a control-based system nothing’s left alone for long” (“Control and Becoming” 175). Such a constant networking of behaviour is described as a shift from “molds” to “modulation,” where controls become “a self-transmuting molding changing from one moment to the next, or like a sieve whose mesh varies from one point to another” (“Postscript” 179). Accordingly, the crisis underpinning civil institutions is consistent with the generalisation of disciplinary logics across social space, forming an intensive modulation of everyday life, but one ambiguously associated with socio-technical ensembles. The precise dynamics of this epistemic shift are significant in terms of political agency: while control implies an arrangement capable of absorbing massive contingency, a series of complex instabilities actually mark its operation. Noise, viral contamination, and piracy are identified as key points of discontinuity; they appear as divisions or “errors” that force change by promoting indeterminacies in a system that would otherwise appear infinitely calculable, programmable, and predictable. The rendering of piracy as a tactic of resistance, a technique capable of levelling out the uneven economic field of global capitalism, has become a predictable catch-cry for political activists. In their analysis of multitude, for instance, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt describe the contradictions of post-Fordist production as conjuring forth a tendency for labour to “become common.” That is, as productivity depends on flexibility, communication, and cognitive skills, directed by the cultivation of an ideal entrepreneurial or flexible subject, the greater the possibilities for self-organised forms of living that significantly challenge its operation. In this case, intellectual property exemplifies such a spiralling paradoxical logic, since “the infinite reproducibility central to these immaterial forms of property directly undermines any such construction of scarcity” (Hardt and Negri 180). The implications of the filesharing program Napster, accordingly, are read as not merely directed toward theft, but in relation to the private character of the property itself; a kind of social piracy is perpetuated that is viewed as radically recomposing social resources and relations. Ravi Sundaram, a co-founder of the Sarai new media initiative in Delhi, has meanwhile drawn attention to the existence of “pirate modernities” capable of being actualised when individuals or local groups gain illegitimate access to distributive media technologies; these are worlds of “innovation and non-legality,” of electronic survival strategies that partake in cultures of dispersal and escape simple classification (94). Meanwhile, pirate entrepreneurs Magnus Eriksson and Rasmus Fleische – associated with the notorious Piratbyrn – have promoted the bleeding away of Hollywood profits through fully deployed P2P networks, with the intention of pushing filesharing dynamics to an extreme in order to radicalise the potential for social change (“Copies and Context”). From an aesthetic perspective, such activist theories are complemented by the affective register of appropriation art, a movement broadly conceived in terms of antagonistically liberating knowledge from the confines of intellectual property: “those who pirate and hijack owned material, attempting to free information, art, film, and music – the rhetoric of our cultural life – from what they see as the prison of private ownership” (Harold 114). These “unruly” escape attempts are pursued through various modes of engagement, from experimental performances with legislative infrastructures (i.e. Kembrew McLeod’s patenting of the phrase “freedom of expression”) to musical remix projects, such as the work of Negativland, John Oswald, RTMark, Detritus, Illegal Art, and the Evolution Control Committee. Amazon Noir, while similarly engaging with questions of ownership, is distinguished by specifically targeting information communication systems and finding “niches” or gaps between overlapping networks of control and economic governance. Hans Bernhard and Lizvlx from Ubermorgen.com (meaning ‘Day after Tomorrow,’ or ‘Super-Tomorrow’) actually describe their work as “research-based”: “we not are opportunistic, money-driven or success-driven, our central motivation is to gain as much information as possible as fast as possible as chaotic as possible and to redistribute this information via digital channels” (“Interview with Ubermorgen”). This has led to experiments like Google Will Eat Itself (2005) and the construction of the automated software thief against Amazon.com, as process-based explorations of technological action. Agency, Distribution Deleuze’s “postscript” on control has proven massively influential for new media art by introducing a series of key questions on power (or desire) and digital networks. As a social diagram, however, control should be understood as a partial rather than totalising map of relations, referring to the augmentation of disciplinary power in specific technological settings. While control is a conceptual regime that refers to open-ended terrains beyond the architectural locales of enclosure, implying a move toward informational networks, data solicitation, and cybernetic feedback, there remains a peculiar contingent dimension to its limits. For example, software code is typically designed to remain cycling until user input is provided. There is a specifically immanent and localised quality to its actions that might be taken as exemplary of control as a continuously modulating affective materialism. The outcome is a heightened sense of bounded emergencies that are either flattened out or absorbed through reconstitution; however, these are never linear gestures of containment. As Tiziana Terranova observes, control operates through multilayered mechanisms of order and organisation: “messy local assemblages and compositions, subjective and machinic, characterised by different types of psychic investments, that cannot be the subject of normative, pre-made political judgments, but which need to be thought anew again and again, each time, in specific dynamic compositions” (“Of Sense and Sensibility” 34). This event-orientated vitality accounts for the political ambitions of tactical media as opening out communication channels through selective “transversal” targeting. Amazon Noir, for that reason, is pitched specifically against the material processes of communication. The system used to harvest the content from “Search inside the Book” is described as “robot-perversion-technology,” based on a network of four servers around the globe, each with a specific function: one located in the United States that retrieved (or “sucked”) the books from the site, one in Russia that injected the assembled documents onto P2P networks and two in Europe that coordinated the action via intelligent automated programs (see “The Diagram”). According to the “villains,” the main goal was to steal all 150,000 books from Search Inside!™ then use the same technology to steal books from the “Google Print Service” (the exploit was limited only by the amount of technological resources financially available, but there are apparent plans to improve the technique by reinvesting the money received through the settlement with Amazon.com not to publicise the hack). In terms of informational culture, this system resembles a machinic process directed at redistributing copyright content; “The Diagram” visualises key processes that define digital piracy as an emergent phenomenon within an open-ended and responsive milieu. That is, the static image foregrounds something of the activity of copying being a technological action that complicates any analysis focusing purely on copyright as content. In this respect, intellectual property rights are revealed as being entangled within information architectures as communication management and cultural recombination – dissipated and enforced by a measured interplay between openness and obstruction, resonance and emergence (Terranova, “Communication beyond Meaning” 52). To understand data distribution requires an acknowledgement of these underlying nonhuman relations that allow for such informational exchanges. It requires an understanding of the permutations of agency carried along by digital entities. According to Lawrence Lessig’s influential argument, code is not merely an object of governance, but has an overt legislative function itself. Within the informational environments of software, “a law is defined, not through a statue, but through the code that governs the space” (20). These points of symmetry are understood as concretised social values: they are material standards that regulate flow. Similarly, Alexander Galloway describes computer protocols as non-institutional “etiquette for autonomous agents,” or “conventional rules that govern the set of possible behavior patterns within a heterogeneous system” (7). In his analysis, these agreed-upon standardised actions operate as a style of management fostered by contradiction: progressive though reactionary, encouraging diversity by striving for the universal, synonymous with possibility but completely predetermined, and so on (243-244). Needless to say, political uncertainties arise from a paradigm that generates internal material obscurities through a constant twinning of freedom and control. For Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, these Cold War systems subvert the possibilities for any actual experience of autonomy by generalising paranoia through constant intrusion and reducing social problems to questions of technological optimisation (1-30). In confrontation with these seemingly ubiquitous regulatory structures, cultural theory requires a critical vocabulary differentiated from computer engineering to account for the sociality that permeates through and concatenates technological realities. In his recent work on “mundane” devices, software and code, Adrian McKenzie introduces a relevant analytic approach in the concept of technological action as something that both abstracts and concretises relations in a diffusion of collective-individual forces. Drawing on the thought of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, he uses the term “transduction” to identify a key characteristic of technology in the relational process of becoming, or ontogenesis. This is described as bringing together disparate things into composites of relations that evolve and propagate a structure throughout a domain, or “overflow existing modalities of perception and movement on many scales” (“Impersonal and Personal Forces in Technological Action” 201). Most importantly, these innovative diffusions or contagions occur by bridging states of difference or incompatibilities. Technological action, therefore, arises from a particular type of disjunctive relation between an entity and something external to itself: “in making this relation, technical action changes not only the ensemble, but also the form of life of its agent. Abstraction comes into being and begins to subsume or reconfigure existing relations between the inside and outside” (203). Here, reciprocal interactions between two states or dimensions actualise disparate potentials through metastability: an equilibrium that proliferates, unfolds, and drives individuation. While drawing on cybernetics and dealing with specific technological platforms, McKenzie’s work can be extended to describe the significance of informational devices throughout control societies as a whole, particularly as a predictive and future-orientated force that thrives on staged conflicts. Moreover, being a non-deterministic technical theory, it additionally speaks to new tendencies in regimes of production that harness cognition and cooperation through specially designed infrastructures to enact persistent innovation without any end-point, final goal or natural target (Thrift 283-295). Here, the interface between intellectual property and reproduction can be seen as a site of variation that weaves together disparate objects and entities by imbrication in social life itself. These are specific acts of interference that propel relations toward unforeseen conclusions by drawing on memories, attention spans, material-technical traits, and so on. The focus lies on performance, context, and design “as a continual process of tuning arrived at by distributed aspiration” (Thrift 295). This later point is demonstrated in recent scholarly treatments of filesharing networks as media ecologies. Kate Crawford, for instance, describes the movement of P2P as processual or adaptive, comparable to technological action, marked by key transitions from partially decentralised architectures such as Napster, to the fully distributed systems of Gnutella and seeded swarm-based networks like BitTorrent (30-39). Each of these technologies can be understood as a response to various legal incursions, producing radically dissimilar socio-technological dynamics and emergent trends for how agency is modulated by informational exchanges. Indeed, even these aberrant formations are characterised by modes of commodification that continually spillover and feedback on themselves, repositioning markets and commodities in doing so, from MP3s to iPods, P2P to broadband subscription rates. However, one key limitation of this ontological approach is apparent when dealing with the sheer scale of activity involved, where mass participation elicits certain degrees of obscurity and relative safety in numbers. This represents an obvious problem for analysis, as dynamics can easily be identified in the broadest conceptual sense, without any understanding of the specific contexts of usage, political impacts, and economic effects for participants in their everyday consumptive habits. Large-scale distributed ensembles are “problematic” in their technological constitution, as a result. They are sites of expansive overflow that provoke an equivalent individuation of thought, as the Recording Industry Association of America observes on their educational website: “because of the nature of the theft, the damage is not always easy to calculate but not hard to envision” (“Piracy”). The politics of the filesharing debate, in this sense, depends on the command of imaginaries; that is, being able to conceptualise an overarching structural consistency to a persistent and adaptive ecology. As a mode of tactical intervention, Amazon Noir dramatises these ambiguities by framing technological action through the fictional sensibilities of narrative genre. Ambiguity, Control The extensive use of imagery and iconography from “noir” can be understood as an explicit reference to the increasing criminalisation of copyright violation through digital technologies. However, the term also refers to the indistinct or uncertain effects produced by this tactical intervention: who are the “bad guys” or the “good guys”? Are positions like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (something like freedom or tyranny) so easily identified and distinguished? As Paolo Cirio explains, this political disposition is deliberately kept obscure in the project: “it’s a representation of the actual ambiguity about copyright issues, where every case seems to lack a moral or ethical basis” (“Amazon Noir Interview”). While user communications made available on the site clearly identify culprits (describing the project as jeopardising arts funding, as both irresponsible and arrogant), the self-description of the artists as political “failures” highlights the uncertainty regarding the project’s qualities as a force of long-term social renewal: Lizvlx from Ubermorgen.com had daily shootouts with the global mass-media, Cirio continuously pushed the boundaries of copyright (books are just pixels on a screen or just ink on paper), Ludovico and Bernhard resisted kickback-bribes from powerful Amazon.com until they finally gave in and sold the technology for an undisclosed sum to Amazon. Betrayal, blasphemy and pessimism finally split the gang of bad guys. (“Press Release”) Here, the adaptive and flexible qualities of informatic commodities and computational systems of distribution are knowingly posited as critical limits; in a certain sense, the project fails technologically in order to succeed conceptually. From a cynical perspective, this might be interpreted as guaranteeing authenticity by insisting on the useless or non-instrumental quality of art. However, through this process, Amazon Noir illustrates how forces confined as exterior to control (virality, piracy, noncommunication) regularly operate as points of distinction to generate change and innovation. Just as hackers are legitimately employed to challenge the durability of network exchanges, malfunctions are relied upon as potential sources of future information. Indeed, the notion of demonstrating ‘autonomy’ by illustrating the shortcomings of software is entirely consistent with the logic of control as a modulating organisational diagram. These so-called “circuit breakers” are positioned as points of bifurcation that open up new systems and encompass a more general “abstract machine” or tendency governing contemporary capitalism (Parikka 300). As a consequence, the ambiguities of Amazon Noir emerge not just from the contrary articulation of intellectual property and digital technology, but additionally through the concept of thinking “resistance” simultaneously with regimes of control. This tension is apparent in Galloway’s analysis of the cybernetic machines that are synonymous with the operation of Deleuzian control societies – i.e. “computerised information management” – where tactical media are posited as potential modes of contestation against the tyranny of code, “able to exploit flaws in protocological and proprietary command and control, not to destroy technology, but to sculpt protocol and make it better suited to people’s real desires” (176). While pushing a system into a state of hypertrophy to reform digital architectures might represent a possible technique that produces a space through which to imagine something like “our” freedom, it still leaves unexamined the desire for reformation itself as nurtured by and produced through the coupling of cybernetics, information theory, and distributed networking. This draws into focus the significance of McKenzie’s Simondon-inspired cybernetic perspective on socio-technological ensembles as being always-already predetermined by and driven through asymmetries or difference. As Chun observes, consequently, there is no paradox between resistance and capture since “control and freedom are not opposites, but different sides of the same coin: just as discipline served as a grid on which liberty was established, control is the matrix that enables freedom as openness” (71). Why “openness” should be so readily equated with a state of being free represents a major unexamined presumption of digital culture, and leads to the associated predicament of attempting to think of how this freedom has become something one cannot not desire. If Amazon Noir has political currency in this context, however, it emerges from a capacity to recognise how informational networks channel desire, memories, and imaginative visions rather than just cultivated antagonisms and counterintuitive economics. As a final point, it is worth observing that the project was initiated without publicity until the settlement with Amazon.com. There is, as a consequence, nothing to suggest that this subversive “event” might have actually occurred, a feeling heightened by the abstractions of software entities. To the extent that we believe in “the big book heist,” that such an act is even possible, is a gauge through which the paranoia of control societies is illuminated as a longing or desire for autonomy. As Hakim Bey observes in his conceptualisation of “pirate utopias,” such fleeting encounters with the imaginaries of freedom flow back into the experience of the everyday as political instantiations of utopian hope. Amazon Noir, with all its underlying ethical ambiguities, presents us with a challenge to rethink these affective investments by considering our profound weaknesses to master the complexities and constant intrusions of control. It provides an opportunity to conceive of a future that begins with limits and limitations as immanently central, even foundational, to our deep interconnection with socio-technological ensembles. References “Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime.” http://www.amazon-noir.com/>. Bey, Hakim. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia, 1991. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fibre Optics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Crawford, Kate. “Adaptation: Tracking the Ecologies of Music and Peer-to-Peer Networks.” Media International Australia 114 (2005): 30-39. Cubitt, Sean. “Distribution and Media Flows.” Cultural Politics 1.2 (2005): 193-214. Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Trans. Seán Hand. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. ———. “Control and Becoming.” Negotiations 1972-1990. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 169-176. ———. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” Negotiations 1972-1990. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 177-182. Eriksson, Magnus, and Rasmus Fleische. “Copies and Context in the Age of Cultural Abundance.” Online posting. 5 June 2007. Nettime 25 Aug 2007. Galloway, Alexander. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Harold, Christine. OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. McKenzie, Adrian. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. ———. “The Strange Meshing of Impersonal and Personal Forces in Technological Action.” Culture, Theory and Critique 47.2 (2006): 197-212. Parikka, Jussi. “Contagion and Repetition: On the Viral Logic of Network Culture.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 7.2 (2007): 287-308. “Piracy Online.” Recording Industry Association of America. 28 Aug 2007. http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php>. Sundaram, Ravi. “Recycling Modernity: Pirate Electronic Cultures in India.” Sarai Reader 2001: The Public Domain. Delhi, Sarai Media Lab, 2001. 93-99. http://www.sarai.net>. Terranova, Tiziana. “Communication beyond Meaning: On the Cultural Politics of Information.” Social Text 22.3 (2004): 51-73. ———. “Of Sense and Sensibility: Immaterial Labour in Open Systems.” DATA Browser 03 – Curating Immateriality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems. Ed. Joasia Krysa. New York: Autonomedia, 2006. 27-38. Thrift, Nigel. “Re-inventing Invention: New Tendencies in Capitalist Commodification.” Economy and Society 35.2 (2006): 279-306. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Dieter, Michael. "Amazon Noir: Piracy, Distribution, Control." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/07-dieter.php>. APA Style Dieter, M. (Oct. 2007) "Amazon Noir: Piracy, Distribution, Control," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/07-dieter.php>.

I. First Brexit, then Trump: Has the past year or so ushered in a “wave” (Weisberg), a “barrage” (Desmond-Harris) or a “deluge” (Sidahmed) of that notoriously noxious affect, hate? It certainly feels that way to those of us identified with progressive social and political causes—those of us troubled, not just by Trump’s recent electoral victory, but by the far-right forces to which that victory has given voice. And yet the questions still hanging over efforts to quantify emotional or affective states leaves the claim that there has been a clear spike in hate moot (Ngai 26; Massumi 136-7; Ahmed, Promise 3-8). So let’s try asking a different question. Has this same period seen a rise, across liberal media platforms, in the rhetorical work of “hate-attribution”? Here, at least, an answer seems in readier reach. For no one given to scrolling distractedly through liberal Anglophone media outlets, from The New York Times, to The Guardian, to Slate, will be unfamiliar with a species of journalism that, in reporting the appalling activities associated with what has become known as the “alt-right” (Main; Wallace-Wells; Gourarie), articulates those activities in the rubric of a calculable uptick in hate itself.Before the U.S. Presidential election, this fledgling journalistic genre was already testing its wings, its first shudderings felt everywhere from Univision anchor Jorge Ramos’s widely publicized documentary, Hate Rising (2016), which explores the rise of white supremacist movements across the South-West U.S, to an edition of Slate’s Trumpcast entitled “The Alt-Right and a Deluge of Hate,” which broached the torment-by-Twitter of left-wing journalist David French. In the wake of the election, and the appalling acts of harassment and intimidation it seemed to authorize, the genre gained further momentum—leading to the New Yorker’s “Hate Is on the Rise After Trump’s Election,” to The Guardian’s “Trump’s Election led to Barrage of Hate,” and to Vox’s “The Wave of Post-Election Hate Reportedly Sweeping the Nation, Explained.” And it still has traction today, judging not just by James King’s recent year-in-review column, “The Year in Hate: From Donald Trump to the Rise of the Alt-Right,” but by Salon’s “A Short History of Hate” which tracks the alt-right’s meteoric 2016 rise to prominence, and the New York Times’ recently launched hate-speech aggregator, “This Week in Hate.”As should already be clear from these brisk, thumbnail accounts of the texts in question, the phenomena alluded to by the titular term “hate” are not instances of hate per se, but rather instances of “hate-speech.” The word “hate,” in other words, is being deployed here not literally, to refer to an emotional state, but metonymically, as a shorthand for “hate-speech”—a by-now widely conventionalized and legally codified parlance originating with the U.N. Declaration to describe “violent or violence-inciting speech or acts that “aim or intend to inflict injury, or incite prejudice or hatred, against persons of groups” because of their ethnic, religious, sexual or social affiliation. And there is no doubt that, beyond the headlines, these articles do incredibly important work, drawing connections between, and drawing attention to, a host of harmful activities associated with the so-called “alt-right”—from a pair of mangled, pretzel-shaped swastikas graffiti-ed in a children’s playground, to acts of harassment, intimidation and violence against women, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, and LGBTQ people, to Trump’s own racist, xenophobic and misogynistic tweets. Yet the fact that an emotion-term like hate is being mobilized across these texts as a metonym for the “alt-right” is no oratorical curio. Rather, it perpetuates a pervasive way of thinking about the relationship between the alt-right (a political phenomenon) and hate (an emotional phenomenon) that should give pause to those of us committed to mining that vein of cultural symptomatology now consigned, across the social sciences and critical humanities, to affect theory. Specifically, these headlines inscribe, in miniature, a kind of micro-assessment, a micro-geography and micro-theory of hate. First, they suggest that, even prior to its incarnation in specific, and dangerous, forms of speech or action, hate is in and of itself anathema, a phenomenon so unquestioningly dangerous that a putative “rise” or “spike” in its net presence provides ample pretext for a news headline. Second, they propose that hate may be localized to a particular social or political group—a group subsisting, unsurprisingly, on that peculiarly contested frontier between the ideological alt-right and the American Midwest. And third, they imply that hate is so indubitably the single most significant source of the xenophobic, racist and sexist activities they go on to describe that it may be casually used as these activities’ lexical proxy. What is crystallizing here, I suggest, is what scholars of rhetoric dub a rhetorical “constellation” (Campbell and Jamieson 332)—a constellation from which hate emerges as, a) inherently problematic, b) localizable to the “alt-right,” and, c) the primary engine of the various activities and expressions we associate with them. This constellation of conventions for thinking about hate and its relationship to the activities of right-wing extremist movement has coalesced into a “genre” we might dub the genre of “hate-attribution.” Yet while it’s far from clear that the genre is an effective one in a political landscape that’s fast becoming a political battleground, it hasn’t appeared by chance. Treating “hate,” then, less as a descriptive “grid of analysis” (Sedgwick 152), than as a rhetorical projectile, this essay opens by interrogating the “hate-attribution” genre’s logic and querying its efficacy. Having done so, it approaches the concept of “alternatives” by asking: how might calling time on the genre help us think differently about both hate itself and about the forces catalyzing, and catalyzed by, Trump’s presidential campaign? II.The rhetorical power of the genre of hate-attribution, of course, isn’t too difficult to pin down. An emotion so thoroughly discredited that its assignment is now in and of itself a term of abuse (see, for example, the O.E.D’s freshly-expanded definition of the noun “hater”), hate is an emotion the Judeo-Christian tradition deems not just responsible for but practically akin to murder (John 3:1). In part as a result of this tradition, hate has proven thoroughly resistant to efforts to elevate it from the status of an expression of a subject’s pestiferous inner life to the status of a polemical response to an object in the world. Indeed, while a great deal of the critical energy amassing under the rubric of “affect theory” has recently been put into recuperating the strategic or diagnostic value of emotions long scorned as irrelevant to oppositional struggle—from irritation and envy, to depression, anger and shame (Ngai; Cvetkovich; Gould; Love)—hate has notably not been among them. In fact, those rare scholarly accounts of affect that do address “hate,” notably Ahmed’s excellent work on right-wing extremist groups in the United Kingdom, display an understandable reluctance to rehabilitate it for progressive thought (Cultural Politics). It should come as no surprise, then, that the genre of “hate-attribution” has a rare rhetorical power. In identifying “hate” as the source of a particular position, gesture or speech-act, we effectively drain said position, gesture or speech-act of political agency or representational power—reducing it from an at-least-potentially polemical action in or response to the world, to the histrionic expression of a reprehensible personhood. Yet because hate’s near-taboo status holds across the ideological and political spectrum, what is less clear is why the genre of hate-attribution has achieved such cachet in the liberal media in particular. The answer, I would argue, lies in the fact that the work of hate-attribution dovetails all too neatly with liberal political theory’s longstanding tendency to laminate its social and civic ideals to affective ideals like “love,” “sympathy,” “compassion,” and, when in a less demonstrative humor, “tolerance”. As Martha Nussbaum’s Political Emotions has recently shown, this tradition has an impressive philosophical pedigree, running from Aristotle’s philia (16), John Locke’s “toleration” and David Hume’s “sympathy” (69-75), to the twentieth century’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its promotion of “tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups.” And while the labour of what Lauren Berlant calls “liberal sentimentality” (“Poor Eliza”, 636) has never quite died away, it does seem to have found new strength with the emergence of the “intimate public sphere” (Berlant, Queen)—from its recent popular apotheosis in the Clinton campaign’s notorious “Love Trumps Hate” (a slogan in which “love,” unfortunately, came to look a lot like resigned technocratic quietism in the face of ongoing economic and environmental crisis [Zizek]), to its revival as a philosophical project among progressive scholars, many of them under the sway of the so-called “affective turn” (Nussbaum; Hardt; Sandoval; hooks). No surprise, then, that liberalism’s struggle to yoke itself to “love” should have as its eerie double a struggle to locate among its ideological and political enemies an increasingly reified “hate”. And while the examples of this project we’ve touched on so far have hailed from popular media, this set of protocols for thinking about hate and its relationship to the activities of right-wing extremist movements is not unique to media circles. It’s there in political discourse, as in ex-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s announcement, on MSNBC, that “Americans will unite against [Trump’s] hatred.” And it’s there, too, in academic media studies, from FLOW journal’s November 2016 call for papers inviting respondents to comment, among other things, on “the violence and hatred epitomized by Trump and his supporters,” to the SCMS conference’s invitation to members to participate in a pop-up panel entitled “Responding to Hate, Disenfranchisement and the Loss of the Commons.” Yet while the labor of hate-attribution to which many progressive forces have become attached carries an indisputable rhetorical force, it also has some profound rhetorical flaws. The very same stigma, after all, that makes “hate” such a powerful explanatory grenade to throw also makes it an incredibly tough one to land. As Ahmed’s analysis of the online rhetoric of white supremacist organizations should remind us (Cultural Politics), most groups structured around inciting and promoting violence against women and minorities identify, perversely, not as hate groups, but as movements propelled by the love of race and nation. And while left-wing pundits pronounce “hate” the signature emotion of a racist, misogynist Trump-voting right, supporters of Trump ascribe it, just as routinely, to the so-called “liberal elite,” a group whose mythical avatars—from the so-called “Social Justice Warrior” or “SJW,” to the supercilious Washington politico—are said to brand “ordinary [white, male] Americans” indiscriminately as racist, misogynistic, homophobic buffoons. Thus, for example, The Washington Post’s uncanny, far-right journalistic alter-ego, The Washington Times, dubs the SPLC a “liberal hate group”; the Wikipedia mirror-site, Conservapedia, recasts liberal objections to gun violence as “liberal hate speech” driven by an “irrational aversion to weapons”; while one blood-curdling sub-genre of reportage on Steve Bannon’s crypto-fascist soapbox, Breitbart News, is devoted to denouncing what it calls “ ‘anti-White Racism.’” It’s easy enough, of course, to defend the hate-attribution genre’s liberal incarnations while dismissing its right-wing variants as cynical, opportunistic shams, as Ahmed does (Cultural Politics)—thereby re-establishing the wellspring of hate where we are most comfortable locating it: among our political others. Yet to do so seems, in some sense, to perpetuate a familiar volley of hate-attribution. And to the extent that, as many media scholars have shown (Philips; Reed; Tett; Turow), our digital, networked political landscape is in danger of being reduced to a silo-ed discursive battleground, the ritual exchange of terminological grenades that everyone seems eager to propel across ideological lines, but that no one, understandably, seems willing to pick up, seems counter-productive to say the least.Even beyond the genre’s ultimate ineffectiveness, what should strike anyone used to reflecting on affect is how little justice it does to the ubiquity and intricacy of “hate” as an affective phenomenon. Hate is not and cannot be the exclusive property or preserve of one side of the political spectrum. One doesn’t have to stretch one’s critical faculties too far to see the extent to which the genre of hate-attribution participates in the emotional ballistics it condemns or seeks to redress. While trafficking in a relatively simple hate-paradigm (as a subjective emotional state that may be isolated to a particular person or group), the genre itself incarnates a more complex, socially dynamic model of hate in which the emotion operates through logics of projection perhaps best outlined by Freud. In the “hate-attribution” genre, that is, hate—like those equally abjected categories “sentimentality,” “worldliness” or “knowingness” broached by Sedgwick in her bravura analyses of “scapegoating attribution” (150-158)—finds its clearest expression in and through the labor of its own adscription. And it should come as no surprise that an emotion so widely devalued, where it is not openly prohibited, might also find expression in less overt form.Yet to say as much is by no means to discredit the genre. As legal scholar Jeremy Waldron has recently pointed out, there’s no particular reason why “the passions and emotions that lie behind a particular speech act” (34)—even up to and including hate—should devalue the speech acts they rouse. On the contrary, to pin the despicable and damaging activities of the so-called “alt right” on “hate” is, if anything, to do an injustice to a rich and complex emotion that can be as generative as it can be destructive. As Freud suggests in “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” for example, hate may be the very seed of love, since the forms of “social feeling” (121) celebrated under the liberal rubric of “tolerance,” “love,” and “compassion,” are grounded in “the reversal of what was first a hostile feeling into a positively-toned tie in the nature of an identification” (121; italics mine). Indeed, Freud projects this same argument across a larger, historical canvas in Civilization and its Discontents, which contends that it is in our very struggle to combat our “aggressive instincts” that human communities have developed “methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim-inhibited relationships of love” (31). For Freud, that is, the practice of love is a function of ongoing efforts to see hate harnessed, commuted and transformed. III.What might it mean, then, to call time on this round of hate-attribution? What sort of “alternatives” might emerge when we abandon the assumption that political engagement entails a “struggle over who has the right to declare themselves as acting out of love” (Ahmed, Cultural Politics 131), and thus, by that same token, a struggle over the exact location and source of hate? One boon, I suggest, is the license it gives those of us on the progressive left to simply own our own hate. There’s little doubt that reframing the dangerous and destructive forms of speech fomented by Trump’s campaign, not as eruptions of hate, or even as “hate-speech,” but as speech we hate would be more consistent with what once seemed affect theory’s first commandment: to take our own affective temperature before launching headlong into critical analysis. After all, when Lauren Berlant (“Trump”) takes a stab at economist Paul Krugman’s cautions against “the Danger of Political Emotions” with the timely reminder that “all the messages are emotional,” the “messages” she’s pointing to aren’t just those of our political others, they’re ours; and the “emotions” she’s pointing to aren’t just the evacuated, insouciant versions of love championed by the Clinton campaign, they’re of the messier, or as Ngai might put it, “uglier” (2) variety—from shame, depression and anger, to, yes, I want to insist, hate.By way of jump-starting this program of hate-avowal, then, let me just say it: this essay was animated, in part, by a certain kind of hate. The social critic in me hates the breathtaking simplification of the complex social, economic and emotional forces animating Trump voters that seem to actuate some liberal commentary; the psychologist in me hates the self-mystification palpable in the left’s insistence on projecting and thus disowning its own (often very well justified) aggressions; and the human being in me, hating the kind of toxic speech to which Trump’s campaign has given rise, wishes to be able to openly declare that hatred. Among its other effects, hate is characterized by hypervigilance for lapses or failings in an object it deems problematic, a hypervigilance that—sometimes—animates analysis (Zeki and Romoya). In this sense, “hate” seems entitled to a comfortable place in the ranks of what Nick Salvato has recently dubbed criticism’s creative “obstructions”—phenomena that, while “routinely identified as detriments” to critical inquiry, may also “form the basis for … critical thinking” (1).Yet while one boon associated with this disclosure might be a welcome intellectual honesty, a more significant boon, I’d argue, is what getting this disclosure out of the way might leave room for. Opting out of the game of hurling “hate” back and forth across a super-charged political arena, that is, we might devote our column inches and Facebook posts to the less sensational but more productive task of systematically challenging the specious claims, and documenting the damaging effects, of a species of utterance (Butler; Matsuda; Waldron) we’ve grown used to simply descrying as pure, distilled “hate”. And we also might do something else. Relieved of the confident conviction that we can track “Trumpism” to a spontaneous outbreak of a single, localizable emotion, we might be able to offer a fuller account of the economic, social, political and affective forces that energize it. Certainly, hate plays a part here—although the process by which, as Isabelle Stengers puts it, affect “make[s] present, vivid and mattering … a worldly world” (371) demands that we scrutinize that hate as a syndrome, rather than simply moralize it as a sin, addressing its mainsprings in a moment marked by the nerve-fraying and life-fraying effects of what has become known across the social sciences and critical humanities as conditions of social and economic “precarity” (Muehlebach; Neil and Rossiter; Stewart).But perhaps hate’s not the only emotion tucked away under the hood. Here’s something affect theory knows today: affect moves not, as more traditional theorists of political emotion have it, “unambiguously and predictably from one’s cognitive processing,” but in ways that are messy, muddled and indirect (Gould 24). That form of speech is speech we hate. But it may not be “hate speech.” That crime is a crime we hate. But it may not be a “hate-crime.” One of the critical tactics we might crib from Berlant’s work in Cruel Optimism is that of decoding and decrypting, in even the most hateful acts, an instance of what Berlant, herself optimistically, calls “optimism.” For Berlant, after all, optimism is very often cruel, attaching itself, as it seems to have done in 2016, to scenes, objects and people that, while ultimately destined to “imped[e] the aim that brought [it to them] initially,” nevertheless came to seem, to a good portion of the electorate, the only available exponent of that classic good-life genre, “the change that’s gonna come” (“Trump” 1-2) at a moment when the Democratic party’s primary campaign promise was more of the free-market same. 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Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“I must plunge again and again in the water of doubt” (Wittgenstein 1e). The Holy Grail in the phenomenology of religion (and, to a lesser extent, the sociology of religion) is a definition of religion that actually works, but, so far, this seems to have been elusive. Classical definitions of religion—substantive (e.g. Tylor) and functionalist (e.g. Durkheim)—fail, in part because they attempt to be in three places at once, as it were: they attempt to distinguish religion from non-religion; they attempt to capture what religions have in common; and they attempt to grasp the “heart”, or “core”, of religion. Consequently, family resemblance definitions of religion replace certainty and precision for its own sake with a more pragmatic and heuristic approach, embracing doubt and putting forward definitions that give us a better understanding (Verstehen) of religion. In this paper, I summarise some “new” definitions of religion that take this approach, before proposing and defending another one, defining religion as non-propositional and “apophatic”, thus accepting that doubt is central to religion itself, as well as to the analysis of religion.The question of how to define religion has had real significance in a number of court cases round the world, and therefore it does have an impact on people’s lives. In Germany, for example, the courts ruled that Scientology was not a religion, but a business, much to the displeasure of the Church of Scientology (Aldridge 15). In the United States, some advocates of Transcendental Meditation (TM) argued that TM was not a religion and could therefore be taught in public schools without violating the establishment clause in the constitution—the separation of church and state. The courts in New Jersey, and federal courts, ruled against them. They ruled that TM was a religion (Barker 146). There are other cases that I could cite, but the point of this is simply to establish that the question has a practical importance, so we should move on.In the classical sociology of religion, there are a number of definitions of religion that are quite well known. Edward Tylor (424) defined religion as a belief in spiritual beings. This definition does not meet with widespread acceptance, the notable exception being Melford Spiro, who proposed in 1966 that religion was “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated super-human beings” (Spiro 96, see also 91ff), and who has bravely stuck to that definition ever since. The major problem is that this definition excludes Buddhism, which most people do regard as a religion, although some people try to get round the problem by claiming that Buddhism is not really a religion, but more of a philosophy. But this is cheating, really, because a definition of religion must be descriptive as well as prescriptive; that is, it must apply to entities that are commonly recognised as religions. Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, proposed that religion had two key characteristics, a separation of the sacred from the profane, and a gathering together of people in some sort of institution or community, such as a church (Durkheim 38, 44). However, religions often reject a separation of the sacred from the profane. Most Muslims and many Calvinist Christians, for example, would insist strongly that everything—including the ostensibly profane—is equally subject to the sovereignty of God. Also, some religions are more oriented to a guru-pupil kind of relationship, rather than a church community.Weber tried to argue that religion should only be defined at the end of a long process of historical and empirical study. He is often criticised for this, although there probably is some wisdom in his argument. However, there seems to be an implicit definition of religion as theodicy, accounting for the existence of evil and the existence of suffering. But is this really the central concern of all religions?Clarke and Byrne, in their book Religion Defined and Explained, construct a typology of definitions, which I think is quite helpful. Broadly speaking, there are two types of classical definition. Firstly, there are substantive definitions (6), such as Tylor’s and Spiro’s, which posit some sort of common “property” that religions “have”—“inside” them, as it were. Secondly, functionalist definitions (Clarke and Byrne 7), such as Durkheim’s, define religion primarily in terms of its social function. What matters, as far as a definition of religion is concerned, is not what you believe, but why you believe it.However, these classical definitions do not really work. I think this is because they try to do too many things. For a strict definition of religion to work, it needs to tell us (i) what religions have in common, (ii) what distinguishes religion on the one hand from non-religion, or everything that is not religion, on the other, and (iii) it needs to tell us something important about religion, what is at the core of religion. This means that a definition of religion has to be in three places at once, so to speak. Furthermore, a definition of religion has to be based on extant religions, but it also needs to have some sort of quasi-predictive capacity, the sort of thing that can be used in a court case regarding, for example, Scientology or Transcendental Meditation.It may be possible to resolve the latter problem by a gradual process of adjustment, a sort of hermeneutic circle of basing a definition on extant religions and applying it to new ones. But what about the other problem, the one of being in three places at once?Another type identified by Clarke and Byrne, in their typology of definitions, is the “family resemblance” definition (11-16). This derives from the later Wittgenstein. The “family resemblance” definition of religion is based on the idea that religions commonly share a number of features, but that no one religion has all of them. For example, there are religious beliefs, doctrines and mythos—or stories and parables. There are rituals and moral codes, institutions and clergy, prayers, spiritual emotions and experiences, etc. This approach is of course less precise than older substantive and functional definitions, but it also avoids some of the problems associated with them.It does so by rethinking the point of defining religion. Instead of being precise and rigorous for the sake of it, it tries to tell us something, to be “productive”, to help us understand religion better. It eschews certainty and embraces doubt. Its insights could be applied to some schools of philosophy (e.g. Heideggerian) and practical spirituality, because it does not focus on what is distinctive about religion. Rather, it focuses on the core of religion, and, secondarily, on what religions have in common. The family resemblance approach has led to a number of “new” definitions (post-Durkheim definitions) being proposed, all of which define religion in a less rigorous, but, I hope, more imaginative and heuristic way.Let me provide a few examples, starting with two contrasting ones. Peter Berger in the late 1960s defined religion as “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant”(37), which implies a consciousness of an anthropocentric sacred cosmos. Later, Alain Touraine said that religion is “the apprehension of human destiny, existence, and death”(213–4), that is, an awareness of human limitations, including doubt. Berger emphasises the high place for human beings in religion, and even a sort of affected certainty, while Touraine emphasises our place as doubters on the periphery, but it seems that religion exists within a tension between these two opposites, and, in a sense, encompasses them both.Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church and arch-nemesis of the conservative Anglicans, such as those from Sydney, defines religion as like good poetry, not bad science. It is easy to understand that he is criticising those who see religion, particularly Christianity, as centrally opposed to Darwin and evolution. Holloway is clearly saying that those people have missed the point of their own faith. By “good poetry”, he is pointing to the significance of storytelling rather than dogma, and an open-ended discussion of ultimate questions that resists the temptation to end with “the moral of the story”. In science (at least before quantum physics), there is no room for doubt, but that is not the case with poetry.John Caputo, in a very energetic book called On Religion, proposes what is probably the boldest of the “new” definitions. He defines religion as “the love of God” (1). Note the contrast with Tylor and Spiro. Caputo does not say “belief in God”; he says “the love of God”. You might ask how you can love someone you don’t believe in, but, in a sense, this paradox is the whole point. When Caputo says “God”, he is not necessarily talking in the usual theistic or even theological terms. By “God”, he means the impossible made possible (10). So a religious person, for Caputo, is an “unhinged lover” (13) who loves the impossible made possible, and the opposite is a “loveless lout” who is only concerned with the latest stock market figures (2–3). In this sense of religious, a committed atheist can be religious and a devout Catholic or Muslim or Hindu can be utterly irreligious (2–3). Doubt can encompass faith and faith can encompass doubt. This is the impossible made possible. Caputo’s approach here has something in common with Nietzsche and especially Kierkegaard, to whom I shall return later.I would like to propose another definition of religion, within the spirit of these “new” definitions of religion that I have been discussing. Religion, at its core, I suggest, is non-propositional and apophatic. When I say that religion is non-propositional, I mean that religion will often enact certain rituals, or tell certain stories, or posit faith in someone, and that propositional statements of doctrine are merely reflections or approximations of this non-propositional core. Faith in God is not a proposition. The Eucharist is not a proposition. Prayer is not, at its core, a proposition. Pilgrimage is not a proposition. And it is these sorts of things that, I suggest, form the core of religion. Propositions are what happen when theologians and academics get their hands on religion, they try to intellectualise it so that it can be made to fit within their area of expertise—our area of expertise. But, that is not where it belongs. Propositions about rituals impose a certainty on them, whereas the ritual itself allows for courage in the face of doubt. The Maundy Thursday service in Western Christianity includes the stripping of the altar to the accompaniment of Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me”), ending the service without a dismissal (Latin missa, the origin of the English “mass”) and with the church in darkness. Doubt, confusion, and bewilderment are the heart and soul of this ritual, not orthodox faith as defined propositionally.That said, religion does often involve believing, of some kind (though it is not usually as central as in Christianity). So I say that religion is non-propositional and apophatic. The word “apophatic”, though not the concept, has its roots in Greek Orthodox theology, where St Gregory Palamas argues that any statement about God—and particularly about God’s essence as opposed to God’s energies—must be paradoxical, emphasising God’s otherness, and apophatic, emphasising God’s essential incomprehensibility (Armstrong 393). To make an apophatic statement is to make a negative statement—instead of saying God is king, lord, father, or whatever, we say God is not. Even the most devout believer will recognise a sense in which God is not a king, or a lord, or a father. They will say that God is much greater than any of these things. The Muslim will say “Allahu Akhbar”, which means God is greater, greater than any human description. Even the statement “God exists” is seen to be well short of the mark. Even that is human language, which is why the Cappadocian fathers (Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Naziansus) said that they believed in God, while refusing to say that God exists.So to say that religion is at its core non-propositional is to say that religious beliefs are at their core apophatic. The idea of apophasis is that by a process of constant negation you are led into silence, into a recognition that there is nothing more that can be said. St Thomas Aquinas says that the more things we negate about God, the more we say “God is not…”, the closer we get to what God is (139). Doubt therefore brings us closer to the object of religion than any putative certainties.Apophasis does not only apply to Christianity. I have already indicated that it applies also to Islam, and the statement that God is greater. In Islam, God is said to have 99 names—or at least 99 that have been revealed to human beings. Many of these names are apophatic. Names like The Hidden carry an obviously negative meaning in English, while, etymologically, “the Holy” (al-quddu-s) means “beyond imperfection”, which is a negation of a negation. As-salaam, the All-Peaceful, means beyond disharmony, or disequilibrium, or strife, and, according to Murata and Chittick (65–6), “The Glorified” (as-subbuh) means beyond understanding.In non-theistic religions too, an apophatic way of believing can be found. Key Buddhist concepts include sunyata, emptiness, or the Void, and anatta, meaning no self, the belief or realisation that the Self is illusory. Ask what they believe in instead of the Self and you are likely to be told that you are missing the point, like the Zen pupil who confused the pointing finger with the moon. In the Zen koans, apophasis plays a major part. One well-known koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Any logical answers will be dismissed, like Thomas Aquinas’s statements about God, until the pupil gets beyond logic and achieves satori, or enlightenment. Probably the most used koan is Mu—Master Joshu is asked if a dog has Buddha-nature and replies Mu, meaning “no” or “nothing”. This is within the context of the principle that everything has Buddha-nature, so it is not logical. But this apophatic process can lead to enlightenment, something better than logic. By plunging again and again in the water of doubt, to use Wittgenstein’s words, we gain something better than certainty.So not only is apophasis present in a range of different religions—and I have given just a few examples—but it is also central to the development of religion in the Axial Age, Karl Jaspers’s term for the period from about 800-200 BCE when the main religious traditions of the world began—monotheism in Israel (which also developed into Christianity and Islam), Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. In the early Hindu traditions, there seems to have been a sort of ritualised debate called the Brahmodya, which would proceed through negation and end in silence. Not the silence of someone admitting defeat at the hands of the other, but the silence of recognising that the truth lay beyond them (Armstrong 24).In later Hinduism, apophatic thought is developed quite extensively. This culminates in the idea of Brahman, the One God who is Formless, beyond all form and all description. As such, all representations of Brahman are equally false and therefore all representations are equally true—hence the preponderance of gods and idols on the surface of Hinduism. There is also the development of the idea of Atman, the universal Self, and the Buddhist concept anatta, which I mentioned, is rendered anatman in Sanskrit, literally no Atman, no Self. But in advaita Hinduism there is the idea that Brahman and Atman are the same, or, more accurately, they are not two—hence advaita, meaning “not two”. This is negation, or apophasis. In some forms of present-day Hinduism, such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as the Hare Krishnas), advaita is rejected. Sometimes this is characterised as dualism with respect to Brahman and Atman, but it is really the negation of non-dualism, or an apophatic negation of the negation.Even in early Hinduism, there is a sort of Brahmodya recounted in the Rig Veda (Armstrong 24–5), the oldest extant religious scripture in the world that is still in use as a religious scripture. So here we are at the beginning of Axial Age religion, and we read this account of creation:Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal.Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.All that existed then was void and form less.Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.(Rig Veda Book 10, Hymn 129, abridged)And it would seem that this is the sort of thought that spread throughout the world as a result of the Axial Age and the later spread of Axial and post-Axial religions.I could provide examples from other religious traditions. Taoism probably has the best examples, though they are harder to relate to the traditions that are more familiar in the West. “The way that is spoken is not the Way” is the most anglicised translation of the opening of the Tao Te Ching. In Sikhism, God’s formlessness and essential unknowability mean that God can only be known “by the Guru’s grace”, to quote the opening hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib.Before I conclude, however, I would like to anticipate two criticisms. First, this may only be applicable to the religions of the Axial Age and their successors, beginning with Hinduism and Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and early Jewish monotheism, followed by Jainism, Christianity, Islam and so on. I would like to find examples of apophasis at the core of other traditions, including Indigenous Australian and Native American ones, for example, but that is work still to be done. Focusing on the Axial Age does historicise the argument, however, at least in contrast with a more universal concept of religion that runs the risk of falling into the ahistorical homo religiosus idea that humans are universally and even naturally religious. Second, this apophatic definition looks a bit elitist, defining religion in terms that are relevant to theologians and “religious virtuosi” (to use Weber’s term), but what about the ordinary believers, pew-fillers, temple-goers? In response to such criticism, one may reply that there is an apophatic strand in what Niebuhr called the religions of the disinherited. In Asia, devotion to the Buddha Amida is particularly popular among the poor, and this involves a transformation of the idea of anatta—no Self—into an external agency, a Buddha who is “without measure”, in terms of in-finite light and in-finite life. These are apophatic concepts. In the Christian New Testament, we are told that God “has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong…, the things that are not to shame the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The things that are not are the apophatic, and these are allied with the foolish and the weak, not the educated and the powerful.One major reason for emphasising the role of apophasis in religious thought is to break away from the idea that the core of religion is an ethical one. This is argued by a number of “liberal religious” thinkers in different religious traditions. I appreciate their reasons, and I am reluctant to ally myself with their opponents, who include the more fundamentalist types as well as some vocal critics of religion like Dawkins and Hitchens. However, I said that I would return to Kierkegaard, and the reason is this. Kierkegaard distinguishes between the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. Of course, religion has an aesthetic and an ethical dimension, and in some religions these dimensions are particularly important, but that does not make them central to religion as such. Kierkegaard regarded the religious sphere as radically different from the aesthetic or even the ethical, hence his treatment of the story of Abraham going to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, in obedience to God’s command. His son was not killed in the end, but Abraham was ready to do the deed. This is not ethical. This is fundamentally and scandalously unethical. Yet it is religious, not because it is unethical and scandalous, but because it pushes us to the limits of our understanding, through the waters of doubt, and then beyond.Were I attempting to criticise religion, I would say it should not go there, that, to misquote Wittgenstein, the limits of my understanding are the limits of my world, whereof we cannot understand thereof we must remain silent. Were I attempting to defend religion, I would say that this is its genius, that it can push back the limits of understanding. I do not believe in value-neutral sociology, but, in this case, I am attempting neither. ReferencesAldridge, Alan. Religion in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.Aquinas, Thomas. “Summa of Christian Teaching”. An Aquinas Reader. ed. Mary Clarke. New York: Doubleday, 1972.Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.Barker, Eileen. New Religious Movements: a Practical Introduction. London: HMSO, 1989.Berger, Peter. The Social Reality of Religion. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.Caputo, John. On Religion. London: Routledge, 2001.Clarke, Peter, and Peter Byrne, eds. Religion Defined and Explained. New York: St Martin’s Press. 1993.Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press, 1995.Holloway, Richard. Doubts and Loves. Edinburgh: Caqnongate, 2002.Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977.Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. London: Penguin, 1992.———. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin, 1986.Murata, Sachiko, and William Chittick. The Vision of Islam. St Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1994.Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. New York: Holt, 1929.Spiro, Melford. “Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation.” Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. London: Tavistock, 1966. 85–126.Touraine, Alain. The Post-Industrial Society. London: Wilwood House, 1974.Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. London: Murray, 1903.Weber, Max. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991.Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Nottingham: Brynmill Press, 1979.

Introduction Children are not only born digital, they are fashioned toward a lifestyle that needs them to be digital all the time (Palfrey and Gasser). They click, tap, save, circulate, download, and upload the texts of their lives, their friends’ lives, and the anonymous lives of the people that surround them. They are socialised as Internet consumers ready to participate in digital services targeted to them as they age such as Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. But they are also fashioned as producers, whereby their lives are sold as content on these same markets. As commodities, the minutiae of their lives become the fodder for online circulation. Paradoxically, we also celebrate these digital behaviours as a means to express identity. Personal profile-building for adults is considered agency-building (Beer and Burrows), and as a consequence, we praise children for mimicking these acts of adult lifestyle. This article reflects on the Kids, Creative Storyworlds, and Wearables project, which involved an ethnographic study with five young children (ages 4-7), who were asked to share their autobiographical stories, creative self-narrations, and predictions about their future mediated lives (Atkins et al.). For this case study, we focus on commercialised forms of children’s automedia, and we compare discussions we had with 6-year old Cayden, a child we met in the study who expresses the desire to make himself famous online, with videos of Jacob, a child vlogger on YouTube’s Kinder Playtime, who clearly influences children like Cayden. We argue that child social influencers need consideration both as autobiographical agents and as child subjects requiring a sheltered approach to their online lives.Automedia Automedia is an emergent genre of autobiography (Smith and Watson Reading 190; “Virtually Me” 78). Broadcasting one’s life online takes many forms (Kennedy “Vulnerability”). Ümit Kennedy argues “Vlogging on YouTube is a contemporary form of autobiography in which individuals engage in a process of documenting their life on a daily or weekly basis and, in doing so, construct[ing] their identity online” (“Exploring”). Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson write that “visual and digital modes are projecting and circulating not just new subjects but new notions of subjectivity through the effects of automediality” with the result that “the archive of the self in time, in space and in relation expands and is fundamentally reorganized” (Reading 190). Emma Maguire addresses what online texts “tell us about cultural understandings of selfhood and what it means to communicate ‘real’ life through media” naming one tool, “automedia”. Further, Julie Rak calls on scholars “to rethink ‘life’ and ‘writing’ as automedia” to further “characterize the enactment of a personal life story in a new media environment.” We define automedia as a genre that involves the practices of creating, performing, sharing, circulating, and (at times) preserving one’s digital life narrative meant for multiple publics. Automedia revises identity formation, embodiment, or corporealities in acts of self-creation (Brophy and Hladki 4). Automedia also emphasizes circulation. As shared digital life texts now circulate through the behaviours of other human subjects, and automatically via algorithms in data assemblages, we contend that automediality currently involves a measure of relinquishing control over perpetually evolving mediatised environments. One cannot control how a shared life narrative will meet a public in the future, which is a revised way of thinking about autobiography. For the sake of this paper, we argue that children’s automedia ought to be considered a creative, autobiographical act, in order to afford child authors who create them the consideration they deserve as agents, now and in the future. Automedial practices often begin when children receive access to a device. The need for a distraction activity is often the reason parents hand a young child a smartphone, iPad, or even a wearable camera (Nansen). Mirroring the lives of parents, children aspire to share representations of their own personal lives in pursuit of social capital. They are often encouraged to use technologies and apps as adults do–to track aspects of self, broadcast life stories and eventually “live share” them—effectively creating, performing, sharing, and at times, seeking to preserve a public life narrative. With this practice, society inculcates children into spheres of device ubiquity, “socializing them to a future digital lifestyle that will involve always carrying a computer in some form” (Atkins et al. 49). Consequently, their representations become inculcated in larger media assemblages. Writing about toddlers, Nansen describes how the “archiving, circulation and reception of these images speaks to larger assemblages of media in which software protocols and algorithms are increasingly embedded in and help to configure everyday life (e.g. Chun; Gillespie), including young children’s media lives (Ito)” (Nansen). Children, like adult citizens, are increasingly faced with choices “not structured by their own preferences but by the economic imperatives of the private corporations that have recently come to dominate the internet” (Andrejevic). Recent studies have shown that for children and youth in the digital age, Internet fame, often characterized by brand endorsements, is a major aspiration (Uhls and Greenfield, 2). However, despite the ambition to participate as celebrity digital selves, children are also mired in the calls to shield them from exposure to screens through institutions that label these activities detrimental. In many countries, digital “protections” are outlined by privacy commissioners and federal or provincial/state statutes, (e.g. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada). Consequently, children are often caught in a paradox that defines them either as literate digital agents able to compose or participate with their online selves, or as subjectified wards caught up in commercial practices that exploit their lives for commercial gain.Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables ProjectBoth academic and popular cultural critics continually discuss the future but rarely directly engage the people who will be empowered (or subjugated) by it as young adults in twenty years. To address children’s lack of agency in these discussions, we launched the Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables project to bring children into a dialogue about their own digital futures. Much has been written on childhood agency and participation in culture and mediated culture from the discipline of sociology (James and James; Jenks; Jenkins). In previous work, we addressed the perspective of child autobiographical feature filmmakers to explore issues of creative agency and consent when adult gatekeepers facilitate children in film production (Pedersen and Aspevig “My Eyes”; Pedersen and Aspevig “Swept”). Drawing on that previous work, this project concentrates on children’s automediated lives and the many unique concerns that materialize with digital identity-building. Children are categorised as a vulnerable demographic group necessitating special policy and legislation, but the lives they project as children will eventually become subsumed in their own adult lives, which will almost certainly be treated and mediated in a much different manner in the future. We focused on this landscape, and sought to query the children on their futures, also considering the issues that arise when adult gatekeepers get involved with child social media influencers. In the Storyworlds ethnographic study, children were given a wearable toy, a Vtech smartwatch called Kidizoom, to use over a month’s timeframe to serve as a focal point for ethnographic conversations. The Kidizoom watch enables children to take photos and videos, which are uploaded to a web interface. Before we gave them the tech, we asked them questions about their lives, including What are machines going to be like in the future? Can you imagine yourself wearing a certain kind of computer? Can you tell/draw a story about that? If you could wear a computer that gave you a super power, what would it be? Can you use your imagination to think of a person in a story who would use technology? In answering, many of them drew autobiographical drawings of technical inventions, and cast themselves in the images. We were particularly struck by the comments made by one participant, Cayden (pseudonym), a 6-year-old boy, and the stories he told us about himself and his aspirations. He expressed the desire to host a YouTube channel about his life, his activities, and the wearable technologies his family already owned (e.g. a GroPro camera) and the one we gave him, the Kidizoom smartwatch. He talked about how he would be proud to publically broadcast his own videos on YouTube, and about the role he had been allowed to play in the making of videos about his life (that were not broadcast). To contextualize Cayden’s commentary and his automedial aspirations, we extended our study to explore child social media influencers who broadcast components of their personal lives for the deliberate purpose of popularity and the financial gain of their parents.We selected the videos of Jacob, a child vlogger because we judged them to be representative of the kinds that Cayden watched. Jacob reviews toys through “unboxing videos,” a genre in which a child tells an online audience her or his personal experiences using new toys in regular, short videos on a social media site. Jacob appears on a YouTube channel called Kinder Playtime, which appears to be a parent-run channel that states that, “We enjoy doing these things while playing with our kids: Jacob, Emily, and Chloe” (see Figure 1). In one particular video, Jacob reviews the Kidizoom watch, serving as a child influencer for the product. By understanding Jacob’s performance as agent-driven automedia, as well as being a commercialised, mediatised form of advertising, we get a clearer picture of how the children in the study are coming to terms with their own digital selfhood and the realisation that circulated, life-exposing videos are the expectation in this context.Children are implicated in a range of ways through “family” influencer and toy unboxing videos, which are emergent entertainment industries (Abidin 1; Nansen and Nicoll; Craig and Cunningham 77). In particular, unboxing videos do impact child viewers, especially when children host them. Jackie Marsh emphasizes the digital literacy practices at play here that co-construct viewers as “cyberflâneur[s]” and she states that “this mode of cultural transmission is a growing feature of online practices for this age group” (369). Her stress, however, is on how the child viewer enjoys “the vicarious pleasure he or she may get from viewing the playing of another child with the toy” (376). Marsh writes that her study subject, a child called “Gareth”, “was not interested in being made visible to EvanHD [a child celebrity social media influencer] or other online peers, but was content to consume” the unboxing videos. The concept of the cyberflâneur, then, is fitting as a mediatising co-constituting process of identity-building within discourses of consumerism. However, in our study, the children, and especially Cayden, also expressed the desire to create, host, and circulate their own videos that broadcast their lives, also demonstrating awareness that videos are valorised in their social circles. Child viewers watch famous children perform consumer-identities to create an aura of influence, but viewers simultaneously aspire to become influencers using automedial performances, in essence, becoming products, themselves. Jacob, Automedial Subjects and Social Media InfluencersJacob is a vlogger on YouTube whose videos can garner millions of views, suggesting that he is also an influencer. In one video, he appears to be around the age of six as he proudly sits with folded hands, bright eyes, and a beaming, but partly toothless smile (see Figure 2). He says, “Welcome to Kinder Playtime! Today we have the Kidi Zoom Smartwatch DX. It’s from VTech” (Kinder Playtime). We see the Kidi Zoom unboxed and then depicted in stylized animations amid snippets of Jacob’s smiling face. The voice and hands of a faceless parent guide Jacob as he uses his new wearable toy. We listen to both parent and child describe numerous features for recording and enhancing the wearer’s daily habits (e.g. calculator, calendar, fitness games), and his dad tells him it has a pedometer “which tracks your steps” (Kinder Playtime). But the watch is also used by Jacob to mediate himself and his world. We see that Jacob takes pictures of himself on the tiny watch screen as he acts silly for the camera. He also uses the watch to take personal videos of his mother and sister in his home. The video ends with his father mentioning bedtime, which prompts a “thank you” to VTech for giving him the watch, and a cheerful “Bye!” from Jacob (Kinder Playtime). Figure 1: Screenshot of Kinder Playtime YouTube channel, About page Figure 2: Screenshot of “Jacob,” a child vlogger at Kinder Playtime We chose Jacob for three reasons. First, he is the same age as the children in the Storyworlds study. Second, he reviews the smart watch artifact that we gave to the study children, so there was a common use of automedia technology. Third, Jacob’s parents were involved with his broadcasts, and we wanted to work within the boundaries of parent-sanctioned practices. However, we also felt that his playful approach was a good example of how social media influence overlaps with automediality. Jacob is a labourer trading his public self-representations in exchange for free products and revenue earned through the monetisation of his content on YouTube. It appears that much of what Jacob says is scripted, particularly the promotional statements, like, “Today we have the Kidizoom Smartwatch DX. It’s from VTech. It’s the smartest watch for kids” (Kinder Playtime). Importantly, as an automedial subject Jacob reveals aspects of his self and his identity, in the manner of many child vloggers on public social media sites. His product reviews are contextualised within a commoditised space that provides him a means for the public performance of his self, which, via YouTube, has the potential to reach an enormous audience. YouTube claims to have “over a billion users—almost one-third of all people on the Internet—and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views” (YouTube). Significantly, he is not only filmed by others, Jacob is also a creative practitioner, as Cayden aspired to become. Jacob uses high-tech toys, in this case, a new wearable technology for self-compositions (the smart watch), to record himself, friends, family or simply the goings-on around him. Strapped to his wrist, the watch toy lets him play at being watched, at being quantified and at recording the life stories of others, or constructing automediated creations for himself, which he may upload to numerous social media sites. This is the start of his online automediated life, which will be increasingly under his ownership as he ages. To greater or lesser degrees, he will later be able to curate, add to, and remediate his body of automedia, including his digital past. Kennedy points out that “people are using YouTube as a transformative tool, and mirror, to document, construct, and present their identity online” (“Exploring”). Her focus is on adult vloggers who consent to their activities. Jacob’s automedia is constructed collaboratively with his parents, and it is unclear how much awareness he has of himself as an automedia creator. However, if we don’t afford Jacob the same consideration as we afford adult autobiographers, that the depiction of his life is his own, we will reduce his identity performance to pure artifice or advertisement. The questions Jacob’s videos raise around agency, consent, and creativity are important here. Sidonie Smith asks “Can there be a free, agentic space; and if so, where in the world can it be found?” (Manifesto 188). How much agency does Jacob have? Is there a liberating aspect in the act of putting personal technology into the hands of a child who can record his life, himself? And finally, how would an adult Jacob feel about his childhood self advertising these products online? Is this really automediality if Jacob does not fully understand what it means to publicly tell a mediated life story?These queries lead to concerns over child social media influence with regard to legal protection, marketing ethics, and user consent. The rise of “fan marketing” presents a nexus of stealth marketing to children by other children. Stealth marketing involves participants, in this case, fans, who do not know they are involved in an advertising scheme. For instance, the popular Minecon Minecraft conference event sessions have pushed their audience to develop the skills to become advocates and advertisers of their products, for example by showing audiences how to build a YouTube channel and sharing tips for growing a community. Targeting children in marketing ploys seems insidious. Marketing analyst Sandy Fleisher describes the value of outsourcing marketing to fan labourers:while Grand Theft Auto spent $120 million on marketing its latest release, Minecraft fans are being taught how to create and market promotional content themselves. One [example] is Minecraft YouTuber, SkydoesMinecraft. His nearly 7 million strong YouTube army, almost as big as Justin Bieber’s, means his daily videos enjoy a lot of views; 1,419,734,267 to be precise. While concerns about meaningful consent that practices like this raise have led some government bodies, and consumer and child protection groups to advocate restrictions for children, other critics have questioned the limits placed on children’s free expression by such restrictions. Tech commentator Larry Magid has written that, “In the interest of protecting children, we sometimes deny them the right to access material and express themselves.” Meghan M. Sweeney notes that “the surge in collaborative web models and the emphasis on interactivity—frequently termed Web 2.0—has meant that children are not merely targets of global media organizations” but have “multiple opportunities to be active, critical, and resistant producers”...and ”may be active agents in the production and dissemination of information” (68). Nevertheless, writes Sweeney, “corporate entities can have restrictive effects on consumers” (68), by for example, limiting imaginative play to the choices offered on a Disney website, or limiting imaginative topics to commercial products (toys, video games etc), as in YouTube review videos. Automedia is an important site from which to consider young children’s online practices in public spheres. Jacob’s performance is indeed meant to influence the choice to buy a toy, but it is also meant to influence others in knowing Jacob as an identity. He means to share and circulate his self. Julie Rak recalls Paul John Eakin’s claims about life-writing that the “process does not even occur at the level of writing, but at the level of living, so that identity formation is the result of narrative-building.” We view Jacob’s performance along these lines. Kinder Playtime offers him a constrained, parent-sanctioned (albeit commercialised) space for role-playing, a practice bound up with identity-formation in the life of most children. To think through the legality of recognising Jacob’s automedial content as his life, Rak is also useful: “In Eakin’s work in particular, we can see evidence of John Locke’s contention that identity is the expression of consciousness which is continuous over time, but that identity is also a product, one’s own property which is a legal entity”. We have argued that children are often caught in the paradox that defines them either as literate digital creators composing and circulating their online selves or as subjectified personas caught up in commercial advertising practices that use their lives for commercial gain. However, through close observation of individual children, one who we met and questioned in our study, Cayden, the other who we met through his mediated, commercialized, and circulated online persona, Jacob, we argue that child social influencers need consideration as autobiographical agents expressing themselves through automediality. As children create, edit, and grow digital traces of their lives and selves, how these texts are framed becomes increasingly important, in part because their future adult selves have such a stake in the matter: they are being formed through automedia. Moreover, these children’s coming of age may bring legal questions about the ownership of their automedial products such as YouTube videos, an enduring legacy they are leaving behind for their adult selves. Crucially, if we reduce identity performances such as unboxing, toy review videos, and other forms of children’s fan marketing to pure advertisement, we cannot afford Jacob and other child influencers the agency that their self representation is legally and artistically their own.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “#familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor.” Social Media + Society 3.2 (2017): 1-15.Andrejevic, Mark. “Privacy, Exploitation, and the Digital Enclosure.” Amsterdam Law Forum 1.4 (2009). <http://amsterdamlawforum.org/article/view/94/168>.Atkins, Bridgette, Isabel Pedersen, Shirley Van Nuland, and Samantha Reid. “A Glimpse into the Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables Project: A Work-in-Progress.” ICET 60th World Assembly: Teachers for a Better World: Creating Conditions for Quality Education – Pedagogy, Policy and Professionalism. 2017. 49-60.Beer, David, and Roger Burrows. “Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.4 (2013): 47–71.Brophy, Sarah, and Janice Hladki. 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M/C Journal 19.4 (2016). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1127>.———. “The Vulnerability of Contemporary Digital Autobiography” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32.2 (2017): 409-411.Kinder Playtime. “VTech Kidizoom Smart Watch DX Review by Kinder Playtime.” YouTube, 4 Nov. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaxCSjwZjcA&t=28s>.Magid, Larry. “Protecting Children Online Needs to Allow for Their Right to Free Speech.” ConnectSafely 29 Aug. 2014. <http://www.connectsafely.org/protecting-children-online-needs-to-allow-for-their-right-to-free-speech/>.Maguire, Emma. “Home, About, Shop, Contact: Constructing an Authorial Persona via the Author Website.” M/C Journal 17.3 (2014). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/821>.Marsh, Jackie. “‘Unboxing’ Videos: Co-construction of the Child as Cyberflâneur.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 37.3 (2016): 369-380.Nansen, Bjorn. “Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques.” M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1026>.———, and Benjamin Nicoll. “Toy Unboxing Videos and the Mimetic Production of Play.” Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of Internet Researchers (AoIR), Tartu, Estonia. 2017.Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age. New York: Basic Books, 2016.Pedersen, Isabel, and Kristen Aspevig. “‘My Eyes Ended Up at My Fingertips, My Ears, My Nose, My Mouth’: Antoine, Autobiographical Documentary, and the Cinematic Depiction of a Blind Child Subject.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 34.4 (2011).Pedersen, Isabel, and Kristen Aspevig. “‘Swept to the Sidelines and Forgotten’: Cultural Exclusion, Blind Persons’ Participation, and International Film Festivals.” Canadian Journal of Disability Studies 3.3 (2014): 29-52.Rak, Julie. “First Person? Life Writing versus Automedia.” International Association for Biography and Autobiography Europe (IABA Europe). Vienna, Austria. 30 Oct. – 3 Nov. 2013.Smith, Sidonie. “The Autobiographical Manifesto.” Ed. Shirely Neuman. Autobiography and Questions of Gender. London: Frank Cass, 1991.———, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.———. “Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Eds. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 70-95.Sweeney, Meghan. “‘Where Happily Ever After Happens Every Day’: Disney's Official Princess Website and the Commodification of Play.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 3.2 (2011): 66-87.Uhls, Yalda, and Particia Greenfield. “The Value of Fame: Preadolescent Perceptions of Popular Media and Their Relationship to Future Aspirations.” Developmental Psychology 48.2 (2012): 315-326.YouTube. “YouTube for Press.” 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/>.

“What is the point of stories in such a moment”, asks author and critic James Bradley, writing about climate extinction: Bradley emphasises that “climatologist James Hansen once said being a climate scientist was like screaming at people from behind a soundproof glass wall; being a writer concerned with these questions often feels frighteningly similar” (“Writing”). If the impact of climate change asks humans to think differently, to imagine differently, then surely writing—and reading—must change too? According to writer and geographer Samuel Miller-McDonald, “if you’re a writer, then you have to write about this”. But how are we to do that? Where might it be done already? Perhaps not in traditional (or even post-) Modernist modes. In the era of the Anthropocene I find myself turning to non-traditional, un-real models to write the slow violence and read the deep time that is where we can see our current climate catastrophe.At a “Writing in the Age of Extinction” workshop earlier this year Bradley and Jane Rawson advocated changing the language of “climate change”—rejecting such neutral terms—in the same way that I see the stories discussed here pushing against Modernity’s great narrative of progress.My research—as a reader and writer, is in the fantastic realm of speculative fiction; I have written in The Conversation about how this genre seems to be gaining literary popularity. There is no doubt that our current climate crisis has a part to play. As Margaret Atwood writes: “it’s not climate change, it’s everything change” (“Climate”). This “everything” must include literature. Kim Stanley Robinson is not the only one who sees “the models modern literary fiction has are so depleted, what they’re turning to now is our guys in disguise”. I am interested in two recent examples, which both use the strongly genre-associated time-travel trope, to consider how science-fiction concepts might work to re-imagine our “deranged” world (Ghosh), whether applied by genre writers or “our guys in disguise”. Can stories such as The Heavens by Sandra Newman and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang—which apply time travel, whether as an expression of fatalism or free will—help us conceive the current collapse: understand how it has come to pass, and imagine ways we might move through it?The Popularity of Time TravelIt seems to me that time as a notion and the narrative device, is key to any idea of writing through climate change. “Through” as in via, if the highly contested “cli-fi” category is considered a theme; and “through” as entering into and coming out the other side of this ecological end-game. Might time travel offer readers more than the realist perspective of sweeping multi-generational sagas? Time-travel books pose puzzles; they are well suited to “wicked” problems. Time-travel tales are designed to analyse the world in a way that it is not usually analysed—in accordance with Tim Parks’s criterion for great novels (Walton), and in keeping with Darko Suvin’s conception of science fiction as a literature of “cognitive estrangement”. To read, and write, a character who travels in “spacetime” asks something more of us than the emotional engagement of many Modernist tales of interiority—whether they belong to the new “literary middlebrow’” (Driscoll), or China Miéville’s Booker Prize–winning realist “litfic” (Crown).Sometimes, it is true, they ask too much, and do not answer enough. But what resolution is possible is realistic, in the context of this literally existential threat?There are many recent and recommended time-travel novels: Kate Atkinson’s 2013 Life after Life and Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2014 End of Days have main characters who are continually “reset”, exploring the idea of righting history—the more literary experiment concluding less optimistically. For Erpenbeck “only the inevitable is possible”. In her New York Times review Francine Prose likens Life after Life to writing itself: “Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final”. Andrew Sean Greer’s 2013 The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells also centres on the WorldWar(s), a natural-enough site to imagine divergent timelines, though he draws a different parallel. In Elan Mastai’s 2017 debut All Our Wrong Todays the reality that is remembered—though ultimately not missed, is more dystopic than our own time, as is also the way with Joyce Carol Oates’s 2018 The Hazards of Time Travel. Oates’s rather slight contribution to the subgenre still makes a clear point: “America is founded upon amnesia” (Oates, Hazards). So, too, is our current environment. We are living in a time created by a previous generation; the environmental consequence of our own actions will not be felt until after we are gone. What better way to write such a riddle than through the loop of time travel?The Purpose of Thought ExperimentsThis list is not meant to be comprehensive. It is an indication of the increasing literary application of the “elaborate thought experiment” of time travel (Oates, “Science Fiction”). These fictional explorations, their political and philosophical considerations, are currently popular and potentially productive in a context where action is essential, and yet practically impossible. What can I do? What could possibly be the point? As well as characters that travel backwards, or forwards in time, these titles introduce visionaries who tell of other worlds. They re-present “not-exactly places, which are anywhere but nowhere, and which are both mappable locations and states of mind”: Margaret Atwood’s “Ustopias” (Atwood, “Road”). Incorporating both utopian and dystopian aspects, they (re)present our own time, in all its contradictory (un)reality.The once-novel, now-generic “novum” of time travel has become a metaphor—the best possible metaphor, I believe, for the climatic consequence of our in/action—in line with Joanna Russ’s wonderful conception of “The Wearing out of Genre Materials”. The new marvel first introduced by popular writers has been assimilated, adopted or “stolen” by the dominant mode. In this case, literary fiction. Angela Carter is not the only one to hope “the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode”. This must be what Robinson expects: that Ken Gelder’s “big L” literature will be unable to contain the wine of “our guys”—even if it isn’t new. In the act of re-use, the time-travel cliché is remade anew.Two Cases to ConsiderTwo texts today seem to me to realise—in both senses of that word—the possibilities of the currently popular, but actually ancient, time-travel conceit. At the Melbourne Writers Festival last year Ted Chiang identified the oracle in The Odyssey as the first time traveller: they—the blind prophet Tiresias was transformed into a woman for seven years—have seen the future and report back in the form of prophecy. Chiang’s most recent short story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”, and Newman’s novel The Heavens, both of which came out this year, are original variations on this re-newed theme. Rather than a coherent, consistent, central character who travels and returns to their own time, these stories’ protagonists appear diversified in/between alternate worlds. These texts provide readers not with only one possible alternative but—via their creative application of the idea of temporal divergence—myriad alternatives within the same story. These works use the “characteristic gesture” of science fiction (Le Guin, “Le Guin Talks”), to inspire different, subversive, ways of thinking and seeing our own one-world experiment. The existential speculation of time-travel tropes is, today, more relevant than ever: how should we act when our actions may have no—or no positive, only negative—effect?Time and space travel are classic science fiction concerns. Chiang’s lecture unpacked how the philosophy of time travel speaks uniquely to questions of free will. A number of his stories explore this theme, including “The Alchemist’s Gate” (which the lecture was named after), where he makes his thinking clear: “past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully” (Chiang, Exhalation). In “Story of Your Life”, the novella that the film Arrival is based on, Chiang’s main character-narrator embraces a future that could be seen as dystopic while her partner walks away from it—and her, and his daughter—despite the happiness they will offer. Gary cannot accept the inevitable unhappiness that must accompany them. The suggestion is that if he had had Louise’s foreknowledge he might, like the free-willing protagonist in Looper, have taken steps to ensure that that life—that his daughter’s life itself—never eventuated. Whether he would have been successful is suspect: according to Chiang free will cannot foil fate.If the future cannot be changed, what is the role of free will? Louise wonders: “what if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?” In his “story notes” Chiang says inspiration came from variational principles in physics (Chiang, Stories); I see the influence of climate calamity. Knowing the future must change us—how can it not evoke “a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation”? Even if events play out precisely as we know they will. In his talk Chiang differentiated between time-travel films which favour free will, like Looper, and those that conclude fatalistically, such as Twelve Monkeys. “Story of Your Life” explores the idea that these categories are not mutually exclusive: exercising free will might not change fate; fatalism may not preclude acts of free will.Utopic Free Will vs. Dystopic Fate?Newman’s latest novel is more obviously dystopic: the world in The Heavens is worse each time Kate wakes from her dreams of the past. In the end it has become positively post-apocalyptic. The overwhelming sadness of this book is one of its most unusual aspects, going far beyond that of The Time Traveler’s Wife—2003’s popular tale of love and loss. The Heavens feels fatalistic, even though its future is—unfortunately, in this instance—not set but continually altered by the main character’s attempts to “fix” it (in each sense of the word). Where Twelve Monkeys, Looper, and The Odyssey present every action as a foregone conclusion, The Heavens navigates the nightmare that—against our will—everything we do might have an adverse consequence. As in A Christmas Carol, where the vision of a possible future prompts the protagonist to change his ways and so prevent its coming to pass, it is Kate’s foresight—of our future—which inspires her to act. History doesn’t respond well to Kate’s interventions; she is unable to “correct” events and left more and more isolated by her own unique version of a tortuous Cassandra complex.These largely inexplicable consequences provide a direct connection between Newman’s latest work and James Tiptree Jr.’s 1972 “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket”. That tale’s conclusion makes no “real” sense either—when Dovy dies Loolie’s father’s advisers can only say that (time) paradoxes are proliferating—but The Heavens is not the intellectual play of Tiptree’s classic science fiction: the wine of time-travel has been poured into the “depleted” vessel of “big L” literature. The sorrow that seeps through this novel is profound; Newman apologises for it in her acknowledgements, linking it to the death of an ex-partner. I read it as a potent expression of “solastalgia”: nostalgia for a place that once provided solace, but doesn’t any more—a term coined by Australian philosopher Glen Albrecht to express the “psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change” (Albrecht et al.). It is Kate’s grief, for a world (she has) destroyed that drives her mad: “deranged”.The Serious Side of SpeculationIn The Great Derangement Ghosh laments the “smaller shadow” cast by climate change in the landscape of literary fiction. He echoes Miéville: “fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or short story to the genre of science fiction” (Ghosh). Time-travel tales that pose the kind of questions handled by theologians before the Enlightenment and “big L” literature after—what does it mean to exist in time? How should we live? Who deserves to be happy?—may be a way for literary fiction to take climate change “seriously”: to write through it. Out-of-time narratives such as Chiang and Newman’s pose existential speculations that, rather than locating us in time, may help us imagine time itself differently. How are we to act if the future has already come to pass?“When we are faced with a world whose problems all seem ‘wicked’ and intractable, what is it that fiction can do?” (Uhlmann). At the very least, should writers not be working with “sombre realism”? Science fiction has a long and established tradition of exposing the background narratives of the political—and ecological—landscapes in which we work: the master narratives of Modernism. What Anthony Uhlmann describes here, as the “distancing technique” of fiction becomes outright “estrangement” in speculative hands. Stories such as Newman and Chiang’s reflect (on) what readers might be avoiding: that even though our future is fixed, we must act. We must behave as though our decisions matter, despite knowing the ways in which they do not.These works challenge Modernist concerns despite—or perhaps via—satisfying genre conventions, in direct contradiction to Roy Scranton’s conviction that “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy”. In doing so they fit Miéville’s description of a “literature of estrangement” while also exemplifying a new, Anthropocene “literature of recognition” (Crown). These, then, are the stories of our life.What Is Not ExpectedChiang’s 2018 lecture was actually a PowerPoint presentation on how time travel could or would “really” work. His medium, as much as his message, clearly showed the author’s cross-disciplinary affiliations, which are relevant to this discussion of literary fiction’s “depleted” models. In August this year Xu Xi concluded a lecture on speculative fiction for the Vermont College of Fine Arts by encouraging attendees to read—and write—“other” languages, whether foreign forms or alien disciplines. She cited Chiang as someone who successfully raids the riches of non-literary traditions, to produce a new kind of literature. Writing that deals in physics, as much as characters, in philosophy, as much as narrative, presents new, “post-natural” (Bradley, “End”) retro-speculations that (in un- and super-natural generic traditions) offer a real alternative to Modernism’s narrative of inevitable—and inevitably positive—progress.In “What’s Expected of Us” Chiang imagines the possible consequence of comprehending that our actions, and not just their consequence, are predetermined. In what Oates describes as his distinctive, pared-back, “unironic” style (Oates, “Science Fiction”), Chiang concludes: “reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilisation now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has”. The self-deception we need is not America’s amnesia, but the belief that what we do matters.ConclusionThe visions of her “paraself” that Nat sees in “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” encourage her to change her behaviour. The “prism” that enables this perception—a kind of time-tripped iPad that “skypes” alternate temporal realities, activated by people acting in different ways at a crucial moment in their lives—does not always reflect the butterfly effect the protagonist, or reader, might expect. Some actions have dramatic consequences while others have minimal impact. While Nat does not see her future, what she spies inspires her to take the first steps towards becoming a different—read “better”—person. We expect this will lead to more positive outcomes for her self in the story’s “first” world. The device, and Chiang’s tale, illustrates both that our paths are predetermined and that they are not: “our inability to predict the consequences of our own predetermined actions offers a kind of freedom”. The freedom to act, freedom from the coma of inaction.“What’s the use of art on a dying planet? What’s the point, when humanity itself is facing an existential threat?” Alison Croggon asks, and answers herself: “it searches for the complex truth … . It can help us to see the world we have more clearly, and help us to imagine a better one”. In literary thought experiments like Newman and Chiang’s artful time-travel fictions we read complex, metaphoric truths that cannot be put into real(ist) words. In the time-honoured tradition of (speculative) fiction, Chiang and Newman deal in, and with, “what cannot be said in words … in words” (Le Guin, “Introduction”). These most recent time-slip speculations tell unpredictable stories about what is predicted, what is predictable, but what we must (still) believe may not necessarily be—if we are to be free.ReferencesArrival. Dir. Dennis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures, 2016.Albrecht, Glenn, et al. “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change.” Australasian Psychiatry (Feb. 2007): 41–55. Atwood, Margaret. “The Road to Ustopia.” The Guardian 15 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/14/margaret-atwood-road-to-ustopia>.———. “It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change.” Medium 27 July 2015. <https://medium.com/matter/it-s-not-climate-change-it-s-everything-change-8fd9aa671804>.Bradley, James. “Writing on the Precipice: On Literature and Change.” City of Tongues. 16 Mar. 2017 <https://cityoftongues.com/2017/03/16/writing-on-the-precipice-on-literature-and-climate-change/>.———. “The End of Nature and Post-Naturalism: Fiction and the Anthropocene.” City of Tongues 30 Dec. 2015 <https://cityoftongues.com/2015/12/30/the-end-of-nature-and-post-naturalism-fiction-and-the-anthropocene/>.Bradley, James, and Jane Rawson. “Writing in the Age of Extinction.” Detached Performance and Project Space, The Old Mercury Building, Hobart. 27 July 2019.Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. New York: Tor, 2002.———. Exhalation: Stories. New York: Knopf, 2019.Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. London: Gollancz, 1983. 69.Croggon, Alison. “On Art.” Overland 235 (2019). 30 Sep. 2019 <https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-235/column-on-art/>.Crown, Sarah. “What the Booker Prize Really Excludes.” The Guardian 17 Oct. 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/17/science-fiction-china-mieville>.Driscoll, Beth. The New Literary Middlebrow: Tastemakers and Reading in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Erpenbeck, Jenny. Trans. Susan Bernofsky. The End of Days. New York: New Directions, 2016.Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. London: Routledge, 2014.Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. India: Penguin Random House, 2018.Le Guin, Ursula K. “Introduction.” The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1979. 5.———. “Ursula K. Le Guin Talks to Michael Cunningham about Genres, Gender, and Broadening Fiction.” Electric Literature 1 Apr. 2016. <https://electricliterature.com/ursula-k-le-guin-talks-to-michael- cunningham-about-genres-gender-and-broadening-fiction-57d9c967b9c>.Miller-McDonald, Samuel. “What Must We Do to Live?” The Trouble 14 Oct. 2018. <https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2018/10/14/what-must-we-do-to-live>.Oates, Joyce Carol. Hazards of Time Travel. New York: Ecco Press, 2018.———. "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." The New Yorker 13 May 2019. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/science-fiction-doesnt-have-to-be-dystopian>.Prose, Francine. “Subject to Revision.” New York Times 26 Apr. 2003. <https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html>.Robinson, Kim Stanley. “Kim Stanley Robinson and the Drowning of New York.” The Coode Street Podcast 305 (2017). <http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/the-coode-street-podcast/>.Russ, Joanna. “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials.” College English 33.1 (1971): 46–54.Scranton, Roy. “Narrative in the Anthropocene Is the Enemy.” Lithub.com 18 Sep. 2019. <https://lithub.com/roy-scranton-narrative-in-the-anthropocene-is-the-enemy/>.Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Walton, James. “Fascinating, Fearless, and Distinctly Odd.” The New York Review of Books 9 Jan. 2014: 63–64.Uhlmann, Anthony. “The Other Way, the Other Truth, the Other Life: Simpson Returns.” Sydney Review of Books. 2 Sep. 2019 <https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/macauley-simpson-returns/>. Xu, Xi. “Speculative Fiction.” Presented at the International MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Vermont, 15 Aug. 2019.

IntroductionFew life experiences have a greater impact upon the sense of self than the diagnosis of a life-challenging illness. Breast cancer is such an illness, and the sudden transition from 'well' to 'ill' is unsettling for a person's sense of knowing who they are in 'their' own body. What you know about your body, what others know about your body and what your biology knows about your body become suddenly problematic. This paper addresses what people know about their bodies before and after experiencing a breast cancer diagnosis by examining relevant theory and empirical data drawn from an online community for people with breast cancer, their families and supporters. In the Breast Cancer Click (BCC) online community members are encouraged to blog their breast cancer journey, engage in discussion forums, use a private messaging function to talk in real-time with each other and a breast care nurse, and to participate in live group chat. The records of all these activities have been used in a netnographic study which aims to examine the efficacy of this mutual support community. In this paper we present some of the material which has been created in the community’s activities to consider the embodied experience of breast cancer. Evidence from online community members is addressed to consider what a western cultural experience of breast cancer as captured by a disembodied online community can tell us about embodiment and embodied knowledge. How Do We Know?In ‘Knowing and Being’, Polanyi argues that knowing is related to two separate methods of investigation which nonetheless need to be integrated. On the one hand is the detailed knowledge of the particulars, and on the other the grasping of the big-picture conceptualization of the whole. “A medical student,” he writes, “deepens his knowledge of a disease by learning a list of its symptoms with all their variations, but only clinical practice can teach him to integrate the clues observed on an individual patient to form a correct diagnosis of his illness, rather than an erroneous diagnosis which is often more plausible” (460). The implication here is that there is more at stake than a formulaic listing of symptoms. The ‘knowing’ relates to knowledge around the disease of breast cancer; the ‘being’ relates to the experience of being a breast cancer patient. The necessary theory underpinning the identification of disease, the progress of symptoms and the side effects of treatment fails to capture the experience of the breast cancer patient, which is mutually recognisable among other patients even where superficial aspects of the disease manifestation diagnosis and progress may differ. Lekkie Hopkins writes of her immediate and bodily experience of hearing the diagnosis of her breast cancer:Thwack! ‘The good news is that you won’t die of this. The bad news is that you will have to lose a breast’. Whoosh earthwards. Floor opens to swallow my life force. Body a shell. Head empty, uncomprehending. Within seconds, whoosh again, upwards this time. Blood rushes to head, face blooms red, eyes zoom onto the tiny points of calcification on the x-ray image, ears boom. Lose a breast, lose a breast, lose a breast ricochets off the walls. Kind eyes, gentle hands, steady voice: ‘Can I call someone? Your partner?’ Kind eyes, gentle hands, steady voice. Lose a breast, Lose a breast, Lose a breast (132).Such embodied knowledge may not be recognisable within a medical/scientific context. Conflict can arise between a woman’s embodied knowledge of her breast cancer and the medical/scientific understanding involved in her treatment (Thomas-McLean, Memories of Treatment). Perhaps surprisingly, the body can appear absent in medical discourse and alternative approaches are needed to provide an embodied perspective. Considering poet and feminist scholar Adrienne Rich’s invitation to women to learn to think through the body, Lekkie Hopkins wondered “what it must mean to lose part of that body” (134). Thomas-McLean has noted that frameworks of health and illness can fail to capture the “complexities associated with living with an altered body” (Beyond Dichotomies 202). She promotes the idea that “women speaking for themselves, about their own experiences” is an important part of the repository of knowledge and understanding about breast cancer (Memories of Treatment 629). Our knowledge comes from our physical nature, our embodiment within our world and the meanings attached to the body within our social context.An online community constructed using community networking technologies may seem an unlikely place for reclaiming the knowledge of the body. However, deep connection between members has been observed in online communities studied in detail (Bonniface et al.). The qualitative richness of complex experiences, missing from the medical discourse, can be found in such communities and constitute an alternative source of data to traditional interview methods. As mentioned, it is not an aim of this paper to address the efficacy of the Breast Cancer Click community, but to use some of the material which has been created in the community’s activities to consider the embodied experience of breast cancer. In speaking for themselves in the Breast Cancer Click community, women reveal both their knowing and being as breast cancer survivors.Online Support in a (Dis)embodied CommunityThe research question addressed in this paper is “What embodied knowledge about breast cancer can be shared in the disembodied realm of an online support community?” Women experiencing the betrayal of their bodies seek the authenticating experience of sharing their stories with others whose lives have embodied analogous experiences. Breast Cancer Click (BCC) was set up to provide a connection between breast cancer patients and their supporters with others who are currently undergoing treatment and those that have completed their treatments wishing to support others. This peer-to-peer support is expanded through interaction with an online Breast Care Nurse, providing education and information and unraveling the medical terminology and diagnosis with each specific patient, where requested. Through personal messages, forum threads and group online chats regular contact is maintained with newly diagnosed members, those currently involved with treatment, and those considering reconstruction and other post-surgical options. It is through these active members’ dialogue that we can appreciate the value provided by this disembodied communicative space. Using the principles of netnography (Kozinets), which applies ethnographic techniques to online communities and environments, the posts, chat, forum contributions and private messages (all de-identified) were archived to provide the raw data for this study. Transcripts were analysed to identify themes arising (Strauss & Corbin) and to select content which illustrates these themes and illuminates the experience of participants and the value or otherwise of the online community. Necessarily, with hundreds of thousands of words posted as part of the ongoing research project, only selected material is presented here. Three major areas of discussion are presented for this paper: development of a new normal, breast image and holistic health. We have not ‘personalised’ the contributions of Breast Cancer Click members, but have indicated verbatim quotes via the attribution to (BCC).The ‘New Normal’I have silicone implants and swimming now feels VERY wierd. (BCC) This statement is indicative of a range of language comparing the pre-diagnosis, or pre-cancer, body with the changed circumstances which embody the results of the cancer even while the medical model excises it. Insights and comments on the bodily experience arise in a range of circumstances such as: through the experience of hair loss following on from chemotherapy; questions about authenticity and reconstruction following surgery. im expecting to shave my head as soon as i see hairloss. i have already had my hair cut shorter to help my kids adjust etc.i cut my hair short too before chemo so i get used to the idea havent shaved it yet though. (all BCC) These comments indicate the intuitive use of simulation strategies as a means of adjusting to the anticipated response of the body to the experience of chemotherapy. This simulation strategy reintroduces a sense of agency for the BCC member, allowing them to feel as though they have chosen to change their appearance.Sometimes the edge of the new normal can be softened by the experience of social and emotional solidarity conveyed through others embodying their support for the person with a breast cancer diagnosis: oh when i lost my hair, my boss (at the time) was so lovely, and he shaved his head, and we had our pics taken together : ). Mine too- the school did greatest shave just as I lost my hair. Raised $900. (Both BCC) Although the experience of losing hair through chemotherapy is very different from that of being shaved, the embodiment of ‘different’ can serve to offer consolation and companionship for those who are embarking on a breast cancer journey. A return to the ‘old normal’ can be a cause for celebration, along with a recognition that the body continues to function as it had pre-cancer:i remember the feeling when my hair was long enuf to dye back to blonde : ) was fabulous when it got long enuf for a bit of a style instead of just fluff! (BCC) Breast Image, Mastectomy and ReconstructionWithin the breast cancer community, the issue of reconstruction following mastectomy becomes a very personal one, whilst also, for some people, involving wider gender politics. Although it might seem this is an elaboration of the discussion around challenges to the concept of the ‘pre-cancer self’ and the new normal, women’s breasts have such a range of associations in Western culture that it is hard to be objective about the new embodiment of the post-cancer self. I had a lumpectomy but it's obvious size wise and I lost my nipple completely ... but I won't reconstruct or wear padding.We all look great (scars are not so lovely) but with swimwear or a bra on we are all OK. I went from a small a cup to a c cup as the plastic surgeon suggested we ‘may as well kick a goal as a point’. (Both BCC)Sometimes the experience of the disease is such that the ‘new normal’ places the body into an anomalous category. There is an embodiment of strangeness which over-rides the conscious understanding about biology and function. The rational, knowledgeable, self can sometimes be seen to be in conflict with the experiential being of the post-treatment breast cancer patient. This was the case with a 29 year-old BCC member who successfully fell pregnant after her diagnosis. This exchange was via live chat between the breast care nurse (BCN) and the BCC member, so it sometimes reads in a disjointed way as the messagers respond to each other’s posts in a semi-synchronous way. Do you think you will breast-feed? (BCC Breast Care Nurse) probably not. (BCC)i feel weird about my boobs now. (BCC) How do you mean? (BCC Breast Care Nurse) like i'd make sure baby got first milk etc, and then bottle feed. (BCC)oh umm its hard to describe, they don't feel like they are for that purpose anymore. (BCC)i don't like the left one being touched much. (BCC)Good plan - good for baby to have some breast milk. (BCC Breast Care Nurse)No - I guess it feels odd - not normal? (BCC Breast Care Nurse)As in this exchange, the online community operates to validate the experiences of its members, to offer support and understanding. The politics around breast feeding, as with those around a woman’s physical appearance, mean that people with a diagnosis of breast cancer often perceive they are subject to a range of social ‘shoulds’ at a time when they are trying to re-learn (or to learn) an authentic sense of being in communication with, and being in communion with, their body. Holistic HealthWe went for a brisk walk around west-end with heart rate monitors on to check our pulse rates. It was great to do the exercise in a group situation. I am looking forward to getting in touch with my pre-diagnosis body again. I gently stretched my 'bad' arm which was OK.I am very happy to say that my energy levels have already improved and have just been for a walk. My unused muscles are waking up and I feel excited now I realize it is possible for me to return to my pre-diagnosis fitness levels and activities. (Both BCC) The physicality of the experience of cancer and its treatment can act as a spur to people who wish to reassert control over their bodies and bring their body back into a positive relationship with health and fitness. Sometimes this impetus can provoke an almost super-human response on the part of the person with breast cancer:I had been attending Body Pump 2 or 3 times a week for 10 years prior to my diagnosis and made casual aquaintences with other regular attendees. […] I returned to the classes myself while still on chemo, I was having a weekly light dose for 3 months so felt OK. While my energy levels were a bit low I managed to do about 75% of the class with light weights and just stopped when I became tired. The instructor and other class members were so supportive. It helped me to feel like I was getting back to normal just being able to participate in the classes. (BCC)On occasions, BCC members will post in a way that invites support from those who have developed successful strategies or responses to similar challenges. Here the mind is sometimes seen as determining the response of the body: [I’m] finding it hard to get motivated enough to go out. This is made worse because I have put on lots of weight and am so unfit compared to my pre-cancer body. So doing exercise just isn't as much fun anymore. Hopefully it will get better. (BCC)When a person with a breast cancer diagnosis seeks strategies to move beyond a place in which they feel stuck, it is often through harnessing a sensory image. The means of moving through a challenge, or towards an acceptable new normal, might be via the use of senses, simulation and experiential movement: I feel like I'd like to have someone gently hold my hand and lead me to do all the cardio, exercises and stretching. Having been through so much I feel like being nurtured but instead I have to be strict and a bit tough to take steps to go forward. […] Often I pop outside and if the sky is clear and it's not too cold I walk around the block. (BCC)Communication and the BodyWhat is clear from these communications between members is that an experience of breast cancer can trigger particular responses associated with physical embodiment. Even as the person with a new diagnosis of breast cancer tries to rationalise the diagnosis, the treatment and the prognosis, so they are assaulted by a range of highly physical sensations, from feeling sick, to feeling crushed, to feeling as if even the certainties of gravity have been challenged by this embodiment of change (Walker, Plant, Hopkins). For those working through their response, initial analysis of the data from the disembodied BCC community indicates that accommodating the post-cancer self often takes a physical form, an acceptance of the revised self and its engagement in sensory and simulated ways with the wider world. For example it is often aspects of the post-surgery body that BCC members use to highlight the possibility of a lighter, more humorous, response to the challenges of their experience:haha XX [friend who has had a breast cancer diagnosis] and [I] still go to lift the boob when washing in the shower haha.a friend of mine had [a] double reconstruction a few years back and needed ‘replacement nipples’ that were imported from the US - we all laughed when she announced they have arrived in the post for her! (Both BCC)In terms of the research question, “What embodied knowledge about breast cancer can be shared in the disembodied realm of an online support community?”, the data presented indicates that experience of the life-changing disease of breast cancer can trigger a new appreciation of the physicality of the human condition. This can be shared with others in a similar situation, seeking confirmation of shared experience. The disembodied community allows the member-self to move from the cognitive realm into an experiential one. It foregrounds the strangeness of the revised body through temporary but highly visible indicators, such as the loss of hair following chemotherapy, and permanent but less visible changes, such as the removal of a breast. It allows these changes to be recontextuatlised as the new normal, and provides a safe space in which to explore and imagine further responses to these embodied challenges such as whether to use a prosthesis, or to embark upon a reconstruction. The physically disembodied community of the BCC may constitute a lived space where the daily experience of breast cancer is addressed; “simultaneously part of bodily forms and their social constructions” (Moss and Dyck 49).This initial analysis of BCC community posts indicates that one way through the maelstrom of diagnosis, treatment and living with an altered body is a renewed focus upon experiential data and the sensory life. Simulation is often used and described as a means of coming to terms with the new normal. Theoretical discussions around embodied knowledge, may yet prove to have practical outcomes by contributing to a composite and shared understanding of the disease and in supporting people whose lives have triggered a radical re-appraisal of what it is to be an embodied being.AcknowledgementsThe research project upon which this paper is based is funded jointly by Breast Cancer Care WA and the Australian Research Council with in-kind contributions from Edith Cowan University and utilizes a social network site linked to Breast Cancer Care WA and Steel Blue’s Purple Boot Brigade.References Bonniface, Leesa, Lelia Green, and Maurice Swanson. “Affect and an Effective Online Therapeutic Community.” M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 14 Aug. 2012 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/05-bonnifacegreenswanson.php›.Hopkins, Lekkie. “Bad News: A Narrative Account of the Subjective Experience of Mastectomy.” Health Sociology Review 12 (2003): 129-136.Kozinets, Robert. Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010.Moss, Pamela, and Isabel Dyck. Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.Plant, Jane. Your Life in Your Hands: Understand, Prevent and Overcome Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer. 4th ed. London: Virgin Books, 2007.Polanyi, Michael. “Knowing and Being.” Mind (New Series), 70.280 (1961): 458-470.Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.Thomas-McLean, Roanne. "Memories of Treatment: the Immediacy of Breast Cancer." Qualitative Health Research 14 (2004): 628-643.---. Beyond Dichotomies of Health and Illness: Life after Breast Cancer. Nursing Inquiry 12 (2005): 200-209.Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago, 1992.Walker, Brenda. Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life. Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2010.

RACHAEL. It seems you feel our work is not a benefit to the public.DECKARD. Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit it's not my problem.RACHAEL. May I ask you a personal question?DECKARD. Yes.RACHAEL. Have you every retired a human by mistake? (Scott 17:30) CAPTCHAs (henceforth "captchas") are commonplace on today's Internet. Their purpose seems clear: block malicious software, allow human users to pass. But as much as they exclude spambots, captchas often exclude humans with visual and other disabilities (Dzieza; W3C Working Group). Worse yet, more and more advanced captcha-breaking technology has resulted in more and more challenging captchas, raising the barrier between online services and those who would access them. In the words of inclusive design advocate Robin Christopherson, "CAPTCHAs are evil". In this essay I describe how the captcha industry implements a posthuman process that speculative fiction has gestured toward but not grasped. The hostile posthumanity of captcha is not just a technical problem, nor just a problem of usability or access. Rather, captchas convey a design philosophy that asks humans to prove themselves by performing well at disembodied games. This philosophy has its roots in the Turing Test itself, whose terms guide speculation away from the real problems that today's authentication systems present. Drawing the concept of "procedurality" from game studies, I argue that, despite a design goal of separating machines and humans to the benefit of the latter, captchas actually and ironically produce an arms race in which humans have a systematic and increasing disadvantage. This arms race results from the Turing Test's equivocation between human and machine bodies, an assumption whose influence I identify in popular film, science fiction literature, and captcha design discourse. The Captcha Industry and Its Side-Effects Exclusion is an essential function of every cybersecurity system. From denial-of-service attacks to data theft, toxic automated entities constantly seek admission to services they would damage. To remain functional and accessible, Websites need security systems to keep out "abusive agents" (Shet). In cybersecurity, the term "user authentication" refers to the process of distinguishing between abusive agents and welcome users (Jeng et al.). Of the many available authentication techniques, CAPTCHA, "Completely Automated Public Turing test[s] to tell Computers and Humans Apart" (Von Ahn et al. 1465), is one of the most iconic. Although some captchas display a simple checkbox beside a disclaimer to the effect that "I am not a robot" (Shet), these frequently give way to more difficult alternatives: perception tests (fig. 1). Test captchas may show sequences of distorted letters, which a user is supposed to recognise and then type in (Godfrey). Others effectively digitize a game of "I Spy": an image appears, with an instruction to select the parts of it that show a specific type of object (Zhu et al.). A newer type of captcha involves icons rotated upside-down or sideways, the task being to right them (Gossweiler et al.). These latter developments show the influence of gamification (Kani and Nishigaki; Kumar et al.), the design trend where game-like elements figure in serious tasks. Fig. 1: A series of captchas followed by multifactor authentication as a "quick security check" during the author's suspicious attempt to access LinkedIn over a Virtual Private Network Gamified captchas, in using tests of ability to tell humans from computers, invite three problems, of which only the first has received focussed critical attention. I discuss each briefly below, and at greater length in subsequent sections. First, as many commentators have pointed out (W3C Working Group), captchas can accidentally categorise real humans as nonhumans—a technical problem that becomes more likely as captcha-breaking technologies improve (e.g. Tam et al.; Brown et al.). Indeed, the design and breaking of captchas has become an almost self-sustaining subfield in computer science, as researchers review extant captchas, publish methods for breaking them, and publish further captcha designs (e.g. Weng et al.). Such research fuels an industry of captcha-solving services (fig. 2), of which some use automated techniques, and some are "human-powered", employing groups of humans to complete large numbers of captchas, thus clearing the way for automated incursions (Motoyama et al. 2). Captchas now face the quixotic task of using ability tests to distinguish legitimate users from abusers with similar abilities. Fig. 2: Captcha production and captcha breaking: a feedback loop Second, gamified captchas import the feelings of games. When they defeat a real human, the human seems not to have encountered the failure state of an automated procedure, but rather to have lost, or given up on, a game. The same frame of "gameful"-ness (McGonigal, under "Happiness Hacking") or "gameful work" (under "The Rise of the Happiness Engineers"), supposed to flatter users with a feeling of reward or satisfaction when they complete a challenge, has a different effect in the event of defeat. Gamefulness shifts the fault from procedure to human, suggesting, for the latter, the shameful status of loser. Third, like games, gamified captchas promote a particular strain of logic. Just as other forms of media can be powerful venues for purveying stereotypes, so are gamified captchas, in this case conveying the notion that ability is a legitimate means, not only of apportioning privilege, but of humanising and dehumanising. Humanity thus appears as a status earned, and disability appears not as a stigma, nor an occurrence, but an essence. The latter two problems emerge because the captcha reveals, propagates and naturalises an ideology through mechanised procedures. Below I invoke the concept of "procedural rhetoric" to critique the disembodied notion of humanity that underlies both the original Turing Test and the "Completely Automated Public Turing test." Both tests, I argue, ultimately play to the disadvantage of their human participants. Rhetorical Games, Procedural Rhetoric When videogame studies emerged as an academic field in the early 2000s, once of its first tasks was to legitimise games relative to other types of artefact, especially literary texts (Eskelinen; Aarseth). Scholars sought a framework for discussing how video games, like other more venerable media, can express ideas (Weise). Janet Murray and Ian Bogost looked to the notion of procedure, devising the concepts of "procedurality" (Bogost 3), "procedural authorship" (Murray 171), and "procedural rhetoric" (Bogost 1). From a proceduralist perspective, a videogame is both an object and a medium for inscribing processes. Those processes have two basic types: procedures the game's developers have authored, which script the behaviour of the game as a computer program; and procedures human players respond with, the "operational logic" of gameplay (Bogost 13). Procedurality's two types of procedure, the computerised and the human, have a kind of call-and-response relationship, where the behaviour of the machine calls upon players to respond with their own behaviour patterns. Games thus train their players. Through the training that is play, players acquire habits they bring to other contexts, giving videogames the power not only to express ideas but "disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world, leading to potentially significant long-term social change" (Bogost ix). That social change can be positive (McGonigal), or it can involve "dark patterns", cases where game procedures provoke and exploit harmful behaviours (Zagal et al.). For example, embedded in many game paradigms is the procedural rhetoric of "toxic meritocracy" (Paul 66), where players earn rewards, status and personal improvement by overcoming challenges, and, especially, excelling where others fail. While meritocracy may seem logical within a strictly competitive arena, its effect in a broader cultural context is to legitimise privileges as the spoils of victory, and maltreatment as the just result of defeat. As game design has influenced other fields, so too has procedurality's applicability expanded. Gamification, "the use of game design elements in non-game contexts" (Deterding et al. 9), is a popular trend in which designers seek to imbue diverse tasks with some of the enjoyment of playing a game (10). Gamification discourse has drawn heavily upon Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "positive psychology" (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi), and especially the speculative psychology of flow (Csikszentmihalyi 51), which promise enormously broad benefits for individuals acting in the "flow state" that challenging play supposedly promotes (75). Gamification has become a celebrated cause, advocated by a group of scholars and designers Sebastian Deterding calls the "Californian league of gamification evangelists" (120), before becoming an object of critical scrutiny (Fuchs et al.). Where gamification goes, it brings its dark patterns with it. In gamified user authentication (Kroeze and Olivier), and particularly gamified captcha, there occurs an intersection of deceptively difficult games, real-world stakes, and users whose differences go often ignored. The Disembodied Arms Race In captcha design research, the concept of disability occurs under the broader umbrella of usability. Usability studies emphasise the fact that some technology pieces are easier to access than others (Yan and El Ahmad). Disability studies, in contrast, emphasises the fact that different users have different capacities to overcome access barriers. Ability is contextual, an intersection of usability and disability, use case and user (Reynolds 443). When used as an index of humanness, ability yields illusive results. In Posthuman Knowledge, Rosi Braidotti begins her conceptual enquiry into the posthuman condition with a contemplation of captcha, asking what it means to tick that checkbox claiming that "I am not a robot" (8), and noting the baffling multiplicity of possible answers. From a practical angle, Junya Kani and Masakatsu Nishigaki write candidly about the problem of distinguishing robot from human: "no matter how advanced malicious automated programs are, a CAPTCHA that will not pass automated programs is required. Hence, we have to find another human cognitive processing capability to tackle this challenge" (40). Kani and Nishigaki try out various human cognitive processing capabilities for the task. Narrative comprehension and humour become candidates: might a captcha ascribe humanity based on human users' ability to determine the correct order of scenes in a film (43)? What about panels in a cartoon (40)? As they seek to assess the soft skills of machines, Kani and Nishigaki set up a drama similar to that of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and its film adaptation, Blade Runner (Scott), describe a spacefaring society populated by both humans and androids. Androids have lesser legal privileges than humans, and in particular face execution—euphemistically called "retirement"—for trespassing on planet Earth (Dick 60). Blade Runner gave these androids their more famous name: "replicant". Replicants mostly resemble humans in thought and action, but are reputed to lack the capacity for empathy, so human police, seeking a cognitive processing capability unique to humans, test for empathy to test for humanness (30). But as with captchas, Blade Runner's testing procedure depends upon an automated device whose effectiveness is not certain, prompting the haunting question: "have you ever retired a human by mistake?" (Scott 17:50). Blade Runner's empathy test is part of a long philosophical discourse about the distinction between human and machine (e.g. Putnam; Searle). At the heart of the debate lies Alan Turing's "Turing Test", which a machine hypothetically passes when it can pass itself off as a human conversationalist in an exchange of written text. Turing's motivation for coming up with the test goes: there may be no absolute way of defining what makes a human mind, so the best we can do is assess a computer's ability to imitate one (Turing 433). The aporia, however—how can we determine what makes a human mind?—is the result of an unfair question. Turing's test, dealing only with information expressed in strings of text, purposely disembodies both humans and machines. The Blade Runner universe similarly evens the playing field: replicants look, feel and act like humans to such an extent that distinguishing between the two becomes, again, the subject of a cognition test. The Turing Test, obsessed with information processing and steeped in mind-body dualism, assesses humanness using criteria that automated users can master relatively easily. In contrast, in everyday life, I use a suite of much more intuitive sensory tests to distinguish between my housemate and my laptop. My intuitions capture what the Turing Test masks: a human is a fleshy entity, possessed of the numerous trappings and capacities of a human body. The result of the automated Turing Test's focus on cognition is an arms race that places human users at an increasing disadvantage. Loss, in such a race, manifests not only as exclusion by and from computer services, but as a redefinition of proper usership, the proper behaviour of the authentic, human, user. Thus the Turing Test implicitly provides for a scenario where a machine becomes able to super-imitate humanness: to be perceived as human more often than a real human would be. In such an outcome, it would be the human conversationalist who would begin to fail the Turing test; to fail to pass themself off according to new criteria for authenticity. This scenario is possible because, through procedural rhetoric, machines shift human perspectives: about what is and is not responsible behaviour; about what humans should and should not feel when confronted with a challenge; about who does and does not deserve access; and, fundamentally, about what does and does not signify authentic usership. In captcha, as in Blade Runner, it is ultimately a machine that adjudicates between human and machine cognition. As users we rely upon this machine to serve our interests, rather than pursue some emergent automated interest, some by-product of the feedback loop that results from the ideologies of human researchers both producing and being produced by mechanised procedures. In the case of captcha, that faith is misplaced. The Feeling of Robopocalypse A rich repertory of fiction has speculated upon what novelist Daniel Wilson calls the "Robopocalypse", the scenario where machines overthrow humankind. Most versions of the story play out as a slave-owner's nightmare, featuring formerly servile entities (which happen to be machines) violently revolting and destroying the civilisation of their masters. Blade Runner's rogue replicants, for example, are effectively fugitive slaves (Dihal 196). Popular narratives of robopocalypse, despite showing their antagonists as lethal robots, are fundamentally human stories with robots playing some of the parts. In contrast, the exclusion a captcha presents when it defeats a human is not metaphorical or emancipatory. There, in that moment, is a mechanised entity defeating a human. The defeat takes place within an authoritative frame that hides its aggression. For a human user, to be defeated by a captcha is to fail to meet an apparently common standard, within the framework of a common procedure. This is a robopocalypse of baffling systems rather than anthropomorphic soldiers. Likewise, non-human software clients pose threats that humanoid replicants do not. In particular, software clients replicate much faster than physical bodies. The sheer sudden scale of a denial-of-service attack makes Philip K. Dick's vision of android resistance seem quaint. The task of excluding unauthorised software, unlike the impulse to exclude replicants, is more a practical necessity than an exercise in colonialism. Nevertheless, dystopia finds its way into the captcha process through the peril inherent in the test, whenever humans are told apart from authentic users. This is the encroachment of the hostile posthuman, naturalised by us before it denaturalises us. The hostile posthuman sometimes manifests as a drone strike, Terminator-esque (Cameron), a dehumanised decision to kill (Asaro). But it is also a process of gradual exclusion, detectable from moment to moment as a feeling of disdain or impatience for the irresponsibility, incompetence, or simply unusualness of a human who struggles to keep afloat of a rising standard. "We are in this together", Braidotti writes, "between the algorithmic devil and the acidified deep blue sea" (9). But we are also in this separately, divided along lines of ability. Captcha's danger, as a broken procedure, hides in plain sight, because it lashes out at some only while continuing to flatter others with a game that they can still win. Conclusion Online security systems may always have to define some users as legitimate and others as illegitimate. Is there a future where they do so on the basis of behaviour rather than identity or essence? Might some future system accord each user, human or machine, the same authentic status, and provide all with an initial benefit of the doubt? In the short term, such a system would seem grossly impractical. The type of user that most needs to be excluded is the disembodied type, the type that can generate orders of magnitude more demands than a human, that can proliferate suddenly and in immense number because it does not lag behind the slow processes of human bodies. This type of user exists in software alone. Rich in irony, then, is the captcha paradigm which depends on the disabilities of the threats it confronts. We dread malicious software not for its disabilities—which are momentary and all too human—but its abilities. Attenuating the threat presented by those abilities requires inverting a habit that meritocracy trains and overtrains: specifically, we have here a case where the plight of the human user calls for negative action toward ability rather than disability. 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Introduction: Bubbles and Sport The ephemeral materiality of bubbles – beautiful, spectacular, and distracting but ultimately fragile – when applied to protect or conserve in the interests of sport-media profit, creates conditions that exacerbate existing inequalities in sport and society. Bubbles are usually something to watch, admire, and chase after in their brief yet shiny lives. There is supposed to be, technically, nothing inside them other than one or more gasses, and yet we constantly refer to people and objects being inside bubbles. The metaphor of the bubble has been used to describe the life of celebrities, politicians in purpose-built capital cities like Canberra, and even leftist, environmentally activist urban dwellers. The metaphorical and material qualities of bubbles are aligned—they cannot be easily captured and are liable to change at any time. In this article we address the metaphorical sporting bubble, which is often evoked in describing life in professional sport. This is a vernacular term used to capture and condemn the conditions of life of elite sportspeople (usually men), most commonly after there has been a sport-related scandal, especially of a sexual nature (Rowe). It is frequently paired with connotatively loaded adjectives like pampered and indulged. The sporting bubble is rarely interrogated in academic literature, the concept largely being left to the media and moral entrepreneurs. It is represented as involving a highly privileged but also pressurised life for those who live inside it. A sporting bubble is a world constructed for its most prized inhabitants that enables them to be protected from insurgents and to set the terms of their encounters with others, especially sport fans and disciplinary agents of the state. The Covid-19 pandemic both reinforced and reconfigured the operational concept of the bubble, re-arranging tensions between safety (protecting athletes) and fragility (short careers, risks of injury, etc.) for those within, while safeguarding those without from bubble contagion. Privilege and Precarity Bubble-induced social isolation, critics argue, encourages a loss of perspective among those under its protection, an entitled disconnection from the usual rules and responsibilities of everyday life. For this reason, the denizens of the sporting bubble are seen as being at risk to themselves and, more troublingly, to those allowed temporarily to penetrate it, especially young women who are first exploited by and then ejected from it (Benedict). There are many well-documented cases of professional male athletes “behaving badly” and trying to rely on institutional status and various versions of the sporting bubble for shelter (Flood and Dyson; Reel and Crouch; Wade). In the age of mobile and social media, it is increasingly difficult to keep misbehaviour in-house, resulting in a slew of media stories about, for example, drunkenness and sexual misconduct, such as when then-Sydney Roosters co-captain Mitchell Pearce was suspended and fined in 2016 after being filmed trying to force an unwanted kiss on a woman and then simulating a lewd act with her dog while drunk. There is contestation between those who condemn such behaviour as aberrant and those who regard it as the conventional expression of youthful masculinity as part of the familiar “boys will be boys” dictum. The latter naturalise an inequitable gender order, frequently treating sportsmen as victims of predatory women, and ignoring asymmetries of power between men and women, especially in homosocial environments (Toffoletti). For those in the sporting bubble (predominantly elite sportsmen and highly paid executives, also mostly men, with an array of service staff of both sexes moving in and out of it), life is reflected for those being protected via an array of screens (small screens in homes and indoor places of entertainment, and even smaller screens on theirs and others’ phones, as well as huge screens at sport events). These male sport stars are paid handsomely to use their skill and strength to perform for the sporting codes, their every facial expression and bodily action watched by the media and relayed to audiences. This is often a precarious existence, the usually brief career of an athlete worker being dependent on health, luck, age, successful competition with rivals, networks, and club and coach preferences. There is a large, aspirational reserve army of athletes vying to play at the elite level, despite risks of injury and invasive, life-changing medical interventions. Responsibility for avoiding performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) also weighs heavily on their shoulders (Connor). Professional sportspeople, in their more reflective moments, know that their time in the limelight will soon be up, meaning that getting a ticket to the sporting bubble, even for a short time, can make all the difference to their post-sport lives and those of their families. The most vulnerable of the small minority of participants in sport who make a good, short-term living from it are those for whom, in the absence of quality education and prior social status, it is their sole likely means of upward social mobility (Spaaij). Elite sport performers are surrounded by minders, doctors, fitness instructors, therapists, coaches, advisors and other service personnel, all supporting athletes to stay focussed on and maximise performance quality to satisfy co-present crowds, broadcasters, sponsors, sports bodies and mass media audiences. The shield offered by the sporting bubble supports the teleological win-at-all-costs mentality of professional sport. The stakes are high, with athlete and executive salaries, sponsorships and broadcasting deals entangled in a complex web of investments in keeping the “talent” pivotal to the “attention economy” (Davenport and Beck)—the players that provide the content for sale—in top form. Yet, the bubble cannot be entirely secured and poor behaviour or performance can have devastating effects, including permanent injury or disability, mental illness and loss of reputation (Rowe, “Scandals and Sport”). Given this fragile materiality of the sporting bubble, it is striking that, in response to the sudden shutdown following the economic and health crisis caused by the 2020 global pandemic, the leaders of professional sport decided to create more of them and seek to seal the metaphorical and material space with unprecedented efficiency. The outcome was a multi-sided tale of mobility, confinement, capital, labour, and the gendering of sport and society. The Covid-19 Gilded Cage Sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry have analysed the socio-politics of mobilities, whereby some people in the world, such as tourists, can traverse the globe at their leisure, while others remain fixed in geographical space because they lack the means to be mobile or, in contrast, are involuntarily displaced by war, so-called “ethnic cleansing”, famine, poverty or environmental degradation. The Covid-19 global pandemic re-framed these matters of mobilities (Rowe, “Subjecting Pandemic Sport”), with conventional moving around—between houses, businesses, cities, regions and countries—suddenly subjected to the imperative to be static and, in perniciously unreflective technocratic discourse, “socially distanced” (when what was actually meant was to be “physically distanced”). The late-twentieth century analysis of the “risk society” by Ulrich Beck, in which the mysterious consequences of humans’ predation on their environment are visited upon them with terrifying force, was dramatically realised with the coming of Covid-19. In another iteration of the metaphor, it burst the bubble of twenty-first century global sport. What we today call sport was formed through the process of sportisation (Maguire), whereby hyper-local, folk physical play was reconfigured as multi-spatial industrialised sport in modernity, becoming increasingly reliant on individual athletes and teams travelling across the landscape and well over the horizon. Co-present crowds were, in turn, overshadowed in the sport economy when sport events were taken to much larger, dispersed audiences via the media, especially in broadcast mode (Nicholson, Kerr, and Sherwood). This lucrative mediation of professional sport, though, came with an unforgiving obligation to generate an uninterrupted supply of spectacular live sport content. The pandemic closed down most sports events and those that did take place lacked the crucial participation of the co-present crowd to provide the requisite event atmosphere demanded by those viewers accustomed to a sense of occasion. Instead, they received a strange spectacle of sport performers operating in empty “cathedrals”, often with a “faked” crowd presence. The mediated sport spectacle under the pandemic involved cardboard cut-out and sex doll spectators, Zoom images of fans on large screens, and sampled sounds of the crowd recycled from sport video games. Confected co-presence produced simulacra of the “real” as Baudrillardian visions came to life. The sporting bubble had become even more remote. For elite sportspeople routinely isolated from the “common people”, the live sport encounter offered some sensory experience of the social – the sounds, sights and even smells of the crowd. Now the sporting bubble closed in on an already insulated and insular existence. It exposed the irony of the bubble as a sign of both privileged mobility and incarcerated athlete work, both refuge and prison. Its logic of contagion also turned a structure intended to protect those inside from those outside into, as already observed, a mechanism to manage the threat of insiders to outsiders. In Australia, as in many other countries, the populace was enjoined by governments and health authorities to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 through isolation and immobility. There were various exceptions, principally those classified as essential workers, a heterogeneous cohort ranging from supermarket shelf stackers to pharmacists. People in the cultural, leisure and sports industries, including musicians, actors, and athletes, were not counted among this crucial labour force. Indeed, the performing arts (including dance, theatre and music) were put on ice with quite devastating effects on the livelihoods and wellbeing of those involved. So, with all major sports shut down (the exception being horse racing, which received the benefit both of government subsidies and expanding online gambling revenue), sport organisations began to represent themselves as essential services that could help sustain collective mental and even spiritual wellbeing. This case was made most aggressively by Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman, Peter V’landys, in contending that “an Australia without rugby league is not Australia”. In similar vein, prominent sport and media figure Phil Gould insisted, when describing rugby league fans in Western Sydney’s Penrith, “they’re lost, because the football’s not on … . It holds their families together. People don’t understand that … . Their life begins in the second week of March, and it ends in October”. Despite misgivings about public safety and equality before the pandemic regime, sporting bubbles were allowed to form, re-form and circulate. The indefinite shutdown of the National Rugby League (NRL) on 23 March 2020 was followed after negotiation between multiple entities by its reopening on 28 May 2020. The competition included a team from another nation-state (the Warriors from Aotearoa/New Zealand) in creating an international sporting bubble on the Central Coast of New South Wales, separating them from their families and friends across the Tasman Sea. Appeals to the mental health of fans and the importance of the NRL to myths of “Australianness” notwithstanding, the league had not prudently maintained a financial reserve and so could not afford to shut down for long. Significant gambling revenue for leagues like the NRL and Australian Football League (AFL) also influenced the push to return to sport business as usual. Sport contests were needed in order to exploit the gambling opportunities – especially online and mobile – stimulated by home “confinement”. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Australians’ weekly spending on gambling went up by 142 per cent, and the NRL earned significantly more than usual from gambling revenue—potentially $10 million above forecasts for 2020. Despite the clear financial imperative at play, including heavy reliance on gambling, sporting bubble-making involved special licence. The state of Queensland, which had pursued a hard-line approach by closing its borders for most of those wishing to cross them for biographical landmark events like family funerals and even for medical treatment in border communities, became “the nation's sporting hub”. Queensland became the home of most teams of the men’s AFL (notably the women’s AFLW season having been cancelled) following a large Covid-19 second wave in Melbourne. The women’s National Netball League was based exclusively in Queensland. This state, which for the first time hosted the AFL Grand Final, deployed sport as a tool in both national sports tourism marketing and internal pre-election politics, sponsoring a documentary, The Sporting Bubble 2020, via its Tourism and Events arm. While Queensland became the larger bubble incorporating many other sporting bubbles, both the AFL and the NRL had versions of the “fly in, fly out” labour rhythms conventionally associated with the mining industry in remote and regional areas. In this instance, though, the bubble experience did not involve long stays in miners’ camps or even the one-night hotel stopovers familiar to the popular music and sport industries. Here, the bubble moved, usually by plane, to fulfil the requirements of a live sport “gig”, whereupon it was immediately returned to its more solid bubble hub or to domestic self-isolation. In the space created between disciplined expectation and deplored non-compliance, the sporting bubble inevitably became the scrutinised object and subject of scandal. Sporting Bubble Scandals While people with a very low risk of spreading Covid-19 (coming from areas with no active cases) were denied entry to Queensland for even the most serious of reasons (for example, the death of a child), images of AFL players and their families socialising and enjoying swimming at the Royal Pines Resort sporting bubble crossed our screens. Yet, despite their (players’, officials’ and families’) relative privilege and freedom of movement under the AFL Covid-Safe Plan, some players and others inside the bubble were involved in “scandals”. Most notable was the case of a drunken brawl outside a Gold Coast strip club which led to two Richmond players being “banished”, suspended for 10 matches, and the club fined $100,000. But it was not only players who breached Covid-19 bubble protocols: Collingwood coaches Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson paid the $50,000 fine imposed on the club for playing tennis in Perth outside their bubble, while Richmond was fined $45,000 after Brooke Cotchin, wife of team captain Trent, posted an image to Instagram of a Gold Coast day spa that she had visited outside the “hub” (the institutionally preferred term for bubble). She was subsequently distressed after being trolled. Also of concern was the lack of physical distancing, and the range of people allowed into the sporting bubble, including babysitters, grandparents, and swimming coaches (for children). There were other cases of players being caught leaving the bubble to attend parties and sharing videos of their “antics” on social media. Biosecurity breaches of bubbles by players occurred relatively frequently, with stern words from both the AFL and NRL leaders (and their clubs) and fines accumulating in the thousands of dollars. Some people were also caught sneaking into bubbles, with Lekahni Pearce, the girlfriend of Swans player Elijah Taylor, stating that it was easy in Perth, “no security, I didn’t see a security guard” (in Barron, Stevens, and Zaczek) (a month later, outside the bubble, they had broken up and he pled guilty to unlawfully assaulting her; Ramsey). Flouting the rules, despite stern threats from government, did not lead to any bubble being popped. The sport-media machine powering sporting bubbles continued to run, the attendant emotional or health risks accepted in the name of national cultural therapy, while sponsorship, advertising and gambling revenue continued to accumulate mostly for the benefit of men. Gendering Sporting Bubbles Designed as biosecurity structures to maintain the supply of media-sport content, keep players and other vital cogs of the machine running smoothly, and to exclude Covid-19, sporting bubbles were, in their most advanced form, exclusive luxury camps that illuminated the elevated socio-cultural status of sportsmen. The ongoing inequalities between men’s and women’s sport in Australia and around the world were clearly in evidence, as well as the politics of gender whereby women are obliged to “care” and men are enabled to be “careless” – or at least to manage carefully their “duty of care”. In Australia, the only sport for women that continued during the height of the Covid-19 lockdown was netball, which operated in a bubble that was one of sacrifice rather than privilege. With minimum salaries of only $30,000 – significantly less than the lowest-paid “rookies” in the AFL – and some being mothers of small children and/or with professional jobs juggled alongside their netball careers, these elite sportswomen wanted to continue to play despite the personal inconvenience or cost (Pavlidis). Not one breach of the netballers out of the bubble was reported, indicating that they took their responsibilities with appropriate seriousness and, perhaps, were subjected to less scrutiny than the sportsmen accustomed to attracting front-page headlines. National Netball League (also known after its Queensland-based naming rights sponsor as Suncorp Super Netball) players could be regarded as fortunate to have the opportunity to be in a bubble and to participate in their competition. The NRL Women’s (NRLW) Premiership season was also completed, but only involved four teams subject to fly in, fly out and bubble arrangements, and being played in so-called curtain-raiser games for the NRL. As noted earlier, the AFLW season was truncated, despite all the prior training and sacrifice required of its players. Similarly, because of their resource advantages, the UK men’s and boy’s top six tiers of association football were allowed to continue during lockdown, compared to only two for women and girls. In the United States, inequalities between men’s and women’s sports were clearly demonstrated by the conditions afforded to those elite sportswomen inside the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sport bubble in the IMG Academy in Florida. Players shared photos of rodent traps in their rooms, insect traps under their mattresses, inedible food and blocked plumbing in their bubble accommodation. These conditions were a far cry from the luxury usually afforded elite sportsmen, including in Florida’s Walt Disney World for the men’s NBA, and is just one of the many instances of how gendered inequality was both reproduced and exacerbated by Covid-19. Bursting the Bubble As we have seen, governments and corporate leaders in sport were able to create material and metaphorical bubbles during the Covid-19 lockdown in order to transmit stadium sport contests into home spaces. The rationale was the importance of sport to national identity, belonging and the routines and rhythms of life. But for whom? Many women, who still carry the major responsibilities of “care”, found that Covid-19 intensified the affective relations and gendered inequities of “home” as a leisure site (Fullagar and Pavlidis). Rates of domestic violence surged, and many women experienced significant anxiety and depression related to the stress of home confinement and home schooling. During the pandemic, women were also more likely to experience the stress and trauma of being first responders, witnessing virus-related sickness and death as the majority of nurses and care workers. They also bore the brunt of much of the economic and employment loss during this time. Also, as noted above, livelihoods in the arts and cultural sector did not receive the benefits of the “bubble”, despite having a comparable claim to sport in contributing significantly to societal wellbeing. This sector’s workforce is substantially female, although men dominate its senior roles. Despite these inequalities, after the late March to May hiatus, many elite male sportsmen – and some sportswomen - operated in a bubble. Moving in and out of them was not easy. Life inside could be mentally stressful (especially in long stays of up to 150 days in sports like cricket), and tabloid and social media troll punishment awaited those who were caught going “over the fence”. But, life in the sporting bubble was generally preferable to the daily realities of those afflicted by the trauma arising from forced home confinement, and for whom watching moving sports images was scant compensation for compulsory immobility. The ethical foundation of the sparkly, ephemeral fantasy of the sporting bubble is questionable when it is placed in the service of a voracious “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, Global Media Sport) that consumes sport labour power and rolls back progress in gender relations as a default response to a global pandemic. Covid-19 dramatically highlighted social inequalities in many areas of life, including medical care, work, and sport. For the small minority of people involved in sport who are elite professionals, the only thing worse than being in a sporting bubble during the pandemic was not being in one, as being outside precluded their participation. Being inside the bubble was a privilege, albeit a dubious one. But, as in wider society, not all sporting bubbles are created equal. Some are more opulent than others, and the experiences of the supporting and the supported can be very different. The surface of the sporting bubble may be impermanent, but when its interior is opened up to scrutiny, it reveals some very durable structures of inequality. Bubbles are made to burst. They are, by nature, temporary, translucent structures created as spectacles. As a form of luminosity, bubbles “allow a thing or object to exist only as a flash, sparkle or shimmer” (Deleuze, 52). In echoing Deleuze, Angela McRobbie (54) argues that luminosity “softens and disguises the regulative dynamics of neoliberal society”. The sporting bubble was designed to discharge that function for those millions rendered immobile by home confinement legislation in Australia and around the world, who were having to deal with the associated trauma, risk and disadvantage. 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