Journal articles on the topic 'Creative ability. Dreams'

Background: Individuals confronting a terminal illness can experience intense psychological distress. Previous research has shown that hope can enhance one’s ability to acknowledge, accept, and fight a terminal illness. Patients can continue to have hope or be hopeful, even in the face of a terminal illness. Can participation in a creative writing practice improve the expression of hope in a hospice setting? Methods: In this program evaluation, each expressed hope placed on the “Hope Tree” was independently coded by all research team members utilizing inductive content analysis. Overall themes were derived using a constant comparative approach and arranged into overarching themes based on consensus. Results: Eight major themes emerged from the data: “Peace,” “Dreams,” “Total well-being,” “Acknowledgment of loss,” “Relationships,” “Hospice care,” “Spirituality,” and “Dichotomies.” Conclusion: The Hope Tree is a creative art project that can be used within a hospice environment to promote hope among family members and the health-care professionals who care for patients.

This paper decodes the story of Campbell’s namesake, Joseph of Genesis, son of Jacob. It demonstrates that Joseph, much more so than Moses, represents the archetypal hero. Joseph is called to adventure into the unknown. Due to the boundedness of the Abrahamic worldview, Joseph must leave monotheistic Israel to fulfil his potential in polytheistic Egypt. It is as viceroy of Pharaoh that he comes into his own power, his political eminence an emanation of his intuitive, creative power. Joseph’s journey itself serves as the Call to Adventure for the hero’s journey of Israel: Israel, as a people, must recognize Joseph’s creative power and follow him into Egypt to realize their own procreative power. Before returning to the familiarity of the desert, the motherless children of Israel are called into the unknown to be nourished by the Nile. It is at the banks of the Nile that they fulfil their divine mandate to multiply. Joseph’s intuitive power—the ability to receive and interpret prophetic dreams—makes explicit what is implicitly encoded in the Campbellian hero’s journey: the masculine individual consciousness venturing into the feminine collective unconscious, matrix of creativity, in pursuit of wholeness. His story moreover celebrates the centrality of personal transformation to the Campbellian heroic quest, flourishing through embodiment of transformational leadership.

In the article the problems of music influence on disabled children are examined. The psychological (the connection of the main music elements with the principal human spheres) and the physiological (the physical music influence on human organs) aspects of music influence on an ordinary child are revealed. The music perception specificity of children with development abnormalities (physical, psychological and mental) is brought out; the peculiarities of music influence on them are contemplated. It is determined that the artistic development of the individual as part of his spiritual culture is a way of transmitting from generation to generation of universal values, in the perception and reproduction of which is the creative self-development of man. Art education is aimed at forming a culture of perception of the world around us, the development of individual abilities to their own transformation and the surrounding reality. We are convinced that art education, due to the specifics of art and the peculiarities of its perception, affects the development of the inner culture of the whole person. Education and culture are inseparable from each other. Art education is a long process and has no end. The growth of artistic culture of the individual determines the growth of cultural potential of society. The main ways of using of music while working with disabled children for therapeutic purposes have been brought forward. The introduction of non-standard, creative means to activate the internal resources of the body of a child with psychophysical disorders creates more chances for its development. That is, creativity is a powerful adaptive method, which with the help of one's own inner forces opens a new world of possibilities. In summary, it is safe to say that music significantly affects the development of all areas of the child (physical, mental and intellectual) and activates the movement, speech, thinking of the child; has the ability to therapeutically (healing, versatile, developing) to influence a child with special educational needs. Methods of music therapy give the opportunity to go beyond the ordinary, to overcome or forget for a while about the disease, to restore the ability to act in accordance with their dreams and preferences. There is a desire to constantly develop. The introduction of non-standard, creative means to activate the internal resources of the body of a child with psychophysical disorders creates more chances for its development. That is, creativity is a powerful adaptive method, which with the help of one's own inner forces opens a new world of possibilities.

Multifunctional dream is an epigenetic gift to a person with great intelligence, new quantum ideas (each material object has quantum states and parallel worlds) and future inventions (discoveries). The circadian system of Homo sapiens and the structural-functional clock of the human body, are synchronized genetically and epigenetically. Life activity of H. sapiens is wave-shaped cyclic oscillations of various intensive processes of circadian stress. The multi-oscillator system, includes evolutionary structural-functional central and peripheral rhythm drivers, primary and secondary pacemakers. Three of the most powerful modern rhythm drivers for humans, the first is light. The second most powerful rhythm driver is power. The third, epigenetic, including social factors, first of all, social status and self-actualization of personality. The main medical and social significance of the visceral brain is the formation of emotions. Visceral brain is involved in the regulation of internal organ functions, smell, automatic regulation, emotions, memory, sleep, waking, etc. Visceral brain determines selection and implementation of adaptation forms of behavior, dynamics of innate forms of behavior, maintenance of homeostasis, generative processes. It provides hormonal stimulation of the body, creation of emotional background, formation and implementation of processes of higher nervous activity. Cognitive memory is one of the largest and most powerful concepts that represents the basic function of memory in general. The knowledge that a person receives in learning is first perceived as something external, but then gradually they turn into experience and beliefs. Cognitive memory retains all acquired knowledge, representing a kind of “library”, with the process of assimilation and preservation becoming more complicated as the information obtained becomes more complex. The brain memory mechanism is a network of cyclic neural circuits (CPNs). When the secretion of γ-aminobutyric acid in the brain is deficient, many CNCs are turned off from the memory mechanism, which causes cognitive dysfunction. This is one of the causes of memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia of Alzheimer’s type. Sleep is the main tool and mechanism in the formation of cognitive memory, its quantitative and qualitative volume, integration of transition to a qualitatively new level of self-development and self-improvement, allowing to create a new intellectual “qualification mind”. H. sapiens of the 21st century will have the ability to understand the physiological and neurophysiological patterns of sleep, manage and change their sleep habits. Digitization of sleep is the future for industry, healthcare, science, and personalized health.

Quality school is the dream of all parties. High-quality schools are characterized by the management of professional schools, learning activities that run in an innovative, creative and fun way, and can achieve the curriculum targets and optimal absorption, then the learning outcomes show good quality. Quality management of educational resources, especially human resources, curriculum, educational and financial facilities and infrastructure is the most decisive factor in the realization of quality schools. Therefore, managerial capabilities of organizers and school managers largely determine the diversity of school quality. Modern societies term the diversity of school quality as “elite school” which means large, luxurious, and quality or the term “school alit” means small, simple, and lacking in quality. However, what really distinguishes school quality lies in the ability of school administrators and managers to manage or manage the school. Small schools that are professionally managed with quality based, the results will be large and quality schools.

In his 1913 guide to the city, Grigorii Moskvich wrote that the dream of the “essential Odessan” was to strike it rich and immediately acquire a house, a carriage, and everything else he needed in order to “transform himself (by appearance, of course) into an impeccable British gentleman or blue-blooded Viennese aristocrat.” Then, “immaculately dressed, with an expensive cigar in his teeth,” the remade Odessan was ready to meet his public. Whether “getting into a carriage or sitting down in one of the better cafés, on the boulevard or in the park,” the Odessan was “out to impress by his appearance, aware of his own worth, looking down on everyone and everything below.” “Odessans are proud of themselves (not without foundation), flaunting their ability to dress as well as any purebred Parisian or Viennese.” Women, too, were always well turned out, “no husband carrying the expenses of his wife's toilette as uncomplainingly as the Odessan… . This passion for fashion, the desire to impress by external appearances, penetrates all of Odessa society, from the counts to the cooks,” the writer declared.

Menzies acknowledges Johnson’s ability to creatively organize and summarize Luke’s powerful message. He also affirms Johnson’s overall emphasis: Luke does call the church to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet-like-Moses. However, Menzies argues that Johnson’s vision for the contemporary church as a prophetic community is too restricted, too quiet, and too rational. It is too restricted in that Johnson suggests that only a select group are called to take up the prophetic mantle. Menzies maintains that for Luke, the church is not simply a prophetic community; rather, it is to be a community of prophets. Johnson’s vision is too quiet in that he tends to stress the ethical teaching of Jesus and downplays the call to bear verbal witness. But, for Luke, bold witness is the key manifestation of the Spirit’s inspiration and this theme dominates his narrative. Finally, Johnson’s vision is too rational in that he fails to take seriously the narrative of Acts as a model for the contemporary church. Thus, his prophetic vision for the contemporary church largely ignores ‘visions and dreams’, ‘inspired witness’, and ‘signs and wonders’, three key elements of Joel’s prophecy as quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2.17-21).

Abstract Introduction When forming our virtual burn camp, burn camp leadership generated themes for each day to formulate a strategic camp curriculum, providing building blocks over the week to create camp community and connection. Each of the themes were well defined with defining concepts. The goal of the program was to provide consistency and guidance for our staff who were located all over the country and beyond to structure our virtual programming for our campers. Methods Burn camp leadership created a theme for each of the 5 days of virtual burn camp to create fluidity across the camp. Supporting these daily themes, we defined 5 core words to further outline the overall theme for the day. Our opening day theme was Creating Community. Accompanying our theme of Creating Community, we provided counselors with the following driving concepts: acceptance, belonging, inclusion, bonded, and connection. Our theme for the second day was Growth. We provided the following driving concepts to support Growth: develop, flourish, thrive, stretch, and progressing. The third day’s theme was Inspire with the following driving concepts: encourage, motivate, energize, enthuse, and lead. Dream was the theme for the fourth day with the following driving concepts: aspire, consider, visualize, imagine, and ambition. Our last day of camp our theme was Hope to inspire kids to look into the future beyond virtual burn camp. The driving concepts included: optimism, plan, promise, confidence, and wish. These themes and driving concepts with definitions were provided to our cabin counselors prior to camp and were sent out each morning. Counselors were required to complete a Google Survey at the end of each day to assess effectiveness and ability to execute the theme for the day. Results The themes and driving concepts allowed for intentionality for each day that provided fluidity for our virtual burn camp. Each daily theme built on the previous theme(s) to provide a connected community and intentional camp experience. Results of our Google Surveys showed the counselors were able to create community, facilitate growth, inspire campers, encourage campers to dream and instill hope. Conclusions Despite a challenging circumstance and an unprecedented situation facing our burn camp, our burn camp leadership team was able to create a structured and strategic framework with which to guide our virtual burn camp. This structure allowed our counselors to feel empowered to facilitate programming each day to connect our campers and move them forward despite difficult times.

Analyzing process of political reforms in the People's Republic of China, the author notes that within the first 20 years of reforms and openness of China economic growth wasn't followed by development of society, political reforms didn't keep up for economic, imperfection of political system constrained economic reforms and development. Owing to this fact the XVI congress of a CPC lifted policy to the level of "political culture" by analogy with "material culture" and "spiritual culture". In the first 20 anniversary of the XXI century with the purpose to finish "comprehensive creation of society "of small prosperity" China has to create "perfect system of socialist market economy", construct "harmonious socialist society". For achievement of these purposes political reforms in China have to provide "improvement of socialist democracy" and "the socialist constitutional state". In the first years of the XXI century they brought a number of significant achievements: political stability, peaceful alternation of generations of the power, essential increase of level of political democracy. The first stage of formation of the constitutional socialist state is passed, ability and level of the management from ruling party increased; party construction amplified. But also at the beginning of the second decade of the XXI century implementation of the legislation, democracy faces many calls, especially intensification of nationalism at the beginning of the century. The Chinese dream will mobilize grandiose powers of unity that China deepened reforms and openness, solved all the political problems, helped a CPC to increase the leading and imperious power. Implementation process of "The Chinese dream" also means aspiration to tops of economy, policy, military science, technologies in the world, to a taking them, reflecting process of formation of the new great power which will succeed the USA. Political reforms with the purpose to achieve "The Chinese dream" have to be connected with peaceful development, make a contribution to development and progress of mankind, successful development, joint with all neighboring countries, and differently China will repeat history of crash and decline of civilizations and great powers.

Grammar Buzz (GB) is an edutainment board game that helps to promote students’ grammar acquisition and their ability of using English grammar in sentences. It is a multisensory game which requires players to physically throw the dice and move the token to the phrase category destination. Then the players are to construct a grammatically correct sentence using the phrase category. Students who have difficulty with single-modality learning method would benefit from this visual, kinaesthetic and auditory board game as GB supports intentional grammar learning. While the players are doing something fun, they can be learning grammar without noticing it. Past studies found revamping the delivery of grammar lesson to be fun and enjoyable, helped increase learners’ motivation and also interest. Inspired from the Monopoly board game, GB is definitely a creative and innovative alternative to dreary grammar drills. Games can remove boredom without sacrificing repetition that is necessary for successful learning of language elements, especially grammar. GB certainly brings about fun and excitement amongst the players and offers entertaining language practices other than the traditional pencil-paper grammar exercises. GB has huge potential to be commercialized in schools as it is applicable for both students and teachers in schools and also at tertiary level.

Since its conception in the mid 1950s, artificial intelligence with its great ambition to understand and emulate intelligence in natural and artificial environments alike is now a truly multidisciplinary field that reaches out and is inspired by a great diversity of other fields. Rapid advances in research and technology in various fields have created environments into which artificial intelligence could embed itself naturally and comfortably. Neuroscience with its desire to understand nervous systems of biological organisms and systems biology with its longing to comprehend, holistically, the multitude of complex interactions in biological systems are two such fields. They target ideals artificial intelligence has dreamt about for a long time including the computer simulation of an entire biological brain or the creation of new life forms from manipulations of cellular and genetic information in the laboratory. The scope for artificial intelligence in neuroscience and systems biology is extremely wide. This article investigates the standing of artificial intelligence in relation to neuroscience and systems biology and provides an outlook at new and exciting challenges for artificial intelligence in these fields. These challenges include, but are not necessarily limited to, the ability to learn from other projects and to be inventive, to understand the potential and exploit novel computing paradigms and environments, to specify and adhere to stringent standards and robust statistical frameworks, to be integrative, and to embrace openness principles.

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the day to day functionality of our life dramatically. IoT and Make in India project are creating waves by spreading its range to different sectors from homes to smart homes, from health to smart healthcare and much more. With an objective to transform India as the global manufacturing hub, the Government of India has launched the significant dream project by the name ‘Make in India’. Make in India initiative has the ability to take the Indian economy to the new pinnacles and create enormous employment opportunities. Because of its favorable approach, it has started getting attention from all over the world. The business-centric policies and the conducive environment for the investment are expected to play a major role in the realization of this project. Make in India campaign is immensely benefited by IoT for providing innovative ways to the sustainable development of manufacturing organizations. Taking into account the current scenario of technology, this review addresses the impact of IoT on entrepreneurship. Moreover, this research article focuses on definitions, characteristics, business value, relevance to manufacturing sector and adoption of Internet of Things in India. The main objective of this paper is to provide an overview of Internet of Things, digital transformation in India, and opportunities made available for startups through Make in India campaign.

This research is dedicated to study Al-Ra’ee Al-Numayri, a distinctive poetic character, to find out the most important (artistic) pre-Islamic features that contributed to its formation. It is further dedicated to know the influence of these features on his literature in the literary arena. After surveying his poetic texts and reading them according to the analytical and investigative methods, the art of the researcher was limited to the field of traditionalists. He was following the footsteps of the ancients by adhering to the traditional Arabic poetry style and the traditional poetic image. Despite that, he had his own imprints and unique style of interrogating times and places with its people, animals and plants. He drew creative, sensual, and artistic poetic images.He bestowed movement and life to his talismanic and flirtatious images by describing the journey and the camel that won the honor of the poet’s eternal participation in all his poetic texts. Consequently, his camel became his legendary animal that accompanies him in his solitude and travels. The participation of the camel in his poetry was an emotional participation of his hopes and pains as well as a test to his patience and dream as it is his partner in his endeavors to praise and obtain the giving and dew of what is desired by him. In the midst of all these events, the effectiveness of the poet's imagination ranked him among the pioneers of Islamic poets. The research falls into an introduction and four axes that clarify the most important of features of his poetry. The study proved his superior poetic ability despite his commitment to the traditionalists.

The review of findamental ideas based upon "Weapons of mass instruction" by John Getto is presented in this article. Attention is drawn to defects and troubles of contemporary school studying. The author's speculation is concentrated on repressive gist of teaching, which is considered as compulsory discipline and killer routine for pupils. Schools are genuine factories for the development of inflammation. Individuality of children, their dreams and thoughts, personal qualities remain unclaimed. Genius is suppressed in educational institutions because teachers do not know how to manage with it. The pedagogue comes up with the idea that up-to-date schools make children stupid instead of giving them the possibility to develop. John Gatto point out several tips for powerful progress of qualitative education. The cornerstone of his cogitation is considering school as environment for child's development. Creating yourself is the most significant task for the pupil. The researcher suggests "education of accessible sources" instead of normative, universal, "controlled" schooling. Students get the ability to create new ideas, experiences, things, revealing the truth through evidence, and not remembering the thoughts of other people. In this way of teaching, teaching is a function, not a profession. Teachers can also act as students, provided them to have certain knowledge or experience of the problem. In such a study, they are active initiators and participants in the educational process, creating their own scenario of their education. To limit such training to any requirements or algorithms means to destroy its essence and purpose, to cling to the strong grip of an official position. Such education is based upon experience, individual ambitions and questions. It gives an opportunity to take control of studying process on pupil's own. The ideas presented in the book by J. Gatto are not radical, but rather fundamental to any process of cognition. They are aimed to encourage as many people as possible and to make changes in education. These ideas and thoughts are important for Ukrainian education, as they will promote the development of the individual freedom of those who want to learn, bring them to life in the situation of freedom and full responsibility for their decisions and deeds. The ideas of the teacher are valuable for us and for allowing the education to fulfill its special historical mission - to become a decisive factor in the transformation of society.

Criticism to the system is a core place in the US American culture.The self-criticism gets its roots in the permanent restlessness of the American People, in their fears, in their dissatisfaction, and even in their insane self-destructive behabiour. Many episodes in the American history have worked out from attitudes of paranoia, disgust or anger towards communities or the public administration. The natural rhythm of society in the United States is far from acceptance and calm. On the contrary, the US history is defined by restlessnees and doubious sentiments. Thus, one might think that the American dream is fundamentally a state of permanent crisis in which people, unable to deal with their present vital conditions, transmute these conditions into havoc and creation. In the pages of this article, a breaf tour into the historical and cultural trend of discouragement is offered. It also pays attention to the American ability to self-analyze its own historical experiences. The fictionated stories, that come from the imagination but also from people’s voices and memories, convey a sense of dissatisfaction and of struggle to improve the American way of behaving. Those citizens, especially uncomfortable with themselves or with the administration, may not be aware that they are precisely those who constitute the best US image abroad. In the ostentation of a self- criticism, of a subversive thought, these Americans, opposed to the official positions,feature the virtue of the relentless self-purge.Therefore,looking at past and present times, this paper is composed by six related arguments that rely on both historical events and fictionated stories, with the titles of: “Under the paranoid style”; “The angry nation”, “Hate: Public Limited Company”, “Images of anger”, “Guilty, ashamed and redeemed”, and “The legacy of disenchantment”.

With the significant growth of the semiconductor industry, creating small devices with powerful processing ability and network capabilities are no longer a dream for engineers. Currently, Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the hottest topics in both industry and academia of wireless communication field. The idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to connect every day physical objects such as microwave, doors, lightings and so on. The technical concept of the IoT is to enables these different physical objects to sense information using sensors and sends this information to a server. Industrial IoT is to integrate various technologies to improve business services in different sectors. It implicitly indicates the behavior of machine-to-machine communications. Each of industrial IoT as service domains has its own communication requirements that are measured differently in both such as reliability, Quality of service (QoS), and privacy. According to the development of industrial automation, the industrial Internet of things (IoT) is widely used in smart factories to capture the data and manage the production. One of the most important components of industrial IoT is the wireless sensor network (WSN), which are easy to deploy and use in indoor industrial environments for a IoT of tasks, such as irrigation, machine condition monitoring, and environment monitoring. There are a IoT of works focusing on the WSN in industrial IoT. For example, in, a WSN-based hidden Markov model is proposed to estimate the occupancy in the building (also see other works [1], [2]). In this paper, the research focus on 3-D mobile robot tracking in 5G wireless communication combine to sensor network and mobile robot path planning. The mobile robot can move fast in the three-dimensional (3-D) indoor industrial environment for many tasks such as the monitoring of possible damages on industrial plants [3], data gathering and transmission from wireless communication [4], transportation [5].

For the first time in industrialised culture, over fifty percent of the population possesses the ability to privatise whatever environment they might be in through the use of a dedicated MP3 player or through a mobile phone with MP3 capabilities. The consumption of technologically mediated sound in the 20th and 21st centuries represents an increasingly significant mode of ‘being-in-theworld’ in which the ‘self’ claims a mobile and auditory territory for itself through a specific form of ‘sensory gating’ permitting the user to screen out unwanted sounds through the creation of their own seductive soundscape. The untrammelled pleasures of creating a privatised mobile soundworld resonates through urban and cultural theory posing a set of interrelated theoretical problems relating to both our relation to the spaces we move through. the nature and meaning of public and private space., the potential for urban aestheticisation, urban retreat and withdrawalIn this paper I discuss the use of Apple iPod in terms of its use as a technological support system of users. The paper draws upon the Internet responses of over one thousand iPod users worldwide between 2004 and 2005. The paper investigates the specific nature of auditory mediation that use entails. It argues that iPod use can usefully be interpreted as a form of pleasurable toxicity within which the ‘total mediated’ world of users lies a dream of unmediated experience - of direct access to the world and one’s emotions. Por primera vez desde el nacimiento de la cultura industrializada, más de la mitad de la población es capaz de personalizar cualquier parte de su entorno gracias a un reproductor de MP3 o a través de un teléfono móvil. El consumo de sonidos mediados tecnológicamente durante los siglos XX y XXI representa una forma cada vez más importante de «estar-en-el-mundo»; el «yo» reclama un territorio sonoro móvil a través de una especie de «compuerta sensorial» que le permite filtrar los sonidos que no le interesan y crear el paisaje sonoro que más le satisface. El placer sin límites que supone crear un mundo sonoro móvil de carácter privado plantea, para la teoría urbana y cultural, un conjunto de problemas teóricos que tienen que ver con la relación con los espacios en los que nos movemos, la naturaleza y el significado del espacio público y privado, el potencial de la estetización de lo urbano, y la incomunicación de la ciudad. También cuestiona el conocimiento de las tecnologías que se usan para mediatizar gran parte de la experiencia cotidiana. En este artículo se analiza el uso del iPod como soporte tecnológico para los consumidores. Se basa en las respuestas de más de un millar de usuarios entre 2004-05. Plantea que el uso del iPod puede ser interpretado positivamente si se considera como una forma de toxicidad placentera en la que bajo el mundo «totalmente mediatizado» de los usuarios subyace un anhelo de experiencia no mediatizada –de acceso directo al mundo y a las emociones de cada uno.

<p class="IIABSTRAK333">Entrepreneurship is the creative and innovative ability that is used as the basis, the tips and resources to find opportunities for success. Currently, many women are moved to create a variety of businesses that can be used as a foundation of life. Entrepreneur­ship is based on interest and family environment. Interest is the source of motivation that encourages a person to do the dream. Furthermore, the business experience of the family will provide an indirect experience to a person to have an entrepreneurial interest.The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of family interest and environment on the decision of Muslim women entrepreneurship. The population in this study is all Muslim women who entrepreneurship in the Village Sukodono Bonang District Demak District with a total sample of 30 respondents. Analytical techniques in this study using multiple linear regression analysis techniques.The results showed that the interest (X1) has a significant effect on the decision of Muslim women entrepreneur­ship with p value (sig) of 0.048 below 0.05. Similarly, the family environment variable (X2) has a significant influence on the decision of Muslim women entrepreneurship, this is indicated by p value (sig) of 0.004 below 0.05.</p><p class="IIABSTRAK333">_________________________________________________________</p>Kewirausahaan adalah kemampuan kreatif dan inovatif yang dijadikan dasar, kiat dan sumber daya untuk mencari peluang menuju sukses. Saat ini, wanita pun banyak yang tergerak untuk membuat berbagai macam usaha yang dapat dijadikan tumpuan hidup. Kewirausahaan dilatar belakangi oleh faktor minat dan lingkungan keluarga. Minat merupakan sumber motivasi yang men­dorong seseorang untuk melakukan hal yang diimpikan. Selanjut­nya, pengalaman usaha dari keluarga akan memberikan peng­alaman secara tidak langsung kepada seseorang untuk me­miliki minat berwirausaha.Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pengaruh minat dan lingkungan keluarga terhadap keputusan wanita muslim berwirausaha. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh wanita muslim yang berwirausaha di Desa Sukodono Ke­camatan Bonang Kabupaten Demak dengan jumlah sampel se­banyak 30 responden. Teknik analisa dalam penelitian ini meng­gunakan teknik analisa regresi linier berganda. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa Minat (X1) berpengaruh signifikan terhadap ke­putusan wanita muslim berwirausaha dengan dengan <em>p</em> <em>value</em> (<em>sig</em>) sebesar 0,048 di bawah 0,05. Begitu juga variabel lingkungan keluarga (X2) memiliki pengaruh signifikan terhadap keputusan wanita muslim berwirausaha, hal ini ditunjukkan dengan <em>p</em> <em>value</em> (<em>sig</em>) sebesar 0,004 di bawah 0,05.

While Transnational Temps were working on the Simiomobile project and also on the Safari Urbis which focuses on the visual presence of natural species in an urban environment, I noticed the minority presence (or total absence) of females in representations of the species. It is simple, if we look for "gorilla" with any search engine, we find an immense number of male specimens: the females, or rather the image of the female does not have the same presence. I couldn't help but see a parallel relationship with the "absence" or omission of women in the history of humanity. This simplification which cancels out the feminine image of a whole species is not inoffensive. It is similar to other situations referred to as discriminatory, speciesist, xenophobic and racist, the "group name", or mass name (in the meaning attributed to it by Negri and Hardt). To talk about blacks, chinese or women gives rise to a generalised discrimination. This is related, without a doubt, to the fact that the members of these groups are "faceless", they are all grouped with a global standard which identifies them. This form of allusion is what we normally use with animals, gorillas, elephants with a given number of repetitions or copies of the same pattern. In the case of the gorillas it is even more significant; all the gorillas which live in captivity are given a name and reference number for identification purposes (it was only after the studies of Jane Goodall on chimpanzees that the practise of giving a name to these and other primates began). It has been demonstrated in a great number of species that the individual specimens which make up that species are unique. Maybe humans will never be able to distinguish between the members of a shoal of dolphins, but this does not mean that they are all the same, or worse that they should be the same. Every living being on the planet is unique, a balance can not be established without the acceptance of this and other basic conditions.The anthropomorphism of the great apes plays a fundamental role in our ability to distinguish one from the other. It is only necessary to pay a little attention to see that each one of the gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans in a zoo are completely different from each other.In the Great Apes in Feminine project I use the portrait as a tool to individualise, emphasising that each member of a species is unique. After more than a decade of "technological" artistic production I took my pencil up again. I was not interested in making photographic or video portraits. To draw a portrait demands a profound connection between individuals, and this is what guided me. The primatologist Sabater Pi (1922-2009) famous for discovering “Copito de Nieve”, believed that drawing portraits was the best technique for representing primates. I am not sure that it is the best technique, but I believe it is a good one for getting to know them. When I draw I "tune in" to the model, this "being with them" (female gorilla-gorilla) enriches me profoundly on a spiritual level. I feel the creative process as a form of dialogue, a "morphological echo".The portrait is a form of differentiation, of individualisation, it shows the unique nature of the subject; in this way, and from an ecofeminist point of view, I find a complete coherence in this practise of "portraying" female gorillas, making their unique and unrepeatable nature evident. Drawing allows me to work in a more detailed way on certain aspects and simply sketch others. I try in this way to bring out the physiological characteristics which stand out in each of the females I draw and which make up the "feminine" image of gorillas found in spanish zoos. “Planet Earth –or Gaia– is not human, nor does it belong to humans. Humans are not the center of life; we are a recent, rapidly growing part of an enormous ancient whole. Gaia is the place for all the living beings we know. It is also the place where our dreams are born. If we feel our lives to be something more than a succession of hedonistic distractions then it is crucial that we reconnect with the biosphere.” (Perales, 2016 :352) Resumen Mientras que, como Transnational Temps, desarrollaba Simiomobile y también de Safari Urbis, que focalizan sobre la confluencia de la extinción de los Gorilas de montaña y sobre la presencia “visual” de especies naturales en nuestro entorno urbano, me percaté de la presencia minoritaria o total ausencia de hembras en la representación de especies. Es simple, si buscamos el término “Gorilla” en cualquier navegador, encontramos un número descompensado de imágenes de machos; las hembras, o mejor dicho: la imagen de las hembras, no tiene el mismo peso. No pude evitar establecer una relación de paralelismo con la “ausencia” u omisión de la mujer en la Historia de la Humanidad. Esta reducción, que anula la imagen de la entera mitad de una especie no es anodina. Caí en la cuenta de otra cuestión que se refiere al comportamiento discriminatorio, especista, xenófobo y racista, se trata del “nombre grupal”, el nombre de la masa, en el sentido que Negri y Hardt dan a este término. Hablar de negros, o chinos o mujeres, propicia la discriminación generalizada. Esto está relacionado, sin lugar a dudas, con el hecho de que estos grupos no tengan “caras” plurales, todos se sitúan bajo un patrón global que los clasifica a modo de identidad homogénea. Esta forma de alusión es la que utilizamos normalmente con los animales, los gorilas, o los elefantes, como un número dado de repeticiones o copias del mismo patrón. En el caso de los gorilas es aún más significativo; todos los ejemplares de gorila que se encuentran en cautiverio reciben un nombre y tienen un número de referencia, un número de identidad (fue a partir de los estudios de Jane Goodall sobre los chimpancés que se empieza a asignar un nombre a estos y otros primates). Se ha demostrado no obstante en un gran número de especies, la condición única de cada uno de los individuos que la componen.Tal vez el hombre nunca llegue a ser capaz de distinguir las diferencias entre los componentes de una manada de delfines, pero esto no quiere decir que todos ellos sean iguales, o peor, que todos sean el mismo. Cada ser vivo es único en este planeta, el equilibrio sostenible no surgirá sin la aceptación de esta y otras bases. El antropomorfismo de los Grandes Simios juega un papel fundamental en nuestra relativa facilidad para distinguir unos de otros. Sólo es necesario prestar un poco de atención para ver que cada uno de los gorilas, bonobos, chimpancés u orangutanes de un parque zoológico se diferencian de forma neta. Después de más de una década de producción artística alejada de las técnicas tradicionales, retomé los lápices. No me interesaba hacer retratos fotográficos, ni tampoco retratos de vídeo. Retratar a través del dibujo exige una conexión profunda del individuo, y esto es lo que me guiaba. El primatólogo Sabater Pi (1922- 2009), famoso por descubrir a Copito de Nieve, sostenía que el dibujo era la mejor técnica para captar a los primates. Yo no estoy segura de que sea la mejor técnica para representarlos, pero sí creo que es una buena técnica para conocerlos. Cuando dibujo “sintonizo” con el modelo, este “ser-con ellas” (hembra gorilla-gorilla) me enriquece profundamente a nivel espiritual. Siento el proceso creativo como una forma de diálogo, a modo de “resonancia mórfica”. El retrato es una forma de diferenciación, de individuación, subraya la unicidad de lo representado; en este sentido, y desde la perspectiva ecofeminista, encuentro una plena coherencia en este “retratar” a las hembras gorila, afirmo su carácter único e irrepetible. El dibujo me permite trabajar con más detalle ciertos detalles y simplemente esbozar otros, procuro de esta manera destacar las características fisiológicas que destacan en cada una de las hembras retratadas y que componen la imagen “femenina” plural de las gorilas que se encuentran en los zoos españoles. “El planeta Tierra –o Gaia– no es humano, ni pertenece a los humanos. Los humanos no somos el centro de la vida, tan sólo somos unos recién llegados creciendo rápidamente como parte de un todo, un todo muchísimo más antiguo. Gaia es el hogar de todos los seres vivos que conocemos. Y también es la cuna de nuestros sueños. Si consideramos que nuestras vidas son, en suma, algo más que una sucesión de distracciones hedonísticas, entonces debemos re-conectar con la biosfera.” (Perales, 2016 :352).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, among the European ruling elites, military circles and imperial non-governmental organizations, the force-based approach to the resolution of international conflicts dominated. The emphasis was on the irreconcilable struggle for the so-called “national interests”, the need to change the world for the better, the undoubted advantage of interstate competition over cooperation and the use of force, primarily military. The unconditional priority of the state was the ability to mobilize national resources to protect its “interests”. The Great War to realize geopolitical dreams was a waste of available resources. Its initiators, primarily Germany, were guided by ideological rather than pragmatic considerations, and obtained results that directly contradicted the calculations of their grand strategies. Among the reasons for the war there were no rational ones that solved basic economic, security, social or any other problems. But there were those, who made money in preparation for the war. The decisive factor that triggered the war was the adherence to myths: about exaggerated or fictitious “national grievances”; “the discrepancy between the obtained share of colonial seizures and the weight in the world economy and politics”; “insignificant nations, incapable of contributing to civilizational progress, their destructive nationalism”; “cultural superiority, which, if necessary, must be extended by force”; “windows of vulnerability that should be closed immediately”; “the call of blood, will and fate”, etc. The origins of war are to be found in the views of the rulers, representatives or servants of the old regimes of the dynastic aristocracy. The ruling imperial class was in crisis, it was threatened by social and national upheavals, which is why it was inclined to seek salvation in a victorious war at a “low cost”. But how did the parties to the conflict hope for a quick victory? Indeed, regardless of the type of regime – an absolute or constitutional monarchy, a democratic or an authoritarian state – too often their top leadership was deeply mistaken, in particular in such matters as entering the war, choosing allies and forms, methods and degree of interaction with them. Note that the war in Europe could have happened earlier, because the states constantly threatened each other, and repeated attempts to eliminate the threat of aggression blew up international stability. The efforts of European leaders were not aimed at creating sustainable military capabilities of the allies united by a common strategy to achieve agreed goals. But diplomatic games prevailed: the sides bluffed, tried to play trump cards, which they actually did not have. As a result of the Great War, four empires collapsed: the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman and the explosion of two of the largest totalitarian revolutions in Europe in the XX-th century – Russian (Bolshevik) and German (Nazi).

IntroductionAccording to modern scholars (N. Maslova, B. Astafiev), one of the important reasons for the global planetary crisis, including modern educational system in particular, is violation of the conformity of nature principles in the process of perception and cognition of the world, which is conditioned by the advantages of the development of logical and rational thinking and insufficient development of figurative, spiritual-intuitive thinking in the contemporary school of all levels.The modern system of education at all levels (school, higher education, postgraduate studies, and doctorate) is aimed primarily at the development of mechanisms of the left hemisphere that are rational, logical thinking, and analytical perception of reality.Such a one-way orientation leads to inhibition of right-sided processes, does not contribute to the development of creativity, disclosure and activation of the spiritual and intuitive capabilities of the individual, as well as to alienation of individual from the World, loss of personal sense of integrity, unity with the World; that is, to the disharmony of individual with his/her own nature and environment.Personal development of an individual in modern conditions takes the form of "Homo technicus" ("technical person"), "Homo informaticus" (“informational and technogenic person”), "Нomо соnsumens" (“person who consumes”), "Reified man" ("material surplus person"), "Nomo Festivus" ("person who has fun") (Butenko, 2017). As a result, a person with a technocratic, rational thinking, pragmatic and consumer attitude towards the world is brought up, and as a consequence, harmony in the "man-man", "man-nature", "man-society", "man-universe" systems, and correspondingly, the equilibrium in the integrated information-energy system interaction "Man – Society – Earth –Universe" are violated.Approach In contemporary education of all levels, high ontological and existential goals are not set, and not enough attention is paid to the spiritual and mental health of the individual, in particular to problems of spiritual self-knowledge, self-development, self-regulation and self-realization, thus leading to the formation of consumer psychology, dominance of pragmatic values, loss of spirituality, upbringing of a human – destroyer, a soulless person, but not a creator.One of the ways out from the planetary global crisis in the area of a contemporary education in particular, is the noosphereization of education, the imperative task of which is formation of the noospheric individual, actualization of his/her spiritual and intuitive potential, training of the noosphere integral harmonious bioadequate environmentally healthy mindset, which is based on a conscious total ownership of logical (left cerebral hemisphere) and creative, spiritual-intuitive (right cerebral hemisphere) thinking that, due to correspondence with both huamn nature and the laws of the cosmoplanetary world, will provide the individual with possibilities to adequately and fully (at the information and energy levels) perceive and recognize the surrounding world, and to interact with it on a spiritual basis.Results and Discussion The problem of intuition always remains relevant throughout the history of mankind. Among the scholars of the late XX century - beginning of the XXI century the problem of intuition and harmonization of the activity of the left and right hemispheres of the brain has been studied by such researchers as G. Kurmyshev, N. Maslova, Osho Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, I. Smokvina and others. Modern psychophysiological science explains the nature of intuitive thinking and cognition: the human mind combines the ability to integrate and develop both intellectual and intuitive knowledge that modern scientists associate with the activity of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. According to psychological science, the two hemispheres of the brain cognize and reflect the surrounding world differently and, thereafter transform information in their own ways. The left hemisphere "sees" objects as discrete, separated; it is responsible for logic and intellect, verbal thinking, application of sign information (reading, counting, language), and is characterized by the ability for logical, rational, mathematical, and scientific thinking. The right hemisphere binds objects into a single whole; it is responsible for emotions, creative thinking, intuition (unconscious processes). Thanks to the right hemisphere, a holistic image of the world is formed, and the left hemisphere gradually collects the model of the world from separate, but carefully studied details. "Left- hemisphered" thinking is associated with the ability for consistent, step-by-step cognition, which has respectively analytical rather than synthetic character. "Right- hemisphered" thinking is linked to the ability for integral, voluminous and complete cognition, space spatial immediate perception of the world in all of its information-energy interrelations and interactions.Logic and intuition, rational and intuitive paths – are different aspects of the unified process of cognition, and if the intellect can be regarded as the earthly beginning in humans, then intuition – is a spiritual primary source, a phenomenon of nonlinear, unearthly thinking, the logic of the Higher Being, the logic of the Almighty. As was very wittily pointed out by Osho Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, logic – the way our mind cognizes our reality, intuition – is how the spirit passes through the experience of reality (Maslova, 2006). Therefore, logic and intuition are two mutually conditioned mechanisms of scientific cognition that supplement and do not exist in isolation from one another. If the function of intuition in this interaction lies in creative discoveries, inventions, awareness of the true essence of things and phenomena, then the task of the scientific method, acting as an assistant of intuition, is to endeavor to comprehend new ideas, explain them from the point of view of earth science at the logical level, and "adapt" to our reality.Given this, rational and intuitive paths must complement, enrich and explain each other, interact in sync, in synthesis.Intuition is an organic component of the spiritual and psychic nature of the individual. Therefore, the problem of the development of intuition and harmonization of the discourse-logical and spiritual-intuitive components of thinking is extremely important at all levels of contemporary education. This is especially true for student youth, since students are the future spiritual and creative potential of the country, and therefore it is extremely important to reveal and develop their spiritual and intuitive abilities, to harmonize their mental-spiritual sphere, which promotes spiritual self-healing of both the individual and the environment, and harmonization of relations in the world. In the context of the modern information and energy paradigm, intuition is considered as a special mental state of a highly spiritual person, in which he/she deliberately initiates informational and energetic contact with any object of the Universe, in the physical or subtle world, "connects" to its information field, "reads out", "decrypts" and analyzes necessary information. This information-energy interaction is perceived by the individual as the process of connection, merging with the object being studied, which enables instant cognition of its true essence (Smokvina, 2013). As the analysis of the literature on the research problem testifies, if the activity mechanisms of the left hemisphere of the brain are relatively studied in modern science, the problems of the individual’s intuitive updating potential and harmonization of the activity of logical and intuitive cognitive processes are being investigated.According to many scholars, the ability for intuition is inborn in every human; however, unfortunately, in most people it is in a latent state. And only due to intense conscious work of the individual regarding their own spiritual self–cognition and self–perfection, one can discover and develop personal spiritual and intuitive abilities.According to the results of our theoretical study the general conditions contributing to the disclosure and development of intuition are as follows: (Tyurina, 2017) • Ability to cope with one’s own passions, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and achievement of the state of internal silence, voicelessness;• Formed self-motivation for spiritual self–cognition and self–perfection;• Achievement by the individual of the corresponding spiritual level: the higher the spirituality of the human, the more clearly his/her ability is expressed to obtain a higher spiritual knowledge: information and energy interaction, contact with higher levels of psychic reality;• Conscious desire, willingness of the individual to use intuitive cognition that helps overcome information-power resistance, the barrier that exists between a subject and an object, helps create harmony, assonance, interaction with the object being studied;• Intuitive human confidence: deep inner belief in personal intuitive capabilities and ability for intuitive cognition and self-cognition;• Humanistic orientation of the individual and his/her internal psychological properties such as: altruism, active love for all living beings on the Earth, empathy, ability to express compassion, care, and self-consecration, conscious desire to live in harmony with oneself and the world;• Nonjudgmental practice, which consists of the ability of a person to abandon assessments, classifications, analysis, which creates favorable conditions for immersion into the information space around us, makes it possible to connect to the information-energy field (biofield) of the object being studied;• Sense of inner unity with the world, awareness of oneself as a part of mankind, of the Earth, of the Universe, and a feeling of deep responsibility for the world and for ourselves in the world;• Striving for personal self-realization for the benefit of the cosmoplanetary world.In our opinion, the ways of actualization of intuition and harmonization of the activity of logical and intuitive components of the process of cognition should be attributed to the following (Tyurina, 2018):• Concentration, concentration of human consciousness of the subject being studied, deep and thorough knowledge of it.Psychological mood, deep concentration, focus of human consciousness on the subject of research lead to intuitive penetration into its essence, comprehension of the subject of study as if "from within." An intuitive act of cognition is the result of a huge concentration of all human efforts on a particular problem, deep and thorough knowledge of it, mobilization of all its potencies. In particular, for almost 20 years, D. Mandeleev worked continuously on the systematization of chemical elements, and only after that he "saw" his periodic system of elements in his dream. At academician M. Shchetynin school students spend 21 days (6 lessons daily) studying only one academic discipline for the purpose of deep penetration into its essence - information-energy merger, connection with the subject being studied, into a single whole, that is, achieving an intuitive level of comprehension.• Spiritual practices (prayer, meditation).Prayer and meditation are effective ways of spiritualizing a person, awakening and activating his/her intuitive potential. Through prayer, meditation a person learns to adjust to nature and Cosmos, eternity and infinity, the World Harmony, reaches consonance with the World, and permeates its inner essential depth with the heart.It is believed that it is prayer that promotes the spiritual purification of both the human soul and the surrounding world. During a heart-warming prayer a human comes to enlightenment and spiritual enlightenment, intuitive enlightenment.In the process of prayer, meditation, the right and left hemispheres of the brain begin to work synchronously, which makes the brain function in resonance with the Field of Consciousness or the Field of Information - Noosphere.• Spiritual processing of the corresponding religious, spiritual and philosophical sources, fine arts, classical music, information-energy interaction which raises the spiritual level of an individual, awakens his/her intuitive abilities.Spiritual literature is an important way of discovering and developing intuition and harmonizing the activity of intuitive and logical components of thinking, since information and energy interaction with spiritual literature contributes to individual’s spiritual growth, disclosure and development of intuition, and harmonization of personal intuitional and intellectual sphere.It should be noted that various forms of art, in particular, visual and musical, play a special role in the process of disclosure and development, intuition, harmonization of the logical and figurative, spiritual and intuitive perception of reality.The spiritual potential of art is, first of all, that in itself, creating spiritual values, spiritualizes a person, and interprets personality as a phenomenon of a global planetary-cosmic nature. True art has an ecumenical, cosmic dimension. The best masterpieces of world art transfer the idea of unity of humans with the world, their harmonious interaction.The creativity of great artists contributes to the disclosure and development of the personality's spirituality, the heart's perception of the world, the cultivation of the Cosmic Worldview, and directs the person to high ideals.Musical art is one of the most important means of revealing and developing intuition, harmonizing its spiritual and intuitive basis.The results of research by modern scholars show that classical, spiritual music activates the spiritual-intuitive sphere, harmonizes the person, gives a sense of joy and rest, and helps to restore spiritual and mental balance.It has been scientifically proven that classical musical compositions based on the perfection of harmony and rhythm, especially the works of J. Bach, L. Beethoven, J. Brahms, A. Vivaldi, G. Handel, F. List, F. Mendelssohn, A. Mozart, S. Rakhmaninov, O. Scriabin, P. Tchaikovsky, F. Chopin, F. Schubert, R. Schumann and others have a positive effect on the individual on the spiritual, mental and physiological levels, since classical music relates mainly to the natural rhythms of the human body. This music causes not only positive emotions, but also represents a powerful energy force that inspires humans and the world: makes a person more perfect and the world more beautiful.Consequently, fine arts, classical music, contribute to the disclosure and development of the spiritual and intuitive potential of the individual, to harmonization of his/her intuitive-intellectual sphere; they help the person to grow spiritually and be filled with high spiritual energy, accordingly, to change, and improve the natural and social environment.- Bioadequate REAL-methodology of noosphere education (N. Maslova), in which stages of relaxation (accumulation of information, work of the right creative hemisphere in a state of rest), alternating with stages of activity (training of the left hemisphere: logic, analysis, synthesis of information) are presented. As a result, the work of the left and right cerebral hemispheres is synchronized, which promotes harmonization of consciousness, carries a beneficial influence on the spiritual, mental, social and physical health of the student's personality.The fundamental characteristics of the bioadequate method of noospheric education are:1. Health preserving - does not violate the nature of perception, processing and preservation of information.2. Corrective - restores the natural genetic sequence of work with the information and health of the student and the teacher.3. Developing - improves the body's reserves.4. Harmonizing - integrates all systems of the body and personality (Vernadsky, 2002).According to studies of the neuropathologist I. Smokvinova, PhD, bioadequate methods of noosphere education, taking into account the physiological and informational and energy resources of the individual, contribute to the harmonization of the work of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, awaken higher feelings, recharge with life energy, teach the ability to direct vitality to the realization of one’s own higher potential, which also has a beneficial effect on the spiritual, mental and physical health of the individual. Moreover, due to the application of a bioadequate technique, psychological and physiological stress is eliminated, and a positive emotional mood is created that heals the body and the student's psychics (Osho, 2000). According to N. Maslova, holistic thinking contributes to the acquisition of basic energy, biologically adequate to livelihoods programs (Kurmyshev, 2013).Many independent groups of scientists (teachers, psychologists, physicians, biologists) have proved that noosphere education, harmonizing the left and right hemispheres thinking, has a healing effect on the body of both the student and the teacher, contributes to the development of natural creativity.Practical valueResults of our study can be used in lectures and practical classes with students in medical psychology, psychology of creativity, social, general, pedagogical psychology, pedagogy (sections of didactics, spiritual and moral education), sociology, philosophy, etc.ConclusionsThus, the actualization of the spiritual and intuitive potential of the individual and the harmonization of the activity of the left and right cerebral hemispheres stimulates the disclosure of spiritual and creative abilities of the individual, fills the individual with spiritual energy, and the person becomes a source of spiritualization of himself/herself and the world, thus contributing to the spiritual and psychological improvement of society, humanity, and civilization in general, since at the information-energy level, "Man - Society - Earth - Universe" this is the only cosmoplanetary organism, all parts of which are mutually interconnected, interact and stipulate with one another. We consider that it is important in the future to develop appropriate special disciplines for all the sections of modern school and keep working in the direction of developing and incorporating into the content of the curricula, relevant pedagogical technologies aimed at the disclosure and development of the intuitive-mental sphere of the individual

Abstract: The author addresses two important issues in this paper. First, what is a man, and what makes a man great and globally-historically important? In the light of this issue, he writes about Saint Nicholai. The author asserts that the attributes of a great man are intellectual depth, the width of knowledge, the ability to reach God and ontological depths of the world, vails of time and historical human destiny through his action, creation, and writing. All men who are great deal with the issue of man, meaning of life, and inevitability of death. Great men dreamt of immortality in their own glorious ways. What is left behind these giants are permanent unsurpassed deeds and the power of ideas accepted in all ages. The author aims to highlight what makes a man great for his people and for humanity in total, and to what extent does St. Nicholai meet these strict and demanding conditions and criteria to be viewed as a great man; is he great for his people or even outside of these limits. In the second, main issue and part of the paper, the author examines the understanding of war and peace in Bishop Nicholai’s work War and the Bible. The focal point of the examination is the phenomenon of war and peace, and especially the perception of the Bishop’s biblical study of war and peace which differentiates his approach from many other approaches to the phenomenon of war. The theological perspective of the phenomenon of war and peace always implies that good and evil clash in war and peace, and that this conflict is planetary and omnipresent; some individuals are on the side of justness, providence, light, and sanctity of life, while others side with the dark line of life which signifies the rule of evil in our world. According to the author, war is God’s will, just as peace among men. Conflict and peace between nations, as well as spiritual harmony and dissonance in human souls, depend primarily on faith in the Lord. If one is in God’s grace victory is secure. We ought to be reminded of the Christian understanding that the support of all people to one man is futile if he stands against God — on the other hand, he fears nothing if the will of God is on his side, even if all people are against him. In his book, War and the Bible, Bishop Nicholai claims that even in modern times the Lord of Armies decides the victor of every war, just as it was in ancient times. He claims that in modern war, just like in old times, the sinfulness of nations and national leaders and deviation from God’s Laws inevitably brings defeat; in today’s wars, just like in ancient conflicts, justfulness of nations and their leaders brings victory. Bishop Nicholai’s key conclusion is that all wars, both ancient and modern, can only be understood and explained in a biblical light. He devoted his entire very valuable and useful work to this idea, over a hundred years ago.

This paper aims to portray the overall picture of poverty in the world and mentions the key solution to overcome poverty from a critical perspective. The data and figures were quoted from a number of researchers and organizations in the field of poverty around the world. Simultaneously, the information strengthens the correlations among poverty and lack of education. Only appropriate philosophies of education can improve the country’s socio-economic conditions and contribute to effective solutions to worldwide poverty. In the 21st century, despite the rapid development of science and technology with a series of inventions brought into the world to make life more comfortable, human poverty remains a global problem, especially in developing countries. Poverty, according to Lister (2004), is reflected by the state of “low living standards and/or inability to participate fully in society because of lack of material resources” (p.7). The impact and serious consequences of poverty on multiple aspects of human life have been realized by different organizations and researchers from different contexts (Fraser, 2000; Lister, 2004; Lipman, 2004; Lister, 2008). This paper will indicate some of the concepts and research results on poverty. Figures and causes of poverty, and some solutions from education as a key breaker to poverty will also be discussed. Creating a universal definition of poverty is not simple (Nyasulu, 2010). There are conflicts among different groups of people defining poverty, based on different views and fields. Some writers, according to Nyasulu, tend to connect poverty with social problems, while others focus on political or other causes. However, the reality of poverty needs to be considered from different sides and ways; for that reason, the diversity of definitions assigned to poverty can help form the basis on which interventions are drawn (Ife and Tesoriero, 2006). For instance, in dealing with poverty issues, it is essential to intervene politically; economic intervention is very necessary to any definition of this matter. A political definition necessitates political interventions in dealing with poverty, and economic definitions inevitably lead to economic interventions. Similarly, Księżopolski (1999) uses several models to show the perspectives on poverty as marginal, motivation and socialist. These models look at poverty and solutions from different angles. Socialists, for example, emphasize the responsibilities of social organization. The state manages the micro levels and distributes the shares of national gross resources, at the same time fighting to maintain the narrow gap among classes. In his book, Księżopolski (1999) also emphasizes the changes and new values of charity funds or financial aid from churches or organizations recognized by the Poor Law. Speaking specifically, in the new stages poverty has been recognized differently, and support is also delivered in limited categories related to more specific and visible objectives, with the aim of helping the poor change their own status for sustainable improvement. Three ways of categorizing the poor and locating them in the appropriate places are (1) the powerless, (2) who is willing to work and (3) who is dodging work. Basically, poverty is determined not to belong to any specific cultures or politics; otherwise, it refers to the situation in which people’s earnings cannot support their minimum living standard (Rowntree, 1910). Human living standard is defined in Alfredsson & Eide’s work (1999) as follows: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (p. 524). In addition, poverty is measured by Global Hunger Index (GHI), which is calculated by the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) every year. The GHI measures hunger not only globally, but also by country and region. To have the figures multi-dimensionally, the GHI is based on three indicators: 1. Undernourishment: the proportion of the undernourished as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of the population with insufficient calorie intake). 2. Child underweight: the proportion of children under age 5 who are underweight (low weight for their age, reflecting wasting, stunted growth or both), which is one indicator of child under-nutrition. 3. Child mortality: the mortality rate of children under 5 (partially reflecting the fatal synergy of inadequate dietary intake and unhealthy environments). Apart from the individual aspects and the above measurement based on nutrition, which help partly imagine poverty, poverty is more complicated, not just being closely related to human physical life but badly affecting spiritual life. According to Jones and Novak (1999 cited in Lister, 2008), poverty not only characterizes the precarious financial situation but also makes people self-deprecating. Poverty turns itself into the roots of shame, guilt, humiliation and resistance. It leads the poor to the end of the road, and they will never call for help except in the worst situations. Education can help people escape poverty or make it worse. In fact, inequality in education has stolen opportunity for fighting poverty from people in many places around the world, in both developed and developing countries (Lipman, 2004). Lipman confirms: “Students need an education that instills a sense of hope and possibility that they can make a difference in their own family, school, and community and in the broader national and global community while it prepare them for multiple life choices.” (p.181) Bradshaw (2005) synthesizes five main causes of poverty: (1) individual deficiencies, (2) cultural belief systems that support subcultures of poverty, (3) economic, political and social distortions or discrimination, (4) geographical disparities and (5) cumulative and cyclical interdependencies. The researcher suggests the most appropriate solution corresponding with each cause. This reflects the diverse causes of poverty; otherwise, poverty easily happens because of social and political issues. From the literature review, it can be said that poverty comes from complex causes and reasons, and is not a problem of any single individual or country. Poverty has brought about serious consequences and needs to be dealt with by many methods and collective effort of many countries and organizations. This paper will focus on representing some alarming figures on poverty, problems of poverty and then the education as a key breaker to poverty. According to a statistics in 2012 on poverty from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), nearly half the world's population lives below the poverty line, of which is less than $1.25 a day . In a statistics in 2015, of every 1,000 children, 93 do not live to age 5 , and about 448 million babies are stillborn each year . Poverty in the world is happening alarmingly. According to a World Bank study, the risk of poverty continues to increase on a global scale and, of the 2009 slowdown in economic growth, which led to higher prices for fuel and food, further pushed 53 million people into poverty in addition to almost 155 million in 2008. From 1990 to 2009, the average GHI in the world decreased by nearly one-fifth. Many countries had success in solving the problem of child nutrition; however, the mortality rate of children under 5 and the proportion of undernourished people are still high. From 2011 to 2013, the number of hungry people in the world was estimated at 842 million, down 17 percent compared with the period 1990 to 1992, according to a report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) titled “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013” . Although poverty in some African countries had been improved in this stage, sub-Saharan Africa still maintained an area with high the highest percentage of hungry people in the world. The consequences and big problems resulting from poverty are terrible in the extreme. The following will illustrate the overall picture under the issues of health, unemployment, education and society and politics ➢ Health issues: According a report by Manos Unidas, a non- government organization (NGO) in Spain , poverty kills more than 30,000 children under age 5 worldwide every day, and 11 million children die each year because of poverty. Currently, 42 million people are living with HIV, 39 million of them in developing countries. The Manos Unidas report also shows that 15 million children globally have been orphaned because of AIDS. Scientists predict that by 2020 a number of African countries will have lost a quarter of their population to this disease. Simultaneously, chronic drought and lack of clean water have not only hindered economic development but also caused disastrous consequences of serious diseases across Africa. In fact, only 58 percent of Africans have access to clean water; as a result, the average life expectancy in Africa is the lowest in the world, just 45 years old (Bui, 2010). ➢ Unemployment issues: According to the United Nations, the youth unemployment rate in Africa is the highest in the world: 25.6 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment with growth rates of 10 percent a year is one of the key issues causing poverty in African and negatively affecting programs and development plans. Total African debt amounts to $425 billion (Bui, 2010). In addition, joblessness caused by the global economic downturn pushed more than 140 million people in Asia into extreme poverty in 2009, the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned in a report titled The Fallout in Asia, prepared for the High-Level Regional Forum on Responding to the Economic Crisis in Asia and the Pacific, in Manila from Feb. 18 to 20, 2009 . Surprisingly, this situation also happens in developed countries. About 12.5 million people in the United Kingdom (accounting for 20 percent of the population) are living below the poverty line, and in 2005, 35 million people in the United States could not live without charity. At present, 620 million people in Asia are living on less than $1 per day; half of them are in India and China, two countries whose economies are considered to be growing. ➢ Education issues: Going to school is one of the basic needs of human beings, but poor people cannot achieve it. Globally, 130 million children do not attend school, 55 percent of them girls, and 82 million children have lost their childhoods by marrying too soon (Bui, 2010). Similarly, two-thirds of the 759 million illiterate people in total are women. Specifically, the illiteracy rate in Africa keeps increasing, accounting for about 40 percent of the African population at age 15 and over 50 percent of women at age 25. The number of illiterate people in the six countries with the highest number of illiterate people in the world - China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh and Egypt - reached 510 million, accounting for 70 percent of total global illiteracy. ➢ Social and political issues: Poverty leads to a number of social problems and instability in political systems of countries around the world. Actually, 246 million children are underage labors, including 72 million under age 10. Simultaneously, according to an estimate by the United Nations (UN), about 100 million children worldwide are living on the streets. For years, Africa has suffered a chronic refugee problem, with more than 7 million refugees currently and over 200 million people without homes because of a series of internal conflicts and civil wars. Poverty threatens stability and development; it also directly influences human development. Solving the problems caused by poverty takes a lot of time and resources, but afterward they can focus on developing their societies. Poverty has become a global issue with political significance of particular importance. It is a potential cause of political and social instability, even leading to violence and war not only within a country, but also in the whole world. Poverty and injustice together have raised fierce conflicts in international relations; if these conflicts are not satisfactorily resolved by peaceful means, war will inevitably break out. Obviously, poverty plus lack of understanding lead to disastrous consequences such as population growth, depletion of water resources, energy scarcity, pollution, food shortages and serious diseases (especially HIV/AIDS), which are not easy to control; simultaneously, poverty plus injustice will cause international crimes such as terrorism, drug and human trafficking, and money laundering. Among recognizable four issues above which reflected the serious consequences of poverty, the third ones, education, if being prioritized in intervention over other issues in the fighting against poverty is believed to bring more effectiveness in resolving the problems from the roots. In fact, human being with the possibility of being educated resulted from their distinctive linguistic ability makes them differential from other beings species on the earth (Barrow and Woods 2006, p.22). With education, human can be aware and more critical with their situations, they are aimed with abilities to deal with social problems as well as adversity for a better life; however, inequality in education has stolen opportunity for fighting poverty from unprivileged people (Lipman, 2004). An appropriate education can help increase chances for human to deal with all of the issues related to poverty; simultaneously it can narrow the unexpected side-effect of making poverty worse. A number of philosophies from ancient Greek to contemporary era focus on the aspect of education with their own epistemology, for example, idealism of Plato encouraged students to be truth seekers and pragmatism of Dewey enhanced the individual needs of students (Gutex, 1997). Education, more later on, especially critical pedagogy focuses on developing people independently and critically which is essential for poor people to have ability of being aware of what they are facing and then to have equivalent solutions for their problems. In other words, critical pedagogy helps people emancipate themselves and from that they can contribute to transform the situations or society they live in. In this sense, in his most influential work titled “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1972), Paulo Freire carried out his critical pedagogy by building up a community network of peasants- the marginalized and unprivileged party in his context, aiming at awakening their awareness about who they are and their roles in society at that time. To do so, he involved the peasants into a problem-posing education which was different from the traditional model of banking education with the technique of dialogue. Dialogue wasn’t just simply for people to learn about each other; but it was for figuring out the same voice; more importantly, for cooperation to build a social network for changing society. The peasants in such an educational community would be relieved from stressfulness and the feeling of being outsiders when all of them could discuss and exchange ideas with each other about the issues from their “praxis”. Praxis which was derived from what people act and linked to some values in their social lives, was defined by Freire as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p.50). Critical pedagogy dialogical approach in Pedagogy of the Oppressed of Freire seems to be one of the helpful ways for solving poverty for its close connection to the nature of equality. It doesn’t require any highly intellectual teachers who lead the process; instead, everything happens naturally and the answers are identified by the emancipation of the learners themselves. It can be said that the effectiveness of this pedagogy for people to escape poverty comes from its direct impact on human critical consciousness; from that, learners would be fully aware of their current situations and self- figure out the appropriate solutions for their own. In addition, equality which was one of the essences making learners in critical pedagogy intellectually emancipate was reflected via the work titled “The Ignorant Schoolmaster” by Jacques Rancière (1991). In this work, the teacher and students seemed to be equal in terms of the knowledge. The explicator- teacher Joseph Jacotot employed the interrogative approach which was discovered to be universal because “he taught what he didn’t know”. Obviously, this teacher taught French to Flemish students while he couldn’t speak his students’ language. The ignorance which was not used in the literal sense but a metaphor showed that learners can absolutely realize their capacity for self-emancipation without the traditional teaching of transmission of knowledge from teachers. Regarding this, Rancière (1991, p.17) stated “that every common person might conceive his human dignity, take the measure of his intellectual capacity, and decide how to use it”. This education is so meaningful for poor people by being able to evoking their courageousness to develop themselves when they always try to stay away from the community due the fact that poverty is the roots of shame, guilt, humiliation and resistance (Novak, 1999). The contribution of critical pedagogy to solving poverty by changing the consciousness of people from their immanence is summarized by Freire’s argument in his “Pedagogy of Indignation” as follows: “It is certain that men and women can change the world for the better, can make it less unjust, but they can do so from starting point of concrete reality they “come upon” in their generation. They cannot do it on the basis of reveries, false dreams, or pure illusion”. (p.31) To sum up, education could be an extremely helpful way of solving poverty regarding the possibilities from the applications of studies in critical pedagogy for educational and social issues. Therefore, among the world issues, poverty could be possibly resolved in accordance with the indigenous people’s understanding of their praxis, their actions, cognitive transformation, and the solutions with emancipation in terms of the following keynotes: First, because the poor are powerless, they usually fall into the states of self-deprecation, shame, guilt and humiliation, as previously mentioned. In other words, they usually build a barrier between themselves and society, or they resist changing their status. Therefore, approaching them is not a simple matter; it requires much time and the contributions of psychologists and sociologists in learning about their aspirations, as well as evoking and nurturing the will and capacities of individuals, then providing people with chances to carry out their own potential for overcoming obstacles in life. Second, poverty happens easily in remote areas not endowed with favorable conditions for development. People there haven’t had a lot of access to modern civilization; nor do they earn a lot of money for a better life. Low literacy, together with the lack of healthy forms of entertainment and despair about life without exit, easily lead people into drug addiction, gambling and alcoholism. In other words, the vicious circle of poverty and powerlessness usually leads the poor to a dead end. Above all, they are lonely and need to be listened to, shared with and led to escape from their states. Community meetings for exchanging ideas, communicating and immediate intervening, along with appropriate forms of entertainment, should be held frequently to meet the expectations of the poor, direct them to appropriate jobs and, step by step, change their favorite habits of entertainment. Last but not least, poor people should be encouraged to participate in social forums where they can both raise their voices about their situations and make valuable suggestions for dealing with their poverty. Children from poor families should be completely exempted from school fees to encourage them to go to school, and curriculum should also focus on raising community awareness of poverty issues through extracurricular and volunteer activities, such as meeting and talking with the community, helping poor people with odd jobs, or simply spending time listening to them. Not a matter of any individual country, poverty has become a major problem, a threat to the survival, stability and development of the world and humanity. Globalization has become a bridge linking countries; for that reason, instability in any country can directly and deeply affect the stability of others. The international community has been joining hands to solve poverty; many anti-poverty organizations, including FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), BecA (the Biosciences eastern and central Africa), UN-REDD (the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), BRAC (Building Resources Across Communities), UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), WHO (World Health Organization) and Manos Unidas, operate both regionally and internationally, making some achievements by reducing the number of hungry people, estimated 842 million in the period 1990 to 1992, by 17 percent in 2011- to 2013 . The diverse methods used to deal with poverty have invested billions of dollars in education, health and healing. The Millennium Development Goals set by UNDP put forward eight solutions for addressing issues related to poverty holistically: 1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 2) Achieve universal primary education. 3) Promote gender equality and empower women. 4) Reduce child mortality. 5) Improve maternal health. 6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. 7) Ensure environmental sustainability. 8) Develop a global partnership for development. Although all of the mentioned solutions carried out directly by countries and organizations not only focus on the roots of poverty but break its circle, it is recognized that the solutions do not emphasize the role of the poor themselves which a critical pedagogy does. More than anyone, the poor should have a sense of their poverty so that they can become responsible for their own fate and actively fight poverty instead of waiting for help. It is not different from the cores of critical theory in solving educational and political issues that the poor should be aware and conscious about their situation and reflected context. It is required a critical transformation from their own praxis which would allow them to go through a process of learning, sharing, solving problems, and leading to social movements. This is similar to the method of giving poor people fish hooks rather than giving them fish. The government and people of any country understand better than anyone else clearly the strengths and characteristics of their homelands. It follows that they can efficiently contribute to causing poverty, preventing the return of poverty, and solving consequences of the poverty in their countries by many ways, especially a critical pedagogy; and indirectly narrow the scale of poverty in the world. In a word, the wars against poverty take time, money, energy and human resources, and they are absolutely not simple to end. Again, the poor and the challenged should be educated to be fully aware of their situation to that they can overcome poverty themselves. They need to be respected and receive sharing from the community. All forms of discrimination should be condemned and excluded from human society. When whole communities join hands in solving this universal problem, the endless circle of poverty can be addressed definitely someday. More importantly, every country should be responsible for finding appropriate ways to overcome poverty before receiving supports from other countries as well as the poor self-conscious responsibilities about themselves before receiving supports from the others, but the methods leading them to emancipation for their own transformation and later the social change.

Dreams have fascinated human cultures and societies for thousands of years. What dreams are, what they look like, and what they mean have been the centre of discussions in a variety of contexts, across disciplines, and languages. The very notion of ‘dream’ entails, on the one hand, something unattainable, whimsical, and even fantastic. Dreams reside, perhaps by definition, in the realm of the imaginary. This does not mean, however, that they do not have cultural and historical relevance. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa argue that “while we by no means assume that we can make contact with the dream itself”, there is no doubt that all subsequent decodings and interpretations of the dream “are expressive of culturally specific themes, patterns, tensions, and meanings” (3).Equally, dreams are inspirational; they can be representational of our innermost desires and wishes for the future. The very notion of ‘dream’ has been used metaphorically across the board of media and narrative, and has included a conspicuous presence in poems, literature, film, art, advertising, and even political speeches. The representation of dreams as metaphor is entangled with our projections of feeling, identities and the everyday. As such, any mention of dream must pay close attention to the common usage of socio-cultural and socio-historical perceptions over “emotions, temporal references, successes and failures, fortunes and misfortunes” (Domhoff 2). Transformed into their specific counterparts as nightmares, dreams give voice to our innermost fears. They give voice to both the intangible and the tangible, and act as a conduit for the exploration of both the illusionary and the physical. As agents of both dread and desire, dreams are metaphors for both our everyday and our innermost fantasies. They never exist ex nihilo, and channel – both tacitly and explicitly – parts of our human experience instead. Dreams are, in this context, a profoundly “cultural act” (Shulman and Stroumsa 3).Drawing on the multi-faceted nature of the very concept of ‘dream’, this issue of M/C Journal seeks to expand the definition of the term, by investigating its meanings and representations across the media and cultural spectrum. ‘Dream’ is taken to be a matter of both metaphor and agency, bringing together perspectives on matters of desire, wistfulness, and meaning. This issue aims to explore emerging research on the textual, methodological, and practical aspects of ‘dream’. What we are interested in is the exploration of the broader and multi-faceted aspects of “dream culture” (Shulman and Stroumsa 3) and its ability to showcase issues of both a private and a public nature. The article in this issue provide wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary approaches to the versatile and mutating notion of ‘dream’.This issue begins with Donna Lee Brien’s “Dreaming of Creativity” which looks at how the self is imagined and envisioned in memoirs written by both first time authors and creative writers. Brien presents a survey of how writers-as-memorists capture (and create) a reflection of their lived experiences-real or otherwise.Angelique Nairn’s “Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares” builds on this discussion of dreams in reality as documented in the music industry by bands and musicians themselves. Nairn focuses on artists such as Thirty Seconds to Mars and the Jonas Brothers as they witness their creative aspirations go from dream to nightmare.Blair Speakman takes us from real world dreams and nightmares to the uncanny world of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in “Poor Creature, Trapped in Existential Solitude Forever”. Speakman interrogates how the medium of the dream can be used to show not only wishes but also repressed and unconscious desires.From the liminal of the television screen to liminal spaces created by wearers of alternative fashion in Lisa J. Hackett’s “Dreaming of Yesterday”. Hackett’s interviews with people who dress in retro 1950s style show how these activities are tempered by both gender and temporal distance. These alternative fashion practitioners show that you can live the dream and still be aware of the fantasy at play.In a similar vein, Nancy Johnson-Hunt’s “Dreams for Sale” looks at how in the world of cosmetics, “beauty is in the eyes of the advertiser”. For Johnson-Hunt the dream is an idealised version of our desires; it is both packageable for consumption but also endlessly unobtainable.Patrick Leslie West’s “Thom Gunn’s ‘The Annihilation of Nothing’ and the Negative Capability of Dream Poetry” positions Gunn’s work as a dream poem in which dream relates not to a specific dream, but rather the poetic creative process.In “Dream Machines” Paul Ryder asks us to buckle up in the iconic cars of The Great Gatsby. The machines have captured the imagination of the motoring public since their inception and continue to do so. Ryder contrasts motoring history with Fitzgerald’s fictional world and the spirits that inhabit both.Through interviews with refugee families in a Perth-based migrant support centre, Carmen Jacques, Kelly Jaunzems, Layla Al-Hameed, and Lelia Green show how nightmare pasts have the potential to become dreamed of futures in “Refugees’ Dreams of the Past, Projected into the Future”.Finally, in Glenda Ballantyne and Aneta Podkalicka's “Dreaming Diversity” these dreams are investigated from the perspective of second generation Australians. For these Australians, who are trapped between refugee/migrants and “old/white Australia”, the dream is not one of belonging but of identity.ReferencesDomhoff, G. William. Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach. New York: Springer, 1996.Shulman, David, and Guy G. Stroumsa. Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

In the 2019 documentary Chasing Happiness, recording artist/musician Joe Jonas tells audiences that the band was “living the dream”. Similarly, in the 2012 documentary Artifact, lead singer Jared Leto remarks that at the height of Thirty Seconds to Mars’s success, they “were living the dream”. However, for both the Jonas Brothers and Thirty Seconds to Mars, their experiences of the music industry (much like other commercially successful recording artists) soon transformed into nightmares. Similar to other commercially successful recording artists, the Jonas Brothers and Thirty Seconds to Mars, came up against the constraints of the industry which inevitably led to a forfeiting of authenticity, a loss of creative control, increased exploitation, and unequal remuneration. This work will consider how working in the music industry is not always a dream come true and can instead be viewed as a proverbial nightmare. Living the DreamIn his book Dreams, Carl Gustav Jung discusses how that which is experienced in sleep, speaks of a person’s wishes: that which might be desired in reality but may not actually happen. In his earlier work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argued that the dream is representative of fulfilling a repressed wish. However, the creative industries suggest that a dream need not be a repressed wish; it can become a reality. Jon Bon Jovi believes that his success in the music industry has surpassed his wildest dreams (Atkinson). Jennifer Lopez considers the fact that she held big dreams, had a focussed passion, and strong aspirations the reason why she pursued a creative career that took her out of the Bronx (Thomas). In a Twitter post from 23 April 2018, Bruno Mars declared that he “use [sic] to dream of this shit,” in referring to a picture of him performing for a sold out arena, while in 2019 Shawn Mendes informed his 24.4 million Twitter followers that his “life is a dream”. These are but a few examples of successful music industry artists who are seeing their ‘wishes’ come true and living the American Dream.Endemic to the American culture (and a characteristic of the identity of the country) is the “American Dream”. It centres on “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability and achievement” (Adams, 404). Although initially used to describe having a nice house, money, stability and a reasonable standard of living, the American Dream has since evolved to what the scholar Florida believes is the new ‘aspiration of people’: doing work that is enjoyable and relies on human creativity. At its core, the original American Dream required striving to meet individual goals, and was promoted as possible for anyone regardless of their cultural, socio-economic and political background (Samuel), because it encourages the celebrating of the self and personal uniqueness (Gamson). Florida’s conceptualisation of the New American dream, however, tends to emphasise obtaining success, fame and fortune in what Neff, Wissinger, and Zukin (310) consider “hot”, “creative” industries where “the jobs are cool”.Whether old or new, the American Dream has perpetuated and reinforced celebrity culture, with many of the young generation reporting that fame and fortune were their priorities, as they sought to emulate the success of their famous role models (Florida). The rag to riches stories of iconic recording artists can inevitably glorify and make appealing the struggle that permits achieving one’s dream, with celebrities offering young, aspiring creative people a means of identification for helping them to aspire to meet their dreams (Florida; Samuel). For example, a young Demi Lovato spoke of how she idolised and looked up to singer Beyonce Knowles, describing Knowles as a role model because of the way she carries herself (Tishgart). Similarly, American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson cited Aretha Franklin as her musical inspiration and the reason that she sings from a place deep within (Nilles). It is unsurprising then, that popular media has tended to portray artists working in the creative industries and being paid to follow their passions as “a much-vaunted career dream” (Duffy and Wissinger, 4656). Movies such as A Star Is Born (2018), The Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), Dreamgirls (2006), Begin Again (2013) and La La Land (2016) exalt the perception that creativity, talent, sacrifice and determination will mean dreams come true (Nicolaou). In concert with the American dream is the drive among creative people pursuing creative success to achieve their dreams because of the perceived autonomy they will gain, the chance of self-actualisation and social rewards, and the opportunity to fulfil intrinsic motivations (Amabile; Auger and Woodman; Cohen). For these workers, the love of creation and the happiness that accompanies new discoveries (Csikszentmihalyi) can offset the tight budgets and timelines, precarious labour (Blair, Grey, and Randle; Hesmondhalgh and Baker), uncertain demand (Caves; Shultz), sacrifice of personal relationships (Eikhof and Haunschild), the demand for high quality products (Gil & Spiller), and the tense relationships with administrators (Bilton) which are known to plague these industries. In some cases, young, up and coming creative people overlook these pitfalls, instead romanticising creative careers as ideal and worthwhile. They willingly take on roles and cede control to big corporations to “realize their passions [and] uncover their personal talent” (Bill, 50). Of course, as Ursell argues in discussing television employees, such idealisation can mean creatives, especially those who are young and unfamiliar with the constraints of the industry, end up immersed in and victims of the “vampiric” industry that exploits workers (816). They are socialised towards believing, in this case, that the record label is a necessary component to obtain fame and fortune and whether willing or unwilling, creative workers become complicit in their own exploitation (Cohen). Loss of Control and No CompensationThe music industry itself has been considered by some to typify the cultural industries (Chambers). Popular music has potency in that it is perceived as speaking a universal language (Burnett), engaging the emotions and thoughts of listeners, and assisting in their identity construction (Burnett; Gardikiotis and Baltzis). Given the place of music within society, it is not surprising that in 2018, the global music industry was worth US$19.1billion (IFPI). The music industry is necessarily underpinned by a commercial agenda. At present, six major recording companies exist and between them, they own between 70-80 per cent of the recordings produced globally (Konsor). They also act as gatekeepers, setting trends by defining what and who is worth following and listening to (Csikszentmihalyi; Jones, Anand, and Alvarez). In essence, to be successful in the music industry is to be affiliated with a record label. This is because the highly competitive nature and cluttered environment makes it harder to gain traction in the market without worthwhile representation (Moiso and Rockman). In the 2012 documentary about Thirty Seconds to Mars, Artifact, front man Jared Leto even questions whether it is possible to have “success without a label”. The recording company, he determines, “deal with the crappy jobs”. In a financially uncertain industry that makes money from subjective or experience-based goods (Caves), having a label affords an artist access to “economic capital for production and promotion” that enables “wider recognition” of creative work (Scott, 239). With the support of a record label, creative entrepreneurs are given the chance to be promoted and distributed in the creative marketplace (Scott; Shultz). To have a record label, then, is to be perceived as legitimate and credible (Shultz).However, the commercial music industry is just that, commercial. Accordingly, the desire to make money can see the intrinsic desires of musicians forfeited in favour of standardised products and a lack of remuneration for artists (Negus). To see this standardisation in practice, one need not look further than those contestants appearing on shows such as American Idol or The Voice. Nowhere is the standardisation of the music industry more evident than in Holmes’s 2004 article on Pop Idol. Pop Idol first aired in Britain from 2001-2003 and paved the way for a slew of similar shows around the world such as Australia’s Popstars Live in 2004 and the global Idol phenomena. According to Holmes, audiences are divested of the illusion of talent and stardom when they witness the obvious manufacturing of musical talent. The contestants receive training, are dressed according to a prescribed image, and the show emphasises those melodramatic moments that are commercially enticing to audiences. Her sentiments suggest these shows emphasise the artifice of the music industry by undermining artistic authenticity in favour of generating celebrities. The standardisation is typified in the post Idol careers of Kelly Clarkson and Adam Lambert. Kelly Clarkson parted with the recording company RCA when her manager and producer Clive Davis told her that her album My December (2007) was “not commercial enough” and that Clarkson, who had written most of the songs, was a “shitty writer… who should just shut up and sing” (Nied). Adam Lambert left RCA because they wanted him to make a full length 80s album comprised of covers. Lambert commented that, “while there are lots of great songs from that decade, my heart is simply not in doing a covers album” (Lee). In these instances, winning the show and signing contracts led to both Clarkson and Lambert forfeiting a degree of creative control over their work in favour of formulaic songs that ultimately left both artists unsatisfied. The standardisation and lack of remuneration is notable when signing recording artists to 360° contracts. These 360° contracts have become commonplace in the music industry (Gulchardaz, Bach, and Penin) and see both the material and immaterial labour (such as personal identities) of recording artists become controlled by record labels (Stahl and Meier). These labels determine the aesthetics of the musicians as well as where and how frequently they tour. Furthermore, the labels become owners of any intellectual property generated by an artist during the tenure of the contract (Sanders; Stahl and Meier). For example, in their documentary Show Em What You’re Made Of (2015), the Backstreet Boys lament their affiliation with manager Lou Pearlman. Not only did Pearlman manufacture the group in a way that prevented creative exploration by the members (Sanders), but he withheld profits to the point that the Backstreet Boys had to sue Pearlman in order to gain access to money they deserved. In 2002 the members of the Backstreet Boys had stated that “it wasn’t our destinies that we had to worry about in the past, it was our souls” (Sanders, 541). They were not writing their own music, which came across in the documentary Show Em What You’re Made Of when singer Howie Dorough demanded that if they were to collaborate as a group again in 2013, that everything was to be produced, managed and created by the five group members. Such a demand speaks to creative individuals being tied to their work both personally and emotionally (Bain). The angst encountered by music artists also signals the identity dissonance and conflict felt when they are betraying their true or authentic creative selves (Ashforth and Mael; Ashforth and Humphrey). Performing and abiding by the rules and regulations of others led to frustration because the members felt they were “being passed off as something we aren’t” (Sanders 539). The Backstreet Boys were not the only musicians who were intensely controlled and not adequately compensated by Pearlman. In the documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story 2019, Lance Bass of N*Sync and recording artist Aaron Carter admitted that the experience of working with Pearlman became a nightmare when they too, were receiving cheques that were so small that Bass describes them as making his heart sink. For these groups, the dream of making music was undone by contracts that stifled creativity and paid a pittance.In a similar vein, Thirty Seconds to Mars sought to cut ties with their record label when they felt that they were not being adequately compensated for their work. In retaliation EMI issued Mars with a US$30 million lawsuit for breach of contract. The tense renegotiations that followed took a toll on the creative drive of the group. At one point in the documentary Artifact (2012), Leto claims “I can’t sing it right now… You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to sing this song the way it needs to be sung right now. I’m not ready”. The contract subordination (Phillips; Stahl and Meier) that had led to the need to renegotiate financial terms came at not only a financial cost to the band, but also a physical and emotional one. The negativity impacted the development of the songs for the new album. To make music requires evoking necessary and appropriate emotions in the recording studio (Wood, Duffy, and Smith), so Leto being unable to deliver the song proved problematic. Essentially, the stress of the lawsuit and negotiations damaged the motivation of the band (Amabile; Elsbach and Hargadon; Hallowell) and interfered with their creative approach, which could have produced standardised and poor quality work (Farr and Ford). The dream of making music was almost lost because of the EMI lawsuit. Young creatives often lack bargaining power when entering into contracts with corporations, which can prove disadvantaging when it comes to retaining control over their lives (Phillips; Stahl and Meier). Singer Demi Lovato’s big break came in the 2008 Disney film Camp Rock. As her then manager Phil McIntyre states in the documentary Simply Complicated (2017), Camp Rock was “perceived as the vehicle to becoming a superstar … overnight she became a household name”. However, as “authentic and believable” as Lovato’s edginess appeared, the speed with which her success came took a toll on Lovato. The pressure she experienced having to tour, write songs that were approved by others, star in Disney channel shows and movies, and look a certain way, became too much and to compensate, Lovato engaged in regular drug use to feel free. Accordingly, she developed a hybrid identity to ensure that the squeaky clean image required by the moral clauses of her contract, was not tarnished by her out-of-control lifestyle. The nightmare came from becoming famous at a young age and not being able to handle the expectations that accompanied it, coupled with a stringent contract that exploited her creative talent. Lovato’s is not a unique story. Research has found that musicians are more inclined than those in other workforces to use psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs (Vaag, Bjørngaard, and Bjerkeset) and that fame and money can provide musicians more opportunities to take risks, including drug-use that leads to mortality (Bellis, Hughes, Sharples, Hennell, and Hardcastle). For Lovato, living the dream at a young age ultimately became overwhelming with drugs her only means of escape. AuthenticityThe challenges then for music artists is that the dream of pursuing music can come at the cost of a musician’s authentic self. According to Hughes, “to be authentic is to be in some sense real and true to something ... It is not simply an imitation, but it is sincere, real, true, and original expression of its creator, and is believable or credible representations or example of what it appears to be” (190). For Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, being in the spotlight and abiding by the demands of Disney was “non-stop” and prevented his personal and musical growth (Chasing Happiness). As Kevin Jonas put it, Nick “wanted the Jonas Brothers to be no more”. The extensive promotion that accompanies success and fame, which is designed to drive celebrity culture and financial motivations (Currid-Halkett and Scott; King), can lead to cynical performances and dissatisfaction (Hughes) if the identity work of the creative creates a disjoin between their perceived self and aspirational self (Beech, Gilmore, Cochrane, and Greig). Promoting the band (and having to film a television show and movies he was not invested in all because of contractual obligations) impacted on Nick’s authentic self to the point that the Jonas Brothers made him feel deeply upset and anxious. For Nick, being stifled creatively led to feeling inauthentic, thereby resulting in the demise of the band as his only recourse.In her documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017), Lady Gaga discusses the extent she had to go to maintain a sense of authenticity in response to producer control. As she puts it, “when producers wanted me to be sexy, I always put some absurd spin on it, that made me feel like I was still in control”. Her words reaffirm the perception amongst scholars (Currid-Halkett and Scott; King; Meyers) that in playing the information game, industry leaders will construct an artist’s persona in ways that are most beneficial for, in this case, the record label. That will mean, for example, establishing a coherent life story for musicians that endears them to audiences and engaging recording artists in co-branding opportunities to raise their profile and to legitimise them in the marketplace. Such behaviour can potentially influence the preferences and purchases of audiences and fans, can create favourability, originality and clarity around artists (Loroz and Braig), and can establish competitive advantage that leads to producers being able to charge higher prices for the artists’ work (Hernando and Campo). But what impact does that have on the musician? Lady Gaga could not continue living someone else’s dream. She found herself needing to make changes in order to avoid quitting music altogether. As Gaga told a class of university students at the Emotion Revolution Summit hosted by Yale University:I don’t like being used to make people money. It feels sad when I am overworked and that I have just become a money-making machine and that my passion and creativity take a backseat. That makes me unhappy.According to Eikof and Haunschild, economic necessity can threaten creative motivation. Gaga’s reaction to the commercial demands of the music industry signal an identity conflict because her desire to create, clashed with the need to be commercial, with the outcome imposing “inconsistent demands upon” her (Ashforth and Mael, 29). Therefore, to reduce what could be considered feelings of dissonance and inconsistency (Ashforth and Mael; Ashforth and Humphrey) Gaga started saying “no” to prevent further loss of her identity and sense of authentic self. Taking back control could be seen as a means of reorienting her dream and overcoming what had become dissatisfaction with the commercial processes of the music industry. ConclusionsFor many creatives working in the creative industries – and specifically the music industry – is constructed as a dream come true; the working conditions and expectations experienced by recording artists are far from liberating and instead can become nightmares to which they want to escape. The case studies above, although likely ‘constructed’ retellings of the unfortunate circumstances encountered working in the music industry, nevertheless offer an inside account that contradicts the prevailing ideology that pursuing creative passions leads to a dream career (Florida; Samuel). If anything, the case studies explored above involving 30 Seconds to Mars, the Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert and the Backstreet Boys, acknowledge what many scholars writing in the creative industries have already identified; that exploitation, subordination, identity conflict and loss of control are the unspoken or lesser known consequences of pursuing the creative dream. That said, the conundrum for creatives is that for success in the industry big “creative” businesses, such as recording labels, are still considered necessary in order to break into the market and to have prolonged success. This is simply because their resources far exceed those at the disposal of independent and up-and-coming creative entrepreneurs. Therefore, it can be argued that this friction of need between creative industry business versus artists will be on-going leading to more of these ‘dream to nightmare’ stories. The struggle will continue manifesting in the relationship between business and artist for long as the recording artists fight for greater equality, independence of creativity and respect for their work, image and identities. 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Creative writing can be defined as “the ability to harness creative thoughts revolving inside one‟s head and mind and put it into writing using very good sentence structure”.The most important skill of any language is writing skill. It is the power students need to understand and control their lives, to shape their future, to define their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Writing allows students to put their ideas on a page. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly – about anything in the world. Writing builds confidence and is not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they know. The essential thing is that everyone should be creative in his writing and should be unique. Creative writing is not confined to only writers, but is nowadays considered as a basic skill for getting success in life. We live in new world of teaching and learning. It‟s the world dominated with one clear aim of clearing „the writing test‟. But academicians should go beyond this only aim. And the prerequisite for the same is the belief that creative writing can be thought. The journey of teaching creative writing can be frustrating many times, but can also be rewarding sometimes. Definitely, if learning to write creatively is difficult, and then teaching to write creatively is equally difficult. By teaching students how to write well, by guiding them to focus their intellectual energy in this innovative way, a teacher can provide students a key that helps them unlock the complex ideas we expect them to a master as they mature. This can also contribute to the improvement in their behavior and self-esteem.

This article reports on the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software for developing a dynamic environment for an online public access catalogue (OPAC). COTS products are widely used throughout the industry. While there are many potential benefits, use of COTS components is also fraught with pitfalls. The research on creating a dynamic environment for OPACs is based on the previous work in this area, Public Access Catalogue Extension (PACE), which was developed with custom-based software programs. Although in the previous research project all the programs were successfully developed in C and C++, the present project relied very little on original and custom programming. Instead, a number of COTS products were used to construct the dynamic environment: Macromedia Director, 3D Dreams, Extreme 3D, Crossroads, and Easybase. These COTS products were chosen for their ability to produce the desired results, their availability at reasonable costs, and their capability to integrate with one another. A small experimental database with one hundred MARC records was constructed in Easybase. Models were built in Extreme 3D and converted to 3D Studio using Crossroads. These models were used in 3D Dreams to create three-dimensional environments for use in Macromedia Director.

The background of this research is the importance of character education in human life being able to shape one's personality, identity and character so as to have a balanced ability between thoughts and feelings, emotionality and intellect. realize the application of character education there are many ways that are done through education, literary works, etc. but in this case, the researcher was inspired to analyze the values of karaker education contained in a literary work in the form of a novel that is the Dreamer novel by Andrea Hirata and found the relevance of the character education values contained in the Dreamer novel withthe values of character education for the educational process in Cluster 4 Langke Rembong DistrictThis study aims to analyze the values of character education contained in the novel Sang Pemimpi and find the relevance of the values of character education contained in the novel Sang Pemimpi with the values of character education for the educational process in Cluster 4 DistrictLangke Rembong.This research is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach and content analysis methods through data collection techniques in the form of text analysis, document studies and interviews.The results of the study found twelve character education values contained in the novel The Dreamer of eighteen character education while six other character values were not found by the writer in the novel Dreamer. the twelve values of character education contained in the novel The Dreamer that is in relation to God, including religious values, in relation to oneself including the values of discipline, the value of hard work, creative values, independent values, the value of curiosity, the value of responsibilityanswer, the value of respecting achievement and in relation to others includes the value of tolerance, the value of friendship / communicative, and the value of social care. in addition to analyzing the values contained in the novel The Dreamer the researcher also conducted research in the form of interviews in Cluster 4 Langke Rembong District. The sources of interview data are the principal, grade 5 teachers and grade V. studentsbased on the analysis of the values of character education contained in the novel Sang Pemimpi, with the values of character education applied in Cluster 4, Langke Rembong District. shows relevance.

"And then I ask the question, 'How long have you been doing this?' And it says, 'That knowledge isn't given to you.' And I say, 'Jesus Christ, will you answer a question for the love of God? How long have you been doing this, and stop with those stupid answers.' I'm so pissed off at it. And it sort of just smiles and doesn't answer. And I say, 'Have you been doing this forever?' I don't think it understands forever. And then I ask what it's doing. 'What are you doing?' It wants me to give it my mind, and then it will show me what it's doing. I say, 'No dice, I don't care that much. No thanks, I'm not interested.' It says, 'Why are you afraid? Why are you worried? Don't be afraid.' All the same bullshit that it always wants to give you." -- Abductee 'Karen Morgan', interviewed in David Jacobs's Secret Life "We should learn to live by learning how not to make conversation with the ghost but how to talk with him, with her, how to let them speak or how to give them back speech, even if it is in oneself, in the other, in the other in oneself: they are always there, spectres, even if they do not exist, even if they are no longer, even if they are not yet." -- Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx Hundreds of people from all around the world are reporting being abducted by apparently alien beings, taken aboard a UFO or into a profoundly unfamiliar environment, and subjected to bizarre reproductive procedures and quasi-medical examinations. It's usually called alien abduction, and it's becoming increasingly common in western society. Official culture (academics, government, scientific institutions, etc.) have been very slow to acknowledge that anything at all is happening, overlooking the clear implication that even if a lot of people aren't reporting actual experience, that a lot of people believe they are reporting actual experience. The source of this apparent lack of official interest may lie in the undesirability of transgressing the superficial sensationalism that belies the phenomenon's apparent complexity. But what seems unavoidable is the implication that alien abduction represents an unprecedented sociological and psychological phenomenon. Predominantly obfuscating investigation of alien abduction is the absence of a clear mode of approach. The most obvious (and common) place to begin is with the question "is alien abduction real?" -- which quickly proves unproductive, essentially because its premises aren't appropriate. Firstly, it assumes that current definitions of 'real' are both stable and applicable to a hypothetically alien phenomenon. Alien abduction is also commonly deemed impossible a priori; in other words, it's not happening because we 'know' it can't. (Note: this premise embarrassed many French astronomers who for decades, despite villagers' reports, maintained that 'rocks could not fall from the sky'. We now know, despite the astronomers' arrogance, that meteorites do exist.) This is an effect of the dominant ontology -- literally, a reality constructed and reinforced by a minority of powerful members of a culture. Phenomena which threaten the most basic ontological, epistemological and existential premises of this minority are marginalised as tabloid, suppressed, or simply ignored in its hegemonic efforts to maintain power. Secondly, asking if alien abduction is real bypasses the highly problematic trait that connects virtually all abduction cases: the bulk of evidence is in the form of abductees' memories. Roughly 30% of abductions are remembered without the use of hypnosis, and 70% are 'recovered' memories of 'missing time'. (McLeod et al. 156) Most abduction experiences seem to involve complete, or almost complete, erasure of memory of the event. (see Hopkins, Missing Time). Memory itself thus becomes heavily problematised, and no longer reliable. Abduction (if we take any notice of it) causes us to doubt the reality of events that our memories are capable of providing for our perusal, since abductees remember, often very clearly, events which as a culture we generally consider impossible. Conversely, and most provocatively, alien abduction causes us to question the assumed fantasy of events that our memories contain. Vivid dreams are potential abduction experiences. As a society we may stubbornly assume the role of the French astronomers and tell abductees that they are not remembering experience, that their memories are 'false' or have been implanted by hypnotists predisposed to the alien hypothesis. But the abductees, and their memories, do not go away. A conceptualisation of memory that is capable of dealing with alien abduction phenomena should begin by observing that the memorial is intimately linked with the imaginative. It is the retained impression of experience, which is a convergence of imagination (creative thought) and perception (reception of sensory stimuli). Without memory, without the ability to recognise patterns, 'experience' -- meaningful perception -- would not be possible. Experience then, upon which we rely totally to formulate reality, is not possible without memory and imagination. Reality does influence imagination, and vice versa. But imagination is more powerful at the end of the day, since it is always imagination that changes reality. Put simply, discovery is invention. The earth only orbits the sun because enough people imagine (or think or believe) that it does. It only became possible to imagine that the earth orbits the sun, as opposed to the sun orbiting the earth, because of changes that occurred within the culture. Knowledge, despite its claims of universality, is always cultural. The experiences that produce knowledge are always never more than what a culture will allow, can allow. Cultural practice, including the production of knowledge, is and inevitably must be, a restrictive practice. The emergence of postmodern thought is essentially what has allowed an alien abduction phenomenon to begin an existence. Conceptual boundaries which have traditionally precluded such a phenomenon are now being attacked and acknowledged as cultural and therefore subject to change. Postmodern society recognises and appreciates the plasticity and constant change of reality and knowledge, and stresses the priority of concrete experience over fixed abstract principles (Tarnas 395). At its deepest level, alien abduction exposes the arbitrary nature of the reality/non-reality duality, since abduction experiences seem to involve something from non-reality/immateriality (alien beings that walk through walls) entering reality/materiality (its aftereffects are observed in the physical world). Importantly, people are affected not so much by their experience of alien abduction (which are usually forgotten), but by their memories of alien abduction. John E. Mack suggests as a response to this that our use of familiar words like 'happening', 'occurred' and 'real' will themselves have to be thought of differently, and less literally (405). What would have once been interpreted as an inclination towards fantasy, realistic dreams or simply insanity now has the potential to become something more. The memories that so many people are now reporting are not seen as merely memories of dreams, memories of fantasies or memories of episodes of insanity. They are seen as memories of experiences that bridge an objective/subjective dichotomy. They are memories of events that persistently evade complete detection and leave only enough traces in the physical world -- the odd anomalous scar or lesion, and distraught abductees -- to imply that something is happening. But the aliens never land on the White House lawn. Most significantly of all, alien abduction particularly involves that ambiguous bridge between reality and non-reality, perception and imagination -- memory. Memory is the true realm of alien abduction, and we will be forever frustrated if we try to transfer it neatly into other conceptual realms such as 'reality' or 'non-reality', 'perception' or 'imagination'. Alien abduction, like memory, just won't fit into them. It is the hybrid of perception and imagination, the convergence of reality and non-reality, resulting from the privileging of imagination over perception in the formulation of experience. It is the ultimate postmodern myth. References Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. London: Routledge, 1994. Harpur, Patrick. Diamonic Reality: Understanding Otherwordly Encounters. London: Penguin, 1994. Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time. New York: Ballantine, 1981. Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. London: Simon and Schuster, 1995. McLeod, Caroline C., Barbara Corbisier, and John E. Mack. "A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO Abduction." Psychological Inquiry 7.2 (1996): 156-168. Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine, 1991. Thompson, Keith. Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination. New York: 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "'What Happened?' Deconstructing Memories of Alien Abduction." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.2 (1998). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/alien.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "'What Happened?' Deconstructing Memories of Alien Abduction," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/alien.php>. APA style: Adam Dodd. (1998) "What happened?" Deconstructing memories of alien abduction. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/alien.php> ([your date of access]).

‘TEAM- Together Everyone Achieves More’ is a guiding principle in all departments in all organizations. On literature search, we can find plenty of materials relating to goals, principles and strategies for team work in health care settings. But are we practising it in clinical settings? And if not, is it due to lack of knowledge and skill regarding implementation of strategies for team work or is it due to attitude problems of leaders who want to force their way of thinking and their opinion in everything and then blame others or juniors for any error which is incurred? Cohesive health care teams have 5 key characteristics- Clear goals with measurable outcomes, clinical administrative systems, division of labour, training of all team members and effective communication [1]. The quality of team work is associated with higher quality of patient safety care systems and is imperative in reducing errors. This requires that staff be comfortable in recognizing and discussing challenging situations. Structural briefing and debriefing are an effective team strategy, but they like all other interventions require strong leadership to realize their benefits [2]. The hall mark of high performing organizations is that leaders defined a very clear set of behaviours that apply to everyone whether they clean the floor or are the chief of staff [3]. Smart teams are not simple team of smart members and collective intelligence requires social perceptiveness of team members or their ability to infer others mental state such as beliefs or feeling based subtle cues [4]. The study highlights that for creating smart team two critical communication processes are required from team members i.e. (a). Speak up when their expertise can be useful & (b). Influence the team’s work so that the team does its collective best for the patient [4]. The incorporation of sharing responsibilities with accountability between team members in health care systems offers great benefit. However, shared responsibility without high quality team work can result in immediate risk for patients [5]. As is a common saying ‘where everyone is responsible actually no one is responsible’, which can be a dangerous situation for health care services.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.Don DeLillo, UnderworldIntroductionWhile the media industries have been rather thoroughly dissected for their capacity to generate enthusiasm through well-honed practices of marketing and patterns of consumerism, any analysis of the shift underway to capture and modulate the ‘enthusiastic’ and affective labour of media industry practitioners themselves may still have much to learn by reaching back to the long tradition in Western philosophy: a tradition, starting with the Greeks that has almost always contrasted enthusiasm with reason (Heyd). To quote Hume: “Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are … the true sources of enthusiasm” (73). Hume’s remarks are contextualised in protestant theological debates of the 18th century, where enthusiasm was a term for a religious practice, in which God possesses the believer. Especially English preachers and theologians were putting considerable energy into demonising this far too ecstatic form of belief in god (Heyd). This ambivalent attitude towards enthusiasm time-travels from the Greeks and the Enlightenment period straight into the 20th century. In 1929, William Henry Schoenau, an early author of self-help literature for the white-collar worker, aimed to gain a wider audience with the title: “Charm, Enthusiasm and Originality - their Acquisition and Use”. According to him, enthusiasm is necessary for the success of the salesman, and has to be generated by techniques such as a rigorous special diet and physical exercises of his facial muscles. But it also has to be controlled:Enthusiasm, when controlled by subtle repression, results in either élan, originality, magnetism, charm or “IT”, depending on the manner of its use. Uncontrolled enthusiasm results in blaring jazz, fanaticism and recklessness. A complete lack of enthusiasm produces the obsequious waiter and the uneducated street car conductor. (7)Though William Henry Schoenau got rather lost in his somewhat esoteric take on enthusiasm – for him it was a result of magnetic and electric currents – we argue that Schoenau had a point: Enthusiasm is a necessary affect in many forms of work, and especially so in the creative industries. It has to be generated, it sometimes has to be enacted, and it has also to be controlled. However, we disagree with Schoenau in one important issue: For us, enthusiasm can only be controlled up to a certain degree. Enthusiasm in the Creative IndustriesSchoenau wrote for an audience of salesmen and ambitious managers. This was simultaneous with the rise of Fordism. Most labour in Fordism was routine labour with the assembly line as its iconic representation. In mass-production itself, enthusiasm was not needed, often not even wanted. Henry Ford himself noted dryly: “Why do I get a human being when all I want is a pair of hands” (Kane 128). It was reserved for few occupational groups situated around the core of the mass-produced economy, such as salesmen, inventors, and leaders like him. “Henry Ford had a burning enthusiasm for the motor car” (Pearle 196).In industrial capitalism enthusiasm on a larger scale was not for the masses. It could be found in political movements, but hardly in the realm of work. This was different in the first socialist state. In the 1920s and 1930s Soviet Union the leaders turned their experience in stimulating a revolutionary mindset into a formula for industrial development – famously documented in Dziga Vertov’s “Enthusiasm. Symphony of the Donbass”.In capitalist countries things changed with the crisis of Fordism. The end of mass production and its transformation to flexible specialisation (Piore/Sabel) prepared the ground for a revival of enthusiasm on a large scale. Post-industrial economies rely on permanent innovation. Now discourses in media, management, and academia emphasise the relevance of buzzwords such as flexibility, adaptability, change, youth, speed, fun, and creativity. In social science debates around topics such as the cultural economy (Ray/Sayers, Cook et al., du Gay/Pryke, Amin/Thrift), affective labour (Lazzarato, Hardt/Negri, Virno) and creative industries (Florida, Hartley) gained in momentum (for an interesting take on enthusiasm see Bröckling). Enthusiasm has become an imperative for most professions. Those who are not on fire are in danger of getting fired. Producing and Consuming EnthusiasmOur interest in enthusiasm as affective labour emerged in an ethnographic and experimental project that we conducted in 2003-2007 in London’s creative industries. The project brought together three industrial and one academic partner to produce a reality TV show tailor-made for IPTV (internet-protocol-based television). During this project we encountered enthusiasm in many forms. Initially, we were faced with the need to be enthusiastic, while we established the project coalition. To be convincing, we had to pitch the commercial potential of such a project enthusiastically to our potential partners, and often we had to cope with rejections and start the search and pitch again (Caldwell). When the project coalition was set up, we as academic partners managed the network. In the following two years we had to cope with our partner’s different directions, different rhythms and different styles of enthusiasm. The TV producer for example had different ways to express excitement than the new media firm. Such differences resulted in conflicts and blockades, and part of our task as project managers was to rebuild an enthusiastic spirit after periods of frustration. At the same time enthusiasm was one of the ingredients of the digital object that we produced: `Real’ emotions form the material of most reality TV shows (Grindstaff). Affects are for reality TV, what steel was for a Fordist factory. We needed an enthusiastic audience as part of the filmed material. There is thus a need to elicit, select, engineer and film such emotions. To this aim we engaged with the participants and the audience in complex ways, sometimes by distancing ourselves, other times by consciously manipulating them, and at even other times by sharing enthusiasm (similar processes in respect to other emotions are ethnographically described in Hesmondhalgh/Baker). Generating and managing enthusiasm is obviously a necessary part of affective labour in the creative industries. However, just as Hesmondhalgh/Baker indicate, this seemingly simple claim is problematic.Affective Labour as Practice‘Affective labour’ is a term that describes labour through its products: ‘A feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion’ (Hardt/Negri 292-293). Thus, the term ‘affective labour’ usually describes a sector by the area of human endeavour, which it commodifies. But the concept looses its coherence, if it is used to describe labour by its practice (for an analogue argument see Dowling). The latter is what interests us. Such a usage will have to re-introduce the notion of the working subject. To see affective labour as a practice should enable us to describe in more detail, how enthusiasm shapes the becoming of a cultural object. Who employed affect when and what kinds of affects in which way? Analysing enthusiasm as social practice and affective labour usually brings about one of two contrasting perceptions. On the one hand one can celebrate enthusiasm – like Pekka Himanen – as one of the key characteristics for a new work ethic emerging alongside the Protestant Ethic. On the other hand we find critique of the need to display affects. Barbara Ehrenreich shows how a forced display of enthusiasm becomes a requirement for all office workers to survive in late capitalism. Judging from our experience these two approaches need to be synthesized: Much affective labour consists in the display of affects, in showing off, in pretending. On the other hand, enthusiasm can only realise its potential, if it is ‘real’ (as opposed to enacted).With Ehrenreich, Hochschild and many others we think that an analysis of affective labour as a practice needs to start with a notion of expression. Enthusiasm can be expressed through excited gestures, rapid movements, raised voices, eyes wide open, clapping hands, speech. For us it was often impossible to separate which expression was ‘genuine’ and which was enacted. Judging from introspection, it is probable that many actors had a similar experience to ours: They mixed some genuine enthusiasm with more or less enforced forms of re-enactment. Perhaps re-enactment turned to a ‘real’ feeling: We enacted ourselves into an authentic mood - an effect that is also described as “deep acting” (Grandey). What can happen inside us, can also happen in social situations. German philosopher Max Scheler went to substantial lengths to make a case for the contagiousness of affects, and enthusiasm is one of the most contagious affects. Mutual contagiousness of enthusiasm can lead to collective elation, with or without genuine enthusiasm of all members. The difference of real, authentic affects and enacted affects is thus not only theoretically, but also empirically rather problematic. It is impossible to make convincing claims about the degree of authenticity of an affect. However, it is also impossible to ignore this ambivalence. Both ‘authentic’ and ‘faked’ enthusiasm can be affective labour, but they differ hugely in terms of their productive capacities.Enthusiasm as Productive ForceWhy is enthusiasm so important in the first place? The answer is threefold. Firstly, an enthusiastic worker is more productive. He or she will work more intensively, put in more commitment, is likely to go the so-called extra mile. Enthusiasm can create a surplus of labour and a surplus of value, thus a surplus of productivity. Secondly enthusiasm is part of the creative act. It can unleash energies and overcome self-imposed limitations. Thirdly enthusiasm is future-oriented, a stimulus for investment, always risky. Enthusiasm can be the affective equivalent of venture capital – but it is not reified in capital, but remains incorporated in labour. Thus enthusiasm not only leads to an increase of productivity, it can be productive itself. This is what makes it to one of the most precious commodities in the creative industries. To make this argument in more detail we need to turn to one of the key philosophers of affect.Thinking Enthusiasm with SpinozaFor Spinoza, all affects are derivatives of a first basic drive or appetite. Desire/appetite is the direct equivalent of what Spinoza calls Conatus: Our striving to increase our power. From this starting point, Spinoza derives two basic affects: pleasure/joy and sadness/pain. Pleasure/joy is the result of an increase of our power, and sadness/pain is the result of its decrease. Spinoza explains all other affects through this basic framework. Even though enthusiasm is not one of the affects that Spinoza mentions, we want to suggest that Spinoza’s approach enables us to understand the productivity of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a hybrid between desire (the drive) and joy (the basic affect). Like hope or fear, it is future-oriented. It is a desire (to increase our power) combined with an anticipated outcome. Present and the future are tightly bound. Enthusiasm differs in this respect from its closest relatives: hope and optimism. Both hope and optimism believe in the desired outcome, but only against the odds and with a presumption of doubt. Enthusiasm is a form of ecstatic and hyper-confident hope. It already rewards us with joy in the present.With Spinoza we can understand the magical trick of future-oriented enthusiasm: To be enthusiastic means to anticipate an outcome of an increased power. This anticipation increases our power in the present. The increased power in the present can then be used to achieve the increased power in the future. If successful, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is this future-orientedness, which can make enthusiasm productive. Actions and PassionsIn its Greek origin (‘enthousiasmos’) to be enthusiastic meant to be possessed or inspired by a god. An enthusiast was someone with an intense religious fervour and sometimes someone with an exaggerated belief in religious inspiration. Accordingly, enthusiasm is often connected to the devotion to an ideal, cause, study or pursuit. In late capitalism, we get possessed by different gods. We get possessed by the gods of opportunity – in our case the opportunities of a new technology like IPTV. Obsessions cannot easily be switched on and off. This is part of affective labour: The ability to open up and let the gods of future-oriented enthusiasm take hold of us. We believe in something not for the sake of believing, but for the sake of what we believe in. But at the same time we know that we need to believe. The management of this contradiction is a problem of control. As enthusiasm now constitutes a precious commodity, we cannot leave it to mere chance. Spinoza addresses exactly this point. He distinguishes two kinds of affects, actions and passions. Actions are what we control, passions are what controls us. Joy (= the experience of increased power of acting) can also weaken, if someone is not able to control the affection that triggered the joy. In such a case it becomes a passion: An increase of power that weakens in the long run. Enthusiasm is often exactly this. How can enthusiasm as a passion be turned into an action? One possible answer is to control what Spinoza calls the ‘ideas’ of the bodily affections. For Spinoza, affections (affectiones) ‘strike’ the body, but affect (affectus) is formed of both, of the bodily affectiones, but also of our ideas of these affectiones. Can such ideas become convictions, beliefs, persuasions? Our experience suggests that this is indeed possible. The excitement about the creative possibilities of IPTV, for example, was turned into a conviction. We had internalised the affect as part of our beliefs. But we had internalised it for a prize: The more it became an idea the more stable it got, but the less it was a full, bodily affect, something that touched our nervous system. We gained power over it for the price that it became less powerful in its drive.Managing the UnmanageableIn all institutions and organisations enthusiasm needs to be managed on a regular basis. In project networks however the orchestration of affects faces a different set of obstacles than in traditional organizations. Power structures are often shifting and not formally defined. Project partners are likely to have diverging interests, different expectations and different views on how to collaborate. What might be a disappointing result for one partner can be a successful result for another one. Differences of interest can be accompanied by differences of the expression of enthusiasm. This was clearly the case in our project network. The TV company entered a state of hype and frenzy while pitching the project. They were expressing their enthusiasm with talk about prominent TV channels that would buy the product, and celebrities who would take part in the show. The new media company showed its commitment through the development of beautifully designed time plans and prototypes – one of them included the idea to advertise the logo of the project on banners placed on airplanes. This sort of enthusiastic presentation led the TV producer to oppose the vision of the new media’s brand developer: She perceived this as an example of unrealistic pipe dreams. In turn the TV producer’s repeated name-dropping led other partners to mistrust them.Timing was another reason why it seemed to be impossible to integrate the affective cohorts of all partners into one well-oiled machine. Work in TV production requires periods of heightened enthusiasm while shooting the script. Not surprisingly, TV professionals save up their energy for this time. In contrast, new media practitioners create their products on the go: hype and energy are spread over the whole work process. Their labour becomes materialised in detailed plans, concepts, and prototypes. In short, the affective machine of a project network needs orchestration. This is a question of management.As this management failed so often in our project, we could discover another issue in the universe of enthusiasm: Disappointed high spirits can easily turn into bitterness and hostility. High expectations can lead to a lack of motivation and finally to a loss of loyalty towards the product and towards other project partners. Thus managing enthusiasm is not just about timing. It is also about managing disappointment and frustration. These are techniques, which have to be well developed on the level of the self-management as well as group management.Beyond the ProjectWe want to conclude this paper with a scene that happened at the very end of the project. In a final meeting, all partners agreed – much to our surprise – that the product was a big success. At that time we as academic partners found this irritating. There were many reasons why we disagreed: we did not produce a new format, we did not get positive user feedback, and we could not sell the show to further broadcasters (our original aims). However, all of this did not seem to have any impact on this final assessment. At the time of the meeting this looked for us like surreal theatre. Looking back now, this display of enthusiasm was indeed perhaps a ‘rational’ thing to do. Most projects and products in the creative industries are not successful on the market (Frith). To recreate the belief that one will eventually be successful (McRobbie) seems to be the one task of affective labour that stands out at the end of the lifecycle of many creative project networks.References Amin, Ash, and Nigel Thrift, eds. The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.Broeckling, Ulrich. “Enthusiasten, Ironiker, Melancholiker. Vom Umgang mit der unternehmerischen Anrufung.” Mittelweg 36.4 (2008): 80-86.Caldwell, John Thornton. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 200. Cook, Ian, et al., eds. Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns. Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2000.Dowling, Emma. “Producing the Dining Experience: Measure, Subjectivity and the Affective Worker.” Ephemera 7 (2007): 117-132.Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bait and Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the Corporate Dream. London: Granta, 2005.Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002.Du Gay, Paul. and Michael Pryke, eds. Cultural Economy. Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life. London: Sage, 2002.Grandy, Alicia. “Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualise Emotional Labour.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 5 (2000): 95-110.Grindstaff, Laura. The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002.Hartley, John, ed. Creative Industries. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. “Creative Work and Emotional Labour in the Television Industry.” Theory, Culture and Society 25.5 (2008): 97-119.Heyd, Michael. “Be Sober and Reasonable." The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.Himanen, Pekka. The Hacker Ethic. London: Random House, 2002.Hume, David. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm.” Essays, Moral Political and Literary, I.X.3. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1742/1987.Johnson, Gregory. “The Tree of Melancholy. Kant on Philosophy and Enthusiasm.” Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Eds. Chris L. Firestone and Stephen R. Palmquist. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. 43-61.Kane, Pat. The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. London: Pan Books, 2005.Lazzarato, Maurizio. "Verwertung und Kommunikation." Umherschweifende Produzenten. Eds. Negri et al., Berlin: ID Verlag, 1998.Lutz, Burkart. Der kurze Traum immerwährender Prosperität: Eine Neuinterpretation der industriell-kapitalistischen Entwicklung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1984.Mandel, Ernest. Late Capitalism. London, 1978.McRobbie, Angela. “From Holloway to Hollywood: Happiness at Work in the Cultural Economy.” Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life. Eds. Paul du Gay and M. Pryke. London: Sage, 2001. 97-114.Pearle, Norman V. Enthusiasm Makes the Difference. Worl's Work: Kingswood and London, 1967.Piore, Michael, and Charles Sabel. Das Ende der Massenproduktion. Studie über die Requalifizierung der Arbeit und die Rückkehr der Ökonomie in die Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1985.Ray, Larry, and Andrew Sayer, eds. Culture and Economy after the Cultural Turn. London: Sage, 1999.Reich, Robert. The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism. New York: Knopf, 1991.Scheler, Max. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Gesammelte Werke, VII. Bonn: Bouvier, 1973 [1913].Schoenau, William H. Charm, Enthusiasm and Originality: Their Acquisition and Use. Los Angeles: Eln Publishing, 1929.Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. The Collected Works of Spinoza I, trans. E. Curley. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1985. Virno, Paolo. A Grammar of the Multitude. For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004.

PurposeIn a fierce competition environment in which product prices fall sharply or even tend to be free, only by realizing differentiated customer value through continuous innovation can companies respond quickly and effectively to changes and enhance their core competitiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe innovation ecosystem takes the enterprise as the core, based on stakeholders such as partners, customers and intermediaries, and is highly concentrated in an industry or a region to form close horizontal and vertical links with each other[4]. With the goal of continuously creating differentiated customer value, the internal resources of the collaborative system are integrated, and through the rapid flow of knowledge, material and value between the various entities, the overall value-added ability is continuously improved.FindingsThe innovation ecosystem is the core for users to create expected and dream experience. It combines different knowledge systems of groups and individuals with different characteristics and backgrounds to create an environment where various ideas can effectively collide and recombine and integrate resources through multiple channels to form an organism.Originality/valueEcological factors in the production and application of technology diffusion and knowledge in the process of mutual influence, in the process of dynamic interactive learning and self-reinforcing, identify and understand the customer value, coordinated development of the overall operation of product and service system, to form a consistent brand and improve customer loyalty and ultimately improve the innovation ecosystem value.

Here at Queensland University of Technology, the former Arts Faculty has been replaced by a new Faculty of Creative Industries led by the internationally renowned scholar John Hartley. This has entailed a great deal of reorganisation, planning and debate - very little of which need concern us here. However there was one discussion that does bear fairly directly on my topic. This had to do with whether the discipline of journalism should be included within Creative Industries. Though this was eventually resolved in the affirmative some felt that to call a journalist 'creative' was tantamount to an insult. What was at stake here was the old issue of the relationship between the journalist and reality. When the word 'creative' is rejected as non-relevant to the practice of journalism what we have is a signal that the doctrine of empiricism is still alive and well. This remains the staple fare of journalist educators despite having been subjected to devastating attacks by Roy Bhaskar in The Possibilities of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (1979) and in Scientific Realism & Human Emancipation (1986). As Bhaskar has pointed out for the empiricist "…the ultimate objects of knowledge are atomistic events. Such events constitute given facts and their conjunctions exhaust the objective content of our idea of natural necessity. Knowledge and the world may be viewed as surfaces whose points are in isomorphic correspondence…" (Bhaskar 24). Within the empiricist worldview the task of the journalist is to boldly go and find out the facts and report them back to the reader. Similarly within the same outlook the task of the documentary photography can be seen as the recording of what is. Outside the realm of the journalist educator few would today subscribe to such a view of the role of the photographer. Not only has theory advanced beyond classical empiricism, but such has been the strength of the reaction, that theorists such as Simon Watney have felt compelled to write an 'obituary notice' for the British Documentary tradition (12). Watney claimed that the activity of the photographers was motivated by a theoretical assumption that they recorded or reported the truth. For Watney it would seem that the truth is that there is no such thing as the truth and that the photographers served institutional and ideological interests. However drawing upon Bhaskarian Critical Realism it is a fairly easy task to refute scepticism in the strong form that Watney advances. To start with, the claim that it is true that there is no truth is itself self-cancelling. Nor can scepticism about the possibility of truth sustain an account of, for example, medical science where our knowledge is progressive and accumulative. More serious for the practice of documentary photography have been the technological advances that have called into question the very possibility of our ever knowing how 'creative' i.e. how much of a faker a photographer has been. It is to the consideration of just this one aspect of the impact of the new digital technology that I now turn. Photography in the Digital Age: Distinguishing between truth and evidence The digital camera would appear to have given the photographer the power of unlimited creativity and indeed to have put her in the position of Absolute Creator. Especially worrying to some is that the evidential status of the photograph has been definitively called into question. Commentators such as Dai Vaughan in For Documentary (1999) see this as the end of relationship between the camera and reality. Brian Winston has expressed similar views in Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited (1995). It is important to point out here that we need to avoid confusing the question of evidence and that of truth. The latter concept is ultimately an ontological matter while that of evidence belongs to the realm of epistemology. It is failure to make this distinction that has led to the apocalyptic tone adapted by Vaughan and others. Moreover photography has never had a simple relationship with reality. Photography and fakery have gone hand in hand since the inception of the medium. Dorothea Lange's touching up of her famous Migrant Mother and Robert Capa's faking of the death of the Spanish republican soldier are just two of the most famous examples. The latter produced one of the most famous of all war photographs. Entitled Falling Soldier, it was taken in September 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. It purports to show a soldier at the moment of death. He is thrown backward and his rifle has been flung out of his hand. Capa himself claimed that the photograph was taken when he and the man he was to photograph: …were on the Cordoba front, stranded there, the two of them, Capa with his precious camera and the soldier with his rifle. The soldier was impatient. He wanted to get back to the Loyalist lines. Time and again he climbed up and peered over the sandbags. Each time he would drop back at the warning rattle of machine-gun fire. Finally the soldier muttered something to the effect that he was going to take the long chance. He clambered out of the trench with Capa behind him. The machine guns rattled and Capa automatically snapped his camera, falling beside the body of his companion. Two hours later, when it was dark, and the guns were still, the photographer crept across the broken ground to safety. Later he discovered that he had taken one of the finest action shots of the Spanish war (Whelan 96). Capa's photograph went around the world and it was very effective in mobilising support for the anti-fascist Spanish Republican cause, that is Capa's photo helped the good guys. There has however been a fair deal of controversy over whether this photo was faked. The evidence seems to suggest that it was (Whelan 95-100). Does it matter? Richard Whelan in Robert Capa (1985) concludes: "To insist upon knowing whether the photograph actually shows a man at the moment he has been hit by a bullet is both morbid and trivialising, for the picture's greatness ultimately lies in its symbolic implications, not in its literal accuracy as a report on the death of a particular man" (100). Nigel Warburton in Varieties of Photographic representation: Documentary, Pictorial and Quasi-documentary (1991) however, strongly disagrees. He argues that a question of trust is involved between the photojournalist and her audience and violation of this is by no means a trivial matter. As he puts it: "The photojournalist's main responsibility is to aim to instil true beliefs in the viewers of their pictures. What is more, not all means are acceptable means of instilling these beliefs: the journalist and the photojournalist both have a duty to instil these beliefs by presenting evidence" (207). I am in agreement with Warburton here; trust between the photographer and her audience is crucial, especially if one's aesthetic practice is linked to claims that it is part of an emancipatory endeavour. Though of course the matter of truth cannot be reduced to a question of trust. What ultimately is at stake with regard to truth is the relationship of the photograph to the objective manifold, i.e. the ontological status of the photograph. This can be seen as isomorphic as in correspondence models. For example: Is the photograph of Carlo Giuliani, being shot in Genoa at the anti G8 demonstrations, a photograph of Carlo Giuliani being shot? A more satisfactory approach than the correspondence one is, I believe, to be found within Critical Realist model of truth advanced by Roy Bhaskar in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (1993). Here the question of truth ultimately comes down to the capacity of the photograph to uncover alethia - truth as the reason for things, not merely propositions. Complex as these issues are there is nevertheless a fairly simple moral behind the exposure of Capa's fakery. No matter how impressive the process of faking there is always the possibility that this will be at some time exposed. The subsequent exposure of the violation of trust can be a serious blow to a photographer's professional credibility. A somewhat different position on the relationship between digital technology and photography has recently been advanced by Pedro Meyer in an internet article The Renaissance of Photography (Oct 1 1995). He begins with Camille Silvy's 1858 photograph 'River Scene France'. He reveals that this painting is in fact a composite, or a fake if you wish. Silvy solved the technical problem of photographing clouds and a landscape by photographing them separately and joining them in the development process. Meyer concludes this analysis of Silvy's photograph with an endorsement from the grand daughter of Ansel Adams that he would have welcomed digital photography. The next example, which Meyer considers, is that of the two photographs of the Kent University murders in 1970. The recent publication of the photo in 1995 Life Magazine had the pole behind the student's head airbrushed out. No one knows who did this and the photo was reprinted without the pole many times and the elimination of the pole attracted no notice. As Meyer notes however a debate eventually ensued on the Internet. He cites a Brian Masck as arguing that the pole should not have been airbrushed out. Masck went on to make the claim that if photography is to be believed it must not be touched up. This opinion bore directly upon the normative fiduciary level or trust aspect of truth when Masck says: The photographer therefore has a huge burden of responsibility to maintain the credibility of his images, and the employer (publisher) in turn has a burden or responsibility to the photographer as well as the reader to do the same…Once the SOURCE cannot be believed photojournalism is dead." (n.pag) Meyer responds to this by pointing out that the criterion for truth here is more exact than in writing. In writing we need confirmation from a second source. All that has happened in photography is that we now need confirmation of the photograph. It can no longer stand alone as evidence. So photography for Meyer is now freed from the burden of being evidence and can take its place along side the other arts. He does however still fudge the truth question somewhat in his analogy with writing. The use of digital techniques is compared with proofreading in writing. Thus he writes: All pictures, such as with text, are confirmed from several different sources when in doubt; otherwise it's the photographer's responsibility to deliver an image with integrity towards the events, which in turn will be constantly monitored. We understand that integrity is not a matter of how the picture was made, but what it's supposed to communicate. Just as editors don't oversee if the writers do so by hand or type on a computer, our photographers are free to use any tool they want. The veracity of an image is not dependent on how it was produced, any more than a text is credible because no corrections were done on it. (n.pag) This I think will not do. To begin with it would be quite possible to imagine a set of circumstances in which a written text would have more credibility if it were uncorrected. More seriously the phrase 'integrity towards the events' need clarification. If this means that the photo claims to be a record or semiotic trace of an event then the advent of digital techniques mean that it is impossible to assume such 'integrity'. The evidential nature of photography has been irrevocably challenged. To repeat an earlier point it is important to make a clear distinction between evidence and truth. We must understand here that what has been challenged is our capacity to take the evidential status of a photograph for granted. Nevertheless photographs can still prove a record or a semiotic trace of an event, but we can no longer accept the photograph as proof. Despite what the constructionists would have us believe, the referent still lives! Meyer finishes his article with another interesting comparison between a photograph and a painting by Van Gogh. They may be of the same tree. In the painting the tree is transformed into something wonderful. It glows with a kind of transcendent spirituality. By contrast in the photograph the tree is simply a tree. It does though serve the purpose of alerting us to the contrast between recording reality and transforming it through the imagination. Here Meyer quotes the Mexican poet Veronica Volkow as saying: "With the digital revolution, the photograph breaks its loyalty with what is real, that unique marriage between the arts, only to fall into the infinite temptations of the imagination. It is now more the sister of fantasy and dreams than of presence" (n.pag) If Volkow were correct then photojournalism would indeed seem to be dead. But of course there will always be a place for documentary photography. Artistic expression will improve with digital techniques; that is true. But the photograph's ability to provide a semiotic trace will always be welcomed. However, with the growth and spread of digital photography what will gradually disappear is the naive belief in the transparency of the photograph. Conclusions Interrupting the Flow: Neo Heracliteanism and the Practice of Photography The avant-garde filmmaker, poet and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha has argued in When The Moon Waxes Red: Presentation, Gender And Cultural Politics (1991) for an extreme irrealist position in documentary by claiming: 'Reality runs away, reality denies reality. Filmmaking is after all a question of "framing" reality in its course' (43). The first part of this quotation gives us the moment of Heraclitus, who argued : "You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are forever flowing in upon you." (Warner 26). However, there is an even more extreme element in Heraclitean thought and that is associated with his student and follower Cratylus, who seemingly claimed that it was impossible to step into the river at all. The flux of life was so thorough that it was impossible to capture. In Plato Etc Roy Bhaskar cites the anecdote by Aristotle, which has it that Cratylus eventually despaired so much of his ability to say anything about reality that he ended up as an elective mute and would merely point (52). It is the Cratylan position that lies behind Trinh T. Minh-ha's statement 'reality denies reality' (43) for if this phrase has any meaning it must be that it is impossible to know the real. Indeed to my mind Trinh T. Minh-ha's theoretical work is much closer to Cratylus than Heraclitus. If however Heraclitus' fragments 41 & 42 suggest unending flux, fragment 81, which says "We step and do not step into the same rivers: we are and are not" (Warner 26). gives us the moment of the intransitive structure which is relatively enduring underneath the flux of actuality. The distinction between the intransitive (i.e. ontological) dimension and the transitive (i.e. narrowly epistemological) dimensions was first advanced by Roy Bhaskar in his Realist Theory of Science (1978). This emphasis on the difference between the intransitive and transitive dimensions helps us to understand that it is the intransitive dimension or the enduring level of ontology or reality that is the domain of the creative photographer. When the photograph gives us access to this level of reality then we are in the presence of what Cartier Bresson has called 'the decisive moment' and the photographer as creator in the sense not of faking or recording but of revealing reality is born. References: Bkaskar, Roy. The Possibilities of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. London: The Harvester Press, 1979. ____________. Scientific Realism & Human Emancipation. London: Verso, 1986. _____________. Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso, 1993. _______. Plato Etc. London: Verso, 1994. Meyer, P. "The Renaissance of Photography: A keynote address at the SPE Conference Los Angeles, California", Oct 1 1995 < http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/meyer/01.htm>. Trinh T. Minh-ha. When The Moon Waxes Red: Presentation, Gender And Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1991. Vaughan, Dai. For Documentary. Berkeley: University of California Press 1999. Warburton, Nigel. "Varieties of Photographic Representation: Documentary, Pictorial and Quasi-documentary," History of Photography. 15 (3), 1991: 207. Warner, Rex.. The Greek Philosophers. New York: Mentor, 1958. Watney, Simon. "The Documentary Forum," Creative Camera 254, 1986: 12. Whelan, Richard. Robert Capa. London: Faber, 1985. Winston, Brian . Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: BFI, 1995.

Abstract Objective The diagnosis of an advanced cancer in young adulthood can bring one's life to an abrupt halt, calling attention to the present moment and creating anguish about an uncertain future. There is seldom time or physical stamina to focus on forward-thinking, social roles, relationships, or dreams. As a result, young adults (YAs) with advanced cancer frequently encounter existential distress, despair, and question the purpose of their life. We sought to investigate the meaning and function of hope throughout YAs’ disease trajectory; to discern the psychosocial processes YAs employ to engage hope; and to develop a substantive theory of hope of YAs diagnosed with advanced cancer. Method Thirteen YAs (ages 23–38) diagnosed with a stage III or IV cancer were recruited throughout the eastern and southeastern United States. Participants completed one semi-structured interview in-person, by phone, or Skype, that incorporated an original timeline instrument assessing fluctuations in hope and an online socio-demographic survey. Glaser's grounded theory methodology informed constant comparative methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Results Findings from this study informed the development of the novel contingent hope theoretical framework, which describes the pattern of psychosocial behaviors YAs with advanced cancer employ to reconcile identities and strive for a life of meaning. The ability to cultivate the necessary agency and pathways to reconcile identities became contingent on the YAs’ participation in each of the psychosocial processes of the contingent hope theoretical framework: navigating uncertainty, feeling broken, disorienting grief, finding bearings, and identity reconciliation. Significance of Results Study findings portray the influential role of hope in motivating YAs with advanced cancer through disorienting grief toward an integrated sense of self that marries cherished aspects of multiple identities. The contingent hope theoretical framework details psychosocial behaviors to inform assessments and interventions fostering hope and identity reconciliation.

This article argues that digital curation—the art and science of searching, analysing, selecting, and organising content—can be used to promote the development of digital information literacy skills among higher education students. Rather than relying on institutionally approved journal articles that have been pre-ordained as suitable for a given purpose, digital curation tools allow students to evaluate the quality of Web based-based content and then present it in an attractive form, all of which contributes to the cultivation of their digital literacy skills. We draw on a case study in which first- year information and communications technology (ICT) students used the digital curation platform Scoop.it to curate an annotated collection of resources pertaining to a particular topic. The notion of curation has undergone a significant transformation in the wake of an increasingly digital society. To “curate,” traditionally referred to as “taking care,” has morphed into a process of cataloguing, accessing, and representing artefacts. In the digital age, curation is a way of sifting, organising, and making sense of the plethora of information; it has become an important life skill without which one cannot fully participate in digital life. Moreover, the ready availability of information, made possible by the ubiquity of Internet technology, makes digital curation an essential skill for the twenty-first 21st century learner. In answer to this need, we are seeing the emergence of suites of digital tools, dubbed “‘curation”’ tools, that meet the perceived need to locate, select, and synthesise Web content into open, user-organised collections. With information overload, a distinctive feature of the Internet, the ability to sift through the noise and dross to select high- quality, relevant content—selected on the basis of authority, currency, and fitness-for-purpose—is indeed a valuable skill. To examine this issue, we performed a case study in which a group of first- year Information and Communication Technology (ICT) students curated Web- based resources to inform an assessment task. We argue that curation platforms, such as Scoop.it, can be effective at cultivating the digital information literacy skills of higher education students. Digital Curation Traditionally, curation is a practice most commonly associated with the Art world— something reserved for the curators of art exhibitions and museums. However, in today’s world, digital curation tools, such as Scoop.it, make it possible for the amateur curator to collect and arrange content pertaining to a particular topic in a professional way. While definitions of curation in the context of the online environment have been proposed (Scime; Wheeler; Rosenbaum), these have not been aligned to the building of core digital information literacy competencies. The digital curator must give due consideration to the materials they choose to include in a digital collection, which necessitates engaging in a certain amount of metacognitive-cognitive reasoning. For the purpose of this article, the following definition of digital curation is proposed: “Curation can be summarised as an active process whereby content/artefacts are purposely selected to be preserved for future access. In the digital environment, additional elements can be leveraged, such as the inclusion of social media to disseminate collected content, the ability for other users to suggest content or leave comments and the critical evaluation and selection of the aggregated content”. (Antonio, Martin, and Stagg).This definition exemplifies the digital information literacy skills at work in the curation of digital content. It can be further broken down to elucidate the core competencies involved: “Curation can be summarised as an active process whereby content/artefacts are purposely selected.” (Antonio, Martin and Stagg). The user, who curates a particular topic, actively chooses the content they want to appear in their collection. The content must be relevant, up-to-date, and from reputable sources or databases. Achieving this requires a degree of information literacy both in terms of justifying the content that is selected and, conversely, that which is not. The second part of the definition is: “In the digital environment, additional elements can be leveraged, such as the inclusion of social media to disseminate collected content, the ability for other users to suggest content or leave comments.” (Antonio, Martin and Stagg). The digital curator is engaged and immersed in Web 2.0 technologies, ranging from the curation tools themselves to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The use of these tools thus requires at least basic digital literacy skills, which can potentially be further developed through continued engagement with them. Finally, curation involves the “human-mediated automation of content collection.” (Antonio, Martin and Stagg). The curator must accept or reject the content generated by the search algorithm, which necessitates a level of metacognitive-cognitive analysis to determine the value of a piece of content. While there are countless tools laying claim to the digital curation label, including Pinterest, Storify, and Pearltrees, Scoop.it was selected for this study, as the authors consider that it adheres most closely to the stated definition of curation. Scoop.it requires the user to define the sources from which content will be suggested and to make an informed decision about which pieces of content are appropriate for the collection they are creating. This requires the curator to critically evaluate the relevance, currency, and validity (information literacy) of the suggested materials. Additionally, users can include content from other Scoop.it pages, which is referred to as “re-scooping”. Scoop.it therefore relies on an active editorial role undertaken by the user in the selection, or rejection, of content. That is, the owner of a particular collection makes the final decision regarding what will appear on their Scoop.it page. The content is then displayed visually with the collection growing as new content is added. The successful use of Scoop.it depends on the curator’s ability to interpret and critically assess digital information. This study is thus built on the premise that the metacognitive processes inherent in the discovery of traditional, non-Web based information are transferable to the digital environment and Scoop.it can, as such, be utilised for the cultivation of digital information literacy skills. Digital Information Literacy According to the Laboratory for Innovative Technology in Education at the University of Houston, “digital information literacy” refers to the ability to effectively analyse and evaluate evidence; to analyse and evaluate alternate points of view; to synthesise and make connections between information and arguments; and to reflect critically, interpret, and draw conclusions based on analysis. Research suggests that the digital information literacy skills of higher education students are inadequate (White; Antonio, Tuffley and Martin) and that further training in how to assess the value, credibility, and reliability of information is required. According to the CIBER’s Information Behaviour report, students’ often believe that they are information literate (based on their ability to check the validity of sources) and yet, in reality, their methods may not be sufficiently rigorous to qualify. Students may not be adequately equipped with the information literacy skills required to retrieve and critically evaluate sources outside of those that are institutionally provided, such as textbooks and assigned readings. Moreover, a report by the Committee of Inquiry (Hughes) addresses both the digital divide among students and the responsibility of the higher education sector to ensure that students are equipped with the information literacy skills required to search, authenticate, and critically evaluate material from multiple sources. Throughout history, educators have been teaching traditional literacy skills—reading, writing, finding information in libraries—to students. However, in an increasingly digital society, where a wealth of information is available online, higher education institutions need to teach students how to apply these metacognitive skills—searching, retrieving, authenticating, critically evaluating, and attributing material—to the online environment. Many institutions continue to adhere to the age-old practice of exclusive use of peer-reviewed sources for assessment tasks (Antonio and Tuffley). We argue that this is an unnecessary limitation; when students are denied access to non- peer-reviewed Web -based resources, they are not developing the skills they need to determine the credibility of digital information. While it is not suggested that the solution is to simply allow students to use Wikipedia as their primary reference point, we acknowledge that printed texts and journal articles are not the only source of credible, authoritative information. The current study is thus built on the premise that students need opportunities to help them develop their digital information literacy skills and, in order to do this, they must interact with and utilise Web -based content. The desirability of using curation tools for developing students’ digital information literacy skills thus forms the foundation of this article. Method For the purpose of this study, a group of 258 first-year students enrolled in a Communications for ICT course curated digital content for the research component of an assessment task. These ICT students were selected, firstly, because a level of proficiency with digital technology was assumed and, secondly, because previous course evaluations indicated a desire on the part of the students for technology to be integrated into the course, as a traditional essay was deemed unsuitable for ICT students. The assignment consisted of two parts: a written essay about an emerging technology and an annotated bibliography. The students were required to create a Scoop.it presentation on a particular area of technology and curate content that would assist the essay-writing component of the task. On completion of the assessment task, the students submitted their Scoop.it URL to the course lecturer and were invited to complete an anonymous online survey. The survey consisted of 20 questions—eight addressed demographic factors, three were open- ended (qualitative), and nine multiple choice items specifically assessed the students’ beliefs about whether or not the digital curation task had helped them develop their digital information literacy skills. The analysis below pertains to these nine multiple -choice items. Results and Discussion Of the 258 students who completed the assessment task, 89 participated in the survey. The students were asked: “What were the primary benefits of using the curation tool Scoop.it?” The students were permitted to select multiple responses for this item: 69% of participants said the primary benefit of using Scoop.it was “Engaging with my topic”, while 62% said “Learning how to use a new tool”; and 53% said “Learning how to assess the value of Web- based content” was the primary benefit of the curation task. This suggests that the process of digital curation as described in this project could, potentially, be used to enhance students’ digital information literacy skills. It is noteworthy that the participants in this study were not given any specific instructions on how to assess online information before doing the assignment. They were presented with a one-page summary of what constitutes an annotated bibliography; however, a specific set of guidelines for the types of processes that could be considered indicative of digital information literacy skills was not provided. This might have included the date, for currency; author credentials; cross-checking with other sources etc. It is therefore remarkable that more than 50% of respondents believed that the act of curation had positively impacted their performance on this assessment task and enhanced their ability to critically assess the value of Web -based content. This strongly suggests that the simple act of being exposed to online information, and using it in a purposeful way (in this case to research an emerging technology), can aid the development of critical thinking skills. The students were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a series of eight statements, each of which addressed a specific component of digital information literacy. Responses were presented on a Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The students’ responses for strongly agree and agree and strongly disagree and disagree were conflated. Statement 1: The use of Scoop.it helped me develop my critical thinking skills. 44% of respondents agreed that the curation tool Scoop.it had helped them develop their critical thinking skills and 30% disagreed. Statement 2: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel I can make judgments about the value of digital content. 43% of respondents agreed and compared to 22% who disagreed that the curation tool Scoop.it had helped them make judgments about the value of digital content. Statement 3: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel I can synthesise and organise ideas and information. 58% of respondents agreed that curation via Scoop.it helped them synthesise and organise ideas and information, while and 14% disagreed. Statement 4: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel I can make judgments about the currency of information. 43% of respondents agreed and 21% disagreed that using Scoop.it had assisted them in their ability to make judgments about the currency of information. Statement 5: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel I can analyse content in depth. 37% of respondents agreed that the curation task had helped them analyse content in-depth. In contrast, 21% disagreed. Statements 1 to 5 each address a specific component of digital information literacy—the ability to think critically; to make judgments about the value of content; to synthesise and organise ideas and information; to make judgments about the currency of the information; and to analyse content in depth. In response to each of these five components, a greater percentage of students agreed than disagreed that the Scoop.it task helped them develop their digital information literacy skills. By its very nature, Scoop.it generates content based on the key-word parameters entered by the user when creating a given topic. The user is then responsible from for trawling through and evaluating this content in order to make an informed decision about what content they wish to appear on their Scoop.it page. As such, it is perhaps not particularly surprising that the students in this study indicated that the practice of curating content helped them develop their digital information literacy skills. It would, however, be interesting to explore whether or not these students were confident in their abilities prior to undertaking the Scoop.it task, as previous research (CIBER) suggests. Without this information, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the success, or otherwise, of the curation task for cultivating the digital information literacy skills of higher education students. Statement 6: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel able to cite Web-based information. 48% of respondents agreed that using Scoop.it had assisted them in citing Web-based information, while and 24% disagreed. Statement 7: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel confident in my ability to use Web -based content in my assignments. 52% of respondents believed that using Scoop.it to curate resources had positively contributed to their confidence in using web-based content for their assignments, compared to 17% who disagreed. The results of statements 6 and 7 indicate that further instruction in using and citing non- peer-reviewed online resources may be required; however, this will not be possible if higher education institutions continue to mandate the exclusive use of journal articles and textbooks, to the exclusion of other non-peer- reviewed Web-based information, such as blogs and wikis. More than half of the students were more confident using digital information following the Scoop.it task, which suggests that the opportunity to engage with the alternate sources of information generated by the Scoop.it platform (such as blogs and wikis and digital newspapers) encouraged the students to think critically about how such sources can be incorporated into academic writing. Statement 8: As a result of using Scoop.it, I feel I can distinguish between good and bad Web-based content. While 38% of students who responded to the survey said that using Scoop.it to curate content had enabled them to distinguish between high- and low- quality information, 25% did not believe that this was the case, and an additional 37% were neither confident nor unconfident about distinguishing between good and bad Web-based content. In keeping with previous research (White), the results of this case study suggest that, while many students believed that the Scoop.it task encouraged them to think critically about the quality of non- peer-reviewed digital resources, they are were not necessarily confident in their ability to distinguish good from poor content. The implication, as Hughes contends, is that there is a need for educators to ensure that higher education students are equipped with these metacognitive-cognitive skills prior to leaving university, as it is imperative that we produce graduates who can function in an increasingly digital society. Conclusion The rising tide of digital information in the twenty-first 21st century necessitates the development of new approaches to making sense of the information found on the World Wide Web. Such is the exponentially expanding volume of this information on the Web—so-called ‘big data’—, that, unless a new breed of tools for sifting and arranging information is made available to those who use the Web for information- gathering, their capacity to deal with the volume will be overwhelmed. The new breed of digital curation tools, such as Scoop.it, are a rational response to this emerging issue. We have made the case that, by using digital curation tools to make sense of data, users are able to discern, at least to some extent, the quality and reliability of information. While this is not a substitute for peer-reviewed, academically rigorous sources, digital curation tools arguably have a supplementary role in an educational context—perhaps as a preliminary method for gathering general information about a topic area before diving deeper with peer-reviewed articles in the second pass. This dual perspective may prove to be a beneficial approach, as it has the virtue of considering both the breadth and depth of a topic. Even without formal instruction on assessing the value of Web content, no less than 53% of participants felt the primary benefit of using the digital curation tool was assessing the value of such content. This result strongly indicates the potential benefits of combining digital curation tools with formal, content-evaluation instruction. This represents a promising avenue for future research.References Antonio, A., N. Martin, and A. Stagg. “Engaging Higher Education Students via Digital Curation.” Future Challenges, Sustainable Futures (2012). 10 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/wellington12/2012/pagec16a.html›. Antonio, A., D. Tuffley, and N. Martin. “Creating Active Engagement and Cultivating Information Literacy Skills via Scoop.it.” Electric Dreams (2013). 4 May 2015 ‹http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney13/program/proceedings.pdf›. Antonio, A., and D. Tuffley. “Creating Educational Networking Opportunities with Scoop.it.” Journal of Creative Communications 9.2 (2014): 185-97. CIBER. “Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future.” JISC (2008). 5 May 2015 ‹http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=15879›. Hughes, A. “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World.” JISC (2009). 6 May 2015 ‹http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/generalpublications/2009/heweb2.aspx›. Laboratory for Innovative Technology in Education. “New Technologies and 21st Century Skills.” (2013). 5 May 2015 ‹http://newtech.coe.uh.edu/›. Rosenbaum, S. “Why Content Curation Is Here to Stay.” Mashable 3 Mar. 2010. 7 May 2015 ‹http://mashable.com/2010/05/03/content-curation-creation/›. Scime, E. “The Content Strategist as Digital Curator.” Dopedata 8 Dec. 2009. 30 May 2012 ‹http://www.dopedata.com/2009/12/08/the-content-strategits-as-digital-curator/›. Wheeler, S. “The Great Collective.” 2011. ‹http://stevewheeler.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/great-collective.html#!/2011/07/great-collective.html›. White, D. “Digital Visitors and Residents: Progress Report.” JISC (2012). 28 May 2012 ‹http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/vandr.html›.

Introduction In the wake of the disaster of World War I, the Surrealists formulated a hostile critique of the novel that identified its limitations in expressing the depth of the mind's faculties and the fragmentation of the psyche after catastrophic events. From this position of crisis, the Surrealists undertook a series of experimental innovations in form, structure, and style in an attempt to renew the genre. This article examines how the praxis of shock is deployed in a number of Surrealist city novels as a conduit for revolt against a society that grew increasingly mechanised in the climate of post-war regeneration. It seeks to counter the contemporary view that Surrealist city dérives (drifts) represent an intriguing yet ultimately benign method of urban research. By reconsidering its origins in response to a world catastrophe, this article emphasises the Surrealist novel’s binding of the affective properties of shock to the dream-awakening dialectic at the heart of the political position of Surrealism. The Surrealist City Novel Today it has almost become a truism to assert that there is a causal link between the catastrophic devastation wrought by the events of the two World Wars and the ideology of rupture that characterised the iconoclasms of the Modernist avant-gardes. Yet, as we progress into the twenty-first century, it is timely to recognise that new generations are rediscovering canonical and peripheral texts of this era and refracting them through a prism of contemporary preoccupations. In many ways, the revisions of today’s encounters with that past era suggest we have travelled some distance from the rawness of such catastrophic events. One post-war body of work recently subjected to view via an unexpected route is the remarkable array of Surrealist city novels set in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, representing a spectrum of experimental texts by such authors as André Breton, Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Philippe Soupault, and Michel Leiris. Over the past decade, these works have become recuperated in the Anglophone context as exemplary instances of ludic engagement with the city. This is due in large part to the growing surge of interest in psychogeography, an urban research method concerned with the influence that geographical environments exert over the emotions and behaviours of individuals, and a concern for tracing the literary genealogies of walking and writing in broad sweeping encyclopaedic histories and guidebook style accounts (for prominent examples see Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust and Merlin Coverley’s Psychogeography). Yet as Surrealist novels continue to garner renewed interest for their erotic intrigue, their strolling encounters with the unconscious or hidden facets of the city, and as precursors to the apparently more radical practice of Situationist psychogeography, this article suggests that something vital is missing. By neglecting the revolutionary significance that the Surrealists placed upon the street and its inextricable connection to the shock of the marvellous, I suggest that we have arrived at a point of diminished appreciation of the praxis of the dream-awakening dialectic at the heart of Surrealist politics. With the movement firmly lodged in the popular imagination as concerned merely with the art of play and surprise, the Surrealists’ sensorial conception of the city as embedded within a much larger critique of the creators of “a sterile and dead world” (Rasmussen 372) is lost. This calls into question to what extent we can now relate to the urgency with which avant-gardes like the Surrealists responded to the disaster of war in their call for “the revolution of the subject, a revolution that destroyed identity and released the fantastic” (372). At the same time, a re-evaluation of the Surrealist city novel as a significant precursor to the psychogeograhical dérive (drift) can prove instructive in locating the potential of walking, in order to function as a form of praxis (defined here as lived practice in opposition to theory) that goes beyond its more benign construction as the “gentle art” of getting lost. The Great Shock To return to the origins of Surrealism is to illuminate the radical intentions of the movement. The enormous shock that followed the Great War represented, according to Roger Shattuck, “a profound organic reaction that convulsed the entire system with vomiting, manic attacks, and semi-collapse” (9). David Gascoyne considers 1919, the inaugural year of Surrealist activity, as “a year of liquidation, the end of everything but also of paroxysmic death-birth, incubating seeds of renewal” (17). It was at this time that André Breton and his collaborator Philippe Soupault came together at the Hôtel des Grands Hommes in Paris to conduct their early experimental research. As the authors took poetic license with the psychoanalytical method of automatic writing, their desire to unsettle the latent content of the unconscious as it manifests in the spontaneous outpourings of dream-like recollections resulted in the first collection of Surrealist texts, The Magnetic Fields (1920). As Breton recalls: Completely occupied as I still was with Freud at that time, and familiar with his methods of examination which I had had some slight occasion to use on some patients during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what we were trying to obtain from them, namely, a monologue spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the slightest inhibition and which was, as closely as possible, akin to spoken thought. (Breton, Manifesto 22–23) Despite their debts to psychoanalytical methods, the Surrealists sought radically different ends from therapeutic goals in their application. Rather than using analysis to mitigate the pathologies of the psyche, Breton argued that such methods should instead be employed to liberate consciousness in ways that released the individual from “the reign of logic” (Breton, Manifesto 11) and the alienating forces of a mechanised society. In the same manifesto, Breton links his critique to a denunciation of the novel, principally the realist novel which dominated the literary landscape of the nineteenth-century, for its limitations in conveying the power of the imagination and the depths of the mind’s faculties. Despite these protestations, the Surrealists were unable to completely jettison the novel and instead launched a series of innovations in form, structure, and style in an attempt to renew the genre. As J.H. Matthews suggests, “Being then, as all creative surrealism must be, the expression of a mood of experimentation, the Surrealist novel probes not only the potentialities of feeling and imagination, but also those of novelistic form” (Matthews 6). When Nadja appeared in 1928, Breton was not the first Surrealist to publish a novel. However, this work remains the most well-known example of its type in the Anglophone context. Largely drawn from the author’s autobiographical experiences, it recounts the narrator’s (André’s) obsessive infatuation with a mysterious, impoverished and unstable young woman who goes by the name of Nadja. The pair’s haunted and uncanny romance unfolds during their undirected walks, or dérives, through the streets of Paris, the city acting as an affective register of their encounters. The “intellectual seduction” comes to an abrupt halt (Breton, Nadja 108), however, when Nadja does in fact go truly mad, disappearing from the narrator’s life when she is committed to an asylum. André makes no effort to seek her out and after launching into a diatribe vehemently attacking the institutions that administer psychiatric treatment, nonchalantly resumes the usual concerns of his everyday life. At a formal level, Breton’s unconventional prose indeed stirs many minor shocks and tremors in the reader. The insertion of temporally off-kilter photographs and surreal drawings are intended to supersede naturalistic description. However, their effect is to create a form of “negative indexicality” (Masschelein) that subtly undermines the truth claims of the novel. Random coincidences charged through with the attractive force of desire determine the plot while the compressed dream-like narrative strives to recount only those facts of “violently fortuitous character” (Breton, Nadja 19). Strikingly candid revelations perpetually catch the reader off guard. But it is in the novel’s treatment of the city, most specifically, in which we can recognise the evolution of Surrealism’s initial concern for the radically subversive and liberatory potential of the dream into a form of praxis that binds the shock of the marvellous to the historical materialism of Marx and Engels. This praxis unfolds in the novel on a number of levels. By placing its events firmly at the level of the street, Breton privileges the anti-heroic realm of everyday life over the socially hierarchical domain of the bourgeois domestic interior favoured in realist literature. More significantly, the sites of the city encountered in the novel act as repositories of collective memory with the power to rupture the present. As Margaret Cohen comprehensively demonstrates in her impressive study Profane Illumination, the great majority of sites that the narrator traverses in Nadja reveal connections in previous centuries to instances of bohemian activity, violent insurrection or revolutionary events. The enigmatic statue of Étienne Dolet, for example, to which André is inexplicably drawn on his city walks and which produces a sensation of “unbearable discomfort” (25), commemorates a sixteenth-century scholar and writer of love poetry condemned as a heretic and burned at the Place Maubert for his non-conformist attitudes. When Nadja is suddenly gripped by hallucinations and imagines herself among the entourage of Marie-Antoinette, “multiple ghosts of revolutionary violence descend on the Place Dauphine from all sides” (Cohen 101). Similarly, a critique of capitalism emerges in the traversal of those marginal and derelict zones of the city, such as the Saint-Ouen flea market, which become revelatory of the historical cycles of decay and ruination that modernity seeks to repress through its faith in progress. It was this poetic intuition of the machinations of historical materialism, in particular, that captured the attention of Walter Benjamin in his 1929 “Surrealism” essay, in which he says of Breton that: He can boast an extraordinary discovery: he was the first to perceive the revolutionary energies that appear in the “outmoded”—in the first iron constructions, the first factory buildings, the earliest photos, objects that have begun to be extinct, grand pianos, the dresses of five years ago, fashionable restaurants when the vogue has begun to ebb from them. The relation of these things to revolution—no one can have a more exact concept of it than these authors. (210) In the same passage, Benjamin makes passing reference to the Passage de l’Opéra, the nineteenth-century Parisian arcade threatened with demolition and eulogised by Louis Aragon in his Surrealist anti-novel Paris Peasant (published in 1926, two years earlier than Nadja). Loosely structured around a series of walks, Aragon’s book subverts the popular guidebook literature of the period by inventorying the arcade’s quotidian attractions in highly lyrical and imagistic prose. As in Nadja, a concern for the “outmoded” underpins the praxis which informs the politics of the novel although here it functions somewhat differently. As transitional zones on the cusp of redevelopment, the disappearing arcades attract Aragon for their liminal status, becoming malleable dreamscapes where an ontological instability renders them ripe for eruptions of the marvellous. Such sites emerge as “secret repositories of several modern myths,” and “the true sanctuaries of a cult of the ephemeral”. (Aragon 14) City as Dreamscape Contemporary literature increasingly reads Paris Peasant through the lens of psychogeography, and not unproblematically. In his brief guide to psychogeography, British writer Merlin Coverley stresses Aragon’s apparent documentary or ethnographical intentions in describing the arcades. He suggests that the author “rails against the destruction of the city” (75), positing the novel as “a handbook for today’s breed of psychogeographer” (76). The nuances of Aragon’s dream-awakening dialectic, however, are too easily effaced in such an assessment which overlooks the novel’s vertiginous and hyperbolic prose as it consistently approaches an unreality in its ambivalent treatment of the arcades. What is arguably more significant than any documentary concern is Aragon’s commitment to the broader Surrealist quest to transform reality by undermining binary oppositions between waking life and the realm of dreams. As Hal Foster’s reading of the arcades in Surrealism insists: This gaze is not melancholic; the surrealists do not cling obsessively to the relics of the nineteenth-century. Rather it uncovers them for the purposes of resistance through re-enchantment. If we can grasp this dialectic of ruination, recovery, and resistance, we will grasp the intimated ambition of the surrealist practice of history. (166) Unlike Aragon, Breton defended the political position of Surrealism throughout the ebbs and flows of the movement. This notion of “resistance through re-enchantment” retained its significance for Breton as he clung to the radical importance of dreams and the imagination, creative autonomy, and individual freedom over blind obedience to revolutionary parties. Aragon’s allegiance to communism led him to surrender the poetic intoxications of Surrealist prose in favour of the more sombre and austere tone of social realism. By contrast, other early Surrealists like Philippe Soupault contributed novels which deployed the praxis of shock in a less explicitly dialectical fashion. Soupault’s Last Nights of Paris (1928), in particular, responds to the influence of the war in producing a crisis of identity among a generation of young men, a crisis projected or transferred onto the city streets in ways that are revelatory of the author’s attunement to how “places and environment have a profound influence on memory and imagination” (Soupault 91). All the early Surrealists served in the war in varying capacities. In Soupault’s case, the writer “was called up in 1916, used as a guinea pig for a new typhoid vaccine, and spent the rest of the war in and out of hospital. His close friend and cousin, René Deschamps, was killed in action” (Read 22). Memories of the disaster of war assume a submerged presence in Soupault’s novel, buried deep in the psyche of the narrator. Typically, it is the places and sites of the city that act as revenants, stimulating disturbing memories to drift back to the surface which then suffuse the narrator in an atmosphere of melancholy. During the novel’s numerous dérives, the narrator’s detective-like pursuit of his elusive love-object, the young streetwalker Georgette, the tracking of her near-mute artist brother Octave, and the following of the ringleader of a criminal gang, all appear as instances of compensation. Each chase invokes a desire to recover a more significant earlier loss that persistently eludes the narrator. When Soupault’s narrator shadows Octave on a walk that ventures into the city’s industrial zone, recollections of the disaster of war gradually impinge upon his aleatory perambulations. His description evokes two men moving through the trenches together: The least noise was a catastrophe, the least breath a great terror. We walked in the eternal mud. Step by step we sank into the thickness of night, lost as if forever. I turned around several times to look at the way we had come but night alone was behind us. (80) In an article published in 2012, Catherine Howell identifies Last Nights of Paris as “a lyric celebration of the city as spectacle” (67). At times, the narrator indeed surrenders himself to the ocular pleasures of modernity. Observing the Eiffel Tower, he finds delight in “indefinitely varying her silhouette as if I were examining her through a kaleidoscope” (Soupault 30). Yet it is important to stress the role that shock plays in fissuring this veneer of spectacle, especially those evocations of the city that reveal an unnerving desensitisation to the more violent manifestations of the metropolis. Reading a newspaper, the narrator remarks that “the discovery of bags full of limbs, carefully sawed and chopped up” (23) signifies little more than “a commonplace crime” (22). Passing the banks of the Seine provokes “recollection of an evening I had spent lying on the parapet of the Pont Marie watching several lifesavers trying in vain to recover the body of an unfortunate suicide” (10). In his sensitivity to the unassimilable nature of trauma, Soupault intuits a phenomenon which literary trauma theory argues profoundly limits the text’s claim to representation, knowledge, and an autonomous subject. In this sense, Soupault appears less committed than Breton to the idea that the after-effects of shock might be consciously distilled into a form of praxis. Yet this prolongation of an unintegrated trauma still posits shock as a powerful vehicle to critique a society attempting to heal its wounds without addressing their underlying causes. This is typical of Surrealism’s efforts to “dramatize the physical and psychological trauma of a war that everyone wanted to forget so that it would not be swept away too quickly” (Lyford 4). Woman and Radical Madness In her 2007 study, Surrealist Masculinities, Amy Lyford focuses upon the regeneration and nation building project that characterised post-war France and argues that Surrealist tactics sought to dismantle an official discourse that promoted ideals of “robust manhood and female maternity” (4). Viewed against this backdrop, the trope of madness in Surrealism is central to the movement’s disruptive strategies. In Last Nights of Paris, a lingering madness simmers beneath the surface of the text like an undertow, while in other Surrealist texts the lauding of madness, specifically female hysteria, is much more explicit. Indeed, the objectification of the madwoman in Surrealism is among the most problematic aspects of its praxis of shock and one that raises questions over to what extent, if at all, Surrealism and feminism can be reconciled, leading some critics to define the movement as inherently misogynistic. While certainly not unfounded, this critique fails to answer why a broad spectrum of women artists have been drawn to the movement. By contrast, a growing body of work nuances the complexities of the “blinds spots” (Lusty 2) in Surrealism’s relationship with women. Contemporary studies like Natalya Lusty’s Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Katharine Conley’s earlier Automatic Woman both afford greater credit to Surrealism’s female practitioners in redefining their subject position in ways that trouble and unsettle the conventional understanding of women’s role in the movement. The creative and self-reflexive manipulation of madness, for example, proved pivotal to the achievements of Surrealist women. In her short autobiographical novella, Down Below (1944), Leonora Carrington recounts the disturbing true experience of her voyage into madness sparked by the internment of her partner and muse, fellow Surrealist Max Ernst, in a concentration camp in 1940. Committed to a sanatorium in Santander, Spain, Carrington was treated with the seizure inducing drug Cardiazol. Her text presents a startling case study of therapeutic maltreatment that is consistent with Bretonian Surrealism’s critique of the use of psycho-medical methods for the purposes of regulating and disciplining the individual. As well as vividly recalling her intense and frightening hallucinations, Down Below details the author’s descent into a highly paranoid state which, somewhat perversely, heightens her sense of agency and control over her environment. Unable to discern boundaries between her internal reality and that of the external world, Carrington develops a delusional and inflated sense of her ability to influence the city of Madrid: In the political confusion and the torrid heat, I convinced myself that Madrid was the world’s stomach and that I had been chosen for the task of restoring that digestive organ to health […] I believed that I was capable of bearing that dreadful weight and of drawing from it a solution for the world. The dysentery I suffered from later was nothing but the illness of Madrid taking shape in my intestinal tract. (12–13) In this way, Carrington’s extraordinarily visceral memoir embodies what can be described as the Surrealist woman’s “double allegiance” (Suleiman 5) to the praxis of shock. On the one hand, Down Below subversively harnesses the affective qualities of madness in order to manifest textual disturbances and to convey the author’s fierce rebellion against societal constraints. At the same time, the work reveals a more complex and often painful representational struggle inherent in occupying the position of both the subject experiencing madness and the narrator objectively recalling its events, displaying a tension not present in the work of the male Surrealists. The memoir concludes on an ambivalent note as Carrington describes finally becoming “disoccultized” of her madness, awakening to “the mystery with which I was surrounded and which they all seemed to take pleasure in deepening around me” (53). Notwithstanding its ambivalence, Down Below typifies the political and historical dimensions of Surrealism’s struggle against internal and external limits. Yet as early as 1966, Surrealist scholar J.H. Matthews was already cautioning against reaching that point where the term Surrealist “loses any meaning and becomes, as it is for too many, synonymous with ‘strange,’ ‘weird,’ or even ‘fanciful’” (5–6). To re-evaluate the praxis of shock in the Surrealist novel, then, is to seek to reinstate Surrealism as a movement that cannot be reduced to vague adjectives or to mere aesthetic principles. It is to view it as an active force passionately engaged with the pressing social, cultural, and political problems of its time. While the frequent nods to Surrealist methods in contemporary literary genealogies and creative urban research practices such as psychogeography are a testament to its continued allure, the growing failure to read Surrealism as political is one of the more contradictory symptoms of the expanding temporal distance from the catastrophic events from which the movement emerged. As it becomes increasingly common to draw links between disaster, creativity, and renewal, the shifting sands of the reception of Surrealism are a reminder of the need to resist domesticating movements born from such circumstances in ways that blunt their critical faculties and dull the awakening power of their praxis of shock. To do otherwise is to be left with little more than cheap thrills. References Aragon, Louis. Paris Peasant (1926). Trans. Simon Watson Taylor. Boston: Exact Change, 1994. Benjamin, Walter. “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” (1929). Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part I, 1927–1930. Eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap P, 2005. Breton, André. “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924). Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1990. ———. Nadja (1928). Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Grove P, 1960. Breton, André, and Philippe Soupault. The Magnetic Fields (1920). Trans. David Gascoyne. London: Atlas P, 1985. Carrington, Leonora. Down Below (1944). Chicago: Black Swan P, 1983. Cohen, Margaret. Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1993. Conley, Katharine. Automatic Woman: The Representation of Woman in Surrealism. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1996. Coverley, Merlin. Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2010. Foster, Hal. Compulsive Beauty. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1993. Gascoyne, David. “Introduction.” The Magnetic Fields (1920) by André Breton and Philippe Soupault. Trans. David Gascoyne. London: Atlas P, 1985. Howell, Catherine. “City of Night: Parisian Explorations.” Public: Civic Spectacle 45 (2012): 64–77. Lusty, Natalya. Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Lyford, Amy. Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2007. Masschelein, Anneleen. “Hand in Glove: Negative Indexicality in André Breton’s Nadja and W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.” Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Ed. Lise Patt. Los Angeles, CA: ICI P, 2007. 360–87. Matthews, J.H. Surrealism and the Novel. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1996. Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt. “The Situationist International, Surrealism and the Difficult Fusion of Art and Politics.” Oxford Art Journal 27.3 (2004): 365–87. Read, Peter. “Poets out of Uniform.” Book Review. The Times Literary Supplement. 15 Mar. 2002: 22. Shattuck, Roger. “Love and Laughter: Surrealism Reappraised.” The History of Surrealism. Ed. Maurice Nadeau. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. 11–34. Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London: Verso, 2002. Soupault, Philippe. Last Nights of Paris (1928). Trans. William Carlos Williams. Boston: Exact Change, 1992. Suleiman, Susan Robin. “Surrealist Black Humour: Masculine/Feminine.” Papers of Surrealism 1 (2003): 1–11. 20 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal1›.

The ProjectThe Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. In particular, it explores ways that creative life-course interventions might allow children in welfare dependent families to construct alternative realities for themselves and alternative views of their future. Formed through an alliance between a key Western Australian social welfare not-for-profit organisation, St Vincent de Paul WA (SVDPWA and also, in the context of volunteers, ‘Vinnies’), and Edith Cowan University, the project aims to address the organisation’s vision to provide “a hand up” (St Vincent 1) rather than ‘a hand out’, so that people can move forward with their lives without becoming dependent upon welfare. Prior to the start of the research, SVDPWA already had a whole of family focus in its outreach to poverty-impacted families including offering homework clubs and school holiday children’s camps run by their youth services division. Selected families supported by SVDPWA have been invited to participate in an in-depth interview for the project (Seidman), partly so that researchers can help identify “turning points” (King et al.) that might disrupt the communication of welfare dependency and inform more generalised intervention strategies; but also in order to explore the response to creative interventions within the children’s daily lives, including investigation of how strategies the child (and family) employed might help them to imagine alternative realities and futures for themselves. This paper closely examines the way that one 10 year old child from a non-English-speaking background family has employed alternative ways of viewing her life, through the camp program provided by the Linkage Partner St Vincent de Paul WA, and through reading novels such as Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket Unfortunate Incidents series. Such activities help fuel hope for a different future which, in Snyder’s view has “two main components: the ability to plan pathways to desired goals despite obstacles, and agency or motivation to use those pathways” (Carr 96).The FamilyKani is a 10 year old girl living in a migrant sole parent family. The parents had moved to Australia from Bangladesh on student visas when Kani was 5 years old, however due to domestic violence the mother had recently separated from her husband, first into a women’s refuge then into private rental accommodation. The mother is in protracted negotiations with the Department of Immigration for permanent residency, which she had to recommence due to her separation. There are also family court negotiations for child custody and which restrict her leaving Australia. She receives no government benefits and minimal child support, works fulltime and pays full childcare fees for Kani’s 3 year old brother Adil and full primary school fees for Kani at a local religious school, given that Kani had experienced bullying and social aggression in previous schools. Kani was referred to SVDPWA by the women’s refuge and she began attending SVDPWA Kids’ Camps thereafter. (NB: Whilst the relevant specifics of this description are accurate, non-relevant material has been added or changed to protect the child’s and family’s identity.)Creative Life-Course InterventionsThe creative engagement that Kani experienced in the Hand Up project is constructed as one component in a larger model of creativity which includes “intrapersonal insights and interpretations, which often live only within the person who created them,” (Kaufman and Beghetto 4). Such an approach also acknowledges Csikszentmihalyi’s work on the concept of “flow”, whereby optimal experiences can result from positive absorption in a creative activity. Relevant Australian research such as the YouthWorx project has identified participatory engagement in creativity as one means of engaging with young people at risk (Hopkins; Podkalicka). The creative interventions in the Hand Up project take two forms; one is the predesigned and participatory creative activities delivered as part of the SVDPWA Kids’ Camp program. The second is a personalised intervention, identified by way of an in-depth interview with the child and parent, and is wholly dependent on the interests expressed by the child, the ability for the family to engage in that activity, and the budget restraints of the project.Reading as an Alternative RealityA key creative intervention embedded in the Hand Up Linkage project is determined by the interests expressed by the child during their in-depth interview. Also taken into account is the ability for the family to engage in that activity. For example, Kani’s mother works fulltime at a location which is an hour by public transport from home and does not have a car or driver’s license, so the choice of creative opportunity was restricted to a home-based activity or a weekend activity accessible by public transport. A further restriction is the limited budget available for this intervention in the project, along with an imperative that such interventions should be equitable between families and within families, and be of benefit to all the children in addition to the interviewed child. Fortunately, transport was not an issue because Kani expressed her interest very emphatically as books and reading. When asked what she liked doing most in life, Kani replied: “Reading. I like reading like big books, like really thick books and stuff. I have like 30 in my room. Like those really big books. And I'm starting to read Harry Potter now. Okay, the books that I like reading is Harry Potter, the entire set Roald Dahl books and the Baudelaire Orphans by Lemony Snicket. I like reading David Walliams. I like Little Women” (Kani). Her excitement in listing these books further animated the interview and was immediately emphasised because Kani took the interviewer (second author) and her mother into her room to demonstrate the truth of her statement. When asked again at the close of the interview “what’s a favourite thing that makes you feel good inside?” Kani’s answer was “Family and reading”. The energy and enthusiasm with which Kani talked about her reading and books made these the obvious choice as her creative intervention. However, participation in book-related courses or after-school activities was restricted by Kani’s mother’s transportation limitations. Taking into account how the financial constraints of her sole parent family impacted upon their capacity to buy books, and the joy that Kani clearly experienced from having books of her own, it was decided that a book voucher would be provided for her at a local bookstore easily accessible by bus. The research team negotiated with the bookstore to try to ensure that Kani could choose a book a month until the funds were expended so that the intervention would last most of the coming six months.What Kani was expressing in her love of books was partly related to the raw material they provide that help her to imagine the alternative reality of the fictional worlds she loved reading about. Kani’s passionate engagement in these alternative realities reflects theories of narrative immersion in one’s chosen medium: “One key element of an enjoyable media experience is that it takes individuals away from their mundane reality and into a story world. We call the process of becoming fully engaged in a story transportation into a narrative world” (Green et al. 311–12). Kani said: “Reading is everything, yeah. Like getting more books and like those kind of things and making me read more... ‘cause I really love reading, it’s like watching a movie. Do you know ... have you watched Harry Potter? … the book is nothing like the movie, nothing, they’ve missed so many parts so the book is more enjoyable than the movie. That’s why I like reading more. ‘Cause like I have my own adventures in my head.” This process of imagining her own adventures in her head echoes Green and Brock’s explanation of the process of being transported into alternative realities through reading as a result of “an integrative melding of attention, imagery, and feelings” (701).Constructing Alternative Realities for Herself and an Alternative Possible FutureLike many 10 year olds, Kani has a challenging time at school, exacerbated by the many school moves brought about by changes in her family circumstances. Even though she is in a school which supports her family’s faith, her experience is one of being made to feel an outsider: “all the boys and the girls in our class are like friends, they’re like ... it’s a group. But I’m not in their group. I have my friends in other classes and they’re [my classmates are] not happy with it, that’s why they tease me and stuff. And like whenever I play with my friends they’re like ... yeah”. The interviewer asked her what she liked about her special friends. “They’re fun. Creative like, enjoyable, yeah, those kind of things …they have lots of cool ideas like plans and stuff like that.” As Hawkins et al. argue, the capacity to develop and maintain good relationships with peers (and parents) is a key factor in helping children be resilient. It is likely that Kani also shares her creativity, ideas and plans with her friendship group as part of her shared contribution to its existence.A domestication of technology framework (Silverstone et al.) can be useful as part of the explanation for Kani’s use of imaginative experience in building her social relationships. Silverstone et al. argue that technology is domesticated via four interlocking activities: ‘appropriation’ (where it embraced, purchased, taken into the household), ‘objectification’ (where a physical space is found for it), ‘incorporation’ (the spaces through which it is inserted into the everyday activities of the household or users) and ‘conversion’ (whereby the experience and fact of the technology use – or lack of use – becomes material through which family members express themselves and their priorities to the social world beyond the home). Arguably, Kani ‘converts’ her engagement with books and associated imaginative experiences into social currency through which she builds relationships with the like-minded children with whom she makes friends. At the same time, those children feed into her ideas of what constitutes a creative approach to life and help energise her plans for the future.Kani’s views of her future (at the age of 10) are influenced by the traditional occupations favoured by high achieving students, and by the fact that her parents are themselves educational high achievers, entering Australia on student visas. “I want to be a doctor … my cousin wants to be a doctor too. Mum said lawyer but we want to be a doctors anywhere. We want to be a ...me and my cousin want to be doctors like ...we like being doctors and like helping people.” Noting the pressures on the household of the possible fees and costs of high school, Kani adds “I need to work even harder so I get a scholarship. ‘Cause like my mum can’t pay for like four terms, you know how much money that will be? Yeah.” Kani’s follow-on statement, partly to justify why she wants “a big house”, adds some poignancy to her reference to a cousin (one of many), who still lives in Bangladesh and whom Kani hasn’t seen since 2011. “Like I want to live with my mum and like yeah and like I live with my cousin too because like I have a cousin ... she’s a girl, yeah? And like yeah, she’s in Bangladesh, I haven’t seen her for very long time so yeah.” In the absence of her extended family overseas, Kani adds her pets to those with whom she shares her family life: “And my mum and my uncle and then our cat Dobby. I named it [for Harry Potter’s house elf] ...and the goldfish. The goldfish are Twinkle, Glitter, Glow and Bobby.”Kani’s mum notes the importance of an opportunity to dream a future into existence: “maybe she’s too young or she hasn’t really kind of made up her mind as yet as to what she wants to do in life but just going out and just you know doing stuff and just giving them the opportunity”. The SVDPWA Kids’ Camp is an important part of this “they [the refuge] kind of told us like ‘there’s this child camp’. … I was like yeah, sure, why not?” Providing Alternative Spaces at the SVDPWA Kids’ CampThe SVDPWA Kids’ Camps themselves constitute a creative intervention in offering visions of alternative realities to their young participants. Their benefit is delivered via anticipation, as well as the reality of the camp experience. As Kani said “I forget all about the things that’s just past, like all the hard things, you know like I go through and stuff and it just makes me forget it and it makes me like think about camp, things we’re going to do at camp”. The Kids’ Camps take place three times a year and are open to children aged between 8 and 13, with follow-on Teen Camps for older age groups. Once a child is part of the program she or he can continue to participate in successive camps while they are in the target age group. Consisting of a four day activity-based experience in a natural setting, conducted by Vinnies Youth and staffed by key SVDPWA employees and Youth volunteers, the camps offer children a varied schedule of activities in a safe and supported environment, with at least one volunteer for every two child participants. The camps are specifically made available to children from disadvantaged families and are provided virtually free to participants. (A nominal $10 enrolment fee is applied per child). Kani was initially reticent about attending her first camp. She explained: “I was shy, scared because I sleep with my mum so it’s different sleeping without Mum. I know it’s kind of embarrassing ‘cause, sleeping with my mum like, but I just get scared at night”. Kani went on to explain how the camp facilitators were able to allay her fears “I knew I was safe. And I had people I could talk to so yeah ...like the leader”. As one Vinnies Youth volunteer explains, the potential of offering children like Kani time out from the pressures of everyday life is demonstrated when “towards the end of every camp we always see that progression of, they came out of their shell … So I think it’s really just a journey for everyone and it’s understandable if they did feel stuck. It’s about what we can do to help them progress forward” (VY1). Kani was empowered to envision an alternative idea of herself at camp, one which was unexpectedly intuited by the research interviewer.When the interviewer closed the interview by expressing that it had been lovely to talk to Kani as she was “such a bundle of energy”, Kani grinned and replied “Do you know the warm fuzzies, yeah? [When positive thoughts about others are exchanged at the SVDPWA Kids’ Camp]. The bundle ... all the leaders say I’m a bundle of happiness”. The Kids’ Camp provided Kani with a fun and positive alternative reality to the one she experienced as a child handling the considerable challenges experienced by social isolation, domestic violence and parental separation, including the loss of her home, diminished connection to her overseas extended family, legal custody issues, and several school changes. Taking the role of cultural intermediary, by offering the possibility of alternative realities via their camp, SVDPWA offered Kani a chance that supported her work on creating a range of enticing possible futures for herself. This was in contrast to some commercial holiday camp experiences which might more centrally use their “cultural authority as shapers of taste and … new consumerist dispositions” (Nixon and Du Gay 497). Even so, Kani’s interview made clear that her experience with the SVDPWA Kids’ Camps were only part of the ways in which she was crafting a range of possible visions for her adult life, adding to this her love of books and reading, her fun, creative friends, and her vision for a successful future which would reunite her with her distant cousin and offer security to her mother. ConclusionUnderstandably, Kani at 10 lacks the critical insight required to interpret how her imaginative and creative life provides the raw materials from which she crafts her visions for the future. Further, the interviewer is careful not to introduce words like ‘creative’ into her work with the participant families, so that when Kani used it to talk about her friends she did so drawing upon her own store of descriptions and not as a result of having recently been reminded of creativity as a desirable attribute. The interview with this young person indicates, however, how greatly she values the imaginative and cultural inputs into her life and how she converts them in ways which help ensure access to further such creative currency. Apart from referencing her reading in the naming of her cat, Kani’s vision for herself reflects both the conventional idea of success (“a doctor”) and a very specific idea of her future living as an adult in house large enough to include her mum and her cousin.Kani’s love of reading, her pleasure in books, her choice of friends and her aspirations to scholarly excellence all offer her ways to escape the restricted options available to families who seek support from organisations such as SVDPWA. At the same time the Kids’ Camps themselves, like Kani’s books, provide an escape from the difficulties of the present. Kani’s appropriation of the cultural raw materials that she draws into her life, and her conversion of these inputs into a creative, social currency, offers her an opportunity to anticipate a better future, and some tools she can use to help bring it into existence.ReferencesCarr, A. Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Human Strengths. 2nd ed. Hove, UK: Routledge, 2011.Csikszentmihalyi, M. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.Green, M., and T. Brock. “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (2000): 701–21.———, T. Brock, and G. Kaufman. “Understanding Media Enjoyment: The Role of Transportation into Narrative Worlds." Communication Theory 14.4 (2004): 311–27.Hawkins, J.D., R. Kosterman, R.F. Catalano, K.G. Hill, and R.D. Abbott. “Promoting Positive Adult Functioning through Social Development Intervention in Childhood: Long-Term Effects from the Seattle Social Development Project.” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 159.1 (2005): 25. Hopkins, L. “YouthWorx: Increasing Youth Participation through Media Production.” Journal of Sociology 47.2 (2011): 181–197. doi: 10.1177/1440783310386827.Kani. In-depth interview, de-identified, 2016.Kaufman, J. C., and R.A. Beghetto. “Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity.” Review of General Psychology 13.1 (2009): 1–12. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013688>. King, G., T. Cathers, E. Brown, J.A. Specht, C. Willoughby, J.M. Polgar, and L. Havens. “Turning Points and Protective Processes in the Lives of People with Chronic Disabilities.” Qualitative Health Research 13.2 (2003): 184–206.Nixon, S., and P. Du Gay. “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries?” Cultural Studies 16.4 (2002): 495–500.Podkalicka, A. “Young Listening: An Ethnography of YouthWorx Media’s Radio Project.” Continuum 23.4 (2009): 561–72.St Vincent de Paul Society (WA). St Vincent de Paul Society, Annual Report 2013. Perth, WA: St Vincent de Paul Society (WA), 2013. 5 Jan 2017 <http://www.vinnies.org.au/icms_docs/169819_Vinnies_WA_2012_Annual_Report.pdf>.Seidman, I. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2006.Silverstone, R., E. Hirsch, and D. Morley. “Information and Communication Technologies and the Moral Economy of the Household.” Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. Eds. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch. London: Routledge, 1992. 9–17.Snyder, C.R. Handbook of Hope. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 2000.VY1. In-depth interview with Vinnies Youth volunteer, de-identified, 2016.

Everyone thinks I named my cat Mango because of his orange eyes but that’s not the case. I named him Mango because the sounds of his purrs and his wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange. (Mass 3) Synaesthesia, a condition where stimulus in one sense is perceived in that sense as well as in another, is thought to be a neurological fluke, marked by cross-sensory reactions. Mia, a character in the children’s book A Mango-Shaped Space, has audition colorée or coloured hearing, the most common form of synaesthesia where sounds create dynamic coloured photisms in the visual field. Others with the condition may taste shapes (Cytowic 5), feel colours (Duffy 52), taste sounds (Cytowic 118) or experience a myriad of other sensory combinations. Most non-synaesthetes have never heard of synaesthesia and many treat the condition with disbelief upon learning of it, while synaesthetes are often surprised to hear that others don’t have it. Although there has been a resurgence of interest in synaesthesia recently in psychology, neuroscience and philosophy (Ward and Mattingley 129), there is no widely accepted explanation for how or why synaesthetic perception occurs. However, if we investigate what meaning this particular condition may offer for rethinking not only what constitutes sensory normalcy, but also the ocular-centric bias in cultural studies, especially media studies, synaesthesia may present us with very productive coalitions indeed.Some theorists posit the ultimate role of media of all forms “to transfer sense experiences from one person to another” (Bolter and Grusin 3). Alongside this claim, many “have also maintained that the ultimate function of literature and the arts is to manifest this fusion of the senses” found in synaesthesia (Dann ix). If the most primary of media aims are to fuse and transfer sensory experiences, manifesting these goals would be akin to transferring synaesthetic experience to non-synaesthetes. In some cases, this synaesthetic transfer has been the explicit goal of media forms, from the invention of kaleidoscopes as colour symphonies in 1818 (Dann 66) to the 2002 launch of the video game Rez, the packaging for which reads “Discover a new world. A world of sound, visuals and vibrations. Release your instincts, open your senses and experience synaesthesia” (Rez). Recent innovations such as touch screen devices, advances in 3D film and television technologies and a range of motion-sensing video gaming consoles extend media experience far beyond the audio-visual and as such, present both serious challenges and important opportunities for media and culture scholars to reinvigorate ways of thinking about media experience, sensory embodiment and what might be learned from engaging with synaesthesia. Fleshing out the Field While acknowledging synaesthesia as a specific condition that enhances and complicates the lives of many individuals, I also suggest that synaesthesia is a useful mode of interference into our current ocular-centric notions of culture. Vision and visual phenomena hold a particularly powerful role in producing and negotiating meanings, values and relationships in the contemporary cultural arena and as a result, the eye has become privileged as the “master sense of the modern era” (Jay Scopic 3). Proponents of visual culture claim that the majority of modern life takes place through sight and that “human experience is now more visual and visualized than ever before ... in this swirl of imagery, seeing is much more than believing. It is not just a part of everyday life, it is everyday life” (Mirzoeff 1). In order to enjoy this privilege as the master sense, vision has been disentangled from the muscles and nerves of the eyeball and relocated to the “mind’s eye”, a metaphor that equates a kind of disembodied vision with knowledge. Vision becomes the most non-sensual of the senses, and made to appear “as a negative reference point for the other senses...on the side of detachment, separation” (Connor) or even “as the absence of sensuality” (Haraway). This creates a paradoxical “visual culture” in which the embodied eye is, along with the ear, skin, tongue and nose, strangely absent. If visual culture has been based on the separation of the senses, and in fact, a refutation of embodied senses altogether, what about that which we might encounter and know in the world that is not encompassed by the mind’s eye? By silencing the larger sensory context, what are we missing? What ocular-centric assumptions have we been making? What responsibilities have we ignored?This critique does not wish to do away with the eye, but instead to re-embrace and extend the field of vision to include an understanding of the eye and what it sees within the context of its embodied abilities and limitations. Although the mechanics of the eye make it an important and powerful sensory organ, able to perceive at a distance and provide a wealth of information about our surroundings, it is also prone to failures. Equipped as it is with eyelids and blind spots, reliant upon light and gullible to optical illusions (Jay, Downcast 4), the eye has its weaknesses and these must be addressed along with its abilities. Moreover, by focusing only on what is visual in culture, we are missing plenty of import. The study of visual culture is not unlike studying an electrical storm from afar. The visually impressive jagged flash seems the principal aspect of the storm and quite separate from the rumbling sound that rolls after it. We perceive them and name them as two distinct phenomena; thunder and lightning. However, this separation is a feature only of the distance between where we stand and the storm. Those who have found themselves in the eye of an electrical storm know that the sight of the bolt, the sound of the crash, the static tingling and vibration of the crack and the smell of ozone are mingled. At a remove, the bolt appears separate from the noise only artificially because of the safe distance. The closer we are to the phenomenon, the more completely it envelops us. Although getting up close and personal with an electrical storm may not be as comfortable as viewing it from afar, it does offer the opportunity to better understand the total experience and the thrill of intensities it can engage across the sensory palette. Similarly, the false separation of the visual from the rest of embodied experience may be convenient, but in order to flesh out this field, other embodied senses and sensory coalitions must be reclaimed for theorising practices. The senses as they are traditionally separated are simply put, false categories. Towards SynaestheoryAny inquiry inspired by synaesthesia must hold at its core the idea that the senses cannot be responsibly separated. This notion applies firstly to the separation of senses from one another. Synaesthetic experience and experiment both insist that there is rich cross-fertility between senses in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes alike. The French verb sentir is instructive here, as it can mean “to smell”, “to taste” or “to feel”, depending on the context it is used in. It can also mean simply “to sense” or “to be aware of”. In fact, the origin of the phrase “common sense” meant exactly that, the point at which the senses meet. There also must be recognition that the senses cannot be separated from cognition or, in the Cartesian sense, that body and mind cannot be divided. An extensive and well-respected study of synaesthesia conducted in the 1920s by Raymond Wheeler and Thomas Cutsforth, non-synaesthetic and synaesthetic researchers respectively, revealed that the condition was not only a quirk of perception, but of conception. Synaesthetic activity, the team deduced “is an essential mechanism in the construction of meaning that functions in the same way as certain unattended processes in non-synaesthetes” (Dann 82). With their synaesthetic imagery impaired, synaesthetes are unable to do even a basic level of thinking or recalling (Dann, Cytowic). In fact, synaesthesia may be a universal process, but in synaesthetes, “a brain process that is normally unconscious becomes bared to consciousness so that synaesthetes know they are synaesthetic while the rest of us do not” (166). Maurice Merleau-Ponty agrees, claiming:Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the centre of gravity of experience, so that we unlearn how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel in order to deduce, from our bodily organisation and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear and feel. (229) With this in mind, neither the mind’s role nor the body’s role in synaesthesia can be isolated, since the condition itself maintains unequivocally that the two are one.The rich and rewarding correlations between senses in synaesthesia prompt us to consider sensory coalitions in other experiences and contexts as well. We are urged to consider flows of sensation seriously as experiences in and of themselves, with or without interpretation and explanation. As well, the debates around synaesthetic experience remind us that in order to speak to phenomena perceived and conceived it is necessary to recognise the specificities, ironies and responsibilities of any embodied experience. Ultimately, synaesthesia helps to highlight the importance of relationships and the complexity of concepts necessary in order to practice a more embodied and articulate theorising. We might call this more inclusive approach “synaestheory”.Synaestheorising MediaDystopia, a series of photographs by artists Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher suggests a contemporary take on Decartes’s declaration that “I will now close my eyes, I will stop my ears, I will turn away my senses from their objects” (86). These photographs consist of digitally altered faces where the subject’s skin has been stretched over the openings of eyes, nose, mouth and ears, creating an interesting image both in process and in product. The product of a media mix that incorporates photography and computer modification, this image suggests the effects of the separation from our senses that these media may imply. The popular notion that media allow us to surpass our bodies and meet without our “meat” tagging along is a trope that Aziz and Cucher expose here with their computer-generated cover-up. By sealing off the senses, they show us how little we now seem to value them in a seemingly virtual, post-embodied world. If “hybrid media require hybrid analyses” (Lunenfeld in Graham 158), in our multimedia, mixed media, “mongrel media” (Dovey 114) environment, we need mongrel theory, synaestheory, to begin to discuss the complexities at hand. The goal here is producing an understanding of both media and sensory intelligences as hybrid. Symptomatic of our simple sense of media is our tendency to refer to media experiences as “audio-visual”: stimuli for the ear, eye or both. However, even if media are engineered to be predominately audio and/or visual, we are not. Synaestheory examines embodied media use, including the sensory information that the media does not claim to concentrate on, but that is still engaged and present in every mediated experience. It also examines embodied media use by paying attention to the pops and clicks of the material human-media interface. It does not assume simple sensory engagement or smooth engagement with media. These bumps, blisters, misfirings and errors are just as crucial a part of embodied media practice as smooth and successful interactions. Most significantly, synaesthesia insists simply that sensation matters. Sensory experiences are material, rich, emotional, memorable and important to the one sensing them, synaesthete or not. This declaration contradicts a legacy of distrust of the sensory in academic discourse that privileges the more intellectual and abstract, usually in the form of the detached text. However, academic texts are sensory too, of course. Sound, feeling, movement and sight are all inseparable from reading and writing, speaking and listening. We might do well to remember these as root sensory situations and by extension, recognise the importance of other sensual forms.Indeed, we have witnessed a rise of media genres that appeal to our senses first with brilliant and detailed visual and audio information, and story or narrative second, if at all. These media are “direct and one-dimensional, about little, other than their ability to commandeer the sight and the senses” (Darley 76). Whereas any attention to the construction of the media product is a disastrous distraction in narrative-centred forms, spectacular media reveals and revels in artifice and encourages the spectator to enjoy the simulation as part of the work’s allure. It is “a pleasure of control, but also of being controlled” (MacTavish 46). Like viewing abstract art, the impact of the piece will be missed if we are obsessed with what the artwork “is about”. Instead, we can reflect on spectacular media’s ability, like that of an abstract artwork, to impact our senses and as such, “renew the present” (Cubitt 32).In this framework, participation in any medium can be enjoyed not only as an interpretative opportunity, but also as an experience of sensory dexterity and relevance with its own pleasures and intelligences; a “being-present”. By focusing our attention on sensory flows, we may be able to perceive aspects of the world or ourselves that we had previously missed. Every one of us–synaesthete or nonsynaesthete–has a unique blueprint of reality, a unique way of coding knowledge that is different from any other on earth [...] By quieting down the habitually louder parts of our mind and turning the dial of our attention to its darker, quieter places, we may hear our personal code’s unique and usually unheard “song”, needing the touch of our attention to turn up its volume. (Duffy 123)This type of presence to oneself has been termed a kind of “perfect immediacy” and is believed to be cultivated through meditation or other sensory-focused experiences such as sex (Bolter and Grusin 260), art (Cubitt 32), drugs (Dann 184) or even physical pain (Gromala 233). Immersive media could also be added to this list, if as Bolter and Grusin suggest, we now “define immediacy as being in the presence of media” (236). In this case, immediacy has become effectively “media-cy.”A related point is the recognition of sensation’s transitory nature. Synaesthetic experiences and sensory experiences are vivid and dynamic. They do not persist. Instead, they flow through us and disappear, despite any attempts to capture them. You cannot stop or relive pure sound, for example (Gross). If you stop it, you silence it. If you relive it, you are experiencing another rendition, different even if almost imperceptibly from the last time you heard it. Media themselves are increasingly transitory and shifting phenomena. As media forms emerge and fall into obsolescence, spawning hybrid forms and spinoffs, the stories and memories safely fixed into any given media become outmoded and ultimately inaccessible very quickly. This trend towards flow over fixation is also informed by an embodied understanding of our own existence. Our sensations flow through us as we flow through the world. Synaesthesia reminds us that all sensation and indeed all sensory beings are dynamic. Despite our rampant lust for statis (Haraway), it is important to theorise with the recognition that bodies, media and sensations all flow through time and space, emerging and disintegrating. Finally, synaesthesia also encourages an always-embodied understanding of ourselves and our interactions with our environment. In media experiences that traditionally rely on vision the body is generally not only denied, but repressed (Balsamo 126). Claims to disembodiment flood the rhetoric around new media as an emancipatory element of mediated experience and somehow, seeing is superimposed on embodied being to negate it. However phenomena such as migraines, sensory release hallucinations, photo-memory, after-images, optical illusions and most importantly here, the “crosstalk” of synaesthesia (Cohen Kadosh et al. 489) all attest to the co-involvement of the body and brain in visual experience. Perhaps useful here for understanding media involvement in light of synaestheory is a philosophy of “mingled bodies” (Connor), where the world and its embodied agents intermingle. There are no discrete divisions, but plenty of translation and transfer. As Sean Cubitt puts it, “the world, after all, touches us at the same moment that we touch it” (37). We need to employ non-particulate metaphors that do away with the dichotomies of mind/body, interior/exterior and real/virtual. A complex embodied entity is not an object or even a series of objects, but embodiment work. “Each sense is in fact a nodal cluster, a clump, confection or bouquet of all the other senses, a mingling of the modalities of mingling [...] the skin encompasses, implies, pockets up all the other sense organs: but in doing so, it stands as a model for the way in which all the senses in their turn also invaginate all the others” (Connor). The danger here is of delving into a nostalgic discussion of a sort of “sensory unity before the fall” (Dann 94). The theory that we are all synaesthetes in some ways can lead to wistfulness for a perfect fusion of our senses, a kind of synaesthetic sublime that we had at one point, but lost. This loss occurs in childhood in some theories, (Maurer and Mondloch) and in our aboriginal histories in others (Dann 101). This longing for “original syn” is often done within a narrative that equates perfect sensory union with a kind of transcendence from the physical world. Dann explains that “during the modern upsurge in interest that has spanned the decades from McLuhan to McKenna, synaesthesia has continued to fulfil a popular longing for metaphors of transcendence” (180). This is problematic, since elevating the sensory to the sublime does no more service to understanding our engagements with the world than ignoring or degrading the sensory. Synaestheory does not tolerate a simplification of synaesthesia or any condition as a ticket to transcendence beyond the body and world that it is necessarily grounded in and responsible to. At the same time, it operates with a scheme of senses that are not a collection of separate parts, but blended; a field of intensities, a corporeal coalition of senses. It likewise refuses to participate in the false separation of body and mind, perception and cognition. More useful and interesting is to begin with metaphors that assume complexity without breaking phenomena into discrete pieces. This is the essence of a new anti-separatist synaestheory, a way of thinking through embodied humans in relationships with media and culture that promises to yield more creative, relevant and ethical theorising than the false isolation of one sense or the irresponsible disregard of the sensorium altogether.ReferencesAziz, Anthony, and Sammy Cucher. Dystopia. 1994. 15 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.azizcucher.net/1994.php>. Balsamo, Anne. “The Virtual Body in Cyberspace.” Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 116-32.Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.Cohen Kadosh, Roi, Avishai Henik, and Vincent Walsh. “Synaesthesia: Learned or Lost?” Developmental Science 12.3 (2009): 484-491.Connor, Steven. “Michel Serres’ Five Senses.” Michel Serres Conference. Birkbeck College, London. May 1999. 5 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/skc/5senses.htm>. Cubitt, Sean. “It’s Life, Jim, But Not as We Know It: Rolling Backwards into the Future.” Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. Ed. Jon Dovey. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996. 31-58.Cytowic, Richard E. The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning and Consciousness. New York: Putnam Books, 1993.Dann, Kevin T. Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.Darley, Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge, 2000.Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and the Meditations. Trans. Johnn Veitch. New York: Prometheus Books, 1989.Dovey, Jon. “The Revelation of Unguessed Worlds.” Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. Ed. Jon Dovey. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996. 109-35. Duffy, Patricia Lynne. Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds. New York: Times Books, 2001.Graham, Beryl. “Playing with Yourself: Pleasure and Interactive Art.” Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. Ed. Jon Dovey. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996. 154-81.Gromala, Diana. "Pain and Subjectivity in Virtual Reality." Clicking In: Hot Links to a Digital Culture. Ed. Lynn Hershman Leeson. Seattle: Bay Press, 1996. 222-37.Haraway, Donna. “At the Interface of Nature and Culture.” Seminar. European Graduate School. Saas-Fee, Switzerland, 17-19 Jun. 2003.Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California P, 1993.Jay, Martin. "Scopic Regimes of Modernity." Hal Foster, Ed. Vision and Visuality. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 1988. 2-23.MacTavish. Andrew. “Technological Pleasure: The Performance and Narrative of Technology in Half-Life and other High-Tech Computer Games.” ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. Eds. Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska. London: Wallflower P, 2002. Mass, Wendy. A Mango-Shaped Space. Little, Brown and Co., 2003.Maurer, Daphne, and Catherine J. Mondloch. “Neonatal Synaesthesia: A Re-Evaluation.” Eds. Lynn C. Robertson and Noam Sagiv. Synaesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1989.Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “What Is Visual Culture?” The Visual Culture Reader. Ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff. London: Routledge, 1998. 3-13.Rez. United Game Artists. Playstation 2. 2002.Stafford, Barbara Maria. Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.Ward, Jamie, and Jason B. Mattingley. “Synaesthesia: An Overview of Contemporary Findings and Controversies.” Cortex 42.2 (2006): 129-136.

Closer examination of contemporary art forms including music videos in addition to the Gothic’s literature legacy is essential, “as it is virtually impossible to ignore the relationship the Gothic holds to popular culture” (Piatti-Farnell ii). This article critically examines how Gothic themes and modes are used in the music videos of Lana Del Rey; particularly the “ways in which Gothic is dispersed through contemporary non-literary media” (Spooner and McEvoy 2). This work follows the argument laid down by Edwards and Monnet who describe Gothic’s assimilation into popular culture —Pop Gothic— as a powerful pop cultural force, not merely a subcultural or cult expression. By interpreting Del Rey’s work as a both a component of, and a contributor to, the Pop Gothic advance, themes of social climate, consumer culture, gender identity, sexuality and the male gaze can be interrogated. Indeed the potential for a collective crisis of these issues in early 21st Century western culture is exposed, “the façade of carnivalised surfaces is revealed to hide the chaos and entropy of existential emptiness.” (Yeo 17). Gothic modes have been approximated by Pop Gothic into the mainstream (Edwards and Monnet) as a driving force behind these contradictions and destabilisations. The Gothic has become ubiquitous within popular culture and continues to exert influence. This is easily reflected in the $392 million the first Twilight movie grossed at the box office (Edwards and Monnet). Examples are abundant in pop culture across music, film and television. Edwards and Monnet cite the movies Zombieland and Blade in the Pop Gothic march, along with TV shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Being Human, True Blood as well as Lady Gaga’s Fame Monster music album. Edwards and Monnet observe that the Gothic aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, “melancholy and imagery associated with death, dying and the undead” (3), shifted from the corners of subculture to the mainstream of millennial popular culture. With this shift comes the rebelliousness and melancholy that characterises Gothic texts. This is evident when a pop star of Lana Del Rey’s popularity —her Summertime Sadness video alone has over 160 million views on youtube.com (YouTube)— narratively represents themes of death and suicide repeatedly in her videos. In two of Lana Del Rey’s music videos —Blue Jeans and Born to Die— either she or a representation of her persona dies. In a third video, Summertime Sadness, her companion takes her own life and Lana ultimately follows suit. Themes of death and loss are just the most obvious of Gothic elements present in Del Rey’s work. Del Rey’s songs and videos speak of the American dream, of aestheticised beauty, of being immaculately presented, well dressed and having hair “beauty queen style”, as in Summertime Sadness. She depicts an excess of hedonistic consumption and love that knows no bounds, not even death. Much of the delivery has resonance with the Gothic; performatively, visually and musically, and shows a subversion and fatalism that juxtaposes, contests and contradicts pop cultural tropes (Macfarlane). This contrary nature of the Gothic, as characterised by Botting, can provoke a sense of otherness; the uncanny, including “displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to portrayals of perversion or obsession” (Gothic 2). It is argued that these characteristics have been commodified into merchandisable and mainstream stylistic representations (Edwards and Monnet). Del Rey’s visual work uses this otherness and representation of repressed darkness as subversion or contestation to the bubble gum consumerist, fairy tale sexualisation of the Katy Perry brand of neo-liberal pop music that floods the mainstream (Macfarlane). Del Rey also harnesses the Gothic mode in her music, underscoring social anxieties through moments of sound which act as “a sonic imp, this music enters perception through the back door, and there it does its destabilising work” (van Elferen 137). As potential psychosocial sources of this otherness in the Gothic (Botting, Gothic), Jung argued that as a collective consciousness by repressing our darkest side, we can be dislocated from it. Further he argued that many modern ills —conflict, war, disenfranchisement, poverty— stem from culturally rationalised divisions of ‘good vs evil’ (Tacey). Providing a space for these dark sides to surface, Swirski comments that cultural product can act "as a social barometer and a cultural diagnostic tool. It identifies social trends and cultural patterns and weaves elaborate counterfactuals- literary fictions- that hang human faces on large-scale human abstractions such as society and culture" (1). Jung proposes the large-scale social abstraction; that to truly live with ourselves we need embrace the otherness inside us— to learn to live with it (Tacey). The Gothic may enable this living with, rather than living without. Jung asserts that we now rely so much on what we can touch, taste and own, that western culture has become a “creed without substance” (Tacey 32). In more concrete terms, Hoffie argues that popular media today tells stories: in terms of disaster and crisis: weather patterns: disastrous. Climate Change: disastrous. Global Financial Crisis: disastrous. Political situations: disastrous. Unemployment: disastrous. And so on. The high-pitched wail of this lament corrodes the peaks and troughs of potential emotional responsiveness; the vapours of benumbing apathy steam upwards like a bewitching spell. All stands still. Action, like in a bad dream, seems impossible. (14) This apathy in the face of crisis or disaster is well expressed in Del Rey’s work through the Gothic influenced lyrics and videos; she describes her partner as so good looking as to be “sick as cancer” in Blue Jeans and that her lover left her because he was “chasing paper”. Represented here is the social current that the need to acquire goods in late capitalism’s climate “of unrestrained consumerism” (Heine and Thakur 2) is her lover’s priority over companionship. Revealing more of the Gothic aesthetic is that her videos and songs represent this loss, they depict “disturbances of sanity and security” (Botting, Gothic 2) and thematically reflect the social climate of “disaster and crisis” (Hoffie 14). This sense of otherness through Gothic influences of the uncanny, death and melancholy have a significant impact on creative expression creating music videos that play like a kind of half remembered nightmare (Botting, Love Your Zombie; Macfarlane). In the black and white video for Blue Jeans the opening shot shows an image of Del Rey rippling and blurred, framed by circular waves of water as black as oil. The powerful Gothic aesthetic of the abyss is rendered here, “to convey the figurative meaning of a catastrophic situation seen as likely to occur whereby the individual will sink to immeasurable intellectual, ethical or moral depths” (Edwards and Monnet 9). This abyss is represented as Del Rey sings to her ghostly tattooed lover that she will love him until “the end of time” and climaxes in the suggestion that he drowns her. As in Edwards and Monnet‘s description of zombie films, Del Rey’s videos narratively “suggest that the postmodern condition is itself a form of madness that disseminates cultural trauma and erases historical memory” (8). This view is evident in contrasting Del Rey’s interview comment that she finds conversations about feminism boring (Cooper). Yet in her song delivery and lyrics she retains an ironic tone regards feminine power. This combination helps “produce a darkly funny and carnivalesque representation of sex and waste under late capitalism” (Edwards and Monnet 8). Further evidence of these ironies and distorted juxtapositions of loss and possession are evident in the song Radio. The video —a bricolage of retrospective fashion imagery— and lyrics hint at the persistent desire for goods in US western culture (Heine and Thakur). Simultaneously in her song Radio, she is corruptibly engorged by consumption and being consumed (Mulvey) as she sings that life is “sweet like cinnamon, a fucking dream on Ritalin”. The video itself represents distorted dreams hyper-real on Ritalin. Del Rey’s work speaks of an excess; the overflow of sensations, sexual excess, of buying, of having, of owning, and at the same time the absence; of loss or not knowing what to have (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Exemplified by the lyrics in What Makes Us Girls, “do I know what I want?” and again in Radio “American dreams came true somehow, I swore I’d chase until I was dead”. Increasingly it is evident that Del Rey sings “as a woman who does not know what she wants” (Vigier 5). She illustrates the “endemic narcissism” (Hoffie 15) of contemporary western culture. Del Rey therefore clearly delineates much of “the loneliness, emptiness, and alienation that results from rampant consumerism and materialism under advanced capitalism” (Edwards and Monnet 8). As a theme of this representation, Del Rey implies a sense of commodified female sexual energy through the male gaze (Mulvey), along with a sense of wasted youth and opportunity in the carnivalesque National Anthem. The video, shot as if on Super 8 film, tells the story of Del Rey’s ‘character’ married to a hedonistic style of president. It is reminiscent of the JFK story including authentic and detailed presentation of costume —especially Del Rey’s Jackie Onassis fashions— the couple posing in presidential gardens with handsome mixed-race children. Lavish lifestyles are depicted whilst the characters enjoy drinking, gambling and consumerist excess, Del Rey sings "It's a love story for the new age, For the six page, We're on a quick sick rampage, Wining and dining, Drinking and driving, Excessive buying, Overdose and dyin'". In National Anthem sexual excess is one of the strongest themes communicated. Repeatedly depicted are distinct close up shots of his hand on her thigh, and vice versa. Without being sexually explicit in itself, it is an overtly sexual reference, communicating something of sexual excess because of the sheer number of times it is highlighted in close-up shots. This links to the idea of the Gothic use of jouissance, a state of: excessive energies that burst in and beyond circuits of pleasure: intensities are read in relation to a form of subjectivity that finds itself briefly and paradoxically in moments of extreme loss. (Botting, Love Your Zombie 22) Del Rey represents these moments of loss —of herself, of her man, of her power, of her identity being subsumed by his— as intense pleasure, indicated in the video through sexual referencing. Botting argues that these excesses create anxieties; that in the pursuit of postmodern excess, of ownership, of consumption: the subject internalises the inconsistencies and contradictions of capitalism, manifesting pathologies not of privation but overabundance: stress, eating disorders, self-harming, and a range of anxieties. (Love Your Zombie 22) These anxieties are further expressed in National Anthem. Del Rey sings to her lover that he cannot keep his “pants on” and she must “hold you like a python”. The python in this tale simultaneously symbolises the exotic, erotic and dangerous entrapment by her male suitor. Edwards and Monnet argue for the Gothic monster, whose sign is further referenced as Del Rey swims with crocodiles in Blue Jeans. Here the male power, patriarchy and dominance is represented as monstrous. In the video she shares the pool with her beau yet we only see Del Rey swim and writhe with the crocodiles. Analogous of her murderous lover, this adds a powerful otherness to the scene and reinforces the symbols of threatening masculinity and impeding disaster. This expression of monstrousness creates a cathartic tension as it “puts the ‘pop’ in Pop Goth: its popularity is based on the frisson of selling simultaneous aversion from and attraction to self-destruction and cultural taboo” (Edwards and Monnet 9). In a further representation of anxieties Del Rey conforms to the sexual object persona in large part through her retro pin-up iconography —meticulous attention to costume, continuous posing and pouting— and song lyrics (Buszek). As in National Anthem her lyrics talk of devotion and male strength to protect and to “keep me safe in his bell tower”. Her videos, whilst they may show some of her strength, ultimately reside in patriarchal resolution (Mulvey). She is generally confounded by the male figures in her videos appearing to be very much alone and away from them: most notably in Blue Jeans, Born to Die and Video Games. In two cases it is suggested she is murdered by the male figures of her love. Her costume and appearance —iconic 1960’s swimsuits, pantsuits and big hairstyles in National Anthem— portray something of the retro pin-up. Buszek argues that at one time “young feminists may poke fun at the pin-up, but they do so in ways that betray affinities with, even affection for, the genre itself” (3). Del Rey simultaneously adheres to and confronts these normative gender roles, as is characteristic of the Gothic mode (Botting, Gothic). These very Gothic contradictions are also evident in Del Rey’s often ironic or mocking song delivery, undermining apparent heteronormative sexual and gender positioning. In National Anthem she sings, as if parodying women who might sincerely ask, “do you think he’ll buy me lots of diamonds?”. Her conformity is however, subverted. In Del Rey’s videos, clear evidence exists in her facial expressions where she consistently portrays Gothic elements of uncertainty, sorrow, grief and a pervading sense that she does not belong in this world (Botting, Gothic). Whilst depicted as a brooding and mourning widow —simultaneously playing the mistress luxuriating on a lion skin rug— in National Anthem Del Rey sings, “money is the anthem of success” without a smile or sense of any attachment to the lyrics. In the same song she sings “God you’re so handsome” without a trace of glee, pleasure or optimism. In the video for Blue Jeans she sings, “I will love you til the end of time” staring sorrowfully into the distance or directly at the camera. This confident yet ‘dead stare’ emphasises the overall juxtaposition of the largely positive lyrical expression, with the sorrowful facial expression and low sung notes. Del Rey signifies repeatedly that something is amiss; that the American dream is over and that even with apparent success within this sphere, there exists only emptiness and isolation (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Further contradictions exist as Lana Del Rey walks this blurred line —as is the Gothic mode— between heteronormative and ambiguous gender roles (Botting, Gothic; Edwards and Monnet). Lana Del Rey oscillates between positions of strength and independence —shown in her deadpan to-camera delivery— to that of weakness and subjugation. As she plays narrator, Del Rey symbolically reclaims some power as she retells the tragic story of Born to Die from her throne. Represented here Del Rey’s persona exerts a troubled malevolence, with two tigers calmly sat by her side: her benevolent pets, or symbols of contrived excess. She simultaneously presents the angelic —resplendent in sheer white dress and garland ‘crown’ headdress of the spurned bride in the story— and the stoic as she stares down the camera. Del Rey is powerful and in many senses threatening. At one point she draws a manicured thumbnail across her neck in a cut-throat gesture; a movement echoed later by her lover. Her character ultimately walks symbolically —and latently— to her death. She neither remedies her position as subservient, subordinate female nor revisits any kind of redemption for the excessive male dominance in her videos. The “excess is countered by greater excess” (Botting Love Your Zombie 27) and leads to otherness. In this reading of Del Rey’s work, there are representations that remain explicitly Pop Gothic, eliciting sensations of paranoia and fear, overloading her videos with these signs (Yeo). These signs elicit the otherness of the Gothic mode; expressed in visual symbols of violence, passion or obsession (Botting, Gothic). In our digital visual age, subjecting an eager viewer to this excess of signs creates the conditions for over-reading of a growing gender or consumerist paranoia, enabled by the Gothic, “paranoia stems from an excessive over-reading of signs and is a product of interpretation, misinterpretation and re-interpretation based on one’s knowledge or lack of it” (Yeo 22). Del Rey stimulates these sensations of paranoia partly through interlaying intertextual references. She does this thematically —Gothic melancholy— and pop culturally channelling Marilyn Monroe and other fashion iconography, as well as through explicit textual references, as in her most recent single Ultraviolence. In Ultraviolence, Del Rey sings “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”. Effortlessly and simultaneously she celebrates and lays bare her pain; however the intertextual reference to the violent controversy of the film A Clockwork Orange serves to aestheticise the domestic violence she describes. With Del Rey it may be that as meaning is sought amongst the texts as Macfarlane wrote about Lady Gaga, Del Rey’s “truth is ultimately irrelevant in the face of its interlayed performance” (130). Del Rey’s Gothic mode of ambiguity, of transgressed boundaries and unclear lines, shows “this ambience of perpetually deferred climax is no stranger to contemporary culture” (Hoffie 15) and may go some way to expressing something of the “lived experience of her audience” (Vigier 1). Hermes argues that in post-feminist pop culture, strong independent post-feminist women can be characterised by their ability to break traditional taboos, question or hold up for interrogation norms and traditions, but that ultimately narrative arches tend to restore the patriarchal norm. Edwards and Monnet assert that the Gothic in Pop Gothic cultural representation can become “post-race, post-sexuality, post-gender” (6). In places Del Ray exhibits this postmodernism but through the use of Gothic mode goes outside political debates and blurs clear lines of feminist discourse (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Whilst a duality in the texts exists; comments on consumerism, the emptiness of capitalist society and a suicidal expression of hopelessness, are undermined as she demonstrates conformity to subservient gender roles and her ambiguously ironic need to be “young and beautiful”. To be consumed by her man thus defines her value as an object within a consumerist neo-liberal trope (Jameson). This analysis goes some way to confirming Hermes’ assertion that in this post-feminist climate there has been a “loss of a political agenda, or the foundation for a new one, where it signposts the overcoming of unproductive old distinctions between feminist and feminine” (79). Hermes further argues, with reference to television shows Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, that presentation of female characters or personas has moved forward; the man is no longer the lone guarantor of a woman’s happiness. Yet many of the tropes in Del Rey’s work are familiar; overwhelming love for her companion equal only to the emphasis on physical appearance. Del Rey breaks taboos —she is powerful, sexual and a romantic predator, without being a demon seductress— and satirises consumerist excess and gender inequality; yet she remains sexually and politically subservient to the whim and sometimes violently expressed or implied male gaze (Mulvey). Del Rey may well represent something of Vigier’s assertion that whilst society has clear direction for the ‘success’ of women, “that real liberation and genuine satisfaction elude them” (1). In closing, there is no clear answer as to whether Del Rey is a Beauty Queen or Gothic Princess; she is neither and she is both. In Vigier’s words, “self-exploitation or self-destruction cannot be the only choices open to young women today” (13). Del Rey’s work is provocative on multiple levels. It hints at the pull of rampant consumerism and the immediacy of narcissistic desires, interlinked with contradictions which indicate the potential for social crises. This is shown in Del Rey’s use of the Gothic — otherness, the monstrous, darkness and death— and its juxtaposition with heteronormative gender representations which highlights the persistent commodification of the female body, its subjugation to male power and the potential for deep anxieties in 21st-century identity. References Blue Jeans. Dir. Yoann Lemoine. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2012. Botting, Fred. Gothic. New York: Routledge, 2014. Botting, Fred. "Love Your Zombie." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Ed. Edwards, Justin and Agnieszka Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 19-36. Buszek, Maria. Pin-Up Grrrls Feminism, Sexuality and Popular Culture. London: Duke University Press, 2006. Cooper, Duncan. "Lana Del Rey Cover Interview." Fader, June 2014. Edwards, Justin, and Agnieszka Monnet. "Introduction." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Eds. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 1-18. Heine, Jorge, and Ramesh Thakur. The Dark Side of Globalisation. New York: UN UP, 2011. Hermes, Joke. "The Tragic Success of Feminism." Feminism in Popular Culture. Eds. Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley. New York: Berg, 2006. 79-95. Hoffie, Pat. "Deadly Ennui." Artlink Magazine 32.4 (2012): 15-16. Jameson, Fredric. "Globalisation and Political Strategy." New Left Review 2.4 (2000): 49-68. Lana Del Rey. "Radio." Born To Die. Interscope Records, 2012. "Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness" YouTube, n.d. 12 June 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVjsGKrE6E8›. Lana Del Rey. "This Is What Makes Us Girls." Born To Die. Interscope Records, 2012. Macfarlane, K. "The Monstrous House of Gaga." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Ed. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 114-134. Mestrovic, Stjepan. Postemotional Society. London: Sage, 1997. Mulvey, Laura. Visual and other Pleasures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. National Anthem. Dir. Anthony Mandler. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2012. Paglia, Camille. Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex. 12 Sep. 2010. 2 June 2014 ‹http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article389697.ece›. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. "Introduction: a Place for Contemporary Gothic." Aeternum: the Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 1.1 (2014): i-iv. Spooner, Catherine, and Emma McEvoy. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. New York: Routledge, 2007. Summertime Sadness. Dir. Chris Sweeney. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2013. Swirski, Peter. American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York: Routledge, 2011. Tacey, David. The Jung Reader. New York: Routledge, 2012. Van Elferen, Isabella. "Spectural Liturgy, Transgression, Ritual and Music in Gothic." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Eds. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 135-147. Vigier, Catherine. "The Meaning of Lana Del Rey." Zeteo: The Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing Fall (2012): 1-16. Yeo, David. "Gothic Paranoia in David Fincher's Seven, The Game and Fight Club." Aeternum: The Journal Of Contemporary Gothic Studies 1.1 (2014): 16-25. Young and Beautiful. Dir. Chris Sweeney. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2013.

In one of his final pieces of writing, Timothy Leary—one of the most singularly iconic and influential figures of the 1960s counterculture, known especially for his advocacy of a “molecular revolution” premised upon hallucinogenic self-medication—proposes that [c]ounterculture blooms wherever and whenever a few members of a society choose lifestyles, artistic expressions, and ways of thinking and being that wholeheartedly embrace the ancient axiom that the only true constant is change itself. The mark of counterculture is not a particular social form or structure, but rather the evanescence of forms and structures, the dazzling rapidity and flexibility with which they appear, mutate, and morph into one another and disappear. (ix) But it is not just radical activists and ancient philosophers who celebrate the constancy of change; on the contrary, it is a basic principle of post-industrial capitalism, a system which relies upon the constant extraction of surplus value—this being the very basis of the accumulation of capital—through an ever-accelerating creation of new markets and new desires fostered via a perpetual cycle of technical obsolescence and social destabilisation. Far from being unambiguously aligned with a mode of resistance then (as seemingly inferred by the quote above), the imperative for change would appear to be a basic constituent of that which the latter seeks to undermine. The very concept of “counterculture” as an ideal and a practice has been challenged and contested repeatedly over the past fifty or so years, both inside and outside of the academy. For the most part, the notion of counterculture is understood to have emerged out of the tumultuous cultural shifts of the 1960s, and yet, at the same time, as Theodore Roszak—who first coined the term—notes, the intellectual heritage of such a movement draws upon a “stormy Romantic sensibility, obsessed from first to last with paradox and madness, ecstasy and spiritual striving” (91) that dates back to nineteenth century Idealist philosophy and its critique of a rapidly industrialising civilisation. My purpose in this paper is not to address these numerous conceptualisations of counterculture but instead to analyse specifically the enigmatic definition given by Leary above, whereby he conflates counterculture with the demand for continual change or novelty, arguing that the former appears precisely at the point when “equilibrium and symmetry have given way to a complexity so intense as to appear to the eye as chaos” (ix). Concerned that this definition is internally inconsistent given Leary’s understanding of counterculture as a profoundly anti-capitalist force, I will cursorily illustrate the contradictions that proceed when the notion of counterculture as resistance to capitalist hegemony is combined with the identification of counterculture as an authentic and repeated irruption of the new, albeit one that is inevitably domesticated by and subsumed into the dominant culture against which it is posed, as occurs in Leary’s account. The claim that I make here is that this demand for change as an end in itself is inextricably capitalist in its orientation, and as such, cannot be meaningfully understood as a structural externality to the capitalist processes that it strives to interrupt. Capitalism and Growth The study of counterculture is typically, and probably inevitably premised upon an opposition between a dominant culture and those emergent forces that seek to undermine it. In the words of Roszak, the American counterculture of the 1960s arose in defiance of the “modernizing, up-dating, rationalizing, planning” tendencies of technocracy, “that social form in which an industrial society reaches the peak of its organizational integration” (5). Similarly, for Herbert Marcuse, the philosopher perhaps most closely associated with this counterculture, and whose writings formed the intellectual lynchpin of the student protest movement at that time, “intensified progress seems to be bound up with intensified unfreedom,” and as a consequence, we must strive for “a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man [sic] and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations” (Eros 4-5). In both cases, the dominant culture is associated with a particular form of repression, based upon the false sense of freedom imposed by the exigencies of the market. “Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom,” argues Marcuse, “if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear” (One-Dimensional 10). Most importantly, Marcuse observes that this facile freedom of choice is propped up by processes of continual renewal, transformation, and rationalisation—“advertising, public relations, indoctrination, planned obsolescence”—operating on the basis of a “relentless utilization of advanced techniques and science,” such that “a rising standard of living is the almost unavoidable by-product of the politically manipulated industrial society” (One-Dimensional 52-53). Writing at a time when the Keynesian welfare state was still a foregone conclusion, Marcuse denounces the way in which an increase in the quality of life associated with the rise of consumerism and lifestyle culture “reduces the use-value of freedom”, for “there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the ‘good’ life” (One-Dimensional 53). The late industrial society, in other words, is presented as driven by a repressive desublimation which does not merely replace the objects of a so-called “high culture” with those of an inferior mass culture, but totally liquidates any such distinction, reducing all culture to a mere process of consumption, divorced from any higher goals or purposes. This desublimation is able to maintain growth through the constant production of novelty—providing new objects for the purposes of consumption. This society is not stagnant then; rather, “[i]ts productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction” all represent the demand for a continual production of the new that undergirds its own stability (One-Dimensional 11). This necessary dynamism, and the creative destruction that goes along with it, is a result of the basic laws of competition: the need not only to generate profit, but to maintain this profitability means that new avenues for growth must constantly be laid down. This leads to both a geographical expansion in search of new markets, and a psychological manipulation in order to cultivate needs, desires, and fantasies in consumers that they never knew they had, combined with a dramatic shift in the search for both raw materials and labour power toward the developing economies of Asia. The result, notes David Harvey, is to “exacerbate insecurity and instability, as masses of capital and workers shift from one line of production to another, leaving whole sectors devastated, while the perpetual flux in consumer wants, tastes, and needs becomes a permanent locus of uncertainty and struggle” (106). What we are seeing then, as these processes of production and demands for consumption accelerate, is not so much the maintenance of the comfortable and carefree life that Marcuse sees as destructive to culture; conversely, this acceleration is engendering a sense of disorientation and even groundlessness that leaves us in a state of continual anxiety and disquietude. Although these processes have certainly accelerated in recent years—not least because of the rise of high-speed digital networking and telecommunications—they were prominent throughout the second-half of the twentieth century (in varying degrees), and indicate a general logic of rationalisation and technical efficiency that has been the focus of critique from the proto-countercultural romanticism of the nineteenth century onward. It is Marx who observes that “[t]he driving motive and determining purpose of capitalist production is the self-valorization of capital to the greatest possible extent,” and it is precisely this seemingly unstoppable impetus toward accumulation that finds its most acute manifestation in our age of digital, post-industrial capitalism (449). What needs to be kept in mind is that capitalism is not opposed to those exteriorities that resist its logic; on the contrary, it is through its ability to appropriate them in a double movement whereby it simultaneously claims to act as the condition of their production and claims the right to represent them on its terms (through the universal sign of money) that capitalism is able to maintain its continual growth. Put simply, capitalism as an economic system and an ideological constellation has proved itself time and time again to be remarkably resilient not only to intellectual critique, but also to the concrete production of new forms of living seemingly contrary to its principles, precisely because it is able to incorporate and thus nullify such threats. The production of the new does not harm capitalism; on the contrary, capitalism thrives on such production. The odd contradiction of the mass society, writes Walter Benjamin, coheres in the way that “the novelty of products—as a stimulus to demand—is accorded an unprecedented importance,” whilst at the same time, “‘the eternal return of the same’ is manifest in mass production” (331). This production of novelty is, in other words, restricted by the parameters of the commodity form—the necessity that it be exchangeable under the terms of capital (as money)—such that its potential heterogeneity is restrained by its identity as a commodity. Capitalism is perfectly capable of creating new modes of living, but it does so specifically according to its terms. This poses a difficulty then for the study and advocacy of counterculture in the terms for which Leary advocates above, because the progressivism of the latter—referring to its demand for continual change and innovation (a demand that admittedly runs counter to the nostalgic romanticism that has motivated a great deal of countercultural thought and praxis, and is certainly not a universally accepted definition of counterculture more broadly)—is not necessarily easily distinguishable from the dominant culture against which it is counterposed. Raymond Williams expresses this frustration well when he observes that “it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture […] and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to it” (123). In other words, given that capitalism as an economic system and hegemonic cultural formation is so effective in producing the novelty that we crave—creating objects, ideas, and practices often vastly different to those residual traditions that preceded them—there is no obvious metric for determining when we are looking at a genuine alternative to this hegemony, and when we are looking at yet another variegated product of it. Williams makes a distinction here, whereby the emergence (in the strict sense of coming-into-being or genesis) of a new culture is presumed to be qualitatively different to mere novelty. What is not adequately considered is the possibility that this distinction is entirely illusory—that holding out hope for a qualitatively different mode of existence that will mark a distinct break from capitalist hegemony is in fact the chimera by which this hegemony is sustained, and its cycle of production perpetuated. There is an anxiety here that is present within (and one might suggest even constitutive of) present-day debates over counterculture, particularly in regard to the question of resistance, and what form it might take under the conditions of late capitalism. From Williams’s perspective, it can be argued that “all or nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic,” such that “the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture” (114). To argue this though, he goes on to suggest, would: overlook the importance of works and ideas which, while clearly affected by hegemonic limits and pressures, are at least in part significant breaks beyond them, which may again in part be neutralized, reduced, or incorporated, but which in their most active elements nevertheless come through as independent and original. (114)Authentic breaks in specific social conditions are not just a fantasy, he correctly observes, but have occurred many times across history—and not merely in the guise of violent revolutionary activity. What is needed, therefore, is the development of “modes of analysis which instead of reducing works to finished products, and activities to fixed positions, are capable of discerning, in good faith, the finite but significant openness of many actual initiatives and contributions” (114). For Williams, this openness is located chiefly within the semiotic indeterminacy of the artwork, and the resultant potentiality contained within it for individuals to develop resistant readings contrary to any dominant interpretation. These divergent readings become the sites upon which we might imagine new worlds and new ways of living. There is a sense of resignation in his solution though: an appeal to the autonomy of an artwork, and a momentary sublime glimpse of another world, that will inevitably be domesticated by capital. The difficulty that comes with understanding counterculture as an uncompromising demand for the new, over and against the mundane repetitions of commodity culture and lifestyle consumerism, is that it must reckon with the seemingly inevitable appropriation of these new creations by the system against which they are opposed. In such cases, the typical result is a tragic and fundamentally romantic defeatism, in which the creative individual (or community, etc.) must continue to create anew, knowing full well that their output will immediately find itself domesticated and enervated by the forces of capital. This specific conception of counterculture as perpetual change knows that it is doomed to failure, but takes pleasure in the struggle that nonetheless ensues. The Subsumption of Counterculture “Marx and Freud, perhaps, do represent the dawn of our culture,” writes philosopher Gilles Deleuze, “but Nietzsche is something entirely different: the dawn of counterculture” (142). Friedrich Nietzsche seems like an unlikely candidate for the originator of counterculture—his writings certainly bear little overt resemblance to the premises of the various movements that emerged in the 1960s, even though, as Roszak remarks, these movements actually largely issued forth from “the work of Freud and of Nietzsche, the major psychologists of the Faustian soul” (91)—but what he does share with Leary is a belief, expressed most clearly in his posthumous text The Will to Power (1967), in the political and ethical power of becoming, and the need to celebrate and affirm, rather than resist, a world that appears to be in constant, ineluctable flux. Rather than seeking merely to improve the status quo, Nietzsche works toward total and perpetual upheaval—a transvaluation of all values. In Deleuze’s words, he “made thought into a machine of war—a battering ram—into a nomadic force” (149). At a time when resistance to capitalism seems futile; when the possibility of capitalism ending seems more and more distant (which is not to say that it is unlikely to end anytime soon, but merely that its plausible alternatives have been evacuated from the popular imagination), such a claim can seem rather appealing. But how might we distinguish this conception of perpetual revolution of values from the creative destruction of capitalism itself? Why do we presume that there is such a distinction to be made? Why should Leary’s call for rapidity and flexibility—and more broadly, a celebration of change over constancy—be seen as anything other than an acknowledgement and reinforcement of capitalism’s accelerating cycle of obsolescence? The uncomfortable reality we must consider is that the countercultural, as an apparent exteriority waiting to be appropriated, plays an essential role in the accumulation of capital that drives our economic system, and that accordingly, it cannot be plausibly understood as external to the structural conditions that it opposes. This is not to suggest that counterculture does not produce new possibilities, new opportunities, and new ways of living, but simply that its production is always already structured by capitalist relations—the precise anxiety acknowledged by Williams. Once again, this is not a dismissal of counterculture, just the opposite in fact. It is a rejection of the conflation that Leary makes between counterculture and novelty, the combination of which is supposed to provide a potent threat to capitalist hegemony. “The naive supposition of an unambiguous development towards increased production,” argues German philosopher Theodor Adorno, “is itself a piece of that bourgeois outlook which permits development because […] it is hostile to qualitative difference” (156). Capitalism produces many different types of commodities (within which we can include ideas, beliefs, means of communication, as well as physical goods in the traditional sense), but what unites them is their shared identity under the regime of exchange value (money). This exchange value masks their genuine heterogeneity. But what use is it simply reassuring us that if we continue to produce, we may eventually produce something so new, so different that it will evade capture by this logic? Does this not merely reinforce a complicity between the appeal of the countercultural as a force of change and the continuous accumulation of capital? I would contend that to define counterculture as the production of the new underwrites the inexhaustible productivism of the capitalist hegemony that it seeks to challenge. What if, then, this qualitative difference was created not through the production of the new, but the total rejection of this production as the means to resistance? This would not be to engender or encourage a state of total stasis (which is definitely not a preferable or plausible scenario), but rather, to detach the hope for a better world from the idea that we must achieve this by somehow adding to the world that we already have—to recognise, as Adorno would have it, that “the forces of production are not the deepest substratum of man [sic], but represent his historical form adapted to the production of commodities” (156). Leary’s peculiar conception of counterculture that we have been examining throughout this paper refuses to give countenance to any kind of stability or equilibrium, instead proffering an essentially Nietzschean mode of resistance in which incessant creativity becomes the means to the contrivance of a new world—this is part of what Roszak records as the rejection of Marx’s “compulsive hard-headedness” and the embrace of “[m]yth, religion, dreams, visions” which mark the fundamental romanticism of (post-)1960s counterculture, and its heritage in nineteenth century bourgeois sensibilities. For all the benefits that such a conception of counterculture has provided, it would seem misguided to ignore the ways in which Leary’s rhetoric is undermined by the simple fact that it presumes a hierarchy between a dominant culture (capitalism) and its resistant periphery that is already structured by and given through a capitalist mode of thought that presumes its own self-sufficiency (that is, it assumes the adequacy of the logic of exchange to homogenise all products under the commodity form). The postulate that grounds Leary’s understanding of counterculture is a covert identification of man/woman as a restless, alienated being who will never reach a state of stability or actualisation, and must instead continue to produce in the vain hope that this might finally and definitely change things for the better. Instead of embracing the constancy of change, an ideology that ends up justifying the excesses of a capitalist order that knows nothing other than production, perhaps it is possible to begin reconceptualising counterculture in terms that resist precisely this demand for novelty. As Alexander Galloway declares, “[i]t is time now to subtract from this world, not add to it,” for the “political does not arise from the domain of production” (138-139). We do not need more well-intentioned ideas regarding how the world could be a better place or what new possibilities are on offer—we know these things already, we hear about them every day. What we need, and what perhaps counterculture can offer, is to affirm the truth of that which does not need to be produced, which is always already given to us through the immanence of human thought. In the words of François Laruelle, this is an understanding of human individuals as ordinary, “stripped of qualities or attributes by a wholly positive sufficiency,” such that “they lack nothing, are not alienated,” whereby the identity of the individual “is defined by characteristics that are absolutely original, primitive, internal, and without equivalent in the World […] not ideal essences, but finite, inalienable (and consequently irrecusable) lived experiences” (48-49). The job of counterculture then becomes not so much creating that which did not exist prior, but of realising “what we already know to be true” (Galloway 139). References Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso, 1974. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge and London: The Belknapp Press, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles. “Nomad Thought.” The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation. Ed. David B. Allison. New York City: Dell Publishing, 1977: 142-149. Galloway, Alexander R. The Interface Effect. Cambridge and Malden: Polity, 2012. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Laruelle, François. From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought. Ed. Robin Mackay. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2012. Leary, Timothy. “Foreword.” Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. Ken Goffman and Dan Joy. New York City: Villard Books, 2004: ix-xiv. Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. ---. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge, 1998. Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume One. London: Penguin, 1976. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Roszak, Theodore. The Makings of a Counter Culture. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

In his recent re-evaluation of McLuhanite theories for the information age, Digital McLuhan, Paul Levinson makes what at first glance appears to be a curious statement: he says that on the Web "the common denominator ... is the written word, as it is and has been with all things having to do with computers -- and will likely continue to be until such time, if ever, that the spoken word replaces the written as the vehicle of computer commands" (38). This, however, seems to directly contradict what any Web user has been able to experience for several years now: Web content has increasingly come to rely on graphics, at first still, now also often animated, and continues to include more and more audiovisual elements of various kinds. We don't even have to look at the current (and, hopefully, passing) phase of interminable Shockwave splash pages, which users have to endure while they wait to be transferred to the 'real' content of a site: even on as print-focussed a page as the one you're currently reading, you'll see graphical buttons to the left and at the bottom, for example. Other sites far surpass this for graphical content: it is hard to imagine what the official Olympics site or that of EXPO 2000 would look like in text-only versions. The drive towards more and more graphics has long been, well, visible. Already in 1997 (at a time when 33.6k modems were considered fast) Marshall considered the Internet to have entered its "graphic stage, a transitional media form that has made surfing the net feel like flipping through a glossy magazine or the interlinkages of a multimedia game or encyclopedia CD-ROMs"; to him this stage "relies on a construction that is textual and graphically enhanced through software overlays ... and highlighted by sample images, sound bites and occasionally short, moving images" (51). This historicised view mirrors a distinction made around the same time by Lovink, who divided users into "IBM-PC-modernists" still running text-based interfaces, and those enjoying the "Apple-Windows 95-postmodernism" of their graphical user interfaces (Lovink and Winkler 15). In the age of GUIs, in fact, 'text' in itself does not really exist on screen any more: everything from textual to graphical information consists of individual pixels in the same way, which is precisely what makes Levinson's initial statement appear so anachronistic. The move from 'text' to 'graphics and text' could thus be seen as a sign of the overall shift from the industrial to the information age -- a view not without precedent, since the transition from modernist to postmodernist times is similarly contemporaneous with the rise of graphic design as a form of communication as well as art. Beyond such broad strokes, we can also identify some of the finer details presented by the current state of graphics on the Web, however. Marshall's 'graphic stage', after all, was a 'transitional' one, and by now it seems that we might have passed it already, entering into a new aesthetic paradigm which appears to have borrowed many of its approaches from the realm of computer games: the new Web vision is shiny, colourful, animated, and increasingly also accompanied by sound effects. This is no surprise since the mass acceptance of personal computers themselves was largely driven by their use as a source of entertainment. Gaming and computers are inseparably interconnected, and the development of home computers' graphical capabilities in particular has long been driven almost exclusively by players' needs for better, faster, more realistic graphics. Of course, the way we interact with computers also owes a significant debt to games. Engagement in a dialogue with the machine, in which the computer displays both our own actions and its responses, representing us and itself simultaneously on screen, is the predominant mode of computing, and such a mode of engagement (dissolving the barriers between human mind and machinic computation) can now also be found in our interaction with the Web. Here, too, individual knowledge blends with the information available on the network as we immerse ourselves in hypertextual connectivity. As Talbott writes, "clearly, a generation raised on Adventure and video games -- where every door conceals a treasure or a monster worth pursuing in frenetic style -- has its own way of appreciating the hypertext interface" (13); not only has the Web taken on the aesthetics of computer gaming, then, but using the Web itself exhibits aspects of participation in a global 'knowledge game'. Talbott means to criticise this when he writes that thus "the doctrines of endless Enlightenment and Progress become the compelling subtext of a universal video game few can resist playing" (196), but however we may choose to evaluate this game, the observation itself is sound. One possible reason for taking a critical view of this development is that computer and video games rarely present more than the appearance of participation; while players may have a feeling of control over features of the game, the game itself usually remains entirely unaffected and ready for a restart at any moment. Web users might similarly feel empowered by the wealth of information to which they have gained access online, without actually making use of that information to form new knowledge for themselves. This is a matter for the individual user, however; where they have a true interest in the information they seek, we can have every confidence that they will process it to their advantage, too. Beyond this, the skills of information seeking learnt from Web use might also have overall benefits for users, as a kind of 'mind-eye coordination' similar to the 'hand-eye coordination' benefits often attributed to the playing of action games. The ability to figure out unknown problems, the desire to understand and gain control of a situation, which they can learn from computer games, is likely to help them better understand the complexity and interconnectedness of anything they might learn: "it could ... well be true that the cross-linking inherent in hypertext encourages people to see the connections among different aspects of the world so that they will get less fragmented knowledge" (Nielsen 190). The increasingly graphical nature of Web content could appear to work against this, however: "extensions of traditional hyperTEXT systems to encompass hyperMEDIA introduces [sic] a new dimension. ... The picture that 'speaks a thousand words' may say a thousand different words to different viewers. Pictures or graphics lend themselves much more than does text to multiple interpretations", as McAleese claims (12-13) -- but perhaps this overrates significantly the ability of text to anchor down meaning to any one point. Rather, it is questionable whether text and images really are that different from one another -- viewed from a historical perspective, certainly, opinions are divided, it seems: "the medieval church feared the power of the visual image because of the way it appeared to licence the imagination and the consideration of alternatives. Obversely, contemporary cultural critics fear that the abandonment of the written word in favour of graphics is stifling critical and creative powers" (Moody 60) -- take, for example, the commonly held view that movies made from novels limit the reader's imagination to the particular portrayal of events chosen for the film. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that both text and images (especially when they are increasingly easy to manipulate by digital means, thus losing once and for all their claim to photographic 'realism') can 'say a thousand different words to different viewers' -- indeed, traditional photography has also been described as 'writing with light'. As Levinson notes, therefore, "once the photograph is converted to a digital format, it is as amenable to manipulation, as divorced from the reality it purports to represent, as the words which appear on the same screen. On that score, the Internet's co-option of photography -- the rendering of the formerly analogue image as its content -- is at least as profound as the Internet's promotion of written communication" (43), and this, then, may perhaps begin to provide a resolution to his overall preference for writing as the predominant Internet communication form, as quoted above: online writing now includes in almost equal measure 'print' text and graphical images, both of which are of course graphically rendered on screen by the computer anyway; they combine into a new form of writing not unlike ancient hieroglyphics. On the Web, writing has come full circle: from the iconographic representations of the earliest civilisations through their simplification and solidification into the various alphabets back to a new online iconography. This also demonstrates the strong Western bias of this technology, of course: had computers emerged from Chinese or Japanese culture, for example -- where alphabets in the literal sense don't exist -- chances are they would never have existed in a text-only form. Now that we have passed the alphabetic stage to re-enter an era of iconography, then, it remains to be seen how this change along with our overall "'immersion' in hypertext will affect the way that we mentally structure our world. Linear argumentation is more a consequence of alphabetic writing than of printed books and it remains to be seen if hypertext presentation will significantly erode this predominant convention for mentally ordering our world" (McKnight et al. 41). Perhaps the computer game experience (where a blending of text and graphics had begun some time before the Web) can provide some early pointers already, then. The game-like nature of information search and usage online might help to undermine some of the more heavily encrusted structures of information dissemination that are still dominant: "we are promised, on the information 'library' side, less of the dogmatic and more of the ludic, less of the canonical and more of the festive. Fewer arguments from authority, through more juxtaposition of authorities" (Debray 146). This is also supported by the fact that there usually exists no one central authority, no one central site, in any field of information covered by the Web, but that there rather is a multiplicity of sources and viewpoints with varying claims to 'authority' and 'objectivity'; rather than rely on authorities to determine what is accepted knowledge, Web users must, and do, distil their own knowledge from the information they find in their searches. Kumon and Aizu's notion that from the industrial-age "wealth game" we have now moved into the "wisdom game" (320) sums up this view. However, for all the ludic exuberance of this game, we should also be concerned that, as in any game, we are also likely to see winners and losers. Those unaware of the rules of the game, and people who are prevented from playing for personal or socioeconomic reasons (the increased use of graphics will make it much more difficult for certain disabled readers to use the Web, for example) must not be left out of it. In gaming terminology, perhaps the formation of teams including such disadvantaged people is the answer? References Debray, Régis. "The Book as Symbolic Object." The Future of the Book. Ed. Geoffrey Nunberg. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 139-51. Kumon, Shumpei, and Izumi Aizu. "Co-Emulation: The Case for a Global Hypernetwork Society." Global Networks: Computers and International Communication. Ed. Linda M. Harasim. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994. 311-26. Levinson, Paul. Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium. London: Routledge, 1999. Lovink, Geert, and Hartmut Winkler. "The Computer: Medium or Calculating Machine." Convergence 3.2 (1997): 10-18. Marshall, P. David. "The Commodity and the Internet: Interactivity and the Generation of Audience Commodity." Media International Australia 83 (Feb. 1997): 51-62. McAleese, Ray. "Navigation and Browsing in Hypertext." Hypertext: Theory into Practice. Ed. Ray McAleese. Oxford: Intellect, 1993. 5- 38. McKnight, Cliff, Andrew Dillon, and John Richardson. Hypertext in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Moody, Nickianne. "Interacting with the Divine Comedy." Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. Ed. Jon Dovey. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996. 59-77. Nielsen, Jakob. Hypertext and Hypermedia. Boston: Academic P, 1990. Talbott, Stephen L. The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly and Associates, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "The Knowledge Adventure: Game Aesthetics and Web Hieroglyphics." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "The Knowledge Adventure: Game Aesthetics and Web Hieroglyphics," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: AxeM/C: A Journal of Media and Culture l Bruns. (2000) The knowledge adventure: game aesthetics and Web hieroglyphics. 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php> ([your date of access]).

Borders seem to be dropping all around us. Interdisciplinary university curricula, international free trade, wireless broadband technologies—these and many other phenomena suggest a steady decline in the rigidity and quantity of borders delimiting social interactions. In response to this apparent loss of borders, critical scholars might point out that university hiring practices remain discipline-bound, international tariffs are widespread, and technological access is uneven. But even as this critical response points out the limited extent of border-loss, it still affirms the weakening of these borders. Since the 9/11 tragedy, the world has witnessed much fortification of national and cultural borders through essentializing discourses (epitomized by America’s “us versus them” response to terror). But can critical scholars, as affirmative as they are of the dissolution and the crossing of borders, also support the building of exclusionary national and cultural borders? More importantly, can this reasoning responsibly emerge from a postmodern or postcolonial perspective that both favors marginalized voices and recognizes the routinely violent excesses of nationalism? By considering the practice of hybridity within the context of international capitalism, I will argue that maintaining the “conditions of possibility” for hybridity, and thus, maintaining the possibility of resistance to essentializing discourses, requires the strategic reinforcement of national and cultural borders. Border-Crossing as Hybrid Practice The most critical aspect of hybridity in relation to culture is the hybrid’s position as border-crosser. Postmodern theory typically affirms individual instances of border-crossing, but its overall project in regards to boundaries is more comprehensive. Henri Giroux writes: …postmodernism constitutes a general attempt to transgress the borders sealed by modernism, to proclaim the arbitrariness of all boundaries, and to call attention to the sphere of culture as a shifting social and historical construction. (Border 55) The figure of the hybrid emerges in postcolonial discourses as the embodiment of this postmodern critique of borders. Hybrid identities such as Gloria Anzaldua’s “mestiza consciousness”—a hybrid of white, Indian, and Mexican identities—creates the possibility of resisting oppression because such multiplicity disavows the reductive and essentializing binaries that colonizers employ to maintain power (Anzaldua 892). By embracing these hybrid identities, colonized people thus affirm cultural differences in ways that resist essentialism and which conceive of these differences in ways that “are not identified with backwardness” (Martín-Barbero 352). In studying the border-crossing work of critical intellectual Paulo Freire, Giroux claims that border-crossing offers the hybrid the “opportunity for new subject positions, identities, and social relations that can produce resistance to and relief from the structures of domination and oppression” (“Paulo” 18). Prior to these claims, postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha wrote that the “third space” of hybridity surfaces as an “ambivalence” toward colonial authority and as a “strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal” (34). But what if we take seriously Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s claim in their book, Empire, that postcolonial theory, with its acclaim of the subversive potential of the hybrid, is “entirely insufficient for theorizing contemporary global power”? Or what if we admit that, unfortunately, the postcolonial hybrid is nowhere near as successful or as efficient a border-crosser as corporations have become, corporations which have made their own successful ‘runs for the borders’ by colonizing the markets of nations across the globe? In what forms can the ambivalence and disavowal identified by Bhabha emerge when cultures are now being colonized, not by other cultures, but by the influence of corporations? In the context of this new state of empire, Hardt and Negri warn that traditional hybridity becomes “an empty gesture … or worse, these gestures risk reinforcing imperial power rather than challenging it” (216–17). But in a world where “the freedom of self-fashioning is often indistinguishable from the powers of an all-encompassing control,” how can scholars approve a program of aggressive national self-fashioning (Hardt 216)? Stanley Fish suggests one answer. In Professional Correctness, Fish states that only enterprises “bent on suicide” would fail to establish their “distinctiveness.” He writes: An enterprise acquires an identity by winning a space at the table of enterprises …. Within the space that has been secured, all questions, including questions on basic concepts, remain open. Nor are the boundaries between enterprises fixed and impermeable; negotiations on the borders go on continually, and at times border skirmishes can turn into large-scale territorial disputes (19) If we substitute the word “nations” or “cultures” here for “enterprises,” Fish’s text reminds us that the building of national and cultural borders is always at best a temporary event, and that ‘openness’ is only available within a “space that has [previously] been secured.” Although nations may risk many things when they resist colonization, cultural fixity is not one of them. Cultures can thus maintain distinctiveness from other cultures without giving up their aspirations to hybridity. Pragmatically, Fish might say, one needs to secure a space at the table before one can negotiate. Essentialist border-building is just such a pragmatic effort. Building Borders That Disavow Cultural turf and national turf are inseparable. In the idealistic American view of culture as a “melting pot,” cultural identity relinquishes its substance to a greater national identity. Especially in the wake of 9/11, nationalistic maintenance of identity has prompted a host of culturally-focused turf disputes ranging from the bombing of mosques to the deliberate dumping of French champagne. Such disputes reveal cultural antagonisms that emerge from essentializing discourses. In his speech to the United Nations only two months after the September 11th attack, President George W. Bush explicitly connected the willingness of countries to form a coalition against terror (and thus to accept the essentializing “us versus them” mentality) with the ability to maintain secure borders by stating “Some nations want to play their part in the fight against terror, but tell us they lack the means to enforce their laws and control their borders” (n.pag.). Clear and manageable borders are presented here as stabilizing influences that enable the war against terror. By maintaining Western economic and political interests, these borders appear to delimit a space most unlike the subversive hybrid space that Bhabha imagines. Although essentializing discourses naturally seem to threaten the space of hybridity, it is important here to recall Bhabha’s definition of hybridity as a “strategic reversal of the process of domination” (emphasis added). Gayatri Spivak reminds us that “it’s the idea of strategy that has been forgotten” in current critiques of essentialism (5). In fact, essentialism, properly situated, can be used as a strategy against essentialism. While Spivak warns that a “strategic use of essentialism can turn into an alibi for proselytizing academic essentialisms,” she more forcefully claims that the “strategic use of a positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” is “something one cannot not use”; a strategy that is “unavoidably useful” (4, 5). For Spivak, the critical qualities of a strategic essentialism are its “self-conscious” use (i.e. its “scrupulously visible political interest”) and its ongoing “critique of the ‘fetish-character’” of its own master terms (3–4). Three short examples will serve to highlight this strategic use of border-building in service of “scrupulously visible political interests.” While Russians may have the distinction of being the first to turn a candy bar’s name (“Snickers”) into a swear word, there have been no more visible borders that disavow multinational capitalism than those in France. Predictably, the key sites of struggle are the traditional repositories of French high culture: art, language, and food. One highly visible effort in this struggle is the ten per cent cinema tax (which, based on American dominance in the industry, affects mainly American films), the revenue from which is used to subsidize French filmmaking. Also, the controversial 1997 Toubon Law built borders by establishing fines and even prison sentences for refusal to use French language in venues such as advertising; as did the 1999 “dismantling” of a McDonald’s restaurant by José Bové, a French sheep farmer protesting U.S. sanctions, the WTO, and “Americanization” in general (Gordon 23, 35). Two nations that erected “borders of disavowal” in regards to the war on terror are Turkey and the Philippines. In March of 2003, even after being offered $6 billion in aid from the U.S., Turkey refused to allow 62,000 U.S. troops to be deployed in Turkey to facilitate the war in Iraq (Lee). While Turkey did allow the U.S. the use of airbases for certain purposes, the refusal to allow U.S. troops to cross the Turkey-Iraq border marked a significant site of cultural resistance. Even after the Philippines accepted a $78 billion increase in military aid from the U.S. to fight terrorism, public outcry there forced the U.S. to remove its “active” military presence since it violated a portion of the Philippines’s constitution that banned combat by foreign soldiers on its soil. (Klein). Also significant here is the degree to which the negotiation of national and cultural borders is primarily a negotiation of capital. As The Nation reported: For [Philippine President Arroyo], the global antiterrorist campaign is first and foremost a business proposition, and she made this very clear when she emerged from her meeting with President Bush in Washington in November and boasted to Filipino reporters that "it's $4.6 billion, and counting.” (Bello) All of these examples reinforce cultural and national borders in order to resist domination by capital. In French Foreign Minister Védrine’s words, the “desire to preserve cultural diversity in the world is in no way a sign of anti-Americanism but of antihegemonism, a refusal of impoverishment” (qtd. in Gordon 30). This “refusal of impoverishment” is the accomplishment of identities that refuse to supplant culture with capital. As these examples show, borders need not simply reinforce existing power relations, but are sites of resistance as well. But Is This Turf Really Cultural? Can one legitimately refer to the examples of Turkey and the Philippines, as well as the web of forces that structure the interactions of all nations in a system of multinational capitalism, as being “cultural”? If the subtitle of Fredric Jameson’s book, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, does not suggest strongly enough the particularly cultural turf of these systems, Jameson makes this explicit when he states that we have witnessed . . . a prodigious expansion of culture throughout the social realm, to the point at which everything in our social life—from economic value and state power to practices and to the very structure of the psyche itself—can be said to have become ”cultural.” (48). One of Jameson’s basic arguments in his second chapter is that “every position on postmodernism in culture . . . is also at one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today” (3). I would like to transpose this statement somewhat by asserting that every position on culture in postmodernism is necessarily a political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism. Therefore, actions that negotiate cultural turf and modify national identities can be methods of influencing the contours of multinational capitalism. In other words, strategic border-building maintains the space of hybridity because it seeks to disavow the dominance of cultural turf by capital. Without such protectionist and essentializing efforts, the conditions of possibility for hybrid identities would be at the mercy of market forces. The pragmatic use of essentialism as a mode of resistance is a move one can imagine Fish would approve of, and that Hardt and Negri hint at the necessity of when they state: The creative forces that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges. The struggles to contest and subvert Empire, as well as those to construct a real alternative, will thus take place on the imperial terrain itself. (xv) Essentialism is admittedly one of the “creative forces that sustain Empire.” The dangers of struggling “on the imperial terrain itself” lie in not retaining the critical self-consciousness of one’s own strategies that Spivak argues for, and in not remaining mindful of the histories of genocide and tyranny that have accompanied much modern nationalism. In constructing a “counter-Empire,” cultures can resist both the seductions of aggressive nationalism and the homogenizing forces of multinational capitalism. The turf of hybridity provides a space from which to launch this counter-Empire, but this space may only exist between cultural identities, not between multiple versions of a homogenized consumer identity maintained by corporate influence. Nations should neither be afraid to rebuild self-consciously their cultural borders nor to act strategically to maintain their distinctiveness, despite postmodern theory’s acclamation of the dissolution of borders and political appeals for global solidarity against the terrorist ‘Other.’ In order to establish resistance in the context of international capitalism, the strategic disavowal necessary to hybridity may need to emerge as a disavowal of hybridity itself. Works Cited Anzaldua, Gloria. “Borderlands/La Frontera.” Literary Theory, An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2001. 887–902. Bello, Waldo. “A ‘Second Front’ in the Philippines.” The Nation 18 Mar. 2002. 16 Feb. 2004. <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020318&s=bello>. Bhabha, Homi. K. “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817.” The Postcolonial Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Ashcroft, et al. New York: Routledge, 1995. 29–35. Bush, George W. “President Bush Speaks to United Nations.” The White House. 11 Jan. 2004. <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011110-3.php>. Fish, Stanley. Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Giroux, Henry. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge, 1992. ---. “Paulo Freire and the Politics of Postcolonialism.” JAC 12.1 (1992): 15–26. Gordon, Philip H., and Sophie Meunier. “Globalization and French Cultural Identity.”French Politics, Culture, and Society 19.1 (2001): 22–41. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Klein, Naomi. “Mutiny in Manila.” The Nation 1 Sep. 2003. 16 Feb. 2004. <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030901&s=klein>. Lee, Matthew. “Turkey’s Refusal Stuns U.S.” Common Dreams News Center. 1 Mar. 2003. 12 Jan. 2004. <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0301-10.htm>. Martín-Barbero, Jésus. “The Processes: From Nationalisms to Transnationals.” Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 351–84. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mason's, Eric D. "Border-Building" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/03-border-building.php>. APA Style Mason's, E. (2004, Mar17). Border-Building. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/03-border-building.php>

Cyborgs already walk among us. (“Cures to Come” 76) This essay was begun as a reaction to a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie called Sweet Nothing in My Ear (2008), which follows the lives of two parents, Dan, who is hearing (played by Jeff Daniels), and Laura, who is deaf (Marlee Matlin), as they struggle to make a decision about whether or not to give their 11-year-old son, Adam (late-deafened), a cochlear implant. Dan and Laura represent different perspectives, hearing and deaf perspectives. The film dramatizes the parents’ conflict and negotiation, exposing audiences to both sides of the cochlear implant debate, albeit in a fairly simplistic way. Nevertheless, it represents the lives of deaf people and gives voice to debates about cochlear implants with more accuracy and detail than most film and television dramas. One of the central scenes in the film is what I call the “activation scene”, quite common to cochlear implant narratives. In the scene, the protagonists witness a child having his implant activated or turned on. The depiction is reminiscent of the WATER scene in the film about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker, employing a sentimental visual rhetoric. First, the two parents are shown seated near the child, clasping their hands as if in prayer. The audiologist, wielder of technology and therefore clearly the authority figure in the scene, types away furiously on her laptop. At the moment of being “turned on,” the child suddenly “hears” his father calling “David! David!” He gazes angelically toward heaven as piano music plays plaintively in the background. The parents all but fall to their knees and the protagonist of the film, Dan, watching through a window, weeps. It is a scene of cure, of healing, of “miracle,” a hyper-sentimentalised portrait of what is in reality often a rather anti-climactic event. It was certainly anti-climactic in my son, Michael’s case. I was taken aback by how this scene was presented and dismayed overall at some of the inaccuracies, small though they were, in the portrayal of cochlear implants in this film. It was, after all, according to the Nielsen ratings, seen by 8 million people. I began to wonder what kinds of misconceptions my son was going to face when he met people whose only exposure to implants was through media representations. Spurred by this question, I started to research other recent portrayals of people with implants on U.S. television in the past ten years, to see how cochlear implant (hereafter referred to as CI) identity has been portrayed by American media. For most of American history, deaf people have been portrayed in print and visual media as exotic “others,” and have long been the subject of an almost morbid cultural fascination. Christopher Krentz suggests that, particularly in the nineteenth century, scenes pairing sentimentality and deafness repressed an innate, Kristevan “abject” revulsion towards deaf people. Those who are deaf highlight and define, through their ‘lack’, the “unmarked” body. The fact of their deafness, understood as lack, conjures up an ideal that it does not attain, the ideal of the so-called “normal” or “whole” body. In recent years, however, the figure of the “deaf as Other” in the media, has shifted from what might be termed the “traditionally” deaf character, to what Brenda Jo Brueggeman (in her recent book Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places), calls “the new deaf cyborg” or the deaf person with a cochlear implant (4). N. Katharine Hailes states that cyborgs are now “the stage on which are performed contestations about the body boundaries that have often marked class, ethnic, and cultural differences” (85). In this essay, I claim that the character with a CI, as portrayed in the media, is now not only a strange, “marked” “Other,” but is also a screen upon which viewers project anxieties about technology, demonstrating both fascination fear. In her book, Brueggeman issues a call to action, saying that Deaf Studies must now begin to examine what she calls “implanting rhetorics,” or “the rhetorical relationships between our technologies and our identity” and therefore needs to attend to the construction of “the new deaf cyborg” (18). This short study will serve, I hope, as both a response to that injunction and as a jumping-off point for more in-depth studies of the construction of the CI identity and the implications of these constructions. First, we should consider what a cochlear implant is and how it functions. The National Association of the Deaf in the United States defines the cochlear implant as a device used to help the user perceive sound, i.e., the sensation of sound that is transmitted past the damaged cochlea to the brain. In this strictly sensorineural manner, the implant works: the sensation of sound is delivered to the brain. The stated goal of the implant is for it to function as a tool to enable deaf children to develop language based on spoken communication. (“NAD Position”) The external portion of the implant consists of the following parts: a microphone, which picks up sound from the environment, which is contained in the behind-the-ear device that resembles the standard BTE hearing aid; in this “hearing aid” there is also a speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. The processor transmits signals to the transmitter/receiver, which then converts them into electric impulses. Part of the transmitter sits on the skin and attaches to the inner portion of the transmitter by means of a magnet. The inner portion of the receiver/stimulator sends the impulses down into the electrode array that lies inside the cochlea, which in turn stimulates the auditory nerve, giving the brain the impression of sound (“Cochlear Implants”). According to manufacturer’s statistics, there are now approximately 188,000 people worldwide who have obtained cochlear implants, though the number of these that are in use is not known (Nussbaum). That is what a cochlear implant is. Before we can look at how people with implants are portrayed in the media, before we examine constructions of identity, perhaps we should first ask what constitutes a “real” CI identity? This is, of course, laughable; pinning down a homogeneous CI identity is no more likely than finding a blanket definition of “deaf identity.” For example, at this point in time, there isn’t even a word or term in American culture for someone with an implant. I struggle with how to phrase it in this essay - “implantee?” “recipient?” - there are no neat labels. In the USA you can call a person deaf, Deaf (the “D” representing a specific cultural and political identity), hearing impaired, hard of hearing, and each gradation implies, for better or worse, some kind of subject position. There are no such terms for a person who gets an implant. Are people with implants, as suggested above, just deaf? Deaf? Are they hard of hearing? There is even debate in the ASL community as to what sign should be used to indicate “someone who has a cochlear implant.” If a “CI identity” cannot be located, then perhaps the rhetoric that is used to describe it may be. Paddy Ladd, in Understanding Deaf Culture, does a brilliant job of exploring the various discourses that have surrounded deaf culture throughout history. Stuart Blume borrows heavily from Ladd in his “The Rhetoric and Counter-Rhetoric of a 'Bionic' Technology”, where he points out that an “essential and deliberate feature” of the history of the CI from the 60s onward, was that it was constructed in an overwhelmingly positive light by the mass media, using what Ladd calls the “medical” rhetorical model. That is, that the CI is a kind of medical miracle that promised to cure deafness. Within this model one may find also the sentimental, “missionary” rhetoric that Krentz discusses, what Ladd claims is a revival of the evangelism of the nineteenth-century Oralist movement in America. Indeed, newspaper articles in the 1980s and 90s hailed the implant as a “breakthrough”, a “miracle”; even a quick survey of headlines shows evidence of this: “Upton Boy Can Hear at Last!”, “Girl with a New Song in Her Heart”, “Children Head Queue for Bionic Ears” (Lane). As recently as January 2010, an issue of National Geographic featured on its cover the headline Merging Man and Machine: The Bionic Age. Sure enough, the second photograph in the story is of a child’s bilateral cochlear implant, with the caption “within months of the surgery (the child) spoke the words his hearing parents longed for: Mama and Dada.” “You’re looking at a real bionic kid,” says Johns Hopkins University surgeon John Niparko, proudly (37). To counter this medical/corporate rhetoric of cure, Ladd and Blume claim, the deaf community devised a counter-rhetoric, a discourse in which the CI is not cast in the language of miracle and life, but instead in terms of death, mutilation, and cultural oppression. Here, the implant is depicted as the last in a long line of sadistic experiments using the deaf as guinea pigs. Often the CI is framed in the language of Nazism and genocide as seen in the title of an article in the British Deaf News: “Cochlear Implants: Oralism’s Final Solution.” So, which of these two “implanting rhetorics” is most visible in the current construction of the CI in American television? Is the CI identity presented by rendering people with CIs impossibly positive, happy characters? Is it delineated using the metaphors of the sentimental, of cure, of miracle? Or is the CI identity constructed using the counter-rhetorical references to death, oppression and cultural genocide? One might hypothesize that television, like other media, cultivating as it does the values of the hearing hegemony, would err on the side of promulgating the medicalised, positivist rhetoric of the “cure” for deafness. In an effort to find out, I conducted a general survey of American television shows from 2000 to now that featured characters with CIs. I did not include news shows or documentaries in my survey. Interestingly, some of the earliest television portrayals of CIs appeared in that bastion of American sentimentality, the daytime soap opera. In 2006, on the show “The Young and the Restless”, a “troubled college student who contracted meningitis” received an implant, and in 2007 “All My Children” aired a story arc about a “toddler who becomes deaf after a car crash.” It is interesting to note that both characters were portrayed as “late-deafened”, or suddenly inflicted with the loss of a sense they previously possessed, thus avoiding any whiff of controversy about early implantation. But one expects a hyper-sentimentalised portrayal of just about everything in daytime dramas like this. What is interesting is that when people with CIs have appeared on several “reality” programs, which purport to offer “real,” unadulterated glimpses into people’s lives, the rhetoric is no less sentimentalized than the soaps (perhaps because these shows are no less fabricated). A good example of this is the widely watched and, I think, ironically named show “True Life” which appears on MTV. This is a series that claims to tell the “remarkable real-life stories of young people and the unusual subcultures they inhabit.” In episode 42, “ True Life: I’m Deaf”, part of the show follows a young man, Chris, born deaf and proud of it (his words), who decides to get a cochlear implant because he wants to be involved in the hearing world. Through an interpreter Chris explains that he wants an implant so he can communicate with his friends, talk with girls, and ultimately fulfill his dreams of having a job and getting married (one has to ask: are these things he can’t do without an implant?). The show’s promo asks “how do you go from living a life in total silence to fully understanding the spoken language?” This statement alone contains two elements common to the “miracle” rhetoric, first that the “tragic” deaf victim will emerge from a completely lonely, silent place (not true; most deaf people have some residual hearing, and if you watch the show you see Chris signing, “speaking” voluminously) to seamlessly, miraculously, “fully” joining and understanding the hearing world. Chris, it seems, will only come into full being when he is able to join the hearing world. In this case, the CI will cure what ails him. According to “True Life.” Aside from “soap opera” drama and so-called reality programming, by far the largest dissemination of media constructions of the CI in the past ten years occurred on top-slot prime-time television shows, which consist primarily of the immensely popular genre of the medical and police procedural drama. Most of these shows have at one time or another had a “deaf” episode, in which there is a deaf character or characters involved, but between 2005 and 2008, it is interesting to note that most, if not all of the most popular of these have aired episodes devoted to the CI controversy, or have featured deaf characters with CIs. The shows include: CSI (both Miami and New York), Cold Case, Law and Order (both SVU and Criminal Intent), Scrubs, Gideon’s Crossing, and Bones. Below is a snippet of dialogue from Bones: Zach: {Holding a necklace} He was wearing this.Angela: Catholic boy.Brennan: One by two forceps.Angela {as Brennan pulls a small disc out from behind the victim’s ear} What is that?Brennan: Cochlear implant. Looks like the birds were trying to get it.Angela: That would set a boy apart from the others, being deaf.(Bones, “A Boy in the Tree”, 1.3, 2005) In this scene, the forensics experts are able to describe significant points of this victim’s identity using the only two solid artifacts left in the remains, a crucifix and a cochlear implant. I cite this scene because it serves, I believe, as a neat metaphor for how these shows, and indeed television media in general, are, like the investigators, constantly engaged in the business of cobbling together identity: in this particular case, a cochlear implant identity. It also shows how an audience can cultivate or interpret these kinds of identity constructions, here, the implant as an object serves as a tangible sign of deafness, and from this sign, or clue, the “audience” (represented by the spectator, Angela) immediately infers that the victim was lonely and isolated, “set apart from the others.” Such wrongheaded inferences, frivolous as they may seem coming from the realm of popular culture, have, I believe, a profound influence on the perceptions of larger society. The use of the CI in Bones is quite interesting, because although at the beginning of the show the implant is a key piece of evidence, that which marks and identifies the dead/deaf body, the character’s CI identity proves almost completely irrelevant to the unfolding of the murder-mystery. The only times the CI character’s deafness is emphasized are when an effort is made to prove that the he committed suicide (i.e., if you’re deaf you are therefore “isolated,” and therefore you must be miserable enough to kill yourself). Zak, one of the forensics officers says, “I didn’t talk to anyone in high school and I didn’t kill myself” and another officer comments that the boy was “alienated by culture, by language, and by his handicap” (odd statements, since most deaf children with or without implants have remarkably good language ability). Also, in another strange moment, the victim’s ambassador/mother shows a video clip of the child’s CI activation and says “a person who lived through this miracle would never take his own life” (emphasis mine). A girlfriend, implicated in the murder (the boy is killed because he threatened to “talk”, revealing a blackmail scheme), says “people didn’t notice him because of the way he talked but I liked him…” So at least in this show, both types of “implanting rhetoric” are employed; a person with a CI, though the recipient of a “miracle,” is also perceived as “isolated” and “alienated” and unfortunately, ends up dead. This kind of rather negative portrayal of a person with a CI also appears in the CSI: New York episode ”Silent Night” which aired in 2006. One of two plot lines features Marlee Matlin as the mother of a deaf family. At the beginning of the episode, after feeling some strange vibrations, Matlin’s character, Gina, checks on her little granddaughter, Elizabeth, who is crying hysterically in her crib. She finds her daughter, Alison, dead on the floor. In the course of the show, it is found that a former boyfriend, Cole, who may have been the father of the infant, struggled with and shot Alison as he was trying to kidnap the baby. Apparently Cole “got his hearing back” with a cochlear implant, no longer considered himself Deaf, and wanted the child so that she wouldn’t be raised “Deaf.” At the end of the show, Cole tries to abduct both grandmother and baby at gunpoint. As he has lost his external transmitter, he is unable to understand what the police are trying to tell him and threatens to kill his hostages. He is arrested in the end. In this case, the CI recipient is depicted as a violent, out of control figure, calmed (in this case) only by Matlin’s presence and her ability to communicate with him in ASL. The implication is that in getting the CI, Cole is “killing off” his Deaf identity, and as a result, is mentally unstable. Talking to Matlin, whose character is a stand-in for Deaf culture, is the only way to bring him back to his senses. The October 2007 episode of CSI: Miami entitled “Inside-Out” is another example of the counter-rhetoric at work in the form of another implant corpse. A police officer, trying to prevent the escape of a criminal en route to prison, thinks he has accidentally shot an innocent bystander, a deaf woman. An exchange between the coroner and a CSI goes as follows: (Alexx Woods): “This is as innocent as a victim gets.”(Calleigh Duquesne): “How so?”AW: Check this out.”CD: “I don’t understand. Her head is magnetized? Steel plate?”AW: “It’s a cochlear implant. Helps deaf people to receive and process speech and sounds.”(CSI dramatization) AW VO: “It’s surgically implanted into the inner ear. Consists of a receiver that decodes and transmits to an electrode array sending a signal to the brain.”CD: “Wouldn’t there be an external component?”AW: “Oh, she must have lost it before she was shot.”CD: “Well, that explains why she didn’t get out of there. She had no idea what was going on.” (TWIZ) Based on the evidence, the “sign” of the implant, the investigators are able to identify the victim as deaf, and they infer therefore that she is innocent. It is only at the end of the program that we learn that the deaf “innocent” was really the girlfriend of the criminal, and was on the scene aiding in his escape. So she is at first “as innocent” as they come, and then at the end, she is the most insidious of the criminals in the episode. The writers at least provide a nice twist on the more common deaf-innocent stereotype. Cold Case showcased a CI in the 2008 episode “Andy in C Minor,” in which the case of a 17-year-old deaf boy is reopened. The boy, Andy, had disappeared from his high school. In the investigation it is revealed that his hearing girlfriend, Emma, convinced him to get an implant, because it would help him play the piano, which he wanted to do in order to bond with her. His parents, deaf, were against the idea, and had him promise to break up with Emma and never bring up the CI again. His body is found on the campus, with a cochlear device next to his remains. Apparently Emma had convinced him to get the implant and, in the end, Andy’s father had reluctantly consented to the surgery. It is finally revealed that his Deaf best friend, Carlos, killed him with a blow to the back of the head while he was playing the piano, because he was “afraid to be alone.” This show uses the counter-rhetoric of Deaf genocide in an interesting way. In this case it is not just the CI device alone that renders the CI character symbolically “dead” to his Deaf identity, but it leads directly to his being literally executed by, or in a sense, excommunicated from, Deaf Culture, as it is represented by the character of Carlos. The “House Divided” episode of House (2009) provides the most problematic (or I should say absurd) representation of the CI process and of a CI identity. In the show, a fourteen-year-old deaf wrestler comes into the hospital after experiencing terrible head pain and hearing “imaginary explosions.” Doctors Foreman and Thirteen dutifully serve as representatives of both sides of the “implant debate”: when discussing why House hasn’t mocked the patient for not having a CI, Thirteen says “The patient doesn’t have a CI because he’s comfortable with who he is. That’s admirable.” Foreman says, “He’s deaf. It’s not an identity, it’s a disability.” 13: “It’s also a culture.” F: “Anything I can simulate with $3 earplugs isn’t a culture.” Later, House, talking to himself, thinks “he’s going to go through life deaf. He has no idea what he’s missing.” So, as usual, without permission, he orders Chase to implant a CI in the patient while he is under anesthesia for another procedure (a brain biopsy). After the surgery the team asks House why he did it and he responds, “Why would I give someone their hearing? Ask God the same question you’d get the same answer.” The shows writers endow House’s character, as they usually do, with the stereotypical “God complex” of the medical establishment, but in doing also they play beautifully into the Ladd and Blume’s rhetoric of medical miracle and cure. Immediately after the implant (which the hospital just happened to have on hand) the incision has, miraculously, healed overnight. Chase (who just happens to be a skilled CI surgeon and audiologist) activates the external processor (normally a months-long process). The sound is overwhelming, the boy hears everything. The mother is upset. “Once my son is stable,” the mom says, “I want that THING out of his head.” The patient also demands that the “thing” be removed. Right after this scene, House puts a Bluetooth in his ear so he can talk to himself without people thinking he’s crazy (an interesting reference to how we all are becoming cyborgs, more and more “implanted” with technology). Later, mother and son have the usual touching sentimental scene, where she speaks his name, he hears her voice for the first time and says, “Is that my name? S-E-T-H?” Mom cries. Seth’s deaf girlfriend later tells him she wishes she could get a CI, “It’s a great thing. It will open up a whole new world for you,” an idea he rejects. He hears his girlfriend vocalize, and asks Thirteen if he “sounds like that.” This for some reason clinches his decision about not wanting his CI and, rather than simply take off the external magnet, he rips the entire device right out of his head, which sends him into shock and system failure. Ultimately the team solves the mystery of the boy’s initial ailment and diagnoses him with sarcoidosis. In a final scene, the mother tells her son that she is having them replace the implant. She says it’s “my call.” This show, with its confusing use of both the sentimental and the counter-rhetoric, as well as its outrageous inaccuracies, is the most egregious example of how the CI is currently being constructed on television, but it, along with my other examples, clearly shows the Ladd/Blume rhetoric and counter rhetoric at work. The CI character is on one hand portrayed as an innocent, infantilized, tragic, or passive figure that is the recipient of a medical miracle kindly urged upon them (or forced upon them, as in the case of House). On the other hand, the CI character is depicted in the language of the counter-rhetoric: as deeply flawed, crazed, disturbed or damaged somehow by the incursions onto their Deaf identity, or, in the worst case scenario, they are dead, exterminated. Granted, it is the very premise of the forensic/crime drama to have a victim, and a dead victim, and it is the nature of the police drama to have a “bad,” criminal character; there is nothing wrong with having both good and bad CI characters, but my question is, in the end, why is it an either-or proposition? Why is CI identity only being portrayed in essentialist terms on these types of shows? Why are there no realistic portrayals of people with CIs (and for that matter, deaf people) as the richly varied individuals that they are? These questions aside, if these two types of “implanting rhetoric”, the sentimentalised and the terminated, are all we have at the moment, what does it mean? As I mentioned early in this essay, deaf people, along with many “others,” have long helped to highlight and define the hegemonic “norm.” The apparent cultural need for a Foucauldian “marked body” explains not only the popularity of crime dramas, but it also could explain the oddly proliferant use of characters with cochlear implants in these particular shows. A person with an implant on the side of their head is definitely a more “marked” body than the deaf person with no hearing aid. The CI character is more controversial, more shocking; it’s trendier, “sexier”, and this boosts ratings. But CI characters are, unlike their deaf predecessors, now serving an additional cultural function. I believe they are, as I claim in the beginning of this essay, screens upon which our culture is now projecting repressed anxieties about emergent technology. The two essentialist rhetorics of the cochlear implant, the rhetoric of the sentimental, medical model, and the rhetoric of genocide, ultimately represent our technophilia and our technophobia. The CI character embodies what Debra Shaw terms a current, “ontological insecurity that attends the interface between the human body and the datasphere” (85). We are growing more nervous “as new technologies shape our experiences, they blur the lines between the corporeal and incorporeal, between physical space and virtual space” (Selfe). Technology either threatens the integrity of the self, “the coherence of the body” (we are either dead or damaged) or technology allows us to transcend the limitations of the body: we are converted, “transformed”, the recipient of a happy modern miracle. In the end, I found that representations of CI on television (in the United States) are overwhelmingly sentimental and therefore essentialist. It seems that the conflicting nineteenth century tendency of attraction and revulsion toward the deaf is still, in the twenty-first century, evident. We are still mired in the rhetoric of “cure” and “control,” despite an active Deaf counter discourse that employs the language of the holocaust, warning of the extermination of yet another cultural minority. We are also daily becoming daily more “embedded in cybernetic systems,” with our laptops, emails, GPSs, PDAs, cell phones, Bluetooths, and the likes. We are becoming increasingly engaged in a “necessary relationship with machines” (Shaw 91). We are gradually becoming no longer “other” to the machine, and so our culturally constructed perceptions of ourselves are being threatened. In the nineteenth century, divisions and hierarchies between a white male majority and the “other” (women, African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans) began to blur. Now, the divisions between human and machine, as represented by a person with a CI, are starting to blur, creating anxiety. Perhaps this anxiety is why we are trying, at least in the media, symbolically to ‘cure’ the marked body or kill off the cyborg. Future examinations of the discourse should, I believe, use these media constructions as a lens through which to continue to examine and illuminate the complex subject position of the CI identity, and therefore, perhaps, also explore what the subject position of the post/human identity will be. References "A Boy in a Tree." Patrick Norris (dir.), Hart Hanson (by), Emily Deschanel (perf.). Bones, Fox Network, 7 Sep. 2005. “Andy in C Minor.” Jeannete Szwarc (dir.), Gavin Harris (by), Kathryn Morris (perf.). Cold Case, CBS Network, 30 March 2008. Blume, Stuart. “The Rhetoric and Counter Rhetoric of a “Bionic” Technology.” Science, Technology and Human Values 22.1 (1997): 31-56. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. New York: New York UP, 2009. “Cochlear Implant Statistics.” ASL-Cochlear Implant Community. Blog. Citing Laurent Le Clerc National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University, 18 Mar. 2008. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http:/ /aslci.blogspot.com/2008/03/cochlear-implant-statistics.html›. “Cures to Come.” Discover Presents the Brain (Spring 2010): 76. Fischman, Josh. “Bionics.” National Geographic Magazine 217 (2010). “House Divided.” Greg Yaitanes (dir.), Matthew V. Lewis (by), Hugh Laurie (perf.). House, Fox Network, 22 Apr. 2009. “Inside-Out.” Gina Lamar (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), David Caruso (perf.). CSI: Miami, CBS Network, 8 Oct. 2007. Krentz, Christopher. Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 2007. Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Limited, 2002. Lane, Harlan. A Journey Into the Deaf-World. San Diego: DawnSignPress, 1996. “NAD Position Statement on the Cochlear Implant.” National Association of the Deaf. 6 Oct. 2000. 29 April 2010 ‹http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear-implants›. Nussbaum, Debra. “Manufacturer Information.” Cochlear Implant Information Center. National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University. 29 Apr. 2010 < http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu >. Shaw, Debra. Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. “Silent Night.” Rob Bailey (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), Gary Sinise (perf.). CSI: New York, CBS Network, 13 Dec. 2006. “Sweet Nothing in My Ear.” Joseph Sargent (dir.), Stephen Sachs (by), Jeff Daniels (perf.). Hallmark Hall of Fame Production, 20 Apr. 2008. TWIZ TV scripts. CSI: Miami, “Inside-Out.” “What Is the Surgery Like?” FAQ, University of Miami Cochlear Implant Center. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http://cochlearimplants.med.miami.edu/faq/index.asp›.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. — William Arthur WardIntroductionThe first documented use of the term Mentor can be traced back to the 8th century BC poem by Homer entitled Odyssey (Hay, Gerber and Minichiello). Although this original representation of Mentor is contested in the literature (Colley), historically the term mentor has evolved to imply a wise and trusted other who advises, teaches, protects and supports someone younger who is inexperienced and not so knowledgeable with the ways of the world. The mentor within a 21st century construct still aligns to this historical portrayal, however the evolution of society, the influence of technology, the growth of entrepreneurship, and a greater understanding of the impact of our interactions with others has forced us to consider mentoring in contemporary ways. As such, popular culture, through books, film and images, provide many impressions of the mentor and what it means to mentor in both historical and contemporary circumstances. Similarly, popular culture provides us with a variety of impressions of the teacher. Throughout old and new history, teaching is considered to be a honourable profession, one that is complex and involves specific skills and knowledge to be effective (Marsh). Society has high expectations of teachers as they are entrusted with shaping the future generation (Parkay). Although the levels of respect and trust of teachers changes within different cultural circumstances, society allows teachers to be one of the most influential figures in a child’s life. Popular film often picks up on this theme and portrays teachers as inspirational figures, pillars of society and those that can have a major influence over the development of the student’s in their care. Within the brief story that a film provides, teachers are more often than not, positioned as a ‘mentor type’ figure to the students entrusted in their care, who guides and supports them to become who they want to be. This paper explores the constructs of the mentor and mentorship through a popular culture lens. Culture is broadly described as the “bricks and mortar of our most commonplace understandings” (Willis 185) and our understandings are shaped by what we see, hear and do. The paper is framed by and seeks to answer the following question: To what extent is the teacher as mentor portrayed in popular film a realistic image? Accordingly this paper will examine the rise of the teacher as mentor and determine what images are portrayed through the medium of film. In order to answer the question, the paper will briefly examine current literature for the characteristics and roles of mentors and teachers. The paper will then delve into the way that teachers are portrayed in film and will be followed by an examination of a selection of films that portray teachers as mentors. A comparison will be made between the characteristics of mentors and the characteristics that the movie teachers display. Analysis through the use of reader-response theory will provide insight into the extent of the reality of the teacher as mentor that are portrayed. Mentors and Teachers: A Review of Selected Literature Mentoring consists of a series of interactions that can be of a social, intellectual or emotional nature (Lentz and Allen). Mentoring can be described as a helping relationship whereby two or more people work together in order to achieve personal and professional goals (Johnson and Ridley). Effective mentoring is also known to be mutually beneficial to all participants (Ambrosetti, Knight and Dekkers). When scanning the literature there are a number of common descriptors that are used consistently to situate the interactions a mentor undertakes: supporter, guide, advisor, teacher, protector and counselor (Sundli; Hall et al.). Such descriptors indicate that a mentor performs a series of roles that change according to the needs of those being mentored (Ambrosetti and Dekkers). If the mentor has a series of roles to perform, then it is logical that the mentee also will also have a number of roles to play, however these are lnot well documented in the literature. The roles that both mentors and mentees play during a relationship can be identified and underpinned through the three dimensions of mentoring: the relationship itself, the developmental needs of the participants and the integration of the context in which the mentoring is situated (Ambrosetti, Knight and Dekkers). The interactions that a mentor engages in with a mentee span over a number of dimensions and are often reactive in nature. The three dimensions of mentoring can assist in describing a mentor and the roles they play. The relational dimension includes such roles as supporter, protector, friend and counselor. The roles of guide, teacher/trainer, collaborator, facilitator and reflector can be classified as developmental whereas being a role model can be both a developmental role and contextual role (230). There are a number of characteristics that are common to a mentor. Johnson and Ridley summarize them to include the following traits: exuding warmth, listening actively, showing unconditional regard, tolerating idealization, embracing humor, not expecting perfection, being trustworthy, having interpersonal competence, respecting another’s values and not being jealous of the mentee (43-62). The above list of traits are personal and often linked to personality, thus can be connected explicitly to the relational dimension of mentoring. The possession (or non-possession) of such traits can impact on the interactions that occur within mentorship. Accordingly it can be assumed that the characteristics, in conjunction with the roles that mentors play, that not everyone is suited to the role of mentor. Most people have experienced schooling at some stage in their life and is therefore familiar with the role of a teacher. Teaching is one most well known professions and can be described as a “creative act in which teachers continually shape and reshape lessons, events and the experiences of their students”(Parkay 45). The role of a teacher is to teach both knowledge and skills to their learners in order to prepare them as citizens for the future. More specifically, the role of the teacher is to design and deliver learning experiences that cater for and challenge the learners, that develop skills and knowledge both inside and outside of the classroom, and help them become confident, creative and responsible citizens. Despite this important role, the image of teachers is split between two types: one that is bitter, spiteful and egocentric, and the other being caring, accepting and reflective (Connell). We remember teachers according to such categories. The types of characteristics that teachers hold are extensive, however the following encompasses those that are key within the literature. Teachers generally have compassion, empathy and a caring nature. They can be flexible, creative, personable, humorous, positive, knowledgeable, motivational and dependable. Teachers are often well organised people, fair minded and resourceful (Howell). When examining the characteristics of teachers and the traits of mentors, similarities can be seen indicating that a particular type of person may be more suited to being a teacher and/or mentor. Teachers as Mentors in Film Teachers seem to be a popular subject of feature films. Films such as Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), Blackboard Jungle (1955) and To Sir with Love (1967) provide us with insight into the way teachers are portrayed in society and the role they play. Film however, has the specific ability to shape the cultural understanding we develop and allows us to make comparisons to our own experiences and those that are played out in fictional circumstances (Delamarter). While there are some films that provide a negative portrayal of teachers, generally they provide a view that teachers are positive influences on the students in their care.A search of the World Wide Web about the teacher as mentor brings up a treasure trove of film titles that span from the 1930s to the present day. Despite such a choice of titles, the following films have been selected to examine in this paper: Dead Poets Society (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995), Freedom Writers (2007) and the Harry Potter series of films (2001-2011). Selection of these films was based on the following two criteria: 1) they occurred within in a school setting and 2) are embedded within a contemporary theme of struggle where rebellion and/or other teenage angst are highlighted. Reader-response theory will underpin the analysis of the teachers in each of the films selected, so that an answer to the earlier posed question can be illuminated. Broadly speaking, reader-response theory is concerned with how readers, or in this case viewers, “make meaning from their experience with the text” (Beach 1). There are many perspectives on reader-response theory and how one might focus upon when responding to a text. In this instance the author will highlight the transaction that occurs between the reader, the text and the context. The transactions will include the social, cultural, experiential, psychological and textual viewpoints (Beach 8). Firstly, each film will be briefly described. This will be followed by an analysis of the teachers portrayed in the films. Dead Poets Society (1989) is set at a conservative secondary boys academy in the late 1950s and focuses on a group of students completing their senior year. Mr Keating is a new English teacher who uses unconventional teaching methods in the classroom. He inspires his students to ‘seize the day’ and ‘make your lives extraordinary’ and does this through the teaching of poetry. He encourages them to stand on desks during his lessons and to throw out tradition. It is Keating’s messages to his students to question what they believe that permeates the film and inspires his students to pursue what they want to do and become. The film Dangerous Minds (1995) is set in a low socio-economic area, where un-privilege and protecting yourself is a way of life. The teacher in this film is new and young, but is an ex US Marine. The class the film centres on is a difficult one to teach. This teacher uses unorthodox methods to gain the attention and trust of her students. The film makes a point to show us that she makes particular effort to relate the curriculum to the students’ interests in order to engage them in learning. Emphasis is also on the fact that she takes an interest in the students and many become her ‘personal projects’ and helping them to realize who they can become. Freedom Writers (2007) is set in the years directly following the Los Angeles riots of 1992 whereby issues of racism, segregation and inequality along with the changing view of the world is the focus. The students in the classrooms of this film are from diverse backgrounds and un-trusting of the education system. Their teacher is new and young and her first attempts to earn their trust fail until she begins to get to know the students and make links between what is being taught to their own lives. She inspires her class to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue further education. In the Harry Potter (2001-2011) series of films, there are several teachers who make an impact upon the young wizards. Although set in a fantasy world, the audience is treated to both inspirational teachers looking to nurture, protect and develop their charges, and teachers who are painted as egocentric and suspicious. Inspirational teachers include Dumbledore and McGonagall who offer subtle life lessons, specific skills and knowledge and protect the young wizards from danger. Egocentric and somewhat suspicious teachers include Snape and Quirrell who look to thwart the wizard’s time at school, however they too offer subtle life lessons to their students. The theme of good versus evil is paramount throughout the film series and the teachers are aligned with this theme.Teachers as Mentors – An AnalysisAlthough only a brief description of each film has been offered, the teachers as mentors to their students is the focus. Mr Keating (Dead Poets Society) and LouAnne Johnson (Dangerous Minds) are both described as unorthodox as they each use teaching methods that are frowned upon by others. However their purposeful and different teaching methods draw their students into their lessons so that life learning can occur. In each film, the unorthodox teaching touches the students in ways unknown to them before and in both cases the students demonstrate intellectual and personal growth. The unorthodox methods provide an avenue for a different relationship that is far from the traditional. In some scenes friendship is hinted at where guiding and supporting the students towards their hopes and dreams is highlighted. Aspects of mentoring can be seen through relational, developmental and contextual domains as the students are supported, guided and provided explicit role modeling. The young teacher in Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell, uses a teaching approach that includes taking time to get to know her students. This approach, like Keating and Johnson, provides the opportunity to tweak the curriculum to the interests of the students and thus engage them in academic learning. They teach skills and knowledge in ways which relate to the students’ lives and interests. They guide, support the students towards the unfamiliar and facilitate opportunities for success. They help them to set goals and make them realise that they have a future and can be successful in their lives. The transformations that occur due to the teaching approaches used by the teachers cause their students admire and want to be like them. In Harry Potter, teachers Dumbledore and McGonagall are wise in years and life experience. They offer wisdom, protection and guidance to the young wizards throughout the series. These teachers, like Keating, Johnson and Gruwell, are role models in that they represent what life can be like and how best to achieve that life. Snape and Quirell also take an interest in their students, but represent an alternative view of life and learning. The difference between the four Harry Potter teachers can be drilled down to the traits of effective teachers. Two of which emulate the traits and two whom do not readily display any of the traits. Dumbledore and McGonagall can be considered as teacher mentors whereas Snape and Quirell cannot. In each film the student can be seen as central to the teacher as mentor and this in turn influences the way in which they behave. The teachers in these films pass on life lessons through their teaching. Throughout the films the teachers are guiding, supporting, befriending, protecting and training their charges. Interactions that occur between the teachers and the students are followed by a reflective phase by the teachers, whereby solutions to problems are sought or self-realisation occurs. In many instances the films show the teacher learning from the student and thus learning their own life lessons through reflection. From a social and cultural perspective, what is portrayed within the storylines are often close to the reality of what is expected from teachers. In many instances these lead towards a stereotyping of who teachers are and how they behave. However, from an experiential point of view, our expectations of the actions that teachers undertake do not usually take such form. In reality, teachers are busy people with a complex job to do (Connell) and often do not have time to take personal interest in all of their students individually. The teachers within the films chosen seem to have one class to prepare for, whereas in reality, a school teacher will have many classes to consider. Psychologically, some teachers and the style they embrace appeal to a particular a type of student or group of students. In the case of Dead Poets Society, Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, the storyline painted the students as those needing a particular type of teacher, someone who would save them from their circumstance and visa versa. The textual perspective was well highlighted by the teachers in the Harry Potter films as the viewer expects to see teachers with rather unusual but interesting teaching styles. However the text (within all films) included insight into mentor characteristics such as warmth, humour, tolerance, respect and unconditional regards. Generally, the films examined highlight two different types of teachers, challenging the categories written about by Connell. The first type of teacher highlighted was one who was seen as being more contemporary. One who is individual, unorthodox, and maybe a little rebellious; this teacher highlights that you need to be ‘different’ to make a difference. The second type was one who aligns to the traditional form of teacher; one who uses their knowledge, wisdom and life experience to break through to their student. Each of the films were underpinned by the relationship, the developmental needs and the context in which the narrative was played out, however the relationship between the students and the teacher was highlighted as being central to the storyline. Thus films of this nature often portray teachers as those who help their students in the emotional sense rather than the intellectual sense (Delamarter). Conclusion Several understandings about the teacher as mentor have been brought to light through the examination of the teacher as mentor in film. Firstly, in revisiting the mentoring definitions offered within this paper, it can be said that the teachers highlighted in the discussed films were mentoring their students in a way unique to the relationship developed between teacher and student. In each instance the teacher worked with their students to identify teaching approaches that would be successful in the context in which they were situated. Each film demonstrated that the teachers were committed to creating a relationship that met the developmental needs of their students. Interestingly, it was observed that the relationships were mutually beneficial in that the teachers grew along with the students with many coming to realisations about themselves through reflection and self thought. Secondly, the teachers within the films were portrayed as playing several important roles within their students’ lives. The teachers were role models inside and outside of the classroom. Each film’s storyline positioned the teacher as an influential other, whether they be portrayed as rebellious and unorthodox, evil and suspicious or inspirational and wise. The teachers in these films can be considered as mentors as they were supporting, guiding, protecting and nurturing the students to become better versions of themselves. However, the question that this article sought to answer was: to what extent is the teacher as mentor portrayed in popular film a realistic image? In looking back at the image the teacher in society and the role that they play in developing citizens of the future, it can be said the image presented has slivers of realism. In the real world, teachers must conform to society’s expectations, educational policies and codes of professionalism. Professional relationships with students do not encompass them in behave a student as a ‘personal project’, although catering to their needs is encouraged within the curriculum. It would be thought that if teachers did not encourage their students to be the best they can be, then they would not be doing their job. Many figures throughout our cultural history have been viewed as a mentor due to the role they play and how these roles align to societal beliefs and values. Thus, the portrayal of mentors and mentorship through a popular culture lens provides insight into our understanding about what mentorship is and how this may develop in the future. Both in the past and present, teachers are seen as inspirational figures and pillars of society, and are often considered a mentor by default. Films portray teachers in a variety of fashions, however there are many films that subtly position the teacher as a mentor to their students and it is this that this article has focused on. ReferencesAmbrosetti, Angelina, and John Dekkers. “The Interconnectedness of the Roles of Mentors and Mentees in Pre-Service Teacher Education Mentoring Relationships.” Australian Journal of Teacher Education 35.6 (2010): 42-55.Ambrosetti, Angelina, Bruce Allen Knight, and John Dekkers. “Maximizing the Potential of Mentoring: A Framework for Pre-Service Teacher Education.” Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning 22.3 (2014): 224-39.Beach, Richard. A Teacher’s Response to Reader-Response Theories. Illinois: National Council Teachers of English, 1993.Blackboard Jungle. Directed by Richard Brooks. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1955.Colley, Helen. “Righting Rewritings of the Myth of Mentor: A Critical Perspective on Career Guidance Mentoring.” British Journal of Guidance & Counselling 29.2 (2001): 177-197.Connell, Raewyn. “Teachers.” Education, Change and Society. Eds. Raewyn Connell, Anthony Welch, Margaret Vickers, Dennis Foley, Nigel Bagnall, Debra Hayes, Helen Proctor, Arathi Sriprakash, and Craig Campbell. South Melbourne: Oxford, 2013. 261-275.Dangerous Minds. Directed by John N. Smith. Hollywood Pictures/Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films/Via Rosa Productions, 1995.Dead Poets Society. Directed by Peter Weir. Touchstone Pictures/Silver Screen Partners IV, 1989.Delamater, Jeremy. “Avoiding Practice Shock: Using Teacher Movies to Realign Pre-Service Teachers’ Expectations of Teaching.” Australian Journal of Teacher Education 40.2 (2015): 1-14.Freedom Writers. Directed by Richard LaGravenese. Paramount Pictures, 2007.Goodbye Mr Chips. Directed by Sam Wood. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Denham Studios, 1939.Hall, Kendra M., Rani Jo Draper, Leigh K. Smith, and Robert V. Bullough. “More than a Place to Teach: Exploring the Perceptions of the Roles and Responsibilities of Mentor Teachers.” Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning 16.3 (2008): 328-45.Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Directed by Chris Columbus. Heyday Films/1492 Pictures, 2001.Hay, Terence, Rod Gerber, and Victor Minichiello. “Mentorship: A Review of the Concept.” Unicorn 25.2 (1999): 84-95.Howell, Jennifer. Teaching and Learning: Building Effective Pedagogies. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2014.Lentz, Elizabeth, and Tammy D. Allen. “Reflections on Naturally Occurring Mentoring Relationships.” The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring: A Multiple Perspectives Approach. Eds. Tammy D. Allen and Lillian T. Eby. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. 159-162.Johnson, W. Brad, and Charles R. Ridley. The Elements of Mentoring. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Marsh, Colin. Becoming a Teacher: Knowledge Skills and Issues. 5th ed. Frenchs Forest Pearson, 2010.Parkay, Forrest W. Becoming a Teacher. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.Sundli, Liv. “Mentoring: A New Mantra for Education?” Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007): 201-14.To Sir with Love. Directed by James Clavell. Columbia British Productions, 1967.Willis, Paul. “Shop-Floor Culture, Masculinity and the Wage Form.” Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory. Eds. John Clarke, Chas Critcher, and Richard Johnson. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2007. 185-200.

'Let me give you an analogy; analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.' -- Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures 72 (1933) This paper emerged from a larger study of Freud's view of culture, which used elements of Freud's own way of proceeding to mount a critique of the elaboration of that view. It is proposed here that the use of analogy is foundational to Freud's procedure in building his model of the mind, rather than just a temporary means to an end, and, crucially, that Freud is himself unaware of both the necessity of the analogical move and also of his desire for it. The creation of the concept of the Freudian psyche is a rhetorical tour de force, a structure made of figures of speech, the chief among which is the analogy. Freud constructs an analogy between culture and mind: what is left of his theory of both if this rhetorical connexion is removed? In the opening pages of one of his last works Freud considers the problem of the interpretation of culture, and he concludes that there too it is a question of getting the patient on the couch: '... one is justified [he writes] in attempting to discover a psychoanalytic -- that is, a genetic explanation ...' -- in that psychoanalysis is a method of explaining the origins of present condition of such things as states of mind, to which culture more generally is analogous (Civilization 65). Understanding may be an end in itself, but there may be a more practical purpose in bringing psychoanalysis to bear: a culture may become sick, neurotic, and psychoanalysis may be able to play a part in understanding the nature of the problem, if not also in treating it. Civilization and Its Discontents concludes with the idea that 'we may expect that one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities' (144). What Freud has to say about culture can be read, I propose, on a number of levels. The smallest elements which begin to reveal meaning -- which are capable of being differentiated in a meaningful way, and therefore analysed as texts -- are parapraxes and the minute revelations of the psychoanalytic techniques of free association and dream analysis. A second level of text is that produced by a unitary, identified 'author', such as Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva, or Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin with St Anne. An epoch, such as Freud's Civilization (and its Discontents), and then his view of a species (as in Totem and Taboo), each with its own teleology, form texts of a higher order. My engagement with Freud here is with his method of argument by analogy. On some occasions he makes explicit the extent to which he is dependent on (flexible!) analogies of the description of his method -- as when he writes this in The Question of Lay Analysis: 'In psychology we can only describe things by the help of analogies. There is nothing peculiar in this, it is the case elsewhere as well. But we have constantly to keep changing these analogies, for none of them lasts us long enough. (195) In a key moment in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, he again explicitly uses analogy instead of argument, writing: 'Instead of a discussion, however, I shall bring forward an analogy to deal with the objection' (21). This is a point at which he is dealing with the reason for the forgetting of names, and although he is not yet prepared to indicate what is in his view the precise reason for this (namely: repression), he wishes to persuade his reader to stay with him; and so he inserts a narrative about what we would now call a mugging, an event with just the right combination of violence and yet familiarity to allow readers to accept that such things happen but that the agents are usually unknown. That he is confident of the efficacy of this procedure is indicated by that fact that he uses the same analogy again in the Lecture 3 of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (40-59). Although Freud uses analogy -- as a comparison between two separate and distinct and different things -- what he is most interested in is primary process. This is a mode of thinking which may be capable of an awareness of the differences between things, but is more interested in their confluences (overdetermination and condensation), and their similarities and ability to replace each other (displacement). I suggest that analogy is actually primary process subjected to 'secondary revision', and that Freud is himself unaware of the source of his recurrent need to use analogy. Consider also the 'Slovakia' example in Lecture 23 of the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, in which Freud is extrapolating his division of the mind into the three parts: super-ego, ego and id, the 'three realms, regions, provinces, into which we divide an individual's mental apparatus...' He introduces this in a characteristically persuasive way: 'Let me give you an analogy; analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home' (New Introductory Lectures 72). He then proceeds to a brief description of some of the characteristics of (what is now) Slovakia, in which German, Magyars and Slovaks live, in which there are three kinds of topography and also three groups of industry. He constructs the image partly to demonstrate the complexity of the interrelationships of the parts of the mental apparatus (and partly to have a shot at the powers that at Versailles divided up parts of Europe), and to show that the assignment of distinct names to them tends to obscure the way in which they in fact overlap and interact. However, what the analogy powerfully imports is the 'naturalness', indeed the inevitability, of the division into three. Despite the argument actually being that this division is in fact not clear-cut, it nevertheless implies the necessity of the division. So that his audience is all the more ready the accept the tripartite model of the mind. We could analyse this analogy between the two 'geographies' somewhat in the way that Freud would examine the account of a dream. Firstly, there are the day's residues: in this case his experiences in growing up in this part of Europe together with his reflections on the politics of defining a nation. Then we see the conflation of the two different realms of human experience, political geography and metapsychology; and the displacement of the one set of structures for the other. There is also the overdetermination of the tripartite structures: German, Magyars, Slovaks; hills, plains, lakes; cattle, cereals, fish; superego, ego, id. Finally an instance of secondary revision can be clearly seen in the conclusion of Freud's demonstration. If the partitioning could be neat and clear-cut like this, a Woodrow Wilson would be delighted by it; it would also be convenient for a lecture in a geography lesson. The probability is, however, that you will find less orderliness and more missing, if you travel through the region. ... A few things are naturally as you expected, for fish cannot be caught in the mountains and wine does not grow in the water. Indeed, the picture of the region that you brought with you may on the whole fit the facts; but you will have to put up with deviations in the details. (New Introductory Lectures 73) The implication for my analogy (with dream-analysis) is clearly that there will be a slippage between the different meanings of the images as the process of overdetermination tries to get each to do different work at the same time, and certain elements will have to be refined or retuned, whether in the service of more or less precise relation. A final point might be made, while still on the topic of Slovakia. Freud is, as we have seen, critical to some extent of the political-geographical situation that he receives and describes in his image. The reference to the American president suggests that there might have been a better way to carry out the partition, and certainly events in the region in our own very recent past suggest that this is so. Freud, however, is ultimately accepting of many of the aspects of the picture. He takes the different kinds of primary industry as givens: agriculture, viticulture, and the human culture implied in the national names. The fact that an outsider like Wilson might get it wrong only makes clearer the implication that received political geography is meaningful and in some senses right. This is an example of a cultural unconscious about which Freud does not speak because he cannot. It is not that his assumption about this matter, that which is taken-for-granted, is unthinkable: it is unsayable, something which is outside consciousness because it is so taken-for-granted. This kind of unconscious, which I am calling a kind of cultural unconscious for want of a better term -- and perhaps a notion of the 'non-conscious' might be more accurate -- simply cannot be accommodated by consciousness. Here Freud was appealing to geography to make his point. He far more often appeals to the authority of literature. To give a crude example, it is well known that it was the essay on nature -- thought at one time to be by Goethe -- which is supposed to have been the spur that pricked the side of Freud's intent and actually drove him into what was to become psychoanalysis. So literature not only has an inspirational effect for him, but is also evidence of the interpenetration of Freud's mind -- his way of thinking by analogy and citation -- and the culture of which he is the recipient, and in which he is caught up. If analogy is essential to Freud's theory, rather than just part of its explication (and space has permitted mention of only a few instances) -- if analogy functions as the clasps that hold together the new clothes of the Emperor of Psychoanalysis - what happens when the clasps are removed? References References to the works of Freud in English refer by volume to the Standard Edition (SE): Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the the Complete Psychological Works. 24 vols. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-74. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. SE 21. (1930.) 59-145. ---. "Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's 'Gradiva'." SE 9. (1907 [1906].) 1-95. ---. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. SE 15-6. (1916-17.) ---. "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood." SE 11. (1910.) 59-137. ---. Postscript. SE 20. (1927.) 251-8. ---. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. SE 22. (1933.) ---. The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Eric Mosbacher & James Strachey. Ed. Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud and Ernst Kris. London: Imago; New York: Basic Books, 1950. (1887-1902.) Partly including "A Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1895), in SE 1. Freud, Sigmund. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. SE 6. (1901.) ---. "The Question of Lay Analysis." SE 20. (1926.) 177-250. ---. Totem and Taboo. SE 13. (1912-13.) 1-161. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Garry Gillard. "Mind and Culture: Freud and Slovakia." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/freud.php>. Chicago style: Garry Gillard, "Mind and Culture: Freud and Slovakia," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/freud.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Garry Gillard. (2000) Mind and culture: Freud and Slovakia. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/freud.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction: Brutal?The word “brutal” has associations with cruelty, inhumanity, and aggression. Within the field of architecture, however, the term “Brutalism” refers to a post-World War II Modernist style, deriving from the French phrase betón brut, which means raw concrete (Clement 18). Core traits of Brutalism include functionalist design, daring geometry, overbearing scale, and the blatant exposure of structural materials, chiefly concrete and steel (Meades 1).The emergence of Brutalism coincided with chronic housing shortages in European countries ravaged by World War II (Power 5) and government-sponsored slum clearance in the UK (Power 190; Baker). Brutalism’s promise to accommodate an astonishing number of civilians within a minimal area through high-rise configurations and elevated walkways was alluring to architects and city planners (High Rise Dreams). Concrete was the material of choice due to its affordability, durability, and versatility; it also allowed buildings to be erected quickly (Allen and Iano 622).The Brutalist style was used for cultural centres, such as the Perth Concert Hall in Western Australia, educational institutions such as the Yale School of Architecture, and government buildings such as the Secretariat Building in Chandigarh, India. However, as pioneering Brutalist architect Alison Smithson explained, the style achieved full expression by “thinking on a much bigger scale somehow than if you only got [sic] one house to do” (Smithson and Smithson, Conversation 40). Brutalism, therefore, lent itself to the design of large residential complexes. It was consequently used worldwide for public housing developments, that is, residences built by a government authority with the aim of providing affordable housing. Notable examples include the Western City Gate in Belgrade, Serbia, and Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada.Brutalist architecture polarised opinion and continues to do so to this day. On the one hand, protected cultural heritage status has been awarded to some Brutalist buildings (Carter; Glancey) and the style remains extremely influential, for example in the recent award-winning work of architect Zaha Hadid (Niesewand). On the other hand, the public housing projects associated with Brutalism are widely perceived as failures (The Great British Housing Disaster). Many Brutalist objects currently at risk of demolition are social housing estates, such as the Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens in London, UK. Whether the blame for the demise of such housing developments lies with architects, inhabitants, or local government has been widely debated. In the UK and USA, local authorities had relocated families of predominantly lower socio-economic status into the newly completed developments, but were unable or unwilling to finance subsequent maintenance and security costs (Hanley 115; R. Carroll; The Pruitt-Igoe Myth). Consequently, the residents became fearful of criminal activity in staircases and corridors that lacked “defensible space” (Newman 9), which undermined a vision of “streets in the sky” (Moran 615).In spite of its later problems, Brutalism’s architects had intended to develop a style that expressed 1950s contemporary living in an authentic manner. To them, this meant exposing building materials in their “raw” state and creating an aesthetic for an age of science, machine mass production, and consumerism (Stadler 264; 267; Smithson and Smithson, But Today 44). Corporeal sensations did not feature in this “machine” aesthetic (Dalrymple). Exceptionally, acclaimed Brutalist architect Ernö Goldfinger discussed how “visual sensation,” “sound and touch with smell,” and “the physical touch of the walls of a narrow passage” contributed to “sensations of space” within architecture (Goldfinger 48). However, the effects of residing within Brutalist objects may not have quite conformed to predictions, since Goldfinger moved out of his Brutalist construction, Balfron Tower, after two months, to live in a terraced house (Hanley 112).An abstract perspective that favours theorisation over subjective experiences characterises discourse on Brutalist social housing developments to this day (Singh). There are limited data on the everyday lived experience of residents of Brutalist social housing estates, both then and now (for exceptions, see Hanley; The Pruitt-Igoe Myth; Cooper et al.).Yet, our bodily interaction with the objects around us shapes our lived experience. On a broader physical scale, this includes the structures within which we live and work. The importance of the interaction between architecture and embodied being is increasingly recognised. Today, architecture is described in corporeal terms—for example, as a “skin” that surrounds and protects its human inhabitants (Manan and Smith 37; Armstrong 77). Biological processes are also inspiring new architectural approaches, such as synthetic building materials with life-like biochemical properties (Armstrong 79), and structures that exhibit emergent behaviour in response to human presence, like a living system (Biloria 76).In this article, we employ an autoethnographic perspective to explore the corporeal effects of Brutalist buildings, thereby revealing a new dimension to the anthropological significance of these controversial structures. We trace how they shape the physicality of the bodies interacting within them. Our approach is one step towards considering the historically under-appreciated subjective, corporeal experience elicited in interaction with Brutalist objects.Method: An Autoethnographic ApproachAutoethnography is a form of self-narrative research that connects the researcher’s personal experience to wider cultural understandings (Ellis 31; Johnson). It can be analytical (Anderson 374) or emotionally evocative (Denzin 426).We investigated two Brutalist residential estates in London, UK:(i) The Barbican Estate: This was devised to redevelop London’s severely bombed post-WWII Cripplegate area, combining private residences for middle class professionals with an assortment of amenities including a concert hall, library, conservatory, and school. It was designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon. Opened in 1982, the Estate polarised opinion on its aesthetic qualities but has enjoyed success with residents and visitors. The development now comprises extremely expensive housing (Brophy). It was Grade II-listed in 2001 (Glancey), indicating a status of architectural preservation that restricts alterations to significant buildings.(ii) Trellick Tower: This was built to replace dilapidated 19th-century housing in the North Kensington area. It was designed by Hungarian-born architect Ernő Goldfinger to be a social housing development and was completed in 1972. During the 1980s and 1990s, it became known as the “Tower of Terror” due to its high level of crime (Hanley 113). Nevertheless, Trellick Tower was granted Grade II listed status in 1998 (Carter), and subsequent improvements have increased its desirability as a residence (R. Carroll).We explored the grounds, communal spaces, and one dwelling within each structure, independently recording our corporeal impressions and sensations in detailed notes, which formed the basis of longhand journals written afterwards. Our analysis was developed through co-constructed autoethnographic reflection (emerald and Carpenter 748).For reasons of space, one full journal entry is presented for each Brutalist structure, with an excerpt from each remaining journal presented in the subsequent analysis. To identify quotations from our journals, we use the codes R- and N- to refer to RB’s and NC’s journals, respectively; we use -B and -T to refer to the Barbican Estate and Trellick Tower, respectively.The Barbican Estate: Autoethnographic JournalAn intricate concrete world emerges almost without warning from the throng of glass office blocks and commercial buildings that make up the City of London's Square Mile. The Barbican Estate comprises a multitude of low-rise buildings, a glass conservatory, and three enormous high-rise towers. Each modular building component is finished in the same coarse concrete with burnished brick underfoot, whilst the entire structure is elevated above ground level by enormous concrete stilts. Plants hang from residential balconies over glimmering pools in a manner evocative of concrete Hanging Gardens of Babylon.Figure 1. Barbican Estate Figure 2. Cromwell Tower from below, Barbican Estate. Figure 3: The stairwell, Cromwell Tower, Barbican Estate. Figure 4. Lift button pods, Cromwell Tower, Barbican Estate.R’s journalMy first footsteps upon the Barbican Estate are elevated two storeys above the street below, and already an eerie calm settles on me. The noise of traffic and the bustle of pedestrians have seemingly been left far behind, and a path of polished brown brick has replaced the paving slabs of the city's pavement. I am made more aware of the sound of my shoes upon the ground as I take each step through the serenity.Running my hands along the walkway's concrete sides as we proceed further into the estate I feel its coarseness, and look up to imagine the same sensation touching the uppermost balcony of the towers. As we travel, the cold nature and relentless employ of concrete takes over and quickly becomes the norm.Our route takes us through the Barbican's central Arts building and into the Conservatory, a space full of plant-life and water features. The noise of rushing water comes as a shock, and I'm reminded just how hauntingly peaceful the atmosphere of the outside estate has been. As we leave the conservatory, the hush returns and we follow another walkway, this time allowing a balcony-like view over the edge of the estate. I'm quickly absorbed by a sensation I can liken only to peering down at the ground from a concrete cloud as we observe the pedestrians and traffic below.Turning back, we follow the walkways and begin our approach to Cromwell Tower, a jagged structure scraping the sky ahead of us and growing menacingly larger with every step. The estate has up till now seemed devoid of wind, but even so a cold begins to prickle my neck and I increase my speed toward the door.A high-ceilinged foyer greets us as we enter and continue to the lifts. As we push the button and wait, I am suddenly aware that carpet has replaced bricks beneath my feet. A homely sensation spreads, my breathing slows, and for a brief moment I begin to relax.We travel at heart-racing speed upwards to the 32nd floor to observe the view from the Tower's fire escape stairwell. A brief glance over the stair's railing as we enter reveals over 30 storeys of stair casing in a hard-edged, triangular configuration. My mind reels, I take a second glance and fail once again to achieve focus on the speck of ground at the bottom far below. After appreciating the eastward view from the adjacent window that encompasses almost the entirety of Central London, we make our way to a 23rd floor apartment.Entering the dwelling, we explore from room to room before reaching the balcony of the apartment's main living space. Looking sheepishly from the ledge, nothing short of a genuine concrete fortress stretches out beneath us in all directions. The spirit and commotion of London as I know it seems yet more distant as we gaze at the now miniaturized buildings. An impression of self-satisfied confidence dawns on me. The fortress where we stand offers security, elevation, sanctuary and I'm furnished with the power to view London's chaos at such a distance that it's almost silent.As we leave the apartment, I am shadowed by the same inherent air of tranquillity, pressing yet another futuristic lift access button, plummeting silently back towards the ground, and padding across the foyer's soft carpet to pursue our exit route through the estate's sky-suspended walkways, back to the bustle of regular London civilization.Trellick Tower: Autoethnographic JournalThe concrete majesty of Trellick Tower is visible from Westbourne Park, the nearest Tube station. The Tower dominates the skyline, soaring above its neighbouring estate, cafes, and shops. As one nears the Tower, the south face becomes visible, revealing the suspended corridors that join the service tower to the main body of flats. Light of all shades and colours pours from its tightly stacked dwellings, which stretch up into the sky. Figure 5. Trellick Tower, South face. Figure 6. Balcony in a 27th-floor flat, Trellick Tower.N’s journalOutside the tower, I sense danger and experience a heightened sense of awareness. A thorny frame of metal poles holds up the tower’s facade, each pole poised as if to slip down and impale me as I enter the building.At first, the tower is too big for comprehension; the scale is unnatural, gigantic. I feel small and quite squashable in comparison. Swathes of unmarked concrete surround the tower, walls that are just too high to see over. Who or what are they hiding? I feel uncertain about what is around me.It takes some time to reach the 27th floor, even though the lift only stops on every 3rd floor. I feel the forces of acceleration exert their pressure on me as we rise. The lift is very quiet.Looking through the windows on the 27th-floor walkway that connects the lift tower to the main building, I realise how high up I am. I can see fog. The city moves and modulates beneath me. It is so far away, and I can’t reach it. I’m suspended, isolated, cut off in the air, as if floating in space.The buildings underneath appear tiny in comparison to me, but I know I’m tiny compared to this building. It’s a dichotomy, an internal tension, and feels quite unreal.The sound of the wind in the corridors is a constant whine.In the flat, the large kitchen window above the sink opens directly onto the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor, on the other side of which, through a second window, I again see London far beneath. People pass by here to reach their front doors, moving so close to the kitchen window that you could touch them while you’re washing up, if it weren’t for the glass. Eye contact is possible with a neighbour, or a stranger. I am close to that which I’m normally separated from, but at the same time I’m far from what I could normally access.On the balcony, I have a strong sensation of vertigo. We are so high up that we cannot be seen by the city and we cannot see others. I feel physically cut off from the world and realise that I’m dependent on the lift or endlessly spiralling stairs to reach it again.Materials: sharp edges, rough concrete, is abrasive to my skin, not warm or welcoming. Sharp little stones are embedded in some places. I mind not to brush close against them.Behind the tower is a mysterious dark maze of sharp turns that I can’t see around, and dark, narrow walkways that confine me to straight movements on sloping ramps.“Relentless Employ of Concrete:” Body versus Stone and HeightThe “relentless employ of concrete” (R-B) in the Barbican Estate and Trellick Tower determined our physical interactions with these Brutalist objects. Our attention was first directed towards texture: rough, abrasive, sharp, frictive. Raw concrete’s potential to damage skin, should one fall or brush too hard against it, made our bodies vulnerable. Simultaneously, the ubiquitous grey colour and the constant cold anaesthetised our senses.As we continued to explore, the constant presence of concrete, metal gratings, wire, and reinforced glass affected our real and imagined corporeal potentialities. Bodies are powerless against these materials, such that, in these buildings, you can only go where you are allowed to go by design, and there are no other options.Conversely, the strength of concrete also has a corporeal manifestation through a sense of increased physical security. To R, standing within the “concrete fortress” of the Barbican Estate, the object offered “security, elevation, sanctuary,” and even “power” (R-B).The heights of the Barbican’s towers (123 metres) and Trellick Tower (93 metres) were physically overwhelming when first encountered. We both felt that these menacing, jagged towers dominated our bodies.Excerpt from R’s journal (Trellick Tower)Gaining access to the apartment, we begin to explore from room to room. As we proceed through to the main living area we spot the balcony and I am suddenly aware that, in a short space of time, I had abandoned the knowledge that some 26 floors lay below me. My balance is again shaken and I dig my heels into the laminate flooring, as if to achieve some imaginary extra purchase.What are the consequences of extreme height on the body? Certainly, there is the possibility of a lethal fall and those with vertigo or who fear heights would feel uncomfortable. We discovered that height also affects physical instantiation in many other ways, both empowering and destabilising.Distance from ground-level bustle contributed to a profound silence and sense of calm. Areas of intermediate height, such as elevated communal walkways, enhanced our sensory abilities by granting the advantage of observation from above.Extreme heights, however, limited our ability to sense the outside world, placing objects beyond our range of visual focus, and setting up a “bizarre segregation” (R-T) between our physical presence and that of the rest of the world. Height also limited potentialities of movement: no longer self-sufficient, we depended on a working lift to regain access to the ground and the rest of the city. In the lift itself, our bodies passively endured a cycle of opposing forces as we plummeted up or down numerous storeys in mere seconds.At both locations, N noticed how extreme height altered her relative body size: for example, “London looks really small. I have become huge compared to the tiny city” (N-B). As such, the building’s lift could be likened to a cake or potion from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. This illustrates how the heuristics that we use to discern visual perspective and object size, which are determined by the environment in which we live (Segall et al.), can be undermined by the unusual scales and distances found in Brutalist structures.Excerpt from N’s journal (Barbican Estate)Warning: These buildings give you AFTER-EFFECTS. On the way home, the size of other buildings seems tiny, perspectives feel strange; all the scales seem to have been re-scaled. I had to become re-used to the sensation of travelling on public trains, after travelling in the tower lifts.We both experienced perceptual after-effects from the disproportional perspectives of Brutalist spaces. Brutalist structures thus have the power to affect physical sensations even when the body is no longer in direct interaction with them!“Challenge to Privacy:” Intersubjective Ideals in Brutalist DesignAs embodied beings, our corporeal manifestations are the primary transducers of our interactions with other people, who in turn contribute to our own body schema construction (Joas). Architects of Brutalist habitats aimed to create residential utopias, but we found that the impact of their designs on intersubjective corporeality were often incoherent and contradictory. Brutalist structures positioned us at two extremes in relation to the bodies of others, forcing either an uncomfortable intersection of personal space or, conversely, excessive separation.The confined spaces of the lifts, and ubiquitous narrow, low-ceilinged corridors produced uncomfortable overlaps in the personal space of the individuals present. We were fascinated by the design of the flat in Trellick Tower, where the large kitchen window opened out directly onto the narrow 27th-floor corridor, as described in N’s journal. This enforced a physical “challenge to privacy” (R-T), although the original aim may have been to promote a sense of community in the “streets in the sky” (Moran 615). The inter-slotting of hundreds of flats in Trellick Tower led to “a multitude of different cooking aromas from neighbouring flats” (R-T) and hence a direct sensing of the closeness of other people’s corporeal activities, such as eating.By contrast, enormous heights and scales constantly placed other people out of sight, out of hearing, and out of reach. Sharp-angled walkways and blind alleys rendered other bodies invisible even when they were near. In the Barbican Estate, huge concrete columns, behind which one could hide, instilled a sense of unease.We also considered the intersubjective interaction between the Brutalist architect-designer and the inhabitant. The elements of futuristic design—such as the “spaceship”-like pods for lift buttons in Cromwell Tower (N-B)—reconstruct the inhabitant’s physicality as alien relative to the Brutalist building, and by extension, to the city that commissioned it.ReflectionsThe strength of the autoethnographic approach is also its limitation (Chang 54); it is an individual’s subjective perspective, and as such we cannot experience or represent the full range of corporeal effects of Brutalist designs. Corporeal experience is informed by myriad factors, including age, body size, and ability or disability. Since we only visited these structures, rather than lived in them, we could have experienced heightened sensations that would become normalised through familiarity over time. Class dynamics, including previous residences and, importantly, the amount of choice that one has over where one lives, would also affect this experience. For a full perspective, further data on the everyday lived experiences of residents from a range of different backgrounds are necessary.R’s reflectionDespite researching Brutalist architecture for years, I was unprepared for the true corporeal experience of exploring these buildings. Reading back through my journals, I'm struck by an evident conflict between stylistic admiration and physical uneasiness. I feel I have gained a sympathetic perspective on the notion of residing in the structures day-to-day.Nevertheless, analysing Brutalist objects through a corporeal perspective helped to further our understanding of the experience of living within them in a way that abstract thought could never have done. Our reflections also emphasise the tension between the physical and the psychological, whereby corporeal struggle intertwines with an abstract, aesthetic admiration of the Brutalist objects.N’s reflectionIt was a wonderful experience to explore these extraordinary buildings with an inward focus on my own physical sensations and an outward focus on my body’s interaction with others. On re-reading my journals, I was surprised by the negativity that pervaded my descriptions. How does physical discomfort and alienation translate into cognitive pleasure, or delight?ConclusionBrutalist objects shape corporeality in fundamental and sometimes contradictory ways. The range of visual and somatosensory experiences is narrowed by the ubiquitous use of raw concrete and metal. Materials that damage skin combine with lethal heights to emphasise corporeal vulnerability. The body’s movements and sensations of the external world are alternately limited or extended by extreme heights and scales, which also dominate the human frame and undermine normal heuristics of perception. Simultaneously, the structures endow a sense of physical stability, security, and even power. By positioning multiple corporealities in extremes of overlap or segregation, Brutalist objects constitute a unique challenge to both physical privacy and intersubjective potentiality.Recognising these effects on embodied being enhances our current understanding of the impact of Brutalist residences on corporeal sensation. This can inform the future design of residential estates. Our autoethnographic findings are also in line with the suggestion that Brutalist structures can be “appreciated as challenging, enlivening environments” exactly because they demand “physical and perceptual exertion” (Sroat). Instead of being demolished, Brutalist objects that are no longer considered appropriate as residences could be repurposed for creative, cultural, or academic use, where their challenging corporeal effects could contribute to a stimulating or even thrilling environment.ReferencesAllen, Edward, and Joseph Iano. Fundamentals of Building Construction: Materials and Methods. 6th ed. 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Cities have long been important sites of collective memory. In this paper, I highlight the ritual and memorial functions of cities by focusing on Gibellina, a Sicilian town destroyed by earthquake, and the subsequent struggle among its community to articulate a sense of spatial belonging with its remains. By examining the productive relationships between art, landscape and collective memory, I consider how memorial objects in Gibellina have become integral to the reimagining of place, and, in some cases, to forgetting. To address the relationship between memorial objects and the articulation of communities from this unique vantage point, a significant part of my analysis compares memorial initiatives both in and around the old site on which Gibellina once stood. More specifically, my paper compares the aesthetic similarities between the Italian artist Alberto Burri’s design for a large concrete overlay of the city’s remains, and the Berlin Holocaust Memorial by the American architect Peter Eisenman. To reveal the distinctiveness of Burri’s design in relation to Eisenman’s work and the rich commentaries that have been produced in its name, and therefore to highlight the specificity of their relationship, I extend my comparison to more recent attempts at rebuilding Gibellina in the image of a “frontier city of art” (“Museum Network Belicina”).Broadly speaking, this paper is framed by a series of observations concerning the role that landscape plays in the construction or naturalization of collective identity, and by a further attempt at mapping the bonds that tend to be shared among members of particular communities in any given circumstance. To organize my thoughts in this area, I follow W. J. T. Mitchell’s interpretation of landscape as “a medium of exchange,” in other words, as an artistic practice that galvanizes nature for the purpose of naturalizing culture and its relations of power (5). While the terms of landscape art may in turn be described as “complicated,” “mutual” and marked by “ambivalence,” as Mitchell himself suggests, I would further argue that the artist’s sought-after result will, in almost every case, be to unify the visual and the discursive fields through an ideological operation that engenders, reinforces, and, perhaps also mystifies the constituents of community in general (9). From this perspective, landscape represents a crucial if unavoidable materialization both of community and collective memory.Conflicting viewpoints about this formation are undoubtedly present in the literature. For instance, in describing the effects of this operation, Mitchell, to use one example, will suggest that landscape as a mode of creation unfolds in ways that are similar to that of a dream, or that the materialization of landscape art is in accordance with the promise of “emancipation” that dreams inscribe into imaginaries (12). During the course of investigating and overturning the premise of Mitchell’s claim through a number of writers and commentators, I conclude my paper by turning to a famous work on the inoperative community by Jean-Luc Nancy. This work is especially useful for bringing clarity for understanding what is lost in the efforts by Gibellina’s residents to reconstruct a new city adjacent to the old, and therefore to emancipate themselves from their destructive past. By emphasizing the significance of acknowledging death for the regeneration and durability of communities and their material urban life, I suggest that the wishes of Gibellina’s residents have resulted in an environment for memory and memorialization despite apparent wishes to the contrary. In my reference to Nancy’s metaphor of ‘inoperativity’, therefore, I suggest that the community to emerge from Gibellina’s disaster is, in a sense, yet to come.Figure 1. The “Cretto di Burri” by Alberto Burri (1984-1989). Creative Commons.The old city of Gibellina was a township of Arabic and Medieval origins located southwest of Palermo in the heart of Sicily’s Belice valley. In January 1968, the region experienced a series of earthquakes as it had before. This time, however, the strongest among them provoked a rupture that within moments led to the complete destruction of towns and villages, and to the death of nearly 400 inhabitants. “From a seismological point of view,” as Susan Hough and Roger Bilham write, the towns and villages of the Belice valley were at this time “disasters in the making” (87). Maligned by a particular configuration of geological fault lines, the fragile structures along the surface of the valley were almost certain to be destroyed at some point in their lifetime. In 1968, after the largest disaster in recent history, the surviving inhabitants of the dilapidated urban centres were moved to the squalor conditions of displacement camps, in which many lived without permanent housing into the 1970s. While some of the smaller communities opted to rebuild, a number of the larger townships made the decision to move altogether. In 1971, a new settlement was created in Gibellina’s name, just eighteen kilometres west of the ruin.Since that time, I claim that a pattern of memory and forgetting has developed in the space between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. For instance, the old city of Gibellina underwent a dramatic refurbishment in the 1980s when an internationally renowned Italian sculptor, Alberto Burri, was invited by the city to build a large concrete structure directly on top of the city’s remains. As depicted in Figure One, the artist moulded the destroyed buildings into blocks of smooth concrete surfaces. Standing roughly at human scale, Burri divided these stone slabs, or stelae, in such a way as to retain the lineaments of Gibellina’s medieval streets. Although unfinished and abandoned by the artist due to lack of funds, the tomb of this destroyed city has since become both an artistic oddity and a permanent fixture on the Sicilian landscape. As Elisebha Fabienne and Platzer write,if an ancient inhabitant of Gibellina walks in the inside of the Cretto, he is able to recognise the topic position of his house, but he is also forced by the Verfremdung [alienting effect] of the topical elements to distance himself from the past, to infer new information. (75)According to this assessment, the work’s intrinsic merit appears to be in Burri’s effort to forge a link between a shared memory of the city’s past, and the potential for that memory to fortify the imagination towards a future. In spatial terms, the merit of the work lies in preserving the skeletal imprint of the urban landscape in order to retain a semblance of this once vibrant and living community. Andrea Simitch and Val Warke appear to corroborate this hypothesis. They suggest that while Burri’s structure includes a specific imprint or reference point of the city’s remains, “embedded within the masses that construct the ghosted streets is the physical detritus of imagined narratives” (61). In other words, Simitch and Warke maintain that by using the archival or preserving function to communicate a ritual practice, Burri’s Cretto is intended to infuse the forgotten urban space of old Gibellina with a promise that it will eventually be found and therefore remembered. This promise is met, in turn, by the invitation for visitors to stroll through the hallowed interior of Gibellina as they would any other city. In this sense, the Cretto invites a plurality of narratives and meanings depending on the visitor at hand. In the absence of guidance or interruption, the hope appears to be that visitors will gain an experience of the place that is both familiar and disturbing.But there is a hidden dimension to this promise that the authors above do not explore in sufficient detail. For instance, Nigel Clark analyzes the way in which Burri has insisted upon “confronting us with the stark absence of life where once there was vitality,” a confrontation by the artist that is materialized by “cavernous wounds” (83). On this basis, by interpreting the promise of memory that others have discussed in terms of a warning about the longevity or durability of the built environment, Clark writes that Burri’s Cretto represents “an assertion of the forces of earth that have not been eclipsed by other forms of endangerment” (83). The implication of this particular forewarning is that “the precariousness of human settlement” is guaranteed by a non-human world that insists upon the relentless force of erasure (83). On the other hand, I would argue that Clark’s insistence upon situating the Cretto in relation to the natural forces of destruction ultimately represents a narrowing of perspective on Burri’s work. Significantly, by citing Burri’s choice of supposedly abstracted shapes made from lifeless concrete, Clark reduces the geographical intervention of the artist to “a paradigm of modernist austerity” (82). From Clark’s perspective, the overture to Modernism is meant to highlight Burri’s attempt at pairing the scale and proportion of the work with an effort to convey a sense of purity through abstraction. However, while some interpretations of Burri’s Cretto may be dependent upon its allusion to such Modernist formalism, it should also be recognized that the specific concerns raised by Gibellina go significantly beyond these equivocations.In fact, one crucial element of Burri’s artistic process that is not recognized by Clark is his investment in the American land art movement, which at the time of Burri’s design for Gibellina was led by Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson and other prominent artists in the United States. Burri’s debt to this movement can be detected by his gradual shift towards landscape throughout his career, and by his eventual break from the enclosed and constrained space of the gallery. On this basis, the crumbling city design at Gibellina obliterates the boundaries as to what constitutes a work of art in relation to the land it occupies, and this, in turn, throws into question the specific criteria that we use to assess its value or artistic merit. In an important way, land art and landscape in general forces us to rethink the relationship between art and community in unparalleled ways. To put it another way, if Clark’s overriding concern for that which lies beneath the surface allows us to consider the importance of relationships between memory, forgetting, and erasure, I argue that Burri’s concern with the surface and the ground make it clear that projects such as the Gibellina Cretto might be better paired with memorial sites that deal in architecture.Figure 2. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe / Berlin Holocaust Memorial, by Peter Eisenman. Photograph courtesy of the author.A useful comparison in this regard is Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in downtown Berlin. For one, not only is Eisenman’s site composed of a similar exterior of concrete stelae, those concrete blocks resembling gravestones, but it has also been routinely scorned for the same reasons that Clark raised against Burri as mentioned above. To put it another way, while visitors may be struck by the memorial’s haunting and inspirational configuration of voids, some notable commentators, including the venerable James E. Young, have insinuated that the site signifies a restoration of the monument, derived as it is from a modernist architecture in which recuperation and amnesia are at play with each other (184-224). A more sympathetic reading of Eisenman’s memorial might point to the uniquely architectural vision he held for cultural memory. With Adrian Parr for instance, we find that the traumatic memory of the Holocaust can be effectively transposed through the virtual content of the imagination as personified by visitors to Eisenman’s memorial. That is, by attending to the atrocities of the past, Parr claims that we need not be exhausted by the overwhelming sense of destruction that the memorial site brings to the literal surface. Rather, we might benefit more from considering the event of destruction as but one aspect of the spatial experience of the place to which it is dedicated—an experience that must be open-ended by design. By using the topographical lens that Parr, taking several pages from Gilles Deleuze, describes as “intensive,” I argue that Eisenman’s design is unique for its explicit encouragement to be both creative and present simultaneously (158).On this account, Parr makes the compelling assertion that memorial culture facilitates an epistemic rupture or “break,” that that it reveals an opportunity to restore the potential for using the place occupied by memory as a starting point for effecting social change (3). Parr writes that “memorial culture is utopian memory thinking”—a defining slogan, to be sure, but one with which the author hopes will re-establish the link between memory and the force of life, and, in the process, to recognize the energetic resources that remain concealed by the traditional narratives of memorialization (3). Stefano Corbo corroborates Parr’s assertion by pointing to Eisenman’s efforts in the 1980s to supplement formal concerns with archaeological perspectives, and therefore to develop a theory whereby architecture presages a “deep structure,” in which the artistry or attempt at formal innovation ultimately rests on “a process of invention” itself (41). To accomplish this aim, a specific reference should be made to an early period in Eisenman’s career, in which the architect turned to conceptual issues as opposed to the demands of materiality, and more significantly, to a critical rethinking of site-specific engagement (Bedard). Included in this turn was a willingness on Eisenman’s part to explore the layered and textured history of cities, as well as the linguistic or deconstructive relationships that exist between the ground and the trace.The interdisciplinary complexity of Eisenman’s approach is one that responds to the dominance of architectural form, and it therefore mirrors, as Corbo writes, a delicate interplay between “presence and absence, permanence and loss” (44). The city of Berlin with its cultural memory thus evinces a sort of tectonic rupture and collision upon its surfaces, but a rupture that both runs parallel and opposite to the natural disaster that engulfed Gibellina in 1968. Returning to Parr’s demand that we begin to (re)assert the power of virtual and imaginative space, I argue that Eisenman’s memorial design may be better appreciated for its ability to situate the city itself in relation to competing terms of artistic practice. That is, if Eisenman’s efforts indicate a softening “of the boundary between architecture and the landscape,” to quote Tomà Berlanda, the Holocaust Memorial might in turn be a productive counterpoint in the task of working through the specificity of Burri’s design and the meaning with which it has since been attached (2).Burri’s Cretto raises a number of questions for this hypothesis, as with the Cretto we find a displacement of the constitutive process that writers such as W.J.T. Mitchell describe above in relation to the generative potential of community. Undoubtedly, the imperative to unify is present in the Cretto’s aesthetic presentation, as the concrete surfaces maintain the capacity to reflect the light of the sun against a wide green earth that stretches beyond the visitor’s horizon. On the other hand, while Mitchell, along with Parr and other commentators might opt to insist upon a deeper correlation between the unifying function of the landscape and the forces of life, intensity, or desire, I would only reiterate that Burri’s design is ultimately based on establishing a meaningful relationship with death, not life, and he is consequently focused on the much less spectacular mission of providing solutions as to what the remains should become in the aftermath of total destruction. If there is an intensity to speak of here, it is a maligned intensity, and an intensity that can only be established through relation.Figure 3. The “Porta del Belice” by Pietro Consagra (2014). Wiki Commons.If Burri’s Cretto were measured by the criteria that are variously described by Mitchell and others, the effects that the landscape produces would have necessarily to account for an expression of desire for emancipation from death. However, in a significant departure from Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial, Burri’s design by itself is marked by a throughout absence of any expression of desire for emancipation as such. Indeed, finding such a promised emancipatory narrative would require one to cast their gaze away from the Cretto altogether, and towards a nearby urban center that has supposedly triumphed over the very need for a memory culture at all. This urban center is none other than Gibellina Nuova. As a point in fact, the settlers of Gibellina Nuova did insist upon emancipating themselves from their destructive past. In 1971, the city planners and governors of Gibellina Nuova made efforts to attract contemporary Italian artists and architects, to design and build a series of commemorative structures, and ultimately to make the settlement into a “città di frontiera dell’arte”—a frontier city of art (“Museum Network Belicina”). With the potential for rejuvenation just a stone’s throw away from the original city, the former inhabitants appear to have become immediately invested in the sort of utopian potential that would make its architectural wonders capable of transgressing the line that perennially divides art from community and from the living world. Rivalled only by the refurbishment of Marfa, Texas, which in the last twenty years has become a shrine to minimalist sculpture, the edifices at Gibellina Nuova have been authored by some of Italy’s better-known mid-century artists and architects, including Ludovico Quaroni, Vitorrio Gregotti, and, most notably, Pietro Consagra, whose ‘Porta del Belice’ (Figure Two) has become the most iconic urban fixture of the new urban designs. With the hopes of becoming a sort of “open-air museum” in which to attract international visitors, the city is now in possession of an exceedingly large number of public memorials and avant-garde buildings in various states of decay and disrepair (Bileddo). Predictably, this museological distinction has become a curse in many ways. Some commentators have argued that the obsession among city planners to create a “laboratory of art and architecture” has led in fact to an urban center of monstrous proportions: a city space that can only be described as “elliptical and spinning” (Bileddo). Whereas Gibellina Nuova was supposed to represent a rebalancing of the forces of life in relation to the funereal themes of the Cretto, the robust initiatives of the 1980s have instead produced an egregious lack of cohesiveness, a severed link to Sicilian culture, and a stark erasure of the distinctive traditions of the Belice valley.On the other hand, this experiment in urban design has been reduced to a venerable time capsule of 1970s Italian sculpture, an archive that persists but in constant disrepair. More significantly, however, the city’s failure to deliver on its many promises raises important questions about the ritual and memorial functions of urban space in general, of what specific relationships need to be forged between the history of a place and its architectural presentation, and the ways in which memorials come to reflect, privilege or convoke particular values over those of others. As Elisebha Fabienne Platzer writes, “Gibellina portrays its future in order to forget,” as “its faith in contemporary art is precisely a reaction to death,” or, more specifically, to its effacement (73). If the various pastiche designs of the city’s buildings and ritual edifices fail to stand the measure of time, I claim that it is not simply because they are gaudy reminders of a time best forgotten, but rather because they signify the restless hunt for resolution among inhabitants of this still-unsettled community.Whereas Burri’s Cretto activates a process of mourning and working-through that proves to be unresolvable and yet necessary, the city of Gibellina Nuova operates instead by neutralizing and dividing this process. Taken as a whole, the irreparable relationship between the two sites offers competing images of the relation between place and community. From the time of its division by earthquake if not sooner, the inhabitants of Gibellina became an “inoperative” community in the same way that the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has famously described. In the specific hopes of uncovering the motives of Burri and those of the designers and architects of Gibellina Nuova, I argue that Nancy uses the terms of inoperability as a makeshift solution for the persistent rootedness of communities in an atomized metaphysics for which the relationality between subjects is an abiding problem. Nancy defines community on the basis of its relational content alone, and for this reason he is able to make the claim that death itself should be a necessary moment of its articulation. Nancy writes that “community has not taken place,” as beyond “what society has crushed or lost, it is something that happens to us in the form of a question, waiting, event or imperative” (11).Though Nancy is attempting to provide his own interpretation of the impervious dialectic between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, between “community” and “society,” the substance of his assertion can be brought into a critical reading of Gibellina’s abiding problem of its formations of collective memory in the aftermath of destruction. For instance, it might be argued that if we leave the experience of loss aside, we can perhaps begin to acknowledge that communities are transformed through complex interactions for which their inert physicality provides but one important indication. While “old” Gibellina was not lost in a day, Gibellina Nuova was not created in an instant. For Nancy, it would rather be the case that “death is indissociable from community, and that it is through death that the community reveals itself” (14). Given this claim, while Gibellina Nuova has undoubtedly been shaped and reconstituted by the architecture of the future and the desire to forget, it could equally be argued that this very architecture shares in a reciprocal exchange with the Cretto, a circuit of memory that inadvertently houses an archive of the city’s destructive past. As the community comes into being through resistance, entropy, possibility and reparation, the city landscape provides some clues regarding the trace of this activity as left upon its ground.ReferencesBedard, Jean-Francois, ed. Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988. New York: Rizzoli Publishing, 1994.Berlanda, Tomà. Architectural Topographies: A Graphic Lexicon of How Buildings Touch the Ground. New York: Routledge, 2014.Bileddo, Marco. “Back in Sicily / The Three Dogs Gibellina.” Eodoto108 Magazine. 30 July 2014. Bilham, Roger G., and Susan Elizabeth Hough. After the Earth Quakes: Elastic Rebound on an Urban Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Clark, Nigel. Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2010.Corbo, Stefano. From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Landscape and Power. University of Chicago Press, 2002.Museum Network Belicina. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Inoperative Community. Trans. Christopher Fynsk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.Parr, Adrian. Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the Politics of Trauma. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.Platzer, Elisbha Fabienne. “Semiotics of Spaces: City and Landart.” Seni/able Spaces: Space, Art and the Environment. Edward Huijbens and Ólafur Jónsson, eds. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.Simitch, Andrea, and Val Warke. The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know. Rockport Publishers Incorporated, 2014.Young, James E. At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)The Screen would light up. They would feel a thrill of satisfaction. But the colours had faded with age, the picture wobbled on the screen, the women were of another age; they would come out they would be sad. It was not the film they had dreamt of. It was not the total film each of them had inside himself, the perfect film they could have enjoyed forever and ever. The film they would have liked to make. Or, more secretly, no doubt, the film they would have liked to live. (Perec 57) Over the years that I have watched and thought about Jean-Luc Godard’s films I have been struck by the idea of him as an artist who works with the moving image and perhaps just as importantly the idea of cinema as an irresolvable series of problems. Most obviously this ‘problematic condition’ of Godard’s practice is evidenced in the series of crises and renunciations that pepper the historical trace of his work. A trace that is often characterised thus: criticism, the Nouvelle Vague, May 1968, the Dziga Vertov group, the adoption of video, the return to narrative form, etc. etc. Of all these events it is the rejection of both the dominant cinematic narrative form and its attendant models of production that so clearly indicated the depth and intensity of Godard’s doubt in the artistic viability of the institution of cinema. Historically and ideologically congruent with the events of May 1968, this turning away from tradition was foreshadowed by the closing titles of his 1967 opus Week End: fin de cinema (the end of cinema). Godard’s relentless application to the task of engaging a more discursive and politically informed mode of operation had implications not only for the films that were made in the wake of his disavowal of cinema but also for those that preceded it. In writing this paper it was my initial intention to selectively consider the vast oeuvre of the filmmaker as a type of conceptual project that has in some way been defined by the condition of doubt. While to certain degree I have followed this remit, I have found it necessary to focus on a small number of historically correspondent filmic instances to make my point. The sheer size and complexity of Godard’s output would effectively doom any other approach to deal in generalities. To this end I am interested in the ways that these films have embodied doubt as both an aesthetic and philosophical position. There is an enduring sense of contentiousness that surrounds both the work and perceived motives of the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard that has never come at the cost of discourse. Through a period of activity that now stretches into its sixth decade Godard has shaped an oeuvre that is as stylistically diverse as it is theoretically challenging. This span of practice is noteworthy not only for its sheer length but for its enduring ability to polarise both audiences and critical opinion. Indeed these opposing critical positions are so well inscribed in our historical understanding of Godard’s practice that they function as a type of secondary narrative. It is a narrative that the artist himself has been more than happy to cultivate and at times even engage. One hardly needs to be reminded that Godard came to making films as a critic. He asserted in the pages of his former employer Cahiers du Cinema in 1962 that “As a critic, I thought of myself as a filmmaker. Today I still think of myself as a critic, and in a sense I am, more than ever before. Instead of writing criticism, I make a film, but the critical dimension is subsumed” (59). If Godard did at this point in time believe that the criticality of practice as a filmmaker was “subsumed”, the ensuing years would see a more overt sense of criticality emerge in his work. By 1968 he was to largely reject both traditional cinematic form and production models in a concerted effort to explore the possibilities of a revolutionary cinema. In the same interview the director went on to extol the virtues of the cine-literacy that to a large part defined the loose alignment of Nouvelle Vague directors (Chabrol, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette, Truffaut) referred to as the Cahiers group claiming that “We were the first directors to know that Griffiths exists” (Godard 60). It is a statement that is as persuasive as it is dramatic, foregrounding the hitherto obscured history of cinema while positioning the group firmly within its master narrative. However, given the benefit of hindsight one realises that perhaps the filmmaker’s motives were not as simple as historical posturing. For Godard what is at stake is not just the history of cinema but cinema itself. When he states that “We were thinking cinema and at a certain moment we felt the need to extend that thought” one is struck by how far and for how long he has continued to think about and through cinema. In spite of the hours of strict ideological orthodoxy that accompanied his most politically informed works of the late 1960s and early 1970s or the sustained sense of wilful obtuseness that permeates his most “difficult” work, there is a sense of commitment to extending “that thought” that is without peer. The name “Godard”, in the words of the late critic Serge Daney, “designates an auteur but it is also synonymous with a tenacious passion for that region of the world of images we call the cinema” (Daney 68). It is a passion that is both the crux of his practice as an artist and the source of a restless experimentation and interrogation of the moving image. For Godard the passion of cinema is one that verges on religiosity. This carries with it all the philosophical and spiritual implications that the term implies. Cinema functions here as a system of signs that at once allows us to make sense of and live in the world. But this is a faith for Godard that is nothing if not tested. From the radical formal experimentation of his first feature film À Bout de soufflé (Breathless) onwards Godard has sought to place the idea of cinema in doubt. In this sense doubt becomes a type of critical engine that at once informs the shape of individual works and animates the constantly shifting positions the artist has occupied. Serge Daney's characterisation of the Nouvelle Vague as possessed of a “lucidity tinged with nostalgia” (70) is especially pertinent in understanding the way in which doubt came to animate Godard’s practice across the 1960s and beyond. Daney’s contention that the movement was both essentially nostalgic and saturated with an acute awareness that the past could not be recreated, casts the cinema itself as type of irresolvable proposition. Across the dazzling arc of films (15 features in 8 years) that Godard produced prior to his renunciation of narrative cinematic form in 1967, one can trace an unravelling of faith. During this period we can consider Godard's work and its increasingly complex engagement with the political as being predicated by the condition of doubt. The idea of the cinema as an industrial and social force increasingly permeates this work. For Godard the cinema becomes a site of questioning and ultimately reinvention. In his 1963 short film Le Grand Escroc (The Great Rogue) a character asserts that “cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world”. Indeed it is this sense of the paradoxical that shadows much of his work. The binary of beauty and fraud, like that of faith and doubt, calls forth a questioning of the cinema that stands to this day. It is of no small consequence that so many of Godard’s 1960s works contain scenes of people watching films within the confines of a movie theatre. For Godard and his Nouvelle Vague peers the sale de cinema was both the hallowed site of cinematic reception and the terrain of the everyday. It is perhaps not surprising then he chooses the movie theatre as a site to play out some of his most profound engagements with the cinema. Considered in relation to each other these scenes of cinematic viewing trace a narrative in which an undeniable affection for the cinema is undercut by both a sense of loss and doubt. Perhaps the most famous of Godard’s ‘viewing’ scenes is from the film Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live). Essentially a tale of existential trauma, the film follows the downward spiral of a young woman Nana (played by Anna Karina) into prostitution and then death at the hands of ruthless pimps. Championed (with qualifications) by Susan Sontag as a “perfect film” (207), it garnered just as many detractors, including famously the director Roberto Rosellini, for what was perceived to be its nihilistic content and overly stylised form. Seeking refuge in a cinema after being cast out from her apartment for non payment of rent the increasingly desperate Nana is shown engrossed in the starkly silent images of Carl Dreyer’s 1928 film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc). Godard cuts from the action of his film to quote at length from Dreyer’s classic, returning from the mute intensity of Maria Faloconetti’s portrayal of the condemned Joan of Arc to Karina’s enraptured face. As Falconetti’s tears swell and fall so do Karina’s, the emotional rawness of the performance on the screen mirrored and internalised by the doomed character of Nana. Nana’s identification with that of the screen heroine is at once total and immaculate as her own brutal death at the hands of men is foretold. There is an ominous silence to this sequence that serves not only to foreground the sheer visual intensity of what is being shown but also to separate it from the world outside this purely cinematic space. However, if we are to read this scene as a testament to the power of the cinematic we must also admit to the doubt that resides within it. Godard’s act of separation invites us to consider the scene not only as a meditation on the emotional and existential state of the character of Nana but also on the foreshortened possibilities of the cinema itself. As Godard’s shots mirror those of Dreyer we are presented with a consummate portrait of irrevocable loss. This is a complex system of imagery that places Dreyer’s faith against Godard’s doubt without care for the possibility of resolution. Of all Godard’s 1960s films that feature cinema spectatorship the sequence belonging to Masculin Féminin (Masculine Feminine) from 1966 is perhaps the most confounding and certainly the most digressive. A series of events largely driven by a single character’s inability or unwillingness to surrender to the projected image serve to frustrate, fracture and complexify the cinema-viewing experience. It is however, a viewing experience that articulates the depth of Godard’s doubt in the viability of the cinematic form. The sequence, like much of the film itself, centres on the trials of the character Paul played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. Locked in a struggle against the pop-cultural currents of the day and the attendant culture of consumption and appearances, Paul is positioned within the film as a somewhat conflicted and ultimately doomed romantic. His relationship with Madeleine played by real life yé-yé singer Chantal Goya is a source of constant anxiety. The world that he inhabits, however marginally, of nightclubs, pop records and publicity seems philosophically at odds with the classical music and literature that he avidly devours. If the cinema-viewing scene of Vivre Sa Vie is defined by the enraptured intensity of Anna Karina’s gaze, the corresponding scene in Masculin Féminin stands, at least initially, as the very model of distracted spectatorship. As the film in the theatre starts, Paul who has been squeezed out of his seat next to Madeleine by her jealous girlfriend, declares that he needs to go to the toilet. On entering the bathroom he is confronted by the sight of a pair of men locked in a passionate kiss. It is a strange and disarming turn of events that prompts his hastily composed graffiti response: down with the republic of cowards. For theorist Nicole Brenez the appearance of these male lovers “is practically a fantasmatic image evoked by the amorous situation that Paul is experiencing” (Brenez 174). This quasi-spectral appearance of embracing lovers and grafitti writing is echoed in the following sequence where Paul once again leaves the theatre, this time to fervently inform the largely indifferent theatre projectionist about the correct projection ratio of the film being shown. On his graffiti strewn journey back inside Paul encounters an embracing man and woman nestled in an outer corner of the theatre building. Silent and motionless the presence of this intertwined couple is at once unsettling and prescient providing “a background real for what is being projected inside on the screen” (Brenez 174). On returning to the theatre Paul asks Madeleine to fill him in on what he has missed to which she replies, “It is about a man and woman in a foreign city who…”. Shot in Stockholm to appease the Swedish co-producers that stipulated that part of the production be made in Sweden, the film within a film occupies a fine line between restrained formal artfulness and pornographic violence. What could have been a creatively stifling demand on the part of his financial backers was inverted by Godard to become a complex exploration of power relations played out through an unsettling sexual encounter. When questioned on set by a Swedish television reporter what the film was about the filmmaker curtly replied, “The film has a lot to do with sex and the Swedish are known for that” (Masculin Féminin). The film possesses a barely concealed undertow of violence. A drama of resistance and submission is played out within the confines of a starkly decorated apartment. The apartment itself is a zone in which language ceases to operate or at the least is reduced to its barest components. The man’s imploring grunts are met with the woman’s repeated reply of “no”. What seemingly begins as a homage to the contemporaneous work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman quickly slides into a chronicle of coercion. As the final scene of seduction/debasement is played out on the screen the camera pulls away to reveal the captivated gazes of Madeleine and her friends. It finally rests on Paul who then shuts his eyes, unable to bear what is being shown on the screen. It is a moment of refusal that marks a turning away not only from this projected image but from cinema itself. A point made all the clearer by Paul’s voiceover that accompanies the scene: We went to the movies often. The screen would light up and we would feel a thrill. But Madeleine and I were usually disappointed. The images were dated and jumpy. Marilyn Monroe had aged badly. We felt sad. It wasn't the movie of our dreams. It wasn't that total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we would have liked to make. Or, more secretly, no doubt the film we wanted to live. (Masculin Féminin) There was a dogged relentlessness to Godard’s interrogation of the cinema through the very space of its display. 1963’s Le Mépris (Contempt) swapped the public movie theatre for the private screening room; a theatrette emblazoned with the words Il cinema é un’invenzione senza avvenire. The phrase, presented in a style that recalled Soviet revolutionary graphics, is an Italian translation of Louis Lumiere’s 1895 appraisal of his new creation: “The cinema is an invention without a future.” The words have an almost physical presence in the space providing a fatalistic backdrop to the ensuing scene of conflict and commerce. As an exercise in self reflexivity it at once serves to remind us that even at its inception the cinema was cast in doubt. In Le Mépris the pleasures of spectatorship are played against the commercial demands of the cinema as industry. Following a screening of rushes for a troubled production of Homer’s Odyssey a tempestuous exchange ensues between a hot-headed producer (Jeremy Prokosch played by Jack Palance) and a calmly philosophical director (Fritz Lang as himself). It is a scene that attests to Godard’s view of the cinema as an art form that is creatively compromised by its own modes of production. In a film that plays the disintegration of a relationship against the production of a movie and that features a cast of Germans, Italians and French it is of no small consequence that the movie producer is played by an American. An American who, when faced with a creative impasse, utters the phrase “when I hear the word culture I bring out my checkbook”. It is one of Godard’s most acerbic and doubt filled sequences pitting as he does the implied genius of Lang against the tantrum throwing demands of the rapacious movie producer. We are presented with a model of industrial relations that is both creatively stifling and practically unworkable. Certainly it was no coincidence that Le Mépris had the biggest budget ($1 million) that Godard has ever worked with. In Godard’s 1965 film Une Femme Mariée (A Married Woman), he would once again use the movie theatre as a location. The film, which dealt with the philosophical implications of an adulterous affair, is also notable for its examination of the Holocaust and that defining event’s relationship to personal and collective memory. Biographer Richard Brody has observed that, “Godard introduced the Auschwitz trial into The Married Woman (sic) as a way of inserting his view of another sort of forgetting that he suggested had taken hold of France—the conjoined failures of historical and personal memory that resulted from the world of mass media and the ideology of gratification” (Brody 196-7). Whatever the causes, there is a pervading sense of amnesia that surrounds the Holocaust in the film. In one exchange the character of Charlotte, the married woman in question, momentarily confuses Auschwitz with thalidomide going on to later exclaim that “the past isn’t fun”. But like the barely repressed memories of her past indiscretions, the Holocaust returns at the most unexpected juncture in the film. In what starts out as Godard’s most overt reference to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Charlotte and her lover secretly meet under the cover of darkness in a movie theatre. Each arriving separately and kitted out in dark sunglasses, there is breezy energy to this clandestine rendezvous highly reminiscent of the work of the great director. It is a stylistic point that is underscored in the film by the inclusion of a full-frame shot of Hitchcock’s portrait in the theatre’s foyer. However, as the lovers embrace the curtain rises on Alain Resnais’s 1955 documentary Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). The screen is filled with images of barbed wire as the voice of narrator Jean Cayrol informs the audience that “even a vacation village with a fair and a steeple can lead very simply to a concentration camp.” It is an incredibly shocking moment, in which the repressed returns to confirm that while memory “isn’t fun”, it is indeed necessary. An uncanny sense of recognition pervades the scene as the two lovers are faced with the horrendous evidence of a past that refuses to stay subsumed. The scene is all the more powerful for the seemingly casual manner it is relayed. There is no suspenseful unveiling or affected gauging of the viewers’ reactions. What is simply is. In this moment of recognition the Hitchcockian mood of the anticipation of an illicit rendezvous is supplanted by a numbness as swift as it is complete. Needless to say the couple make a swift retreat from the now forever compromised space of the theatre. Indeed this scene is one of the most complex and historically layered of any that Godard had produced up to this point in his career. By making overt reference to Hitchcock he intimates that the cinema itself is deeply implicated in this perceived crisis of memory. What begins as a homage to the work of one of the most valorised influences of the Nouvelle Vague ends as a doubt filled meditation on the shortcomings of a system of representation. The question stands: how do we remember through the cinema? In this regard the scene signposts a line of investigation that would become a defining obsession of Godard’s expansive Histoire(s) du cinéma, a project that was to occupy him throughout the 1990s. Across four chapters and four and half hours Histoire(s) du cinéma examines the inextricable relationship between the history of the twentieth century and the cinema. Comprised almost completely of filmic quotations, images and text, the work employs a video-based visual language that unremittingly layers image upon image to dissolve and realign the past. In the words of theorist Junji Hori “Godard's historiography in Histoire(s) du cinéma is based principally on the concept of montage in his idiosyncratic sense of the term” (336). In identifying montage as the key strategy in Histoire(s) du cinéma Hori implicates the cinema itself as central to both Godard’s process of retelling history and remembering it. However, it is a process of remembering that is essentially compromised. Just as the relationship of the cinema to the Holocaust is bought into question in Une Femme Mariée, so too it becomes a central concern of Histoire(s) du cinéma. It is Godard’s assertion “that the cinema failed to honour its ethical commitment to presenting the unthinkable barbarity of the Nazi extermination camps” (Temple 332). This was a failure that for Godard moved beyond the realm of doubt to represent “nothing less than the end of cinema” (Brody 512). In October 1976 the New Yorker magazine published a profile of Jean Luc Godard by Penelope Gilliatt a writer who shared the post of film critic at the magazine with Pauline Kael. The article was based on an interview that took place at Godard’s production studio in Grenoble Switzerland. It was notable for two things: Namely, the most succinct statement that Godard has made regarding the enduring sense of criticality that pervades his work: “A good film is a matter of questions properly put.” (74) And secondly, surely the shortest sentence ever written about the filmmaker: “Doubt stands.” (77)ReferencesÀ Bout de soufflé. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. 1960. DVD. Criterion, 2007. Brenez, Nicole. “The Forms of the Question.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Brody, Richard. Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt & Co., 2008. Daney, Serge. “The Godard Paradox.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Gilliat, Penelope. “The Urgent Whisper.” Jean-Luc Godard Interviews. Ed. David Sterritt. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Godard, Jean-Luc. “Jean-Luc Godard: 'From Critic to Film-Maker': Godard in Interview (extracts). ('Entretien', Cahiers du Cinema 138, December 1962).” Cahiers du Cinéma: 1960-1968 New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood. Ed. Jim Hillier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Histoires du Cinema. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. 1988-98. DVD, Artificial Eye, 2008. Hori, Junji. “Godard’s Two Histiographies.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Le Grand Escroc. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jean Seberg. Film. Ulysse Productions, 1963. Le Mépris. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jack Palance, Fritz Lang. 1964. DVD. Criterion, 2002. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Film. Janus films, 1928. MacCabe, Colin. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Masculin Féminin. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Pierre Léaud. 1966. DVD. Criterion, 2005. Nuit et Brouillard. Dir Alain Resnais. Film. Janus Films, 1958. Perec, Georges. Things: A Story of the Sixties. Trans. David Bellos. London: Collins Harvill, 1990. (Originally published 1965.) Sontag, Susan. “Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, 2001. Temple, Michael, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt, eds. For Ever Godard. London: Black Dog, 2004. Une Femme Mariée. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Macha Meril. 1964. DVD. Eureka, 2009. Vivre Sa Vie. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Anna Karina. 1962. DVD. Criterion, 2005. Week End, Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. 1967. DVD. Distinction Series, 2005.

IntroductionCoffee, as a stimulant, and the spaces in which it is has been consumed, have long played a vital role in fostering communication, creativity, and sociality. This article explores the interrelationship of café space, communication, creativity, and materialism. In developing these themes, this article is structured in two parts. The first looks back to the coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to give a historical context to the contemporary role of the café as a key site of creativity through its facilitation of social interaction, communication and information exchange. The second explores the continuation of the link between cafés, communication and creativity, through an instance from the mid-twentieth century where this process becomes individualised and is tied more intrinsically to the material surroundings of the café itself. From this, we argue that in order to understand the connection between café space and creativity, it is valuable to consider the rich polymorphic material and aesthetic composition of cafés. The Social Life of Coffee: London’s Coffee Houses While the social consumption of coffee has a long history, here we restrict our focus to a discussion of the London coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was during the seventeenth century that the vogue of these coffee houses reached its zenith when they operated as a vibrant site of mercantile activity, as well as cultural and political exchange (Cowan; Lillywhite; Ellis). Many of these coffee houses were situated close to the places where politicians, merchants, and other significant people congregated and did business, near government buildings such as Parliament, as well as courts, ports and other travel route hubs (Lillywhite 17). A great deal of information was shared within these spaces and, as a result, the coffee house became a key venue for communication, especially the reading and distribution of print and scribal publications (Cowan 85). At this time, “no coffee house worth its name” would be without a ready selection of newspapers for its patrons (Cowan 173). By working to twenty-four hour diurnal cycles and heightening the sense of repetition and regularity, coffee houses also played a crucial role in routinising news as a form of daily consumption alongside other forms of habitual consumption (including that of coffee drinking). In Cowan’s words, “restoration coffee houses soon became known as places ‘dasht with diurnals and books of news’” (172). Among these was the short-lived but nonetheless infamous social gossip publication, The Tatler (1709-10), which was strongly associated with the London coffee houses and, despite its short publication life, offers great insight into the social life and scandals of the time. The coffee house became, in short, “the primary social space in which ‘news’ was both produced and consumed” (Cowan 172). The proprietors of coffee houses were quick to exploit this situation by dealing in “news mongering” and developing their own news publications to supplement their incomes (172). They sometimes printed news, commentary and gossip that other publishers were not willing to print. However, as their reputation as news providers grew, so did the pressure on coffee houses to meet the high cost of continually acquiring or producing journals (Cowan 173; Ellis 185-206). In addition to the provision of news, coffee houses were vital sites for other forms of communication. For example, coffee houses were key venues where “one might deposit and receive one’s mail” (Cowan 175), and the Penny Post used coffeehouses as vital pick-up and delivery centres (Lillywhite 17). As Cowan explains, “Many correspondents [including Jonathan Swift] used a coffeehouse as a convenient place to write their letters as well as to send them” (176). This service was apparently provided gratis for regular patrons, but coffee house owners were less happy to provide this for their more infrequent customers (Cowan 176). London’s coffee houses functioned, in short, as notable sites of sociality that bundled together drinking coffee with news provision and postal and other services to attract customers (Cowan; Ellis). Key to the success of the London coffee house of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the figure of the virtuoso habitué (Cowan 105)—an urbane individual of the middle or upper classes who was skilled in social intercourse, skills that were honed through participation in the highly ritualised and refined forms of interpersonal communication, such as visiting the stately homes of that time. In contrast to such private visits, the coffee house provided a less formalised and more spontaneous space of sociality, but where established social skills were distinctly advantageous. A striking example of the figure of the virtuoso habitué is the philosopher, architect and scientist Robert Hooke (1635-1703). Hooke, by all accounts, used the opportunities provided by his regular visits to coffee houses “to draw on the knowledge of a wide variety of individuals, from servants and skilled laborers to aristocrats, as well as to share and display novel scientific instruments” (Cowan 105) in order to explore and develop his virtuoso interests. The coffee house also served Hooke as a place to debate philosophy with cliques of “like-minded virtuosi” and thus formed the “premier locale” through which he could “fulfil his own view of himself as a virtuoso, as a man of business, [and] as a man at the centre of intellectual life in the city” (Cowan 105-06). For Hooke, the coffee house was a space for serious work, and he was known to complain when “little philosophical work” was accomplished (105-06). Sociality operates in this example as a form of creative performance, demonstrating individual skill, and is tied to other forms of creative output. Patronage of a coffee house involved hearing and passing on gossip as news, but also entailed skill in philosophical debate and other intellectual pursuits. It should also be noted that the complex role of the coffee house as a locus of communication, sociality, and creativity was repeated elsewhere. During the 1600s in Egypt (and elsewhere in the Middle East), for example, coffee houses served as sites of intensive literary activity as well as the locations for discussions of art, sciences and literature, not to mention also of gambling and drug use (Hattox 101). While the popularity of coffee houses had declined in London by the 1800s, café culture was flowering elsewhere in mainland Europe. In the late 1870s in Paris, Edgar Degas and Edward Manet documented the rich café life of the city in their drawings and paintings (Ellis 216). Meanwhile, in Vienna, “the kaffeehaus offered another evocative model of urban and artistic modernity” (Ellis 217; see also Bollerey 44-81). Serving wine and dinners as well as coffee and pastries, the kaffeehaus was, like cafés elsewhere in Europe, a mecca for writers, artists and intellectuals. The Café Royal in London survived into the twentieth century, mainly through the patronage of European expatriates and local intellectuals such as Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, T. S. Elliot, and Henri Bergson (Ellis 220). This pattern of patronage within specific and more isolated cafés was repeated in famous gatherings of literary identities elsewhere in Europe throughout the twentieth century. From this historical perspective, a picture emerges of how the social functions of the coffee house and its successors, the espresso bar and modern café, have shifted over the course of their histories (Bollerey 44-81). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the coffee house was an important location for vibrant social interaction and the consumption and distribution of various forms of communication such as gossip, news, and letters. However, in the years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the café was more commonly a site for more restricted social interaction between discrete groups. Studies of cafés and creativity during this era focus on cafés as “factories of literature, inciters to art, and breeding places for new ideas” (Fitch, The Grand 18). Central in these accounts are bohemian artists, their associated social circles, and their preferred cafés de bohème (for detailed discussion, see Wilson; Fitch, Paris Café; Brooker; Grafe and Bollerey 4-41). As much of this literature on café culture details, by the early twentieth century, cafés emerge as places that enable individuals to carve out a space for sociality and creativity which was not possible elsewhere in the modern metropolis. Writing on the modern metropolis, Simmel suggests that the concentration of people and things in cities “stimulate[s] the nervous system of the individual” to such an extent that it prompts a kind of self-preservation that he terms a “blasé attitude” (415). This is a form of “reserve”, he writes, which “grants to the individual a [certain] kind and an amount of personal freedom” that was hitherto unknown (416). Cafés arguably form a key site in feeding this dynamic insofar as they facilitate self-protectionism—Fitch’s “pool of privacy” (The Grand 22)—and, at the same time, produce a sense of individual freedom in Simmel’s sense of the term. That is to say, from the early-to-mid twentieth century, cafés have become complex settings in terms of the relationships they enable or constrain between living in public, privacy, intimacy, and cultural practice. (See Haine for a detailed discussion of how this plays out in relation to working class engagement with Paris cafés, and Wilson as well as White on other cultural contexts, such as Japan.) Threaded throughout this history is a clear celebration of the individual artist as a kind of virtuoso habitué of the contemporary café. Café Jama Michalika The following historical moment, drawn from a powerful point in the mid-twentieth century, illustrates this last stage in the evolution of the relationship between café space, communication, and creativity. This particular historical moment concerns the renowned Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki, who is most well-known for his avant-garde piece Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), his Polymorphia (1961), and St Luke Passion (1963-66), all of which entailed new compositional and notation techniques. Poland, along with other European countries devastated by the Second World War, underwent significant rebuilding after the war, also investing heavily in the arts, musical education, new concert halls, and conservatoria (Monastra). In the immediate post-war period, Poland and Polish culture was under the strong ideological influence exerted by the Soviet Union. However, as Thomas notes, within a year of Stalin’s death in 1953, “there were flickering signs of moderation in Polish culture” (83). With respect to musical creativity, a key turning point was the Warsaw Autumn Music Festival of 1956. “The driving force” behind the first festival (which was to become an annual event), was Polish “composers’ overwhelming sense of cultural isolation and their wish to break the provincial nature of Polish music” at that time (Thomas 85). Penderecki was one of a younger generation of composers who participated in, and benefited from, these early festivals, making his first appearance in 1959 with his composition Strophes, and successive appearances with Dimensions of Time and Silence in 1960, and Threnody in 1961 (Thomas 90). Penderecki married in the 1950s and had a child in 1955. This, in combination with the fact that his wife was a pianist and needed to practice daily, restricted Penderecki’s ability to work in their small Krakow apartment. Nor could he find space at the music school which was free from the intrusion of the sound of other instruments. Instead, he frequented the café Jama Michalika off the central square of Krakow, where he worked most days between nine in the morning and noon, when he would leave as a pianist began to play. Penderecki states that because of the small space of the café table, he had to “invent [a] special kind of notation which allowed me to write the piece which was for 52 instruments, like Threnody, on one small piece of paper” (Krzysztof Penderecki, 2000). In this, Penderecki created a completely new set of notation symbols, which assisted him in graphically representing tone clustering (Robinson 6) while, in his score for Polymorphia, he implemented “novel graphic notation, comparable with medical temperature charts, or oscillograms” (Schwinger 29) to represent in the most compact way possible the dense layering of sounds and vocal elements that is developed in this particular piece. This historical account is valuable because it contributes to discussions on individual creativity that both depends on, and occurs within, the material space of the café. This relationship is explored in Walter Benjamin’s essay “Polyclinic”, where he develops an extended analogy between the writer and the café and the surgeon and his instruments. As Cohen summarises, “Benjamin constructs the field of writerly operation both in medical terms and as a space dear to Parisian intellectuals, as an operating table that is also the marble-topped table of a café” (179). At this time, the space of the café itself thus becomes a vital site for individual cultural production, putting the artist in touch with the social life of the city, as many accounts of writers and artists in the cafés of Paris, Prague, Vienna, and elsewhere in Europe attest. “The attraction of the café for the writer”, Fitch argues, “is that seeming tension between the intimate circle of privacy in a comfortable room, on the one hand, and the flow of (perhaps usable) information all around on the other” (The Grand 11). Penderecki talks about searching for a sound while composing in café Jama Michalika and, hearing the noise of a passing tram, subsequently incorporated it into his famous composition, Threnody (Krzysztof Penderecki, 2000). There is an indirect connection here with the attractions of the seventeenth century coffee houses in London, where news writers drew much of their gossip and news from the talk within the coffee houses. However, the shift is to a more isolated, individualistic habitué. Nonetheless, the aesthetic composition of the café space remains essential to the creative productivity described by Penderecki. A concept that can be used to describe this method of composition is contained within one of Penderecki’s best-known pieces, Polymorphia (1961). The term “polymorphia” refers not to the form of the music itself (which is actually quite conventionally structured) but rather to the multiple blending of sounds. Schwinger defines polymorphia as “many formedness […] which applies not […] to the form of the piece, but to the broadly deployed scale of sound, [the] exchange and simultaneous penetration of sound and noise, the contrast and interflow of soft and hard sounds” (131). This description also reflects the rich material context of the café space as Penderecki describes its role in shaping (both enabling and constraining) his creative output. Creativity, Technology, Materialism The materiality of the café—including the table itself for Penderecki—is crucial in understanding the relationship between the forms of creative output and the material conditions of the spaces that enable them. In Penderecki’s case, to understand the origins of the score and even his innovative forms of musical notation as artefacts of communication, we need to understand the material conditions under which they were created. As a fixture of twentieth and twenty-first century urban environments, the café mediates the private within the public in a way that offers the contemporary virtuoso habitué a rich, polymorphic sensory experience. In a discussion of the indivisibility of sensation and its resistance to language, writer Anna Gibbs describes these rich experiential qualities: sitting by the window in a café watching the busy streetscape with the warmth of the morning sun on my back, I smell the delicious aroma of coffee and simultaneously feel its warmth in my mouth, taste it, and can tell the choice of bean as I listen idly to the chatter in the café around me and all these things blend into my experience of “being in the café” (201). Gibbs’s point is that the world of the café is highly synaesthetic and infused with sensual interconnections. The din of the café with its white noise of conversation and overlaying sounds of often carefully chosen music illustrates the extension of taste beyond the flavour of the coffee on the palate. In this way, the café space provides the infrastructure for a type of creative output that, in Gibbs’s case, facilitates her explanation of expression and affect. The individualised virtuoso habitué, as characterised by Penderecki’s work within café Jama Michalika, simply describes one (celebrated) form of the material conditions of communication and creativity. An essential factor in creative cultural output is contained in the ways in which material conditions such as these come to be organised. As Elizabeth Grosz expresses it: Art is the regulation and organisation of its materials—paint, canvas, concrete, steel, marble, words, sounds, bodily movements, indeed any materials—according to self-imposed constraints, the creation of forms through which these materials come to generate and intensify sensation and thus directly impact living bodies, organs, nervous systems (4). Materialist and medium-oriented theories of media and communication have emphasised the impact of physical constraints and enablers on the forms produced. McLuhan, for example, famously argued that the typewriter brought writing, speech, and publication into closer association, one effect of which was the tighter regulation of spelling and grammar, a pressure toward precision and uniformity that saw a jump in the sales of dictionaries (279). In the poetry of E. E. Cummings, McLuhan sees the typewriter as enabling a patterned layout of text that functions as “a musical score for choral speech” (278). In the same way, the café in Penderecki’s recollections both constrains his ability to compose freely (a creative activity that normally requires ample flat surface), but also facilitates the invention of a new language for composition, one able to accommodate the small space of the café table. Recent studies that have sought to materialise language and communication point to its physicality and the embodied forms through which communication occurs. As Packer and Crofts Wiley explain, “infrastructure, space, technology, and the body become the focus, a move that situates communication and culture within a physical, corporeal landscape” (3). The confined and often crowded space of the café and its individual tables shape the form of productive output in Penderecki’s case. Targeting these material constraints and enablers in her discussion of art, creativity and territoriality, Grosz describes the “architectural force of framing” as liberating “the qualities of objects or events that come to constitute the substance, the matter, of the art-work” (11). More broadly, the design features of the café, the form and layout of the tables and the space made available for individual habitation, the din of the social encounters, and even the stimulating influences on the body of the coffee served there, can be seen to act as enablers of communication and creativity. Conclusion The historical examples examined above indicate a material link between cafés and communication. They also suggest a relationship between materialism and creativity, as well as the roots of the romantic association—or mythos—of cafés as a key source of cultural life as they offer a “shared place of composition” and an “environment for creative work” (Fitch, The Grand 11). We have detailed one example pertaining to European coffee consumption, cafés and creativity. While we believe Penderecki’s case is valuable in terms of what it can tell us about forms of communication and creativity, clearly other cultural and historical contexts may reveal additional insights—as may be found in the cases of Middle Eastern cafés (Hattox) or the North American diner (Hurley), and in contemporary developments such as the café as a source of free WiFi and the commodification associated with global coffee chains. Penderecki’s example, we suggest, also sheds light on a longer history of creativity and cultural production that intersects with contemporary work practices in city spaces as well as conceptualisations of the individual’s place within complex urban spaces. References Benjamin, Walter. “Polyclinic” in “One-Way Street.” One-Way Street and Other Writings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London: Verso, 1998: 88-9. Bollerey, Franziska. “Setting the Stage for Modernity: The Cosmos of the Coffee House.” Cafés and Bars: The Architecture of Public Display. Eds. Christoph Grafe and Franziska Bollerey. New York: Routledge, 2007. 44-81. Brooker, Peter. Bohemia in London: The Social Scene of Early Modernism. Houndmills, Hamps.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Cohen, Margaret. Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995. Cowan, Brian. The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004. Fitch, Noël Riley. Paris Café: The Sélect Crowd. Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2007. -----. The Grand Literary Cafés of Europe. London: New Holland Publishers (UK), 2006. Gibbs, Anna. “After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication.” The Affect Theory Reader. Eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Siegworth. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 186-205. Grafe, Christoph, and Franziska Bollerey. “Introduction: Cafés and Bars—Places for Sociability.” Cafés and Bars: The Architecture of Public Display. Eds. Christoph Grafe and Franziska Bollerey. New York: Routledge, 2007. 4-41. Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Haine, W. Scott. The World of the Paris Café. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Hattox, Ralph S. Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1985. Hurley, Andrew. Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Krzysztof Penderecki. Dir. Andreas Missler-Morell. Spektrum TV production and Telewizja Polska S.A. Oddzial W Krakowie for RM Associates and ZDF in cooperation with ARTE, 2000. Lillywhite, Bryant. London Coffee Houses: A Reference Book of Coffee Houses of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1963. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Abacus, 1974. Monastra, Peggy. “Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polymorphia and Fluorescence.” Moldenhauer Archives, [US] Library of Congress. 12 Jan. 2012 ‹http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/2428143.pdf› Packer, Jeremy, and Stephen B. Crofts Wiley. “Introduction: The Materiality of Communication.” Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks. New York, Routledge, 2012. 3-16. Robinson, R. Krzysztof Penderecki: A Guide to His Works. Princeton, NJ: Prestige Publications, 1983. Schwinger, Wolfram. Krzysztof Penderecki: His Life and Work. Encounters, Biography and Musical Commentary. London: Schott, 1979. Simmel, Georg. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Ed. and trans. Kurt H. Wolff. Glencoe, IL: The Free P, 1960. Thomas, Adrian. Polish Music since Szymanowski. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. White, Merry I. Coffee Life in Japan. Berkeley: U of California P, 2012. Wilson, Elizabeth. “The Bohemianization of Mass Culture.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 2.1 (1999): 11-32.

Cities are shared spaces. As the massive worldwide Iraq war protests that began in 2002 indicate, the structure of the city allows for the presentation of social statements, where large groups can gather, share ideas or argue beliefs, and where media outlets can broadcast these activities. While cities enable these forms of interaction, digital technologies also allow for worldwide connections, both through communication and entertainment. What is the relationship between the shared, often contested spaces of the city and how they are represented in interactive media such as videogames? What statements are formed in the streets of Grand Theft Auto? In this paper I will discuss three popular games that reproduce urban spaces: the Grand Theft Auto series (1998-2006), Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (2004), and Getting Up: Contents under Pressure (2006). These games are of interest due to their popularity, as well as the forms of interaction reinforced by the urban game environment. Cities have always been spaces for interaction and competition, becoming the site for festivals, protests and games. Ancient forms of graffiti in Rome and Pompeii have been re-envisioned in a worldwide graffiti movement, transforming blighted areas into image-laden environments. Games of stickball, hockey and football transform streets into fields, as do modern marathons and bicycle races. The city street becomes a zone of interpretation, for adaptation and personalization. More recently, skateboarders have transformed cities into skateparks, forcing designers to develop such curiosities as handrail and planter augmentation meant to deter skating. Even more peculiar, a possible response to the anti-skating backlash is the sport known as ‘free-running’ or le parkeur, where participants use the existing infrastructure to express themselves, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing concrete peaks and adding stylistic flourish with each step. These forms of urban gameplay may also be accompanied by dangerous activities as well. Jenkins suggests that discussions on the negative effects of increased gameplay might be addressed by looking at socioeconomic factors, such as the increasing numbers of young people living in urban or semi-urban areas who have fewer opportunities for activity that takes place out of doors, creating the prospect for increased interaction with videogames (“Complete Freedom”). The adaptability combined with the dangerous allure of the city street makes for problematic, intriguing representations in contemporary videogames that deal with urban spaces. I will first discuss a brief history of games that deal with urban spaces, before discussing three popular games and the manner in which they attempt to represent, and recreate the experiences in the city. Games and the City One of the earliest examples of the city represented in a videogame can be seen in Rampage, released by Bally/Midway in 1986. The game includes the city only as backdrop for demolition by hyperagressive mutant animals. SimCity, created by Will Wright and released in 1989, is considered a landmark in the history of videogames, as it is based in forms of cooperation rather than competition. It has spawned at least 21 varieties, including the highly anticipated Spore, a game that allows the player to control life on a microbiological level. Game developers also have explored the recreation of cities from the past. Games such as Civilization and Children of the Nile: Immortal Cities (2004) allow players to control events on a broad social scale, in the style of SimCity, with the addition of historical information that comes into play. As videogames have developed, an increase in processing power has allowed programmers to create spaces rendered in real-time, in three dimensions, allowing for immersive ‘first-person’ perspectives not possible in earlier game systems. This perspective has changed the way in which the city is engaged, from the simplistic destruction of Rampage to more nuanced ways of moving through game space. When discussing the perspective of the player in the urban game space, we should also discuss the perspective of the city inhabitant. As de Certeau describes it, the act of walking in the city represents a form of ownership, reading and creating ‘texts’ through movement. This perspective can shift, through travel in automobile or train, or by ascending in skyscrapers, changing the understanding of the text in the process. This process is inevitably collaborative, as the urban terrain that is monitored both by individuals and by groups: businesses, governments, police. As Flynn suggests, this notion of walking closely resembles the procedural nature of generating meaning in many videogames. Recent games such as the Grand Theft Auto series (1998-2006), Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (2004), and Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (2006) raise issues regarding the representation of the city, and the possibilities afforded the player. Of interest are the following questions: How is the urban environment represented? What options are provided to players for interaction within this environment? Are their implications for everyday practices that borrow from these game-based environments? Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto (GTA) was first released in 1998, and has since expanded into a series of increasingly controversial games. Originally designed for top-down gameplay, a third person point of view was introduced in GTA II (2001). Along with this new point of view came the ability for players to interact with a highly detailed cityspace, deviating from the urban gangster storyline, and interacting with city inhabitants in any number of illicit ways. This interactivity was taken to an extreme in GTA: San Andreas (2004). GTA: San Andreas is set in a state that is a fictional blend of California and Nevada. It continued the gangster storyline of the previous games, becoming notorious for including an encoded, hidden level that allowed players to take part in explicit sex scenes. It featured a style of nonlinear gameplay that allowed players to entertain themselves, exploring the urban landscape free from rigid game requirements. It also limited interactions with city dwellers, limiting narrative elements to ‘cut scenes’ that allow for uninhibited gameplay. As Frasca suggests, the later Grand Theft Auto games are really about moving through space, typically seen as a mundane activity, in an interesting way. However, that which makes the movement interesting typically involves killing and maiming and destroying that which stands in the way of the main character. Without getting into a discussion of morals and videogames, the GTA series certainly has pushed the boundaries of video game acceptability, as well as engaging gameplay, allowing players to drift through the urban environment. The Situationist International (SI) sought to engage with the city, opening up possibilities for new forms of engagement and interaction through drifts, or derivé. Through various forms of derivé they engaged with the psychogeographic space of the city, walking through varied areas, and reorganizing these experiences as though in a dream state, or, perhaps, game (Sadler). Surely any video game can be experienced in a similar manner. I suggest that the GTA series, through interactive openness, allows players to reread the text of this virtual city, while at the same time contributing to the ‘society of the spectacle’ that situationist Guy Debord so maligned (Debord). As a successful yet problematic blend of simulation and quest, the rules in GTA: San Andreas are not made explicit; we are familiar with the urban spaces depicted in GTA, at least through the stereotypes portrayed in the media. Players therefore know the rules implicit to these spaces, and what happens when we break them; thus, the allure of the simulated urban environment. The text created is one that combines lived experience, mediated images, and interaction with the fictional urban space. What happens when this environment is made specific, when the game depicts a real city? Tony Hawk Pro Skater The Tony Hawk Pro Skater (THPS) series became very popular after its release in 1999, capitalizing on the marketing of ‘extreme sports’ as seen in events such as ESPN X Games, which debuted in 1995. While not the first skateboarding game on the market, THPS captured the imagination of the game buying audience, allowing players to skate as Tony Hawk, or any number of pro skaters. The latest installment of the series is Tony Hawk American Wasteland (THAW), which promotes the seamless connections between levels that are detailed reproductions of Los Angeles. While the GTA series allows for, and in many cases encourages, activities that would be deemed illegal, THAW extends the possibility that the player could actually perform these acts in the place depicted in the game. Does this allow for greater immersion, which then inspires players to ‘take it to the street?’ Or, does the gameplay reinforce the argument against such activities in the actual urban space, affirming their ‘destructive’ nature? Although skaters can be a nuisance, particularly in crowded downtown areas, the appropriation of utilitarian infrastructure can also be seen as improvisational art, adapting existing urban features in the process of skating. The SI notion of detournement can be seen in the actions of many skaters, as the process of skating brings new meanings to the urban landscape. Whether the Pro Skater series adds to the possibilities for detournement, or further limits the actual skating that happens in the city, is only relevant to those who skate and those who attempt to prevent this sport from taking place. As you skate through the city, writing the text of your experience through railslides and grinds, you are also given the ability to ‘tag’ the walls of Los Angeles, literally inscribing your place in the environment. The control of urban spaces, and the possibilities for rewriting these spaces—for detournement—brings me to my third example. Getting Up Marc Ecko, clothing designer and hip-hop aficionado, released Getting Up: Contents under Pressure in 2006. Players assume the identity of ‘Trane,’ a young graffiti artists desparate to learn the ropes in the city of ‘New Radius.’ New Radius is currently under the draconian control of ‘Mayor Sung,’ who has promised to rid the city of the scourge of graffiti. As Trane, you make your way through New Radius, battling foes and meeting graffiti legends, who teach you new skills along the way. Getting Up is unique from the games previously mentioned, as you have the ability to interact with the urban environment in a manner that is not incessantly violent or overtly destructive. In fact, the game is marketed as a way to get the thrill of ‘tagging’ without actually taking part in illegal activity. It is also a unique experience, as Trane walks through the entire environment. This slows down the gameplay, and allows the character to take in the highly detailed environments. It a very literal way, the player in Getting Up is writing the city, as de Certeau describes it, though this writing is typically underappreciated as creative activity, much less art. Conclusion The games that I have described present the city in very different ways, and offer players diverse options for interacting and thinking about the city. While, the impact of these games remains to be seen, and may never register beyond the world of the gamer, these games present urban environments as active spaces for engagement, even if it is the thuggishness reinforced in Grand Theft Auto. I would hope that the creativity shown in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater would lead to the creation of not only more skateparks in suburban spaces, but the acknowledgement of the need for detournement in public urban spaces such as Philadelphia’s Love Park, a favorite East Coast US skate spot that has been the center of much controversy as a result of its popularity. If Pro Skater brings the issue of street skating to a national audience, it is doing good, both as entertainment and social force. Similarly, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up has the potential to not only memorialize the birth of graffiti and hip hop in 1970’s New York; it can also instruct on the flourishing worldwide graffiti scene, allowing those who deserve (and desire) attention to have it. Recent projects such as pacmanhattan have inverted the relationships between gaming and the urban environment that I have described. Taking the game to the city, players engage in interpretations of the video game classic Pac Man in the streets of Manhattan, utilizing a variety of locative media devices. While these games do not change the physicality of the city, they surely change our psycheographical interpretation of that space, in a way that folds together the freedom of gameplay with the control of the street. Jenkins suggests that designers should pay more attention to the work of architects and urban planners as they create interactive worlds (“Game Design”). I would also suggest that the opposite take place. Urban designers might learn from the urban spaces created in games such as American Wasteland and Getting Up, as they present options for the detournement of fixed spaces evident in the graffiti and skate cultures. Increased control will result in diverse responses that subvert this control. Cities should remain spaces for walking, for drifting, for protesting: for games. References Bureau of Public Secrets. Situationist International Anthology. Ed. K. Knabb. Berkeley, Calif.: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1991. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984. Flynn, B. Languages of Navigation within Computer Games. Paper presentation, Digital Art and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 2003. April 2006 http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Flynn.pdf>. Jenkins, Henry. “Complete Freedom of Movement: Videogames as Gendered Play Spaces.” In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Eds. K. Salen and E. Zimmerman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Eds. K. Salen and E. Zimmerman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Frasca, G. Sim Sin City: Some Thoughts on Grand Theft Auto. Game Studies 2003. April 2006 http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/frasca/>. Sadler, S. The Situationist City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Sweeny, Robert. "Code of the Streets: Videogames and the City." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/07-sweeny.php>. APA Style Sweeny, R. (Jul. 2006) "Code of the Streets: Videogames and the City," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/07-sweeny.php>.