Статті в журналах з теми "Hopps, Walter"

This paper treats a kind of a one-dimensional first-passage problem, which seeks the probability that a random walker first hits the origin at a specified time. In addition to a usual random walk which hops either rightwards or leftwards, the present paper introduces the “halt” that the walker does not hop with a nonzero probability. The solution to the problem is expressed using a Gauss hypergeometric function. The moment generating function of the hitting time is also calculated, and a calculation technique of the moments is developed. The author derives the long-time behavior of the hitting-time distribution, which exhibits power-law behavior if the walker hops to the right and left with equal probability.

AbstractThis article intends to be a simple guide to understand how Hoppe built the Argumentation Ethics. In my early studies of libertarian ideas, and of Argumentation Ethics in particular, I could not find a unique text that would explain how Hoppe put the necessary bricks together to build the Ethics. As I was curious about this issue, I assumed others would also like to know it. To write this article, I reviewed the main literature on Argumentation Ethics, starting with Kinsella’s Concise Guide [9]. Then, I interviewed Stephan Kinsella and Prof. Walter Block. Finally, I synthesized the main ideas from the literature and the interviews elaborating an interpretative model, presented in this article.

Walter B. Cannon's research on the sympathetic nervous system and neurochemical transmission was pioneering. Wisdom has endowed our body with a powerful autonomic neural regulation of the circulation that provides optimal perfusion of every organ in accordance to its metabolic needs. Exquisite sensors tuned to an optimal internal environment trigger central and peripheral sympathetic and parasympathetic motor neurons and allow desirable and beneficial adjustments to physiologic needs as well as to acute cardiovascular stresses. This short review, presented as The Walter B. Cannon Memorial Award Lecture for 2009, addresses the mechanisms that disrupt sensory signaling and result in a chronic maladjustment of the autonomic neural output that in many cardiovascular diseases results in excessive increases in the risks of dying. The hopes for any reduction of those risks resides in an understanding of the molecular determinants of neuronal signaling.

The vision of modern urban planning after World War 2 was a remarkably standardized project around the world. Implementation was also universally problematic, the heady reformism of 1940s reconstructionism never being comprehensively realized. Moreover, by the 1970s the early ‘heroic’ modernism had evolved into a counterrevolutionary ‘high’ modernism. Exemplifying these themes was the career of the Sydney-based architect—planner Walter Bunning (1912–1977). In this paper I provide an overview of his particular brand of modernist thought, his central planning ideas, and his physical planning work, with special reference to a disastrous redevelopment scheme near the end of his life. The nature and scope of Walter Bunning's professional life represent a virtual microcosm of the uneven course of planning in Australia in the postwar years: genesis in the avant-garde Le Corbusier-tinged modernism of the 1930s, the early priorities, the broadening agenda but ever moderating tone, the difficulties in translating heady dreams into reality, and the crises which led to the emergence of a new paradigm. I will demonstrate how a biographical approach to planning history can illuminate the origins, meanings, hopes, and outcomes of modernist planning in the urban arena.

Historians know all too well that hand-wringing over what we shall teach our children is about as old as the nation itself. As Walter Licht has noted, "Faced with recurring diagnoses, suggesting cures, and confused debate, historians can only greet the latest best-selling jeremiad [on public education] with both skepticism and bemusement." (Licht, Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840-1950 [1992]) Thus the brouhaha over the recently published National History Standards for American and world history in primary and secondary school may be seen as yet another tum in the cycle. As in all such debates, there is the generous serving of bombast, posturing, fear, arrogance, and plain ignorance. One hopes that there has also been a glimmering of enlightenment, understanding. and respect as well, in short, a bit of light amidst the heat.

We report for the first time Spodoptera cosmioides (Walker, 1858) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) larvae feeding on leaves and causing injuries of up to 50% in hop plants, in the experimental field of the Center for Agroveterinary Sciences, State University of Santa Catarina, municipality of Lages, Santa Catarina, Brazil. This study shows the association of native insects with expanding exotic crops such as hops, and the need for monitoring activity for rational management of these pest insects, which already have several natural enemies in their area of natural occurrence.

Abstract In this Philological Conversation, Dilip M. Menon dwells on the questions of how to think concepts and theorize from the Global South and on writing history beyond the Eurocentric, colonial, nationalist, and terrestrial. We discuss the political and epistemic implications and consequences of such urgent tasks. Dilip M. Menon speaks about his affinities with Edward Said, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Walter Benjamin, among others, and refects on the themes of coloniality of knowledge, postcoloniality, decoloniality, oceanic history, and the idea of paracoloniality. He links his earlier works to his recent decolonial intellectual projects and discusses his intellectual formation and his practice as a historian and social theorist. Put together via e-mail exchanges, this conversation is a culmination of several in-person conversations that took place in Beirut, Delhi and Berlin. One only hopes for many more to come.

Abstract A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

Abstract In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was often held that ancient mystery cults were ‘religions of salvation’ (Erlösungsreligionen). Such interpretations have been criticised by Walter Burkert in Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), who argued against the other-worldly character of Greek mysteries. Burkert’s work remains one of the most important studies of mystery cults today; nevertheless it does not examine the actual use of the Greek word soteria (‘salvation’, ‘deliverance’, ‘safety’), which is central for determining whether Greek mystery cults were indeed ‘Erlösungsreligionen’. This article investigates the extent to which Greek mystery cults could offer soteria (‘salvation’) in the eschatological sense. By examining the language of soteria in the best-known mystery cults in ancient Greece, it will ask whether Greek eschatological hopes were ever expressed in the language of soteria or in other terms. It will be demonstrated that, even when used in relation to mysteries, soteria did not mean anything other than protection in the here-and-now, so that what was offered was predominantly a this-worldly ‘salvation’. If early Christianity indeed derived its most important concept (soteria) from Greek religion, it was a derivation with a significant adaptation and change in meaning.

The gram negative rod Shigella flexneri uses it surface protein IcsA to induce host cell actin assembly and to achieve intracellular motility. Yet, the IcsA protein lacks the oligoproline sequences found in ActA, the surface protein required for locomotion of the gram positive rod Listeria monocytogenes. Microinjection of a peptide matching the second ActA oligoproline repeat (FEFPPPPTDE) stops Listeria locomotion (Southwick, F.S., and D.L. Purich. 1994a. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 91:5168-5172), and submicromolar concentrations (intracellular concentration 80-800 nM) similarly arrest Shigella rocket-tail assembly and intracellular motility. Coinjection of a binary solution containing profilin and the ActA analogue increased the observed rates of intracellular motility by a factor of three (mean velocity 0.90 +/- 0.07 mu m/s, SD n=16 before injection vs 0.3 +/- 0.1 mu m/s, n=33 postinjection, intracellular concentration = 80 nM profilin plus 80 nM ActA analogue). Recent evidence suggests the ActA analogue may act by displacing the profilin-binding protein VASP (Pistor, S.C., T. Chakaborty, V. Walter, and J. Wehland. 1995. Curr. Biol. 5:517-525). At considerably higher intracellular concentrations (10 muM), the VASP oligoproline sequence (GPPPPP)3 thought to represent the profilin-binding site (Reinhard, M., K. Giehl, K. Abel, C. Haffner, T. Jarchau, V. Hoppe, B.M. Jockusch, and U. Walter. 1995. EMBO (Eur. Mol. Biol. Organ.) J. 14:1583-1589) also inhibited Shigella movement. A binary mixture of the VASP analogue and profilin (each 10 muM intracellular concentration) led to a doubling of Shigella intracellular migration velocity (0.09 +/- 0.06 mu m/s, n = 25 preinjection vs 0.18 +/- 0.10 mu m/s, n = 61 postinjection). Thus, the two structurally divergent bacteria, Listeria and Shigella, have adopted convergent mechanisms involving profilin recognition of VASP oligoproline sequences and VASP recognition of oligoproline sequences in ActA or an ActA-like host protein to induce host cell actin assembly and to provide the force for intracellular locomotion and cell-cell spread.

Background: Quality of life is a person's perception of life related to goals, hopes, standards and concerns of life in the context of culture and norms. Quality of life is influenced by the level of health, spirituality, self-esteem and social support. Methods: The method used is the Walker and Avant concept analysis approach carried out in eight stages: selecting concepts, determining the purpose of the analysis, identifying all uses of the concept, determining attributes, identifying model cases, identifying bordering, related and conflicting cases, identifying antecedents and consequences, and defining empirical references. Results: The appropriate instrument used to measure the concept of quality of life for Covid-19 patients is the WHOQOL-BREF instrument whose function is to measure the quality of human life from several domains, namely physical, psychological, social relations and the environment.. Conclusion: The results of the concept analysis obtained an operational definition of justice, namely acting fairly in caring for people/patients according to the needs and standards of nursing practice without looking at social strata, ethnicity, race, religion and others.

O presente texto parte de um diálogo com um artigo publicado recentemente na revista HOPOS (Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science), de autoria dos pesquisadores Fons Dewulf e Massimiliano Simons, intitulado “Positivism in Action: The case of Louis Rougier” (2020). No artigo, os pesquisadores abordam a trajetória pouco frequentada de Louis Rougier, filósofo francês cuja fortuna crítica associou-se à sua participação na rede de intelectuais liberais do pós-guerra e a sua função central na organização do Colóquio Walter Lippmann, ainda em 1938. Os autores abordam a trajetória de Rougier de maneira disciplinarmente inusual: procuram interpretar suas teorias filosóficas à luz de seus comprometimentos políticos, defendendo uma imbricação entre ambas as facetas do pensamento de Rougier. Quero sugerir que uma abordagem disposta a compreender as relações dinâmicas entre uma trajetória intelectual e seu entorno social se beneficia de uma abordagem como essa, às quais pode ser acrescida uma dimensão propriamente institucional das trajetórias intelectuais. Para observá-la, proponho acionar o debate sobre virtudes epistêmicas tal como tem sido pensado por autores como Herman Paul, Lorraine Daston e J. Dongen, com o objetivo de investigar se o debate sobre as non-textual things da atividade intelectual podem ser um caminho para transitar de forma profícua entre texto e contexto. Palavras-chave: Virtudes epistêmicas. História da Filosofia. Louis Rougier. Liberalismo.

The following remarks were originally drafted to serve as the thirty-seventh Evans-Wentz Lecture in Asian Philosophy, Religion and Ethics at Stanford University in May 2006, and take therefore as their tacit point of departure the work of Walter Y Evans-Wentz (1878–1965). His Tibetan Book of the Dead, first published by Oxford University Press in 1927, long remained the most influential account of the way in which Buddhists confronted their future as mortal beings, though in this lecture the scope of my own inquiry is widened from the individual to encompass fears concerning the transience of human society as a whole. This broader approach, moreover, allows for a degree of innovation. Ever since the era of Evans-Wentz, if not earlier, the problem of presenting the impulses behind traditions as unfamiliar as those of South and East Asia without simply confirming their apparent ‘exoticism’ has been difficult to solve, but over recent years our greatly increased knowledge of the history of the planetary environment that we all inhabit has offered an unprecedented perspective on the widely shared hopes and fears of the past. This is because we now know that at times different regions of the planet were subjected to events caused by the same catastrophic upheavals in climate. By taking one of the best known of these in the sixth century CE – and the information given below by no means exhausts what has been discovered about this phenomenon – and looking at its impact in terms of the sense of foreboding it engendered, it is therefore possible to trace the extent to which Europe and East Asia reacted in similar ways.

Just after I turned fifty, I broke my neck in a cycling accident. In the rehab hospital and for months afterwards, as my body tried to recover from the shock to my central nervous system, I suffered terrible neurological pain that lingers to this day. Drawing on theories of melancholia, on literary readings, disability studies, and understandings of loss, in this article I make an argument for exploring feelings of chronic pain and the temporal dislocations of grief as a way forward, remembering what has irretrievably happened in the hopes of making a transformative future. I consider the ways in which disability studies has understandably been hesitant to consider pain, especially the psychic pain of grief, in relation to disabled bodyminds, and turn to the work of Eli Clare and Alison Kafer, both of whom are now “grappling” (Clare’s verb) with phenomenological experiences of pain. To theorize these events and remain true to suffering and grief, I consider psychoanalytic understandings of melancholy, then turn to Walter Benjamin. In his theses on the philosophy of history, he writes against the forgetting that is required by a belief in history-as-progress, and warns that “not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious.” Analyzing sixteenth-century German “mourning plays,” he studies the allegorical poetics of the form to explore how a human world that seems inescapably mournful, is, in the end, transformed through a narrative and poetics of redemption. Benjamin considers this redemptive turn a “betrayal,” and I agree. I consider how that betrayal matters to my own account of living on after a major spinal cord injury and significant paralysis transformed my life.

In the realm of providing space-based internet access services, utilizing large-scale low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks have emerged as a promising solution for bridging the digital divide and connecting previously unconnected regions. The deployment of LEO satellites can augment terrestrial networks, with increased efficiency and reduced costs. However, as the size of LEO constellations continues to grow, the routing algorithm design of such networks faces numerous challenges. In this study, we present a novel routing algorithm, designated as Internet Fast Access Routing (IFAR), aimed at facilitating faster internet access for users. The algorithm consists of two main components. Firstly, we develop a formal model that calculates the minimum number of hops between any two satellites in the Walker-Delta constellation, along with the corresponding forwarding direction from source to destination. Then, a linear programming is formulated, to match each satellite to the visible satellite on the ground. Upon receipt of user data, each satellite then forwards the data only to the set of visible satellites that correspond to its own satellite. To validate the efficacy of IFAR, we conduct extensive simulation work, and the experimental results showcase the potential of IFAR to enhance the routing capabilities of LEO satellite networks and improve the overall quality of space-based internet access services.

Background and PurposeChildren with medical complexity (CMC) experience poor health outcomes despite the high cost of care, and their parents face challenges in providing complex care. Poor health outcomes may be related to an imbalance between parental demands to manage care and their ability to meet the demands needed to provide complex care. However, this phenomenon has not been explored. In addition, much of the existing research focused on CMC lacks an overarching theoretical framework. The purpose of this article is to outline factors that impact families of CMC described in the literature. This article proposes a modified framework using theory derivation, which highlights the concepts of parental workload and capacity and demonstrates how they are related to CMC health.MethodsA revised theoretical framework using theory derivation by Walker and Avant is presented using findings from the CMC literature that most affect the parents of these children.ResultsApplying content from two existing theories using concepts of relevance results in a framework that provides richer insight into the relationship between parental workload and parental capacity, particularly when parental workload outweighs parental capacity. This framework allows for the examination of how an imbalance between workload and capacity impacts CMC health outcomes.Implications for PracticeAlthough further study is needed to test the proposed theory, the framework can be used to examine these relationships with hopes of developing interventions to decrease parental workload and enhance parental ability.

The classic novel The Color Purple by black American author Alice Walker outlines the journey of Celie, a black woman in the Southern part of America in the early 20th century, as she grows up under the triple oppression of race, gender and class. Celie is abused by her stepfather and then forced to marry Mr. ____, a widower who already has four children, and lives in daily slave-like worry. However, with the help of other women, Celie gradually awakens from her numb and closed state, thinks about her gender and identity, and finally grows up to be an independent woman with individuality, dignity, and self-confidence. Therefore, based on the theory of androgyny, this paper analyzes in depth the development process of Celie's gender consciousness, revealing that her gender consciousness goes from clear boundaries to blurring, and finally achieves integration through self-awakening. In the novel, Celie experiences the questioning and redefinition of her own gender awareness, from the initial limitation of social expectations to the gradual escape from the traditional gender boundaries, and finally realizes the comprehensive awareness of gender. Through an in-depth analysis of the image of Celie and the evolution of her gender cognition in The Color Purple, the author hopes to better help readers understand the plurality of individual gender cognition, and to provide useful literary references for the promotion of gender harmony.

Background: Studies have shown that combining tender loving care (TLC) with the treatment of patients with recurrent miscarriages can improve pregnancy outcomes. The importance of TLC has long been recognised in studies on psychiatric, gerontological, and end-of-life nursing in Western countries. Recently, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been used to examine the improvement in outcomes with the addition of TLC to the treatment of patients with recurrent miscarriages; however, no conclusions have been reached. TLC is a highly beneficial and harmless intervention that is not necessary for conducting RCTs. Therefore, healthcare professionals need to be aware of exercising TLC when treating patients with recurrent miscarriages. However, the concept of TLC is ambiguous and its definition is unclear. Purpose: This study aimed to conduct a conceptual analysis of TLC and clarify its constructs. Clarifying the definition of TLC will provide professionals with basic information that will be helpful when exercising TLC with patients who experienced repeated miscarriages despite of hopes of having a baby. Methods: This study was conducted using Walker and Avant’s concept analysis approach. Research published between the first edition of the journal till January 2022 were searched, and the titles and abstracts of the studies were reviewed to determine their suitability. Consequently, 28 articles, all of which were in English, were selected for conceptual analysis. The were CINAHL Plus with Full Text and MEDLINE databases were examined. The search term used was ‘tender loving care’. Results: The results of the conceptual analysis of TLC revealed the following antecedents, defining attributes, and consequences. The antecedents involve patients with the following diseases or disabilities: (1) suffering from mental or physical distress, (2) facing significant barriers in life (illness, disability, etc.), and (3) being unable to manage their mental health and well-being through self-care. Conclusion: In this study, a conceptual analysis of TLC was conducted using Walker and Avant's (2000) method. As a result of the conceptual analysis, ‘tender loving care’ was defined as ‘the care for mentally or physically distressed or impaired subjects by health professionals, parents, and teachers based on compassion and empathy, who perceive the condition of the subject and respond appropriately, thereby reducing tension, distress, and anxiety and achieving a state of mental and physical well-being’.

A poem encrypts, though not predictably, the effects it may have when at some future moment, in another context, it happens to be read and inscribed in a new situation, in ‘an interpretation that transforms the very thing it interprets’, as Jacques Derrida puts it in Specters of Marx. In Wallace Stevens's ‘The Man on the Dump’ (1942), we are told: ‘The dump is full/Of images’. The poem's movement is itself a complex temporal to and fro that aims to repudiate and even annihilate these images. This renunciation leaves the man on the dump ‘The Latest Freed Man’, as the title of another Stevens poem puts it. Like Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, he has his back toward history and has rejected its images in ‘disgust’ in order to face toward a future that will, he hopes, be purified of ideology. Yet Stevens knows that more such images will come and will need in their turn to be rejected and junked, in an endless task of purification. In a now impossibly outdated way, Stevens nevertheless wanted the poet – that is, himself, the man on the dump – to be the begetter of a new ideology, or a new fiction that would, in a powerful speech act, replace all those outworn images on the dump. In the context of potentially catastrophic climate change (as the result of something like a global auto-immune disorder), the second part of the essay complements this commentary on the poem with a free reading; a performative reading, reading as work or as oeuvre that does something with words, for which Jacques Derrida calls. This reading sees Stevens's text as somehow the proleptic foretelling of a present situation. Such future chiming is also, it is argued, a sign to sign relation, an anticipatory allegory or prophecy, or, perhaps, a miniature apocalypse in the etymological sense of an enigmatic unveiling of what has not yet happened.

The economic outcomes surrounding the dramatic spread of “Las Vegas” style casinos in the United States has become a point of great interest and inquiry both politically and academically. Prior research has tended to focus on regional studies and provided uniform conclusions regardless of differences in the nature of the community. Moreover, much of the previous empirical work fails to account for local level trends during estimation. By using a comprehensive data set on employment and earnings from across the US, and by including county-specific trends, this research hopes to alleviate these earlier concerns, as well as help reconcile differences in the early literature surrounding casino effects on related industrial sectors. Basic findings suggest that counties experience an increase in employment after a casino opens, but there seems to be no measurable effect on average earnings. More detailed analysis reveals that the effect on industries related to casinos is somewhat mixed, but in general mildly positive, as casinos provide a positive employment and earnings spillovers into the surrounding local community. Intertemporal estimation suggests that the casino effect changes over time, but also finds that time effects vary across sectors. Estimates of how overall effects vary across different population sizes find that employment growth is inversely related to county population. Finally, additional estimation finds little impact on employment levels in neighboring counties, although there are some small effects in certain industries.I would like to thank Scott Adams, Scott Drewianka, John Heywood, James Peoples, McKinley Blackburn, Keith Bender, Don Siegel, Gary Anders, Doug Walker, and Mike Wentz for their helpful suggestions. I would also thank David Mustard and Earl Grinols for their help with the data. Dain Johnson provided valuable research assistance.

Artists’ studios turned into museums are always specific representations of thepast – spatial images reflecting some idea of art and the artist, as well as his or herworks, and even the position of the spectator imagined as a visitor, admirer, insider,outsider or pilgrim.When a studio is shown through a film, its status of representation comes to theforeground very distinctly just because of the properties of the medium. A filmic representationof the studio is a result of combining images into a sequence, while individualimages attract the spectator’s attention to particular places, areas or aspectsof the space of creation, thus making him or her follow a certain trajectory of meaning.What is more, such a sequence does not have to be limited to the studio’s interiorsince the cinematic montage allows the director to expand it freely by adding somehistoricizing or contextualizing frames. Finally, film allows one to meet the artist inhis or her space through an interview, representation of the creative process or anactor-impersonator.In the first I discuss briefly three issues: the general idea of the present paperand its historical and theoretical contexts.First, my objective is to provide information on my research on Polish documentaryfilm on art in 1948–1989, which was financially supported by the Ministry ofScience and Higher Education. I was doing this research with help of a small team ofyoung scholars – phd students and a younger collegue from Institute of Art History atAdam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In this article I will not address generalproblems related to the filmic representation of artists’ studios, but discuss severalindividual cases.Second, the historical context is connected with the hopes of totalitarian statesto use mass culture, and particularly film, to manipulate the masses. Even though inparticular decades of the 20th century, and in different countries, those hopes wereput into practice in different ways, their ideological and practical implementation hada common basis. That basis can perhaps be best described by Walter Benjamin’s ideathat a modern wish to regenerate the world requires the destruction of the auratic artand influencing the masses with some other kind of artistic creation that could organizethem according to a fixed political purpose. Benjamin believed that the most usefulin that respect would be film, which in his opinion was both technical and massoriented.The masses could receive film with little effort so that it would imperceptiblyform their mental and imaginative habits, and therefore also a political bias.My point is that the filmic representations of artists’ studios must be approachedin the general context of the role assigned to film in the communist Poland, eventhough one should also remember that artists had various attitudes and censors keptchanging their criteria of appropriateness. Still, the research focused on the representationof the artist, his or her studio, and the ideas of art will reveal an officially acceptedpicture to be transmitted into the public space. One the other hand, oneshould remember that within precisely defined political limits Polish documentary(and other) filmmakers could ignore commercial aspects and refer to the acknowledgedhigh position of art, experimenting in different ways with a relationship betweenfilm and the visual arts.Third, my theoretical context is related to the status of the documentary or, thatof reality represented in documentary films. In my view, shared also by a number ofscholars, documentaries have an element of creation and their reality is alwaysprocessed in one way or another. My examples will include studio as office, nature,space of imagination, village hut or cottage, and engine room.

The Palaeoflora Europaea Project required new names to be proposed and validated for 28 fossil taxa referable to 16 miscellaneous angiosperm families of the European Tertiary. Aniba caucasica nom. nov. is proposed instead of Aniba longifolia Kolakovsky & Schakryl (fossil) non Aniba longifolia Schwacke & Mez (extant). Ocotea undulatoides nom. nov. is proposed to replace the later homonym Ocotea undulata (Weyland & Kilpper) Uzunova & Stojanova (fossil) non Ocotea undulata (Meisner) Mez (extant), Ocotea alaris nom. nov. is proposed to replace the later homonym Ocotea alata van der Werff (extant) non Ocotea alata Givulescu (fossil). Clerodendrum sarmatiacum nom. nov. instead of Clerodendrum ovalifolium Baikovskaja (fossil) non C. ovalifolium Gray and C. ovalifolium (Jussieu) Bakhuizen (extant); Persea vanderwerffii nom. nov. instead of Persea fluviatilis van der Werff (extant) non P. fluviatilis Mai (fossil); Euphorbia pontiana nom. nov. in place of Euphorbia cylindrica Negru (fossil) non Euphorbia cylindrica Marloth ex A.C.White, R.A.Dyer & B.Sloane (extant); Malus antiqua nom. nov. instead of Malus pulcherrima Givulescu (fossil) non M. pulcherrima (Ascherson & Graebner) Boynton (extant); Meliosma antiqua nom. nov. instead of Meliosma reticulata (Reid & Reid) M.Chandler (fossil) non M. reticulata Merrill (extant); Nyssa givulescui nom. nov. instead of Nyssa maxima Givulescu, Petrescu & Barbu (fossil) non Nyssa maxima Weber (fossil). Pistacia acuminata Reid & Reid (fossil fruits) is replaced by a new name Pistacia pliolentiscus nom. nov., because of the earlier homonym P. acuminata Boissier & Buhse (extant); Pistacia miolentiscus nom. nov. is proposed to replace the later homonym Pistacia lentiscoides Andreánszky & Cziffery (fossil leaves) non Pistacia lentiscoides Unger (fossil leaves); Sterculia maoana nom. nov. instead of Sterculia cinnamomifolia Tsai & Mao (extant) non S. cinnamomifolia Engelhardt (fossil) and Sterculia acerina nom. nov. instead of Sterculia crassinervia (Ettingshausen) Prochaìzka & Bůžek (fossil) non S. crassinervia Miquel (extant); Ranunculus eoreptans nom. nov. in place of Ranunculus pusillus P.I. Dorofeev (fossil) non R. pusillus Poiret, R. pusillus Ledebour and R. pusillus Pomel (extant); Rhododendron maii nom. nov. is proposed instead of Rhododendron germanicum Mai & Walther (fossil) non Rhododendron germanicum Hoppe (extant). Viburnum pliolantana nom. nov. is proposed to replace the later homonym Viburnum lantanoides P.I. Dorofeev (fossil) non Viburnum lantanoides Michaux and Viburnum lantanoides Miquel (extant). Zanthoxylum affine Pilar (fossil leaves) is replaced by a new name Zanthoxylum pilari nom. nov., because of the earlier homonym Z. affine Kunth (extant); Zanthoxylum tethyca nom. nov. is proposed to replace the later homonym Z. rugosum (Chandler) Palamarev (fossil fruits) non Z. rugosum Saint-Hilaire & Tulasne (extant) and Z. rugosum Negru (fossil fruits). Sambucus sarmatiaca sp. nov. and Photinia sarmatiaca sp. nov. are validated instead of the previously invalidly published Baikovskaja’s fossil taxa lacking holotype designation when published. Lycopus europleistocenicus sp. nov. is validated instead of the invalidly published Lycopus intermedius Dorofeev (lacking holotype designation when published) and renamed because of the earlier homonym Lycopus intermedius Haussknecht (extant). Hibiscus sarmatiacus sp. nov. is validated instead of the invalid Hibiscus splendens Baikovskaja (lacking holotype designation when published) and renamed because of the earlier homonym Hibiscus splendens Graham (extant). Ligustrum miovulgare sp. nov. is proposed to replace invalid Ligustrum vulgare var. fossilis (lacking holotype designation when published). New combinations are validated: Cornus caroli comb. nov. (since formerly used generic designation Cynoxylon is nomenclaturally superfluous), Mahonia sphenophylla comb. nov. (to replace nomenclaturally superfluous Mahonia aspera), Toxicodendron melaenum comb. nov. (to replace invalid Toxicodendron herthae). New additional combinations are made: Aniba aniboides comb. nov.; Damburneya euxina comb. nov.; Exbucklandia germanica comb. nov.; Ocotea pithyusa comb. nov., Ocotea pontica comb. nov. Furthermore Juglans melaena is neotypified for the first time.

-Leslie G. Desmangles, Joan Dayan, Haiti, history, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xxiii + 339 pp.-Barry Chevannes, James T. Houk, Spirits, blood, and drums: The Orisha religion in Trinidad. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xvi + 238 pp.-Barry Chevannes, Walter F. Pitts, Jr., Old ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist ritual in the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 199 pp.-Robert J. Stewart, Lewin L. Williams, Caribbean theology. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. xiii + 231 pp.-Robert J. Stewart, Barry Chevannes, Rastafari and other African-Caribbean worldviews. London: Macmillan, 1995. xxv + 282 pp.-Michael Aceto, Maureen Warner-Lewis, Yoruba songs of Trinidad. London: Karnak House, 1994. 158 pp.''Trinidad Yoruba: From mother tongue to memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996. xviii + 279 pp.-Erika Bourguignon, Nicola H. Götz, Obeah - Hexerei in der Karibik - zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995. 256 pp.-John Murphy, Hernando Calvo Ospina, Salsa! Havana heat: Bronx Beat. London: Latin America Bureau, 1995. viii + 151 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Stephen Stuempfle, The steelband movement: The forging of a national art in Trinidad and Tobago. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. xx + 289 pp.-Hilary McD. Beckles, Jay R. Mandle ,Caribbean Hoops: The development of West Indian basketball. Langhorne PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. ix + 121 pp., Joan D. Mandle (eds)-Edmund Burke, III, Lewis R. Gordon ,Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. xxi + 344 pp., T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Renée T. White (eds)-Keith Alan Sprouse, Ikenna Dieke, The primordial image: African, Afro-American, and Caribbean Mythopoetic text. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xiv + 434 pp.-Keith Alan Sprouse, Wimal Dissanayake ,Self and colonial desire: Travel writings of V.S. Naipaul. New York : Peter Lang, 1993. vii + 160 pp., Carmen Wickramagamage (eds)-Yannick Tarrieu, Moira Ferguson, Jamaica Kincaid: Where the land meets the body: Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994. xiii + 205 pp.-Neil L. Whitehead, Vera Lawrence Hyatt ,Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A new world view. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. xiii + 302 pp., Rex Nettleford (eds)-Neil L. Whitehead, Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of possession in Europe's conquest of the new world, 1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. viii + 199 pp.-Livio Sansone, Michiel Baud ,Etnicidad como estrategia en America Latina y en el Caribe. Arij Ouweneel & Patricio Silva. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 1996. 214 pp., Kees Koonings, Gert Oostindie (eds)-D.C. Griffith, Linda Basch ,Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation-states. Langhorne PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. vii + 344 pp., Nina Glick Schiller, Cristina Szanton Blanc (eds)-John Stiles, Richard D.E. Burton ,French and West Indian: Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana today. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia; London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1995. xii + 202 pp., Fred Réno (eds)-Frank F. Taylor, Dennis J. Gayle ,Tourism marketing and management in the Caribbean. New York: Routledge, 1993. xxvi + 270 pp., Jonathan N. Goodrich (eds)-Ivelaw L. Griffith, John La Guerre, Structural adjustment: Public policy and administration in the Caribbean. St. Augustine: School of continuing studies, University of the West Indies, 1994. vii + 258 pp.-Luis Martínez-Fernández, Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles, 'Subject People' and colonial discourses: Economic transformation and social disorder in Puerto Rico, 1898-1947. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xiii + 304 pp.-Alicia Pousada, Bonnie Urciuoli, Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. xiv + 222 pp.-David A.B. Murray, Ian Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays: Cuba and homosexuality. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. xxvii + 263 pp.-Robert Fatton, Jr., Georges A. Fauriol, Haitian frustrations: Dilemmas for U.S. policy. Washington DC: Center for strategic & international studies, 1995. xii + 236 pp.-Leni Ashmore Sorensen, David Barry Gaspar ,More than Chattel: Black women and slavery in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. xi + 341 pp., Darlene Clark Hine (eds)-A. Lynn Bolles, Verene Shepherd ,Engendering history: Caribbean women in historical perspective. Kingston: Ian Randle; London: James Currey, 1995. xxii + 406 pp., Bridget Brereton, Barbara Bailey (eds)-Bridget Brereton, Mary Turner, From chattel slaves to wage slaves: The dynamics of labour bargaining in the Americas. Kingston: Ian Randle; Bloomington: Indiana University Press; London: James Currey, 1995. x + 310 pp.-Carl E. Swanson, Duncan Crewe, Yellow Jack and the worm: British Naval administration in the West Indies, 1739-1748. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993. x + 321 pp.-Jerome Egger, Wim Hoogbergen, Het Kamp van Broos en Kaliko: De geschiedenis van een Afro-Surinaamse familie. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1996. 213 pp.-Ellen Klinkers, Lila Gobardhan-Rambocus ,De erfenis van de slavernij. Paramaribo: Anton de Kom Universiteit, 1995. 297 pp., Maurits S. Hassankhan, Jerry L. Egger (eds)-Kevin K. Birth, Sylvia Moodie-Kublalsingh, The Cocoa Panyols of Trinidad: An oral record. London & New York: British Academic Press, 1994. xiii + 242 pp.-David R. Watters, C.N. Dubelaar, The Petroglyphs of the Lesser Antilles, the Virgin Islands and Trinidad. Amsterdam: Foundation for scientific research in the Caribbean region, 1995. vii + 492 pp.-Suzannah England, Mitchell W. Marken, Pottery from Spanish shipwrecks, 1500-1800. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xvi + 264 pp.

This paper explains the origins and the theoretical concept of Ordo- liberalism, focusing in particular on one of its founders, Walter Eucken. We will focus on the political and economic concepts of Ordoliberalism in regards to interventionism, competition, monopolies, democracy and property rights. For a better understanding, we will compare its main positions and rationale with both, the concept of a social market economy, as well as with the theoretical background of the Austrian School of economics. We pretend to define how much State is necessary to assure a long-term maximization of human rights and individual liberty, while also evaluating at what stage a State becomes too big, potentially turning into a totalitarian autocracy. Keywords: democracy, Private Property Order, Hoppe, Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Müller-Armack, Ludwig Erhard, Ordoliberalism, Ordo, Mont Pèlerin Society, human rights, liberalism, libertarianism, Austrian school of economics, anarcho-capitalism JEL Classification: A12, B10, B13, B25, H10, H40, K11, P10, P14, P16, P26, P48, P51 Resumen: Este artículo explica los orígenes y el concepto teórico del Ordolibe- ralismo, centrándose en particular en uno de sus fundadores, Walter Eucken. Nos centraremos en los conceptos políticos y económicos del Ordoliberalismo con respecto al intervencionismo, la competencia, los monopolios, la democra- cia y los derechos de propiedad. Para una mejor comprensión, compararemos sus principales posiciones y razones con el concepto de economía social de mercado, así como con los antecedentes teóricos de la Escuela Austriaca de economía. Pretendemos definir cuánto Estado es necesario para asegurar a largo plazo una maximización de los derechos humanos y de la libertad indi- vidual. Palabras clave: democracia, propiedad privada, Hoppe, Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Müller-Armack, Ludwig Erhard, ordoliber- alismo, Ordo, Mont Pèlerin Society, derechos humanos, liberalismo, liber- tarismo, Escuela Austriaca de economía, anarco-capitalismo Clasificación JEL: A12, B10, B13, B25, H10, H40, K11, P10, P14, P16, P26, P48, P51

This article addresses the history of police violence and extra-legal killings of Black people and argues that social contract theory plays an ideological role to legitimate the coercive power of the state over the African-American community. The article first looks at the alarming numbers of Black Americans killed in the United States over the past few decades and compares police violence to the extra-legal lynchings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence, his classic 1921 essay, the article then describes the obfuscation of an underlying truth: that, far from being a neutral arbiter between its citizens, the state is the primary inscription of violence in the body politic. The police are the face of that state, both in its law-making violence (die rechtsetzende Gewalt) and law-preserving violence (die rechtserhaltende Gewalt). In contrast to the mythology of a social contract in which all members are treated equally before the law, the state targets African-Americans to legitimate its monopoly on violence, thereby unmasking the social contract as a racial contract, which has excluded Black people from the country’s very inception. The power of the state rests in part on the psychology of police officers who see themselves as its very embodiment and believe that any resistance to their authority is both a personal and symbolic challenge to their monopoly on violence. Yet, the article dissents from the view of many who believe that the country may transcend its history of institutional racism and violence and restore the promise of the social contract. The article concludes that, despite the hopes of modern liberalism, Benjamin’s theory leads to the conclusion that there is little possibility for either the redemption of the social contract or the rehabilitation of the state.

Abstract Against the social background of the gradual transformation of the social pension mode and the arrival of the ageing age, the tool design of fitness walkers for the elderly was studied. In this paper, the physiological and psychological status of the elderly with mild or moderate stroke or unable to exercise due to the decline of physical function was analysed. In addition, the corresponding elderly fitness walker product market research was studied. Aiming at these problems, this paper proposes a set of elderly fitness walker frames based on the ergonomic semiotic approach of the product architecture design (SAPAD) model. First, the development and structure of artificial engineering is introduced in detail. Then the framework of walking aid for the elderly based on the SAPAD model is proposed, and the SAPAS model and walking aid for the elderly are introduced, respectively, along with the framework of simulation design and application. The experimental results show that the framework of elderly fitness walker based on the ergonomic SAPAD model can be implemented. It can be applied to the elderly’s fitness assistance. A fitness walker can be suitable for the elderly who want to continue to exercise; it also hopes to care for the elderly who need to exercise from the perspective of the product.

Patients present to physicians searching for more than scientific names to call their maladies. They rather enter examination rooms with value-laden narratives of illness, suffering, hopes, and worries. One potentially helpful paradigm, inspired in part by existentialism, is to see patients on a search for meaning. This perspective is particularly important in the seemingly meaningless ruins of modernity. Here, we will summarize Victor Frankl’s account of logotherapy found in his much-circulated book Man’s Search for Meaning and assess the limitations imposed by his religious agnosticism. At best he can offer patients a finite, impersonal meaning this side of the grave. Following Kierkegaard’s depiction of the religious sphere of existence, American novelist Walker Percy will be shown to supplement logotherapy with a theological mooring. The spiritual crisis of the modern world is treatable only by Christian faith supplying ultimate meaning. Taken together, Frankl and Percy show how Catholic physicians can be guides in their patients’ personal searches for meaning. This paradigm may prove chiefly beneficial in goals of care conversations, encountering “aesthetic” patients living only for pleasure, and engaging patients amidst tragedy-ridden circumstances. Although only Christian faith will ultimately satisfy the search for meaning, we first of all need encouragement to take responsibility for seeking meaning, and confidence that even the most hopeless situation can become meaningful. Summary: Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning can enlighten clinical encounters for physicians to see patients on a search for meaning, particularly amidst suffering and tragedy in a post-modern world lacking transcendence. As shown in Walker Percy’s literature, however, ultimate meaning can only be found in Christian faith where the Word became flesh and continues to dwell among us.

Abstract While this year’s chapter on plastic theory/studies is relatively short, with only three texts reviewed, it is a harbinger of important texts in preparation that, next year, will broaden the field into dimensions as diverse as world literature and theology. Such an expansion is logical when we see that the texts published this year include: an important and practical textbook introduction as part of MIT Press’s Essential Knowledge series (Imari Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck’s Plastics); a chapter in a book on flashpoint epistemologies (Ranjan Ghosh’s ‘Plastic Pedagogy: Rabindranath Tagore Revisited’); and a book that links plasticity to political thought (Fathali M. Moghaddam’s Political Plasticity). As this review will show, together these texts speak not only of the contemporary anxieties of a world enmeshed in climate and political catastrophes, but also of the pedagogical and political hopes of new generations of scholars and artists, who are thinking about plasticity and plastic theory—not only in texts but also in their practices and art—in relation to a future still in formation.

Objective To explore decision-making from patients’ perceptions of risks and benefits of epilepsy surgery for refractory focal seizures. Methods Using constructivist grounded theory, in-person interviews were conducted with 35 adults with refractory focal epilepsy who were undergoing a pre-surgical evaluation or who had consented for surgery. Results For this sample of participants decision-making about surgery was complex, centering on the meaning of illness for the self and the impact of epilepsy and its treatment for significant others. Two interrelated categories crystalized from our data: the unique context of brain surgery and how the decisional counterweights of risks and benefits were considered. Discussion Exploring components of decision-making from the patients’ perspective afforded an opportunity to describe thought processes intrinsic to how people with drug-resistant epilepsy weighed their treatment options. Tensions were evident in how decisions were made. We use the analogy of an imaginary tightrope-walker to create a visual image of what patients face as they consider the illness experience (past and present), their hopes for the future, and the simultaneous uncertainty centered around balancing the counterweights of treatment risks and benefits.

In the past few decades many economists who situate themselves in the Mengerian Tradition have tried to come to grips with the fol- lowing question: what is the relationship between Austrian Eco- nomics and Public Choice? Can a common ground be established between the two? To the extent that the Virginia school of Public Choice emerged out of the Chicago public finance tradition1 (James Buchanan was a student of Frank Knight), one would doubt that —except for a broadly shared classical liberal outlook— the two research programmes can have many things in common. In their book An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice economists Thomas di Lorenzo and Walter Block (2016) demonstrate, in fact, how scholars within this tradition rely on too much neoclassical formalism that leads them to part company with both Austrians and Libertarians at the level of positive and normative analysis. Similar criticisms were brought forward by Murray Rothbard (1960), Hans Hermann Hoppe (1993; 2001; 2004) and Joseph T. Salerno (2014). Rothbard, in particular, was appalled at the attempt by Buchanan and Tullock to use the framework provided by neoclassical economics (built upon mechanical physics and embed- ded in a positivist methodology that insists on the importance of starting with unrealistic assumptions for constructing models that possess predictive value) to build a value-free political analysis that, in contrast with “orthodox political theory”, viewed the state, ultimately, as just another type of voluntary agency within the broader division of labour2. For this reason, Rothbard (2011: 932) concluded that “this ‘economic approach’ to politics far from the great advance they think it is… is the death knell of all genuine political philosophy.” Despite all these conceptual errors, however, as Peter Boettke and Edward J. López (2002:112) point out, Public Choice, intended as the extension and application of the economic way of thinking to the study of collective decision-making, has stressed the impor- tance of methodological individualism as well as a “commitment to the unification of the social sciences on the foundation of a rational choice model”. At its very basis, “The public choice school of economic thought”, writes Walter Block (2005), “is dedicated to the notion that political choices and decision making may be prof- itably studied using the tools of economic analysis”, an idea that can indeed find resonance in the work of most Austrian econo- mists. In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises (1949), in fact, presents Economics as a part of a broader social science (Praxeology) that is devoted to the study of all processes of human action and interac- tion (thus including both political action and interaction). “Ludwig von Mises”, in the words of Jesús Huerta de Soto (2009: 251), “was one of the most important forerunners of the School of Public Choice, which studies, using economic analysis, the combined behaviour of politicians, bureaucrats and voters. This approach, which today has reached a high level of development under the auspices of theorists like James M. Buchanan (winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986), fits in perfectly with the broad prax- eological conception of economics developed by Mises, who con- sidered that the goal of our science was to build a general theory of human action in all its varieties and contexts (including, therefore, political actions)”. In his Estudios de Economía Política, Jesús Huerta de Soto (2004) stresses, in particular, Mises (1944) book on Bureaucracy as a mod- ern precursor of Public Choice. In this book, Huerta de Soto under- lines, Mises (1944) develops, as a by-product of his theorem of the impossibility of rational economic planning under socialism, a comparative theoretical analysis between profit management and bureaucratic management. In The English Constitution Walter Bage- hot (1873: 165) aptly observed that while “a bureaucracy tends to under-government, in point of quality; it tends to over-govern- ment, in point of quantity” for “functionaries are not there for the benefit of the people, but the people for the benefit of the function- aries.” What Mises accomplished was to ground Bagehot’s empiri- cal observation on sound economic reasoning, placing the blame on the methods in use within the government sector and not in the individuals themselves: “The fault is not with the men and women who fill the offices and bureaus. They are no less the victims of the new way of life than anybody else. The system is bad, not its sub- ordinate handy men” (Mises, L 1944: 17). In spite of the above disagreements among various Austrian economists regarding the complementarity of both approaches, the following essay will try to underline the importance of ground- ing the insights of Public Choice within the theoretical framework developed by the Austrian school when it comes to analysing pub- lic policies. The basic argument is that Austrian Economics pro- vides the only correct foundation of Public Choice Economics and that the latter’s empirical consideration regarding narrow political interests on the part of politicians and bureaucrats, if supple- mented by the essentialist and dynamic depiction of the market process that characterizes the Mengerian tradition, can provide an important analytical framework that allows to weigh the incentive structure of different political arrangements as well as (and this is more important still) a thymological tool that enables one to see the invisible intentions behind proposed public policies. As a thy- mological tool Public Choice analysis, grounded on the Austrian dynamic conception of the market process, might prove of extreme value both to entrepreneurs (who can better anticipate the evolu- tion of public policies and therefore employ their ingenuity to anticipate such circumstances) and to historians (who will be able to engage in a more realistic process of revisionism)3. The paper will be divided into five sections. In section 1 we will briefly define and examine what is meant with the term public pol- icy and define both its nature and scope. Section 2 will dive into an analysis of Public Choice and show how it revolutionised the way in which social scientists in general and economists in particular have approached the democratic political process. Section 3 will high- light some of the main drawbacks of the neoclassical model of equi- librium on which Public Choice rests and show how the Austrian theory of the market process, driven by competition and entrepre- neurship, provides a more solid foundation for analysing, for exam- ple, the behaviour of legislators, rent-seeking actors and the voting public. Section 4 will analyse the topics of Competition and Monop- oly as well make an excursus into the real historical origins of Anti- trust to show how the use of a unified Austrian-Public Choice framework can enrich our understanding from both a theoretical and historical perspective. A conclusion will end the paper.

القرآن الكريم معجزة الله الخالدة على مر العصور وكر الأيام والدهور : ( كتاب لا تنقضي عجائبه ، و لا يخلق على كثرة الرد ) ، ( أحكمت آياته ثم فصلت من لدن حكيم خبير ) ، هو سر الحياة الفاضلة وروحها ، وأساس الخير فيها ، كتاب أنزل ليكون منهج هداية يهدي للتي هي أقوم ، من تمسك به هدي ، ومن أعرض عنه ضلَّ وهلك به وعن طريقه يتميز أهل الحق من أهل الباطل ، وأهل الخير من أهل الشر ، جاء أسلوبه على بلاغة معجزة ، وصيغت كلماته على أجمل صوره ، والبحث فيه وتقصي معانيه عمل لا ينضب علمه و لا يقل زاده ، ولا تضيع مساعيه ، ولا يخيب رجاء من خاض فيه .من هذا المنطلق كان اختياري لموضوع يخص الدراسات القرآنية في جانبها الجمالي التعبيري ذلك ان تذوق الجمال في النص القرآني بما قدمه لنا من صور تتيح فرصة السمو بالأفكار والمشاعر الى قداسة الرسالة النبيلة كما اني أردت من هذا البحث أن يكون ثمرة لما سبقه من الدراسات والبحوث الداعية الى وجوب تنمية الاحساس بالجمال وذلك بتذوق جمال النظم القرآني واللغات والاشارات الكامنة تحت هذا التعبير المعجز ، فخترة لغة من اللغات التي تطلقها جوارح الانسان الا وهي لغة البصر والمعاني التي نستخلصها من انواع هذه الجارحة الا وهي العين .Koran miracle of God eternal throughout the ages Walker days and ages: (book does not expire wonders, and does not create a large number of post), (tightened its verses and then separated from the presence of a wise expert), is the secret of the virtuous life and spirit, and the basis of the good which, the book was revealed to be curriculum guidance guides to that which is me, of stuck with the guidance, and introduce him astray and perished by and through characterized by the people the right of the people of falsehood, and good people from evil people, came his style on the eloquence of a miracle, and worded the most beautiful pictures, and to search and investigate the meaning of work inexhaustible knowledge and at least Zadeh, not lost his, and not disappoint the hopes of those fought in it.From this point it was optional to the theme for Koranic studies in part, aesthetic expressive so that the taste of the beauty of the Quranic text as given to us by the images provide an opportunity Highness ideas and feelings to the sanctity of the noble message as I wanted from this research to be the result of what previous studies and research calling for should be the development of a sense of beauty and taste of the beauty that Quranic systems and languages of the underlying signals under this miraculous expression, Fajtrh of the languages released by human predators, but a sight and meanings language that we draw from these types of prey, namely the eye.Eyes of the greatest Yes God on man, a learning tool and earn good, and experiences in life, the man is looking forward to the manifestations of nature and the beauty of life and seen the wonders of God's creation in heaven and earth, mountains, seas, rivers and out to achieve discoveries in science, medicine, industry and agriculture, have you choose a recipe from characteristics, namely, (vision) that I view the Quranic text which carries the connotation of language pertaining to the sight and look at him in the Quranic use the whole and then after that we offer to the opinions of the commentators which came objective study of moving the objective approach in the explanatory study you as well as definition of flags in the margin of the study wherever they responded, where lies the importance of this subject in that he wanted to alert the graphical language used by the Koran to be informed of speaking the language through meanings fired by human eyesight.

I. Happy Endings Chaplin’s Modern Times features one of the most subtly strange endings in Hollywood history. It concludes with the Tramp (Chaplin) and the Gamin (Paulette Goddard) walking away from the camera, down the road, toward the sunrise. (Figure 1.) They leave behind the city, their hopes for employment, and, it seems, civilization itself. The iconography deployed is clear: it is 1936, millions are unemployed, and to walk penniless into the Great Depression means destitution if not death. Chaplin invokes a familiar trope of 1930s texts, the “marginal men,” for whom “life on the road is not romanticized” and who “do not participate in any culture,” as Warren Susman puts it (171). The Tramp and the Gamin seem destined for this non-existence. For the duration of the film they have tried to live and work within society, but now they are outcasts. This is supposed to be a happy ending, though. Before marching off into poverty, the Tramp whistles a tune and tells the Gamin to “buck up” and smile; the string section swells around them. (Little-known [or discussed] fact: Chaplin later added lyrics to this music, resulting in the song “Smile,” now part of the repertoire of countless torch singers and jazz musicians. Standout recordings include those by Nat King Cole and Elvis Costello.) It seems like a great day to be alive. Why is that? In this narrative of despair, what is there to “buck up” about? The answer lies outside of the narrative. There is another iconography at work here: the rear-view silhouette of the Tramp strolling down the road, foregrounded against a wide vista, complete with bowler hat, baggy pants, and pigeon-toed walk, recalls previous Chaplin films. By invoking similar moments in his oeuvre, Chaplin signals that the Tramp, more than a mere movie character, is the mass-reproduced trademark image of Charlie Chaplin, multimillionaire entertainer and worldwide celebrity. The film doubles Chaplin with the Tramp. This double exposure, figuratively speaking, reconciles the contradictions between the cheerful atmosphere and the grim story. The celebrity’s presence alleviates the suspicion that the protagonists are doomed. Rather than being reduced to one of the “marginal men,” the Tramp is heading for the Hollywood hills, where Chaplin participates in quite a bit of culture, making hit movies for huge audiences. Nice work if you can get it, indeed. Chaplin resolves the plot by supplanting narrative logic with celebrity logic. Chaplin’s celebrity diverges somewhat from the way Hollywood celebrity functions generally. Miriam Hansen provides a popular understanding of celebrity: “The star’s presence in a particular film blurs the boundary between diegesis and discourse, between an address relying on the identification with fictional characters and an activation of the viewer’s familiarity with the star on the basis of production and publicity” (246). That is, celebrity images alter films by enlisting what Hansen terms “intertexts,” which include journalism and studio publicity. According to Hansen, celebrity invites these intertexts to inform and multiply the meaning of the narrative. By contrast, Modern Times disregards the diegesis altogether, switching focus to the celebrity. Meaning is not multiplied. It is replaced. Filmic resolution depends not only on recognizing Chaplin’s image, but also on abandoning plot and leaving the Tramp and the Gamin to their fates. This explicit use of celebrity culminates Chaplin’s reworking of early twentieth-century celebrity, his negotiations with fame that continue to reverberate today. In what follows, I will argue that Chaplin weds visual celebrity with strategies of author-production often attributed to modernist literature, strategies that parallel Michel Foucault’s theory of the “author function.” Like his modernist contemporaries, Chaplin deploys narrative techniques that gesture toward the text’s creator, not as a person who is visible in a so-called real world, but as an idealized consciousness who resides in the film and controls its meaning. While Chaplin’s Hollywood counterparts rely on images to connote individual personalities, Chaplin resists locating his self within a body, instead using the Tramp as a sign, rather than an embodiment, of his celebrity, and turning his filmmaking into an aesthetic space to contain his subjectivity. Creating himself as author, Chaplin reckons with the fact that his image remains on display. Chaplin recuperates the Tramp image, mobilizing it as a signifier of his mass audience. The Tramp’s universal recognizability, Chaplin suggests, authorizes the image to represent an entire historical moment. II. An Author Is Born Chaplin produces himself as an author residing in his texts, rather than a celebrity on display. He injects himself into Modern Times to resolve the narrative (and by extension assuage the social unrest the film portrays). This gesture insists that the presence of the author generates and controls signification. Chaplin thus echoes Foucault’s account of the author function: “The author is . . . the principle of a certain unity of writing – all differences having to be resolved” by reference to the author’s subjectivity (215). By reconciling narrative contradictions through the author, Chaplin proposes himself as the key to his films’ coherence of meaning. Foucault reminds us, however, that such positioning of the author is illusory: “We are used to thinking that the author is so different from all other men, and so transcendent . . . that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely. The truth is quite the contrary: the author does not precede the works. The text contains a number of signs referring to the author” (221). In this formulation, authors do not create meaning. Rather, texts exercise formal attributes to produce their authors. So Modern Times, by enlisting Chaplin’s celebrity to provide closure, produces a controlling consciousness, a special class of being who “proliferates” meaning. Chaplin’s films in general contain signs of the author such as displays of cinematic tricks. These strategies, claiming affinity with objects of high culture, inevitably evoke the author. Chaplin’s author is not a physical entity. Authorship, Foucault writes, “does not refer purely and simply to a real individual,” meaning that the author is composed of text, not flesh and blood (216). Chaplin resists imbuing the image of the Tramp with the sort of subjectivity reserved for the author. In this way Chaplin again departs from usual accounts of Hollywood stars. In Chaplin’s time, according to Richard Dyer, “The roles and/or the performance of a star in a film were taken as revealing the personality of the star” (20). (Moreover, Chaplin achieves all that fame without relying on close-ups. Critics typically cite the close-up as the device most instrumental to Hollywood celebrity. Scott J. Juengel writes of the close-up as “a fetishization of the face” that creates “an intense manifestation of subjectivity” [353; also see Dyer, 14-15, and Susman, 282]. The one true close-up I have found in Chaplin’s early films occurs in “A Woman” [1915], when Chaplin goes in drag. It shows Chaplin’s face minus the trademark fake mustache, as if to de-familiarize his recognizability.) Dyer represents the standard view: Hollywood movies propose that stars’ public images directly reflect their private personalities. Chaplin’s celebrity contradicts that model. Chaplin’s initial fame stems from his 1914 performances in Mack Sennett’s Keystone productions, consummate examples of the slapstick genre, in which the Tramp and his trademark regalia first become recognizable trademarks. Far from offering roles that reveal “personality,” slapstick treats both people and things as objects, equally at the mercy of apparently unpredictable physical laws. Within this genre the Tramp remains an object, subject to the chaos of slapstick just like the other bodies on the screen. Chaplin’s celebrity emerges without the suggestion that his image contains a unique subject or stands out among other slapstick objects. The disinclination to treat the image as container of the subject – shared with literary modernism – sets up the Tramp as a sign that connotes Chaplin’s presence elsewhere. Gradually, Chaplin turns his image into an emblem that metonymically refers to the author. When he begins to direct, Chaplin manipulates the generic features of slapstick to reconstruct his image, establishing the Tramp in a central position. For example, in “The Vagabond” (1916), the Tramp becomes embroiled in a barroom brawl and runs toward the saloon’s swinging doors, neatly sidestepping before reaching them. The pursuer’s momentum, naturally, carries him through the doorway. Other characters exist in a slapstick dimension that turns bodies into objects, but not the Tramp. He exploits his liberation from slapstick by exacerbating the other characters’ lack of control. Such moments grant the Tramp a degree of physical control that enhances his value in relation to the other images. The Tramp, bearing the celebrity image and referring to authorial control, becomes a signifier of Chaplin’s combination of authorship and celebrity. Chaplin devises a metonymic relationship between author and image; the Tramp cannot encompass the author, only refer to him. Maintaining his subjectivity separate from the image, Chaplin imagines his films as an aesthetic space where signification is contingent on the author. He attempts to delimit what he, his name and image, signify – in opposition to intertexts that might mobilize meanings drawn from outside the text. Writing of celebrity intertexts, P. David Marshall notes that “the descriptions of the connections between celebrities’ ‘real’ lives and their working lives . . . are what configure the celebrity status” (58). For Chaplin, to situate the subject in a celebrity body would be to allow other influences – uses of his name or image in other texts – to determine the meaning of the celebrity sign. His separation of image and author reveals an anxiety about identifying one specific body or image as location of the subject, about putting the actual subject on display and in circulation. The opening moment of “Shoulder Arms” (1920) illustrates Chaplin’s uneasy alliance of celebrity, author, and image. The title card displays a cartoon sketch of the Tramp in doughboy garb. Alongside, print lettering conveys the film title and the words, “written and produced by” above a blank area. A real hand appears, points to the drawing, and elaborately signs “Charles Chaplin” in the blank space. It then pantomimes shooting a gun at the Tramp. The film announces itself as a product of one author, represented by a giant, disembodied hand. The hand provides an inimitable signature of the author, while the Tramp, disfigured by the uniform but still identifiable, provides an inimitable signature of the celebrity. The relationship between the image and the “writer” is co-dependent but antagonistic; the same hand signs Chaplin’s name and mimes shooting the Tramp. Author-production merges with resistance to the image as representation of the subject. III. The Image Is History “Shoulder Arms” reminds us that despite Chaplin’s conception of himself as an incorporeal author, the Tramp remains present, and not quite accounted for. Here Foucault’s author function finds its limitations, failing to explain author-production that relies on the image even as it situates the author in the text. The Tramp remains visible in Modern Times while the film has made it clear that the author is present to engender significance. To Slavoj Zizek the Tramp is “the remainder” of the text, existing on a separate plane from the diegesis (6). Zizek watches City Lights (1931) and finds that the Tramp, who is continually shifting between classes and characters, acts as “an intercessor, middleman, purveyor.” He is continually mistaken for something he is not, and when the mistake is recognized, “he turns into a disturbing stain one tries to get rid of as quickly as possible” (4). Zizek points out that the Tramp is often positioned outside of social institutions, set slightly apart from the diegesis. Modern Times follows this pattern as well. For example, throughout the film the Tramp continually shifts from one side of the law to the other. He endures two prison sentences, prevents a jailbreak, and becomes a security guard. The film doesn’t quite know what to do with him. Chaplin takes up this remainder and transforms it into an emblem of his mass popularity. The Tramp has always floated somewhat above the narrative; in Modern Times that narrative occurs against a backdrop of historical turmoil. Chaplin, therefore, superimposes the Tramp on to scenes of historical change. The film actually withholds the tramp image during the first section of the movie, as the character is working in a factory and does not appear in his trademark regalia until he emerges from a stay in the “hospital.” His appearance engenders a montage of filmmaking techniques: abrupt cross-cutting between shots at tilted angles, superimpositions, and crowds of people and cars moving rapidly through the city, all set to (Chaplin’s) jarring, brass-wind music. The Tramp passes before a closed factory and accidentally marches at the head of a left-wing demonstration. The sequence combines signs of social upheaval, technological advancement, and Chaplin’s own technical achievements, to indicate that the film has entered “modern times” – all spurred by the appearance of the Tramp in his trademark attire, thus implicating the Tramp in the narration of historical change. By casting his image as a universally identifiable sign of Chaplin’s mass popularity, Chaplin authorizes it to function as a sign of the historical moment. The logic behind Chaplin’s treating the Tramp as an emblem of history is articulated by Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image. Benjamin explains how culture identifies itself through images, writing that “Every present day is determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each “now” is of a particular recognizability”(462-3). Benjamin proposes that the image, achieving a “particular recognizability,” puts temporality in stasis. This illuminates the dynamic by which Chaplin elevates the mass-reproduced icon to transcendent historical symbol. The Tramp image crystallizes that passing of time into a static unit. Indeed, Chaplin instigates the way the twentieth century, according to Richard Schickel, registers its history. Schickel writes that “In the 1920s, the media, newly abustle, had discovered techniques whereby anyone could be wrested out of whatever context had originally nurtured him and turned into images . . . for no previous era is it possible to make a history out of images . . . for no subsequent era is it possible to avoid doing so. For most of us, now, this is history” (70-1). From Schickel, Benjamin, and Chaplin, a picture of the far-reaching implications of Chaplin’s celebrity emerges. By gesturing beyond the boundary of the text, toward Chaplin’s audience, the Tramp image makes legible that significant portion of the masses unified in recognition of Chaplin’s celebrity, affirming that the celebrity sign depends on its wide circulation to attain significance. As Marshall writes, “The celebrity’s power is derived from the collective configuration of its meaning.” The image’s connotative function requires collaboration with the audience. The collective configuration Chaplin mobilizes is the Tramp’s recognizability as it moves through scenes of historical change, whatever other discourses may attach to it. Chaplin thrusts the image into this role because of its status as remainder, which stems from Chaplin’s rejection of the body as a location of the subject. Chaplin has incorporated the modernist desire to situate subjectivity in the text rather than the body. Paradoxically, this impulse expands the role of visuality, turning the celebrity image into a principal figure by which our culture understands itself. References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1999. Chaplin, Charles, dir. City Lights. RBC Films, 1931. –––. Modern Times. Perf. Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, United Artists, 1936. –––. “Shoulder Arms.” First National, 1918. –––. “The Vagabond.” Mutual, 1916. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI, 1998. Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Ed. James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press, 1998. Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998. Juengel, Scott J. “Face, Figure and Physiognomics: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Moving Image.” Novel 33.3 (Summer 2000): 353-67. Schickel. Intimate Strangers. New York: Fromm International Publishing Company, 1986. Susman, Warren I. Culture as History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973. Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goldman, Jonathan. "Double Exposure: Charlie Chaplin as Author and Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/05-goldman.php>. APA Style Goldman, J. (Nov. 2004) "Double Exposure: Charlie Chaplin as Author and Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/05-goldman.php>.

It is time for the truth to be brought out ... . Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. -- Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947-50), signed statement to Congress, 22 Aug. 1960 As an avid UFO enthusiast, an enduring subject of frustration for me is the complacency and ignorance that tends to characterise public knowledge of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. Its hard for people like myself to understand how anyone could not be interested in UFOs, let alone Congressional statements from ex-Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testifying to an official policy of secrecy and ridicule (in other words, propaganda), which aims to suppress public interest and belief in UFOs. As a student of cultural studies who also happens to be a conspiracy theorist, the idea of the Central Intelligence Agency seeking to manipulate one of the twentieth century's most significant icons -- the UFO -- is a fascinating one, because it allows for the possibility that the ways in which the UFO has come to be understood by the public may involve more than the everyday cultural processes described by cultural studies. A review of the history of the CIA's interest in UFO phenomena actually suggests, quite compellingly I think, that since the 1950s, American culture (and, indirectly and to a lesser degree, the rest of the western world) may have been subjected to a highly sophisticated system of UFO propaganda that originated from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is, of course, a highly contentious claim which would bring many important repercussions should it turn out to be true. There is no point pretending that it doesn't sound like a basic premise of The X-Files -- of course it does. So to extract the idea from its comfortable fictional context and attempt to place it into a real historical one (a completely legitimate endeavour) one must become familiar with the politics of the UFO phenomenon in Cold War America, a field of history which is, to understate the matter, largely ignored by academia. A cursory glance at the thousands of (now declassified) UFO-related documents that once circulated through some of the highest channels of US intelligence reveal that, rather than the nonsense topic it is often considered, the UFO phenomenon has been a matter of great concern for the US government since 1947. To get a sense of just how seriously UFOs were taken by the CIA in the 1950s, consider this declassified 'Secret' memorandum from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, dated 24 September 1952: a world-wide reporting system has been instituted and major Air Force bases have been ordered to make interceptions of unidentified flying objects ... . Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center, a branch of the US Air Force] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings ... . During 1952 alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20 percent as unexplained and of those received from January through July 1952 it carries 28 percent as unexplained. (qtd. in Good 390) Fifteen-hundred reports in five years is roughly three-hundred reports per year, which is dangerously close to one per day. Although only twenty percent, or one-fifth of these reports were unexplained, equalling about 60 unexplained sightings per year, this still equalled more than one unexplained sighting per week. But these were just the unexplained, official sightings collected by ATIC, which was by no means a comprehensive database of all sightings occurring in the United States, or the rest of the world, for that matter. Extrapolation of these figures suggested that the UFO problem was probably much more extensive than the preliminary findings were indicating, hence the erection of a world-wide reporting system and the interception of UFOs by major US Air Force bases. The social consequences of the UFO problem quickly became a matter of major importance to the CIA. Chadwell went on to point out that: The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic. (qtd. in Good 393) By "acceptance of the incredible" Chadwell was probably referring to acceptance of the existence of intelligently controlled, disc-shaped craft which are capable of performing aerial manoeuvres far in excess of those possible with contemporary technology. Flying saucers were, and remain, incredible. Yet belief in them had permeated the US government as early as 1947, when a 'Secret' Air Materiel Command report (now declassified) from Lieutenant General Nathan Twining to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, announced that: It is the opinion that: (a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary and fictitious. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. (b) The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, manoeuvrability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft or radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely. -- (qtd. in Good 313-4) This report was compiled only two months after the term flying saucer had been invented, following pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine saucer-like objects in June 1947. The fact that a phenomenon which should have been ignored as a tabloid fad was being confirmed, extremely quickly, by the Air Materiel Command Headquarters suggested that those people mentally conditioned to accept the impossible were not restricted to the public domain. They also, apparently, held positions of considerable power within the government itself. This rapid acceptance, at the highest levels of America's defense agencies, of the UFO reality must have convinced certain segments of the CIA that a form of hysteria had already begun, so powerful that those whose job it was to not only remain immune from such psychosocial forces, but to manage them, were actually succumbing to it themselves. What the CIA faced, then, was nothing short of a nation on the verge of believing in aliens. Considering this, it should become a little clearer why the CIA might develop an interest in the UFO phenomenon at this point. Whether aliens were here or not did not, ultimately, matter. What did matter was the obvious social phenomenon of UFO belief. Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence, realised this in 1952, and wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (in a letter previously classified 'Secret'): It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports, and to assure ourselves that the incidents will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack. I therefore recommend that this Agency and the agencies of the Department of Defense be directed to formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects ... . This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Strategy Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate. (qtd. in Good 400-1) What the Director was asserting, basically, was that the UFO problem was too big for the CIA to solve alone. Any government agencies it was deemed necessary to involve were to be called into action to deal with the UFOs. If this does not qualify UFOs as serious business, it is difficult to imagine what would. In the same year, Chadwell again reported to the CIA Director in a memo which suggests that he and his colleagues were on the brink of believing not only that UFOs were real, but that they represented an extraterrestrial presence: At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles. (qtd. in Good 403) In 1953, these concerns eventually led to the CIA's most public investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the Robertson Panel. Its members were Dr H. P. Robertson (physics and radar); Dr Lloyd V. Berkner (geophysics); Dr Samuel Goudsmit (atomic structure and statistical problems); and Dr Thornton Page (astronomy and astrophysics). Associate members were Dr J. Allen Hynek (astronomy) and Frederick C. Durant (missiles and rockets). Twelve hours of meetings ensued (not nearly enough time to absorb all of the most compelling UFO data gathered at this point), during which the panel was shown films of UFOs, case histories and sightings prepared by the ATIC, and intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union's interest in US sightings, as well as numerous charts depicting, for example, frequency and geographic location of sightings (Good 404). The report (not fully declassified until 1975) concluded with a highly skeptical, and highly ambiguous, view of UFO phenomena. Part IV, titled "Comments and Suggestions of the Panel", stated that: Reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings ... by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner. (qtd. in Good 404) However, even if the panel's insistence that UFOs were not of extraterrestrial origin seemed disingenuous, it still noted the subjectivity of the public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare (qtd. in Good 405). To remedy this, it recommended quite a profound method of propaganda: The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in flying saucers which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the secret is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy ... . It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program ... . It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the mystery and then the explanation would be forceful ... . The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic ... . [It is recommended that] the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognise most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. (qtd. in Good 405-6) The general aim of the Robertson Panel's recommendations, then, was to not only stop people believing in UFOs, but to stop people seeing UFOs, which constitutes an extreme manipulation of the public consciousness. It was the intention of the CIA to ensure, as subtly as was possible, that most people interpreted specific visual experiences (i.e. UFO sightings) in terms of a strict CIA-developed criterion. This momentous act basically amounts to an attempt to define, control and enforce a particular construction of reality which specifically excludes UFOs. In an ironic way, the Robertson Panel report advocated a type of modern exorcism, and may have been the very birthplace of the idea that such an obvious icon of wonder and potential as the UFO is, it can never be more than a misidentification or a hoax. We cannot be certain to what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were put into practice, but we can safely assume that its findings were not ignored by the CIA. For example, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the ATIC's Aerial Phenomena Branch, has testified that "[We were] ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation -- make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots" (Good 407). Comments like these make one wonder just how extensive the program of debunking and ridicule actually was. What I have suggested here is that during the 1950s, and possibly throughout the four decades since, an objective of the CIA has been to downplay its own interest in the UFO phenomenon to the public whilst engaging in secret, complex investigations of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. If this is the case, as the evidence -- the best of which can be found in the government's own files (even though such evidence, as tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists continue to stress, can hardly be taken simply at face value) -- indicates, then the construction of the UFO in western popular culture will have to be revised as a process involving more than just the projection of popular hopes, desires and anxieties onto an abstract, mythical object. It will also need to be seen as involving the clandestine manipulation of this process by immeasurably powerful groups within the culture itself, such as the CIA. And since the CIAs major concerns about UFOs haved traditionally been explicitly related to the Cold War, the renewed prominence of the UFO in western popular culture since the demise of the Soviet Union requires immediate, serious investigation in a political context. For the UFO issue is, and has always been, a political issue. I suggest that until this fascinating chapter of American domestic history is explored more thoroughly, the cultural function of the UFO will remain just as poorly understood as its physical nature. References Good, Timothy. Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. London: MacMillan, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1999) Making it unpopular: the CIA and UFOs in popular culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]).

Rexroth, Frank / Teresa Schröder-Stapper (Hrsg.), Experten, Wissen, Symbole. Performanz und Medialität vormoderner Wissenskulturen (Historische Zeitschrift. Beihefte (Neue Folge), 71), Berlin / Boston 2018, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 336 S. / Abb., € 89,95. (Lisa Dannenberg-Markel, Aachen) Enenkel, Karl A. E. / Christine Göttler (Hrsg.), Solitudo. Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cultures (Intersections, 56), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XXXIV u. 568 S. / Abb., € 165,00. (Mirko Breitenstein, Dresden / Leipzig) Tracy, Larissa (Hg.), Medieval and Early Modern Murder. Legal, Literary and Historical Contexts, Woodbridge 2018, Boydell Press, 486 S., £ 60,00. (Benjamin Seebröker, Dresden) Müller, Mario, Verletzende Worte. Beleidigung und Verleumdung in Rechtstexten aus dem Mittelalter und aus dem 16. Jahrhundert (Hildesheimer Universitätsschriften, 33), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York 2017, Olms, 410 S. / Abb., € 78,00. 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The labyrinth is probably the most universal trope of complexity. Deriving from pre-Greek labyrinthos, a word denoting “maze, large building with intricate underground passages”, and possibly related to Lydian labrys, which signifies “double-edged axe,” symbol of royal power, the notion of the labyrinth primarily evokes the Minoan Palace in Crete and the myth of the Minotaur. According to this myth, the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, was born to Pesiphae, king Minos’s wife, who mated with a bull when the king of Crete was besieging Athens. Upon his return, Minos commanded the artist Daedalus to construct a monumental building of inter-connected rooms and passages, at the center of which the King sought to imprison the monstrous sign of his disgrace. The Minotaur required human sacrifice every couple of years, until it was defeated by the Athenian prince Theuseus, who managed to extricate himself from the maze by means of a clue of thread, given to him by Minos’s enamored daughter, Ariadne (Parandowski 238-43). If the Cretan myth establishes the labyrinth as a trope of complexity, this very complexity associates labyrinthine design not only with disorientation but also with superb artistry. As pointed out by Penelope Reed Doob, the labyrinth is an inherently ambiguous construct (39-63). It presumes a double perspective: those imprisoned inside, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted, are disoriented and terrified; whereas those who view it from outside or from above – as a diagram – admire its structural sophistication. Labyrinths thus simultaneously embody order and chaos, clarity and confusion, unity (a single structure) and multiplicity (many paths). Whereas the modern, reductive view equates the maze with confusion and disorientation, the labyrinth is actually a signifier with two contradictory signifieds. Not only are all labyrinths intrinsically double, they also fall into two distinct, though related, types. The paradigm represented by the Cretan maze is mainly derived from literature and myth. It is a multicursal model, consisting of a series of forking paths, each bifurcation requiring new choice. The second type is the unicursal maze. Found mainly in the visual arts, such as rock carvings or coin ornamentation, its structural basis is a single path, twisting and turning, but entailing no bifurcations. Although not equally bewildering, both paradigms are equally threatening: in the multicursal construct the maze-walker may be entrapped in a repetitious pattern of wrong choices, whereas in the unicursal model the traveler may die of exhaustion before reaching the desired end, the heart of the labyrinth. In spite of their differences, the basic similarities between the two paradigms may explain why they were both included in the same linguistic category. The labyrinth represents a road-model, and as such it is essentially teleological. Most labyrinths of antiquity and of the Middle Ages were designed with the thought of reaching the center. But the fact that each labyrinth has a center does not necessarily mean that the maze-walker is aware of its existence. Moreover, reaching the center is not always to be desired (in case it conceals a lurking Minotaur), and once the center is reached, the maze-walker may never find the way back. Besides signifying complexity and ambiguity, labyrinths thus also symbolically evoke the danger of eternal imprisonment, of inextricability. This sinister aspect is intensified by the recursive aspect of labyrinthine design, by the mirroring effect of the paths. In reflecting on the etymology of the word ‘maze’ (rather than the Greek/Latin labyrinthos/labyrinthus), Irwin observes that it derives from the Swedish masa, signifying “to dream, to muse,” and suggests that the inherent recursion of labyrinthine design offers an apt metaphor for the uniquely human faculty of self-reflexitivity, of thought turning upon itself (95). Because of its intriguing aspect and wealth of potential implications, the labyrinth has become a category that is not only formal, but also conceptual and symbolic. The ambiguity of the maze, its conflation of overt complexity with underlying order and simplicity, was explored in ideological systems rooted in a dualistic world-view. In the early Christian era, the labyrinth was traditionally presented as a metaphor for the universe: divine creation based on a perfect design, perceived as chaotic due to the shortcomings of human comprehension. In the Middle-Ages, the labyrinthine attributes of imprisonment and limited perception were reflected in the view of life as a journey inside a moral maze, in which man’s vision was constricted because of his fallen nature (Cazenave 348-350). The maze was equally conceptualized in dynamic terms and used as a metaphor for mental processes. More specifically, the labyrinth has come to signify intellectual confusion, and has therefore become most pertinent in literary contexts that valorize rational thought. And the rationalistic genre par excellence is detective fiction. The labyrinth may serve as an apt metaphor for the world of detective fiction because it accurately conveys the tacit assumptions of the genre – the belief in the existence of order, causality and reason underneath the chaos of perceived phenomena. Such optimistic belief is ardently espoused by the putative detective in Paul Auster’s metafictional novella City of Glass: He had always imagined that the key to good detective work was a close observation of details. The more accurate the scrutiny, the more successful the results. The implication was that human behavior could be understood, that beneath the infinite façade of gestures, tics and silences there was finally a coherence, an order, a source of motivation. (67) In this brief but eloquent passage Auster conveys, through the mind of his sleuth, the central tenets of classical detective fiction. These tenets are both ontological and epistemological. The ontological aspect is subsumed in man’s hopeful reliance on “a coherence, an order, a source of motivation” underlying the messiness and blood of the violent deed. The epistemological aspect is aptly formulated by Michael Holquist, who argues that the fictional world of detective stories is rooted in the Scholastic principle of adequatio rei et intellectus, the adequation of mind to things (157). And if both human reality and phenomenal reality are governed by reason, the mind, given enough time, can understand everything. The mind’s representative is the detective. He is the embodiment of inquisitive intellect, and his superior powers of observation and deduction transform an apparent mystery into an incontestable solution. The detective sifts through the evidence, assesses the relevance of data and the reliability of witnesses. But, first of foremost, he follows clues – and the clue, the most salient element of the detective story, links the genre with the myth of the Cretan labyrinth. For in its now obsolete spelling, the word ‘clew’ denotes a ball of thread, and thus foregrounds the similarity between the mental process of unraveling a crime mystery and the traveler’s progress inside the maze (Irwin 179). The chief attributes of the maze – circuitousness, enclosure, and inextricability – associate it with another convention of detective fiction, the trope of the locked room. This convention, introduced in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a text traditionally regarded as the first analytic detective story, establishes the locked room as the ultimate affront to reason: a hermetically sealed space which no one could have penetrated or exited and in which a brutal crime has nevertheless been committed. But the affront to reason is only apparent. In Poe’s ur-text of the genre, the violent deed is committed by an orangutan, a brutal and abused beast that enters and escapes from the seemingly locked room through a half-closed window. As accurately observed by Holquist, in the world of detective fiction “there are no mysteries, there is only incorrect reasoning” (157). And the correct reasoning, dubbed by Poe “ratiocination”, is the process of logical deduction. Deduction is an enchainment of syllogisms, in which a conclusion inevitably follows from two valid premises; as Dupin elegantly puts it, “the deductions are the sole proper ones and … the suspicion arises inevitably from them as a single result” (Poe 89). Applying this rigorous mental process, the detective re-arranges the pieces of the puzzle into a coherent and meaningful sequence of events. In other words – he creates a narrative. This brings us back to Irwin’s observation about the recursive aspect of the maze. Like the labyrinth, detective fiction is self-reflexive. It is a narrative form which foregrounds narrativity, for the construction of a meaningful narrative is the protagonist’s and the reader’s principal task. Logical deduction, the main activity of the fictional sleuth, does not allow for ambiguity. In classical detective fiction, the labyrinth is associated with the messiness and violence of crime and contrasted with the clarity of the solution (the inverse is true of postmodernist detective mysteries). The heart of the labyrinth is the solution, the vision of truth. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the detective genre: the premise that truth exists and that it can be known. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the initially insoluble puzzle is eventually transformed into a coherent narrative, in which a frantic orangutan runs into the street escaping the abuse of its master, climbs a rod and seeks refuge in a room inhabited by two women, brutally slashes them in confusion, and then flees the room in the same way he penetrated it. The sequence of events reconstructed by Dupin is linear, unequivocal, and logically satisfying. This is not the case with the ‘hard boiled’, American variant of the detective genre, which influenced the inception of film noir. Although the novels of Hammett, Chandler or Cain are structured around crime mysteries, these works problematize most of the tacit premises of analytic detective fiction and re-define its narrative form. For one, ‘hard boiled’ fiction obliterates the dualism between overt chaos and underlying order, between the perceived messiness of crime and its underlying logic. Chaos becomes all-encompassing, engulfing the sleuth as well as the reader. No longer the epitome of a superior, detached intellect, the detective becomes implicated in the mystery he investigates, enmeshed in a labyrinthine sequence of events whose unraveling does not necessarily produce meaning. As accurately observed by Telotte, “whether [the] characters are trying to manipulate others, or simply hoping to figure out how their plans went wrong, they invariably find that things do not make sense” (7). Both ‘hard-boiled’ fiction and its cinematic progeny implicitly portray the dissolution of social order. In film noir, this thematic pursuit finds a formal equivalent in the disruption of traditional narrative paradigm. As noted by Bordwell and Telotte, among others, the paradigm underpinning classical Hollywood cinema in the years 1917-1960 is characterized by a seemingly objective point of view, adherence to cause-effect logic, use of goal-oriented characters and a progression toward narrative closure (Bordwell 157, Telotte 3). In noir films, on the other hand, the devices of flashback and voice-over implicitly challenge conventionally linear narratives, while the use of the subjective camera shatters the illusion of objective truth (Telotte 3, 20). To revert to the central concern of the present paper, in noir cinema the form coincides with the content. The fictional worlds projected by the ‘hard boiled’ genre and its noir cinematic descendent offer no hidden realm of meaning underneath the chaos of perceived phenomena, and the trope of the labyrinth is stripped of its transcendental, comforting dimension. The labyrinth is the controlling visual metaphor of the Coen Brothers’ neo-noir film The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). The film’s title refers to its main protagonist: a poker-faced, taciturn barber, by the name of Ed Crane. The entire film is narrated by Ed, incarcerated in a prison cell. He is writing his life story, at the commission of a men’s magazine whose editor wants to probe the feelings of a convict facing death. Ed says he is not unhappy to die. Exonerated of a crime he committed and convicted of a crime he did not, Ed feels his life is a labyrinth. He does not understand it, but he hopes that death will provide the answer. Ed’s final vision of life as a bewildering maze, and his hope of seeing the master-plan after death, ostensibly refer to the inherent dualism of the labyrinth, the notion of underlying order manifest through overt chaos. They offer the flicker of an optimistic closure, which subscribes to the traditional Christian view of the universe as a perfect design, perceived as chaos due to the shortcomings of human comprehension. But this interpretation is belied by the film’s final scene. Shot in blindingly white light, suggesting the protagonist’s revelation, the screen is perfectly empty, except for the electric chair in the center. And when Ed slowly walks towards the site of his execution, he has a sudden fantasy of the overhead lights as the round saucers of UFOs. The film’s visual metaphors ironically subvert Ed’s metaphysical optimism. They cast a view of human life as a maze of emptiness, to borrow the title of one of Borges’s best-known stories. The only center of this maze is death, the electric chair; the only transcendence, faith in God and in after life, makes as much sense as the belief in flying saucers. The Coen Brothers thus simultaneously construct and deconstruct the traditional symbolism of the labyrinth, evoking (through Ed’s innocent hope) its promise of underlying order, and subverting this promise through the images that dominate the screen. The transcendental dimension of the trope of the labyrinth, its promise of a hidden realm of meaning and value, is consistently subverted throughout the film. On the level of plot, the film presents a crisscrossed pattern of misguided intentions and tragi-comic misinterpretations. The film’s protagonist, Ed Crane, is estranged from his own life; neither content nor unhappy, he is passive, taking things as they come. Thus he condones Doris’s, his wife’s, affair with her employer, Big Dave, reacting only when he perceives an opportunity to profit from their liason. This opportunity presents itself in the form of Creighton Tolliver, a garrulous client, who shares with Ed his fail-proof scheme of making big money from the new invention of dry cleaning. All he needs to carry out his plan, confesses Creighton, is an investment of ten thousand dollars. The barber decides to take advantage of this accidental encounter in order to change his life. He writes an anonymous extortion letter to Big Dave, threatening to expose his romance with Doris and wreck his marriage and his financial position (Dave’s wife, a rich heiress, owns the store that Dave runs). Dave confides in Ed about the letter; he suspects the blackmailer is a con man that tried to engage him in a dry-cleaning scheme. Although reluctant to part with the money, which he has been saving to open a new store to be managed by Doris, Big Dave eventually gives in. Obviously, although unbeknownst to Big Dave, it is Ed who collects the money and passes it to Creighton, so as to become a silent partner in the dry cleaning enterprise. But things do not work out as planned. Big Dave, who believes Creighton to be his blackmailer, follows him to his apartment in an effort to retrieve the ten thousand dollars. A fight ensues, in which Creighton gets killed, not before revealing to Dave Ed’s implication in his dry-cleaning scheme. Furious, Dave summons Ed, confronts him with Creighton’s story and physically attacks him. Ed grabs a knife that is lying about and accidentally kills Big Dave. The following day, two policemen arrive at the barbershop. Ed is certain they came to arrest him, but they have come to arrest Doris. The police have discovered that she has been embezzling from Dave’s store (Doris is an accountant), and they suspect her of Dave’s murder. Ed hires Freddy Riedenschneider, the best and most expensive criminal attorney, to defend his wife. The attorney is not interested in truth; he is looking for a version that will introduce a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. At some point, Ed confesses that it is he who killed Dave, but Riedenschneider dismisses his confession as an inadequate attempt to save Doris’s neck. He concocts a version of his own, but does not get the chance to win the trial; the case is dismissed, as Doris is found hanged in her cell. After his wife’s death, Ed gets lonely. He takes interest in Birdy, the young daughter of the town lawyer (whom he initially approached for Doris’s defense). Birdy plays the piano; Ed believes she is a prodigy, and wants to become her agent. He takes her for an audition to a French master pianist, who decides that the girl is nothing special. Disenchanted, they drive back home. Birdy tells Ed, not for the first time, that she doesn’t really want to be a pianist. She hasn’t been thinking of a career; if at all, she would like to be a vet. But she is very grateful. As a token of her gratitude, she tries to perform oral sex on Ed. The car veers; they have an accident. When he comes to, Ed faces two policemen, who tell him he is arrested for the murder of Creighton Tolliver. The philosophical purport of the labyrinth metaphor is suggested in a scene preceding Doris’s trial, in which her cocky attorney justifies his defense strategy. To support his argument, he has recourse to the theory of some German scientist, called either Fritz or Werner, who claimed that truth changes with the eye of the beholder. Science has determined that there is no objective truth, says Riedenschneider; consequently, the question of what really happened is irrelevant. All a good attorney can do, he concludes, is present a plausible narrative to the jury. Freddy Riedenschneider’s seemingly nonchalant exposition is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Succinctly put, the principle postulates that the more precisely the position of a subatomic particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. What follows is that concepts such as orbits of electrons do not exist in nature unless and until we measure them; or, in Heisenberg’s words, “the ‘path’ comes into existence only when we observe it” (qtd. in Cassidy). Heisenberg’s discovery had momentous scientific and philosophical implications. For one, it challenged the notion of causality in nature. The law of causality assumes that if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future; in this formulation, suggests Heisenberg, “it is not the conclusion that is wrong, but the premises” (qtd. in Cassidy). In other words, we can never know the present exactly, and on the basis of this exact knowledge, predict the future. More importantly, the uncertainty principle seems to collapse the distinction between subjective and objective reality, between consciousness and the world of phenomena, suggesting that the act of perception changes the reality perceived (Hofstadter 239). In spite of its light tone, the attorney’s confused allusion to quantum theory conveys the film’s central theme: the precarious nature of truth. In terms of plot, this theme is suggested by the characters’ constant misinterpretation: Big Dave believes he is blackmailed by Creighton Tolliver; Ed thinks Birdy is a genius, Birdy thinks that Ed expects sex from her, and Ann, Dave’s wife, puts her faith in UFOs. When the characters do not misjudge their reality, they lie about it: Big Dave bluffs about his war exploits, Doris cheats on Ed and Big Dave cheats on his wife and embezzles from her. And when the characters are honest and tell the truth, they are neither believed nor rewarded: Ed confesses his crime, but his confession is impatiently dismissed, Doris keeps her accounts straight but is framed for fraud and murder; Ed’s brother in law and partner loyally supports him, and as a result, goes bankrupt. If truth cannot be known, or does not exist, neither does justice. Throughout the film, the wires of innocence and guilt are constantly crossed; the innocent are punished (Doris, Creighton Tolliver), the guilty are exonerated of crimes they committed (Ed of killing Dave) and convicted of crimes they did not (Ed of killing Tolliver). In this world devoid of a metaphysical dimension, the mindless processes of nature constitute the only reality. They are represented by the incessant, pointless growth of hair. Ed is a barber; he deals with hair and is fascinated by hair. He wonders how hair is a part of us and we throw it to dust; he is amazed by the fact that hair continues to grow even after death. At the beginning of the film we see him docilely shave his wife’s legs. In a mirroring scene towards the end, the camera zooms in on Ed’s own legs, shaved before his electrocution. The leitmotif of hair, the image of the electric chair, the recurring motif of UFOs – all these metaphoric elements convey the Coen Brothers’ view of the human condition and build up to Ed’s final vision of life as a labyrinth. Life is a labyrinth because there is no necessary connection between cause and effect; because crime is dissociated from accountability and punishment; because what happened can never be ascertained and human knowledge consists only of a maze of conflicting, or overlapping, versions. The center of the existential labyrinth is death, and the exit, the belief in an after-life, is no more real than the belief in aliens. The labyrinth is an inherently ambiguous construct. Its structural attributes of doubling, recursion and inextricability yield a wealth of ontological and epistemological implications. Traditionally used as an emblem of overt complexity concealing underlying order and symmetry, the maze may aptly illustrate the tacit premises of the analytic detective genre. But this purport of the maze symbolism is ironically inverted in noir and neo-noir films. As suggested by its title, the Coen Brothers’ movie is marked by absence, and the absence of the man who wasn’t there evokes a more disturbing void. That void is the center of the existential labyrinth. References Auster, Paul. City of Glass. The New York Trilogy. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990. 1-132. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1985. Cassidy, David. “Quantum Mechanics, 1925-1927.” Werner Heisenberg (1901-1978). American Institute of Physics, 1998. 5 June 2007 http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08c.htm>. Cazenave, Michel, ed. Encyclopédie des Symboles. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1996. Coen, Joel, and Ethan Coen, dirs. The Man Who Wasn’t There. 2001. Doob, Penelope Reed. The Idea of the Labyrinth. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. Hofstadter, Douglas. I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books, 2007. Holquist, Michael. “Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in Post-War Fiction.” The Poetics of Murder. Eds. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 149-174. Irwin, John T. The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges and the Analytic Detective Story. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. Parandowski, Jan. Mitologia. Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1960. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Illustrated Stories and Poems. London: Chancellor Press, 1994. 103-114. Telotte, J.P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana: Illinois UP, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Shiloh, Ilana. "A Vision of Complex Symmetry: The Labyrinth in The Man Who Wasn’t There." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/09-shiloh.php>. APA Style Shiloh, I. (Jun. 2007) "A Vision of Complex Symmetry: The Labyrinth in The Man Who Wasn’t There," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/09-shiloh.php>.

If thinking about home necessitates thinking about “place, space, scale, identity and power,” as Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling (2) suggest, then thinking about home themes in popular music makes no less a conceptual demand. Song lyrics and titles most often invoke dominant readings such as intimacy, privacy, nurture, refuge, connectedness and shared belonging, all issues found within Blunt and Dowling’s analysis. The spatial imaginary to which these authors refer takes vivid shape through repertoires of songs dealing with houses and other specific sites, vast and distant homelands, communities or, less tangibly, geographical or cultural settings where particular relationships can be found, supporting Blunt and Dowling’s major claim that home is complex, multi-scalar and multi-layered. Shelley Mallett’s claim that the term home “functions as a repository for complex, inter-related and at times contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another…and with places, spaces and things” (84) is borne out heavily by popular music where, for almost every sentiment that the term home evokes, it seems an opposite sentiment is evoked elsewhere: familiarity versus alienation, acceptance versus rejection, love versus loneliness. Making use of conceptual groundwork by Blunt and Dowling and by Mallett and others, the following discussion canvasses a range of meanings that home has had for a variety of songwriters, singers and audiences over the years. Intended as merely partial and exploratory rather than exhaustive, it provides some insights into contrasts, ironies and relationships between home and gender, diaspora and loss. While it cannot cover all the themes, it gives prominence to the major recurring themes and a variety of important contexts that give rise to these home themes. Most prominent among those songs dealing with home has been a nostalgia and yearning, while issues of how women may have viewed the home within which they have often been restricted to a narrowly defined private sphere are almost entirely absent. This serves as a reminder that, while some themes can be conducive to the medium of popular music, others may be significantly less so. Songs may speak directly of experience but not necessarily of all experiences and certainly not of all experiences equally. B. Lee Cooper claims “most popular culture ventures rely upon formula-oriented settings and phrasings to attract interest, to spur mental or emotional involvement” (93). Notions of home have generally proved both formulaic and emotionally-charged. Commonly understood patterns of meaning and other hegemonic references generally operate more successfully than alternative reference points. Those notions with the strongest cultural currency can be conveyed succinctly and denote widely agreed upon meanings. Lyrics can seldom afford to be deeply analytical but generally must be concise and immediately evocative. Despite that, this discussion will point to diverse meanings carried by songs about home. Blunt and Dowling point out that “a house is not necessarily nor automatically a home” (3). The differences are strongly apparent in music, with only a few songs relating to houses compared with homes. When Malvina Reynolds wrote in 1962 of “little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” she was certainly referring to houses, not homes, thus making it easier to bypass the relationships which might have vested the inhabitants with more warmth and individuality than their houses, in this song about conformity and homogeneity. The more complex though elusive concept of home, however, is more likely to feature in love songs and to emanate from diasporal songs. Certainly these two genres are not mutually exclusive. Irish songs are particularly noteworthy for adding to the array of music written by, or representational of, those who have been forced away from home by war, poverty, strife or other circumstances. They manifest identities of displacement rather than of placement, as studied by Bronwen Walter, looking back at rather than from within their spatial imaginary. Phil Eva claims that during the 19th Century Irish émigrés sang songs of exile in Manchester’s streets. Since many in England’s industrial towns had been uprooted from their homes, the songs found rapport with street audiences and entered popular culture. For example, the song Killarney, of hazy origins but thought to date back to as early as 1850, tells of Killarney’s lakes and fells, Emerald isles and winding bays; Mountain paths and woodland dells… ...her [nature’s] home is surely there. As well as anthropomorphising nature and giving it a home, the song suggests a specifically geographic sense of home. Galway Bay, written by A. Fahy, does likewise, as do many other Irish songs of exile which link geography with family, kin and sometimes culture to evoke a sense of home. The final verse of Cliffs of Doneen gives a sense of both people and place making up home: Fare thee well to Doneen, fare thee well for a while And to all the kind people I’m leaving behind To the streams and the meadows where late I have been And the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Doneen. Earlier Irish songs intertwine home with political issues. For example, Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin vows to Erin that “In exile thy bosum shall still be my home.” Such exile resulted from a preference of fleeing Ireland rather than bowing to English oppression, which then included a prohibition on Irish having moustaches or certain hairstyles. Thomas Moore is said to have set the words of the song to the air Coulin which itself referred to an Irish woman’s preference for her “Coulin” (a long-haired Irish youth) to the English (Nelson-Burns). Diasporal songs have continued, as has their political edge, as evidenced by global recognition of songs such as Bayan Ko (My Country), written by José Corazon de Jesus in 1929, out of love and concern for the Philippines and sung among Filipinos worldwide. Robin Cohen outlines a set of criteria for diaspora that includes a shared belief in the possibility of return to home, evident in songs such as the 1943 Welsh song A Welcome in the Hillside, in which a Welsh word translating roughly as a yearning to return home, hiraeth, is used: We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth When you come home again to Wales. However, the immensely popular I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, not of Irish origin but written by Thomas Westendorf of Illinois in 1875, suggests that such emotions can have a resonance beyond the diaspora. Anti-colonial sentiments about home can also be expressed by long-time inhabitants, as Harry Belafonte demonstrated in Island in the Sun: This is my island in the sun Where my people have toiled since time begun. Though I may sail on many a sea, Her shores will always be home to me. War brought a deluge of sentimental songs lamenting separation from home and loved ones, just as likely to be parents and siblings as sweethearts. Radios allowed wider audiences and greater popularity for these songs. If separation had brought a longing previously, the added horrors of war presented a stronger contrast between that which the young soldiers were missing and that which they were experiencing. Both the First and Second World Wars gave rise to songs long since sung which originated in such separations, but these also had a strong sense of home as defined by the nationalism that has for over a century given the contours of expectations of soldiers. Focusing on home, these songs seldom speak of the details of war. Rather they are specific about what the singers have left behind and what they hope to return to. Songs of home did not have to be written specifically for the war effort nor for overseas troops. Irving Berlin’s 1942 White Christmas, written for a film, became extremely popular with US troops during WWII, instilling a sense of home that related to familiarities and festivities. Expressing a sense of home could be specific and relate to regions or towns, as did I’m Goin’ Back Again to Yarrawonga, or it could refer to any home, anywhere where there were sons away fighting. Indeed the American Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmour, was sung by both Northerners and Southerners, so adaptable was it, with home remarkably unspecified and undescribed. The 1914 British song Keep the Home Fires Burning by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford was among those that evoked a connection between home and the military effort and helped establish a responsibility on those at home to remain optimistic: Keep the Homes fires burning While your hearts are yearning, Though your lads are far away They dream of home, There’s a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining, Turn the dark clouds inside out, Till the boys come Home. No space exists in this song for critique of the reasons for war, nor of a role for women other than that of homemaker and moral guardian. It was women’s duty to ensure men enlisted and home was rendered a private site for emotional enlistment for a presumed public good, though ironically also a point of personal hope where the light of love burned for the enlistees’ safe return. Later songs about home and war challenged these traditional notions. Two serve as examples. One is Pink Floyd’s brief musical piece of the 1970s, Bring the Boys Back Home, whose words of protest against the American war on Viet Nam present home, again, as a site of safety but within a less conservative context. Home becomes implicated in a challenge to the prevailing foreign policy and the interests that influence it, undermining the normal public sphere/private sphere distinction. The other more complex song is Judy Small’s Mothers, Daughters, Wives, from 1982, set against a backdrop of home. Small eloquently describes the dynamics of the domestic space and how women understood their roles in relation to the First and Second World Wars and the Viet Nam War. Reinforcing that “The materialities and imaginaries of home are closely connected” (Blunt and Dowling 188), Small sings of how the gold frames held the photographs that mothers kissed each night And the doorframe held the shocked and silent strangers from the fight. Small provides a rare musical insight into the disjuncture between the men who left the domestic space and those who return to it, and we sense that women may have borne much of the brunt of those awful changes. The idea of domestic bliss is also challenged, though from the returned soldier’s point of view, in Redgum’s 1983 song I Was Only Nineteen, written by group member John Schuman. It touches on the tragedy of young men thrust into war situations and the horrific after-affects for them, which cannot be shrugged off on return to home. The nurturing of home has limits but the privacy associated with the domestic sphere has often concealed the violence and mental anguish that happens away from public view. But by this time most of the songs referring to home were dominated once more by sentimental love, often borne of travel as mobility rose. Journeys help “establish the thresholds and boundaries of home” and can give rise to “an idealized, ideological and ethnocentric view of home” (Mallett 78). Where previously songsters had sung of leaving home in exile or for escape from poverty, lyrics from the 1960s onwards often suggested that work had removed people from loved ones. It could be work on a day-by-day basis, as in A Hard Day’s Night from the 1964 film of the same name, where the Beatles illuminate differences between the public sphere of work and the private sphere to which they return: When I’m home, everything seems to be alright, When I’m home feeling you holding me tight, tight, yeah and reiterated by Paul McCartney in Every Night: And every night that day is through But tonight I just want to stay in And be with you. Lyrics such as these and McCartney’s call to be taken “...home to the Mull of Kintyre,” singled him out for his home-and-hearth messages (Dempsey). But work might involve longer absences and thus more deepfelt loneliness. Simon and Garfunkel’s exemplary Homeward Bound starkly portrays a site of “away-ness”: I’m sittin’ in the railway station, got a ticket for my destination… Mundaneness, monotony and predictability contrast with the home to which the singer’s thoughts are constantly escaping. The routine is familiar but the faces are those of strangers. Home here is, again, not simply a domicile but the warmth of those we know and love. Written at a railway station, Homeward Bound echoes sentiments almost identical to those of (Leaving on a) Jet Plane, written by John Denver at an airport in 1967. Denver also co-wrote (Take Me Home) Country Roads, where, in another example of anthropomorphism as a tool of establishing a strong link, he asks to be taken home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain momma, Take me home, Country Roads. The theme has recurred in numerous songs since, spawning examples such as Darin and Alquist’s When I Get Home, Chris Daughtry’s Home, Michael Bublé’s Home and Will Smith’s Ain’t No Place Like Home, where, in an opening reminiscent of Homeward Bound, the singer is Sitting in a hotel room A thousand miles away from nowhere Sloped over a chair as I stare… Furniture from home, on the other hand, can be used to evoke contentment and bliss, as demonstrated by George Weiss and Bob Thiele’s song The Home Fire, in which both kin and the objects of home become charged with meaning: All of the folks that I love are there I got a date with my favourite chair Of course, in regard to earlier songs especially, while the traveller associates home with love, security and tenderness, back at home the waiting one may have had feelings more of frustration and oppression. One is desperate to get back home, but for all we know the other may be desperate to get out of home or to develop a life more meaningful than that which was then offered to women. If the lot of homemakers was invisible to national economies (Waring), it seemed equally invisible to mainstream songwriters. This reflects the tradition that “Despite home being generally considered a feminine, nurturing space created by women themselves, they often lack both authority and a space of their own within this realm” (Mallett 75). Few songs have offered the perspective of the one at home awaiting the return of the traveller. One exception is the Seekers’ 1965 A World of Our Own but, written by Tom Springfield, the words trilled by Judith Durham may have been more of a projection of the traveller’s hopes and expectations than a true reflection of the full experiences of housebound women of the day. Certainly, the song reinforces connections between home and intimacy and privacy: Close the door, light the lights. We’re stayin’ home tonight, Far away from the bustle and the bright city lights. Let them all fade away, just leave us alone And we’ll live in a world of our own. This also strongly supports Gaston Bachelard’s claim that one’s house in the sense of a home is one’s “first universe, a real cosmos” (qtd. in Blunt and Dowling 12). But privacy can also be a loneliness when home is not inhabited by loved ones, as in the lyrics of Don Gibson’s 1958 Oh, Lonesome Me, where Everybody’s going out and having fun I’m a fool for staying home and having none. Similar sentiments emerge in Debbie Boone’s You Light up My Life: So many nights I’d sit by my window Waiting for someone to sing me his song. Home in these situations can be just as alienating as the “away” depicted as so unfriendly by Homeward Bound’s strangers’ faces and the “million people” who still leave Michael Bublé feeling alone. Yet there are other songs that depict “away” as a prison made of freedom, insinuating that the lack of a home and consequently of the stable love and commitment presumably found there is a sad situation indeed. This is suggested by the lilting tune, if not by the lyrics themselves, in songs such as Wandrin’ Star from the musical Paint Your Wagon and Ron Miller’s I’ve Never Been to Me, which has both a male and female version with different words, reinforcing gendered experiences. The somewhat conservative lyrics in the female version made it a perfect send-up song in the 1994 film Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. In some songs the absentee is not a traveller but has been in jail. In Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Ole Oak Tree, an ex-inmate states “I’m comin’ home. I’ve done my time.” Home here is contingent upon the availability and forgivingness of his old girl friend. Another song juxtaposing home with prison is Tom Jones’ The Green, Green Grass of Home in which the singer dreams he is returning to his home, to his parents, girlfriend and, once again, an old oak tree. However, he awakes to find he was dreaming and is about to be executed. His body will be taken home and placed under the oak tree, suggesting some resigned sense of satisfaction that he will, after all, be going home, albeit in different circumstances. Death and home are thus sometimes linked, with home a euphemism for the former, as suggested in many spirituals, with heaven or an afterlife being considered “going home”. The reverse is the case in the haunting Bring Him Home of the musical Les Misérables. With Marius going off to the barricades and the danger involved, Jean Valjean prays for the young man’s safe return and that he might live. Home is connected here with life, safety and ongoing love. In a number of songs about home and absence there is a sense of home being a place where morality is gently enforced, presumably by women who keep men on the straight and narrow, in line with one of the women’s roles of colonial Australia, researched by Anne Summers. These songs imply that when men wander from home, their morals also go astray. Wild Rover bemoans Oh, I’ve been a wild rover for many a year, and I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer… There is the resolve in the chorus, however, that home will have a reforming influence. Gene Pitney’s Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa poses the dangers of distance from a wife’s influence, while displaying opposition to the sentimental yearning of so many other songs: Dearest darlin’, I have to write to say that I won’t be home anymore ‘cause something happened to me while I was drivin’ home And I’m not the same anymore Class as well as gender can be a debated issue in meanings attached to home, as evident in several songs that take a more jaundiced view of home, seeing it as a place from which to escape. The Animals’ powerful We Gotta Get Outta This Place clearly suggests a life of drudgery in a home town or region. Protectively, the lyrics insist “Girl, there’s a better life for me and you” but it has to be elsewhere. This runs against the grain of other British songs addressing poverty or a working class existence as something that comes with its own blessings, all to do with an area identified as home. These traits may be loyalty, familiarity or a refusal to judge and involve identities of placement rather than of displacement in, for instance, Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Ferry Cross the Mersey: People around every corner, they seem to smile and say “We don’t care what your name is, boy. We’ll never send you away.” This bears out Blunt and Dowling’s claim that “people’s senses of themselves are related to and produced through lived and metaphorical experiences of home” (252). It also resonates with some of the region-based identity and solidarity issues explored a short time later by Paul Willis in his study of working class youth in Britain, which help to inform how a sense of home can operate to constrict consciousness, ideas and aspirations. Identity features strongly in other songs about home. Several years after Neil Young recorded his 1970 song Southern Man about racism in the south of the USA, the group Lynyrd Skynyrd, responded with Sweet Home Alabama. While the meaning of its lyrics are still debated, there is no debate about the way in which the song has been embraced, as I recently discovered first-hand in Tennessee. A banjo-and-fiddle band performing the song during a gig virtually brought down the house as the predominantly southern audience clapped, whopped and stamped its feet. The real meanings of home were found not in the lyrics but in the audience’s response. Wally Johnson and Bob Brown’s 1975 Home Among the Gum Trees is a more straightforward ode to home, with lyrics that prescribe a set of non-commodified values. It is about simplicity and the right to embrace a lifestyle that includes companionship, leisure and an enjoyment of and appreciation of nature, all threatened seriously in the three decades since the song’s writing. The second verse in which large shopping complexes – and implicitly the consumerism they encourage – are eschewed (“I’d trade it all tomorrow for a little bush retreat where the kookaburras call”), is a challenge to notions of progress and reflects social movements of the day, The Green Bans Movement, for instance, took a broader and more socially conscientious attitude towards home and community, putting forward alternative sets of values and insisting people should have a say in the social and aesthetic construction of their neighbourhoods as well as the impacts of their labour (Mundey). Ironically, the song has gone on to become the theme song for a TV show about home gardens. With a strong yet more vague notion of home, Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, was more prone to commodification and has been adopted as a promotional song for Qantas. Nominating only the desire to travel and the love of freedom as Australian values, both politically and socially innocuous within the song’s context, this catchy and uplifting song, when not being used as an advertisement, paradoxically works for a “diaspora” of Australians who are not in exile but have mostly travelled for reasons of pleasure or professional or financial gain. Another paradox arises from the song Home on the Range, dating back to the 19th century at a time when the frontier was still a strong concept in the USA and people were simultaneously leaving homes and reminiscing about home (Mechem). Although it was written in Kansas, the lyrics – again vague and adaptable – were changed by other travellers so that versions such as Colorado Home and My Arizona Home soon abounded. In 1947 Kansas made Home on the Range its state song, despite there being very few buffalo left there, thus highlighting a disjuncture between the modern Kansas and “a home where the buffalo roam” as described in the song. These themes, paradoxes and oppositional understandings of home only scratch the surface of the wide range of claims that are made on home throughout popular music. It has been shown that home is a flexible concept, referring to homelands, regions, communities and private houses. While predominantly used to evoke positive feelings, mostly with traditional views of the relationships that lie within homes, songs also raise challenges to notions of domesticity, the rights of those inhabiting the private sphere and the demarcation between the private and public spheres. Songs about home reflect contexts and challenges of their respective eras and remind us that vigorous discussion takes place about and within homes. The challenges are changing. Where many women once felt restrictively tied to the home – and no doubt many continue to do so – many women and men are now struggling to rediscover spatial boundaries, with production and consumption increasingly impinging upon relationships that have so frequently given the term home its meaning. With evidence that we are working longer hours and that home life, in whatever form, is frequently suffering (Beder, Hochschild), the discussion should continue. In the words of Sam Cooke, Bring it on home to me! References Bacheland, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London: Routledge, 2006. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press, 1997. Cooper, B. Lee. “Good Timin’: Searching for Meaning in Clock Songs.” Popular Music and Society 30.1 (Feb. 2007): 93-106. 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Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Walter, Bronwen. Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women. London: Routledge, 2001. Waring, Marilyn. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. Wellington, NZ: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia UP, 1977. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>. APA Style Varney, W. (Aug. 2007) "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>.