Journal articles on the topic 'Inside a tent or behind a curtain'

The short-nosed fruit bat <i>Cynopterus sphinx</i> (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) constructs shelters by severing stems of the curtain creeper, <i>Vernoniu scundens</i>, and stems and leaves of the mast tree, <i>Polyalthia longifoliu</i>, creating partially enclosed cavities (stem tents) in which to roost. Our observations indicate that the construction and maintenance of stem tents are primarily, if not exclusively, the behaviour of single males. A stem tent is formed in <i>V. scundens</i> when a single male <i>C. sphinx severs</i> up to 300 small- to medium-sized stems creating a partially flattened, bell-shaped cavity, and in <i>P. fongifolia</i> when a male severs a few medium- to small-sized branches and many leaf petioles, creating an entry/exit portal and space in which to roost. A tent constructed in <i>V. scandens</i> is completed in approximately 30 d, whereas one in <i>P. longifoliu</i> is completed in about 50 d. Stem-tent construction takes place mostly at night, but some stem chewing occurs in late afternoon. At night a stem tent is occupied by a single male, whereas females are usually absent. During the day the number of bats occupying completed tents is highly variable, ranging from two to 19 females (and their pups) and a single adult male. Tent construction is annually bimodal, which corresponds to a biannual breeding season. A dominant male sometimes deposits saliva on branches inside his tent cavity and actively defends this space from intrusions by other males. Both behaviours suggest forms of scent marking and territorial display. Our observations indicate that dominant males construct tents, recruit females and then defend the tents (and their female occupants) for the purpose of gaining reproductive access. The variance in harem group size indicates that some tent-making males are more successful than others in recruiting females.

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) constructs shelters by severing stems of the curtain creeper, Vernoniu scundens, and stems and leaves of the mast tree, Polyalthialongifoliu, creatingpartially enclosed cavities(stem tents) in which to roost. Our observations indicate that the construction and maintenance of stem tents are primarily, if not exclusively, the behaviour of single males. A stem tent is formed in V. scundens when a single male C. sphinx severs up to 300 small- to medium-sized stems creating a partially flattened, bell-shaped cavity, and in P. fongifolia when a male severs a few medium- to small-sized branches and many leaf petioles, creating an entry/exit portal and space in which to roost. A tent constructed in V. scandens is completed in approximately 30 d, whereas one in P. longifoliu is completed in about 50 d. Stem-tent construction takes place mostly at night, but some stem chewing occurs in late afternoon. At night a stem tent is occupied by a single male, whereas females are usually absent. During the day the number of bats occupying completed tents is highly variable, ranging from two to 19 females (and their pups) and a single adult male. Tent construction is annually bimodal, which corresponds to a biannual breeding season. A dominant male sometimes deposits saliva on branches inside his tent cavity and actively defends this space from intrusions by other males. Both behaviours suggest forms of scent marking and territorial display. O u r observations indicate that dominant males construct tents, recruit females and then defend the tents (and their female occupants) for the purpose of gaining reproductive access. The variance in harem group size indicates that some tent-making males are more successful than others in recruiting females.

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) constructs shelters by severing stems of the curtain creeper, Vernoniu scundens, and stems and leaves of the mast tree, Polyalthialongifoliu, creatingpartially enclosed cavities(stem tents) in which to roost. Our observations indicate that the construction and maintenance of stem tents are primarily, if not exclusively, the behaviour of single males. A stem tent is formed in V. scundens when a single male C. sphinx severs up to 300 small- to medium-sized stems creating a partially flattened, bell-shaped cavity, and in P. fongifolia when a male severs a few medium- to small-sized branches and many leaf petioles, creating an entry/exit portal and space in which to roost. A tent constructed in V. scandens is completed in approximately 30 d, whereas one in P. longifoliu is completed in about 50 d. Stem-tent construction takes place mostly at night, but some stem chewing occurs in late afternoon. At night a stem tent is occupied by a single male, whereas females are usually absent. During the day the number of bats occupying completed tents is highly variable, ranging from two to 19 females (and their pups) and a single adult male. Tent construction is annually bimodal, which corresponds to a biannual breeding season. A dominant male sometimes deposits saliva on branches inside his tent cavity and actively defends this space from intrusions by other males. Both behaviours suggest forms of scent marking and territorial display. O u r observations indicate that dominant males construct tents, recruit females and then defend the tents (and their female occupants) for the purpose of gaining reproductive access. The variance in harem group size indicates that some tent-making males are more successful than others in recruiting females.

Marital rape is any undesirable sexual acts through a partner or ex-husband, dedicated without consent and/or opposite of someone's will, acquired by means of pressure, or hazard of force, intimidation or when a person is unable to consent. These sexual demonstrations incorporate intercourse, butt-centric or oral sex, constrained sexual conduct with others, and other sexual exercises that are considered by the casualty as corrupting, embarrassing, difficult and undesirable. Women who is raped through their husband is eventually raped regularly. They experience now not only effective vaginal rape, however also oral and anal rape. Husband often rape other halves whilst wife can be asleep, or use coercion, verbal threats, bodily violence, or guns to pressure very own other halves into having non-consensual sex with them. Marital rape is a grave offence that thousands and thousands of ladies worldwide need to go through and face such abuse on everyday basis. It is hard to acquire accurate facts and rape and violence adverse ladies inside the own family, in element due to the fact girls are undesired to document incidents, as ladies raped by their spouses might also hesitate to record due to circle of relatives loyalty, fear in their abuser&rsquo;s revenge, incapacity to leave the connection, securing the fortune of their children, or the truth that there aren't any strict laws in force protective the sufferers of marital rape. Marital rape is specifically complex due to the fact the complicated, private form of marital relation makes it difficult for the sufferer to even see herself as a sufferer. Let alone reporting the offending act to the Government, that's why Marital Rape is one of the relatively underneath-stated violent crimes. Even the ladies who do keep in mind themselves sufferers are disinclined to approach the government because they may be financially depend upon their husbands, and reporting the matter should thoroughly bring about withdrawal of monetary aid leaving them and their children without meals and shelter.&nbsp;

Dogmatic discourse and institutionalized control build a totalitarian state on two main pillars: propaganda and indoctrination. Our study analyzes the phenomena of cultural mimesis and ideological transplantation inside the Romanian communist system. The periphery and centre represent concepts that help us in the process of constructing our cultural theory about the propaganda system and its evolution during the years before the abolition of the monarchy, 1946-1947. The study is based mainly on archive documents. Therefore, we followed up the chronological paths in which the propaganda was used as an external weapon, and also as an internal indoctrination.

Alongside the development of methods of intensifying convective heat transfer inside the blade, development of methods of local improvement of the efficiency of film cooling of the blade’s surface is still of immediate interest. The film is formed on the blade surface in conditions of high-camber shape and low initial velocity of the gas flow in the vicinity of the leading edge with its subsequent abrupt acceleration. The paper presents some data on the peculiarities of film formation on the back and pressure side of the blade in the vicinity of the leading edge. Experimental temperature distribution over the adiabatic wall was obtained with the use of a FLIR-E 64501 thermal imager. It was found that the conditions for the film formation on the blade back are more favorable than those on the pressure side. It manifests itself in the fact that optimal blowing parameters on the blade back are considerably lower than those on the pressure side. The use of V-shaped dimples located on the wall immediately behind the holes for blowing was suggested as a measure for local improvement of film cooling efficiency. The efficiencies of film cooling in the formation of a curtain, without the use and with the use of V-shaped dimples behind the holes for blowing were compared. Local improvement of efficiency and uniformity of film cooling distribution with the use of V-shaped dimples behind the holes for blowing was observed.

Eavesdropping scenes, where one of the characters eavesdrops or spies on one or several of the other characters (usually with the knowledge of at least one of them) will serve as my point of departure for exploring the relations between tragedy, comedy and philosophy. The eavesdropper is a spectator inside the fictional world who because of what he (and most frequently it is a male) learns by eavesdropping or just by carrying out this act of transgression is transformed into a victim. I exemplify with Polonius (in Hamlet, III, 4) and Orgon (in Tartuffe, IV, 5), who are physically situated in a focal (liminal) point where the eavesdroppers become vulnerable and can quickly be transformed from tragic to comic figures and vice versa, transgressing the generic borderlines between tragedy, melodrama, comedy and farce. There are also many instances where philosophical discourses originate from an eavesdropping situation, the most obvious being the form of teaching practiced by Pythagoras, lecturing to his students from behind a curtain. My article also examines examples of eavesdropping in the writings of Plato and Walter Benjamin.

The article deals with the history of the so-called Book Program—a joint effort of the US government, the East European diaspora, and readers of books prohibited behind the Iron Curtain. This was one of the most brilliant smuggling operations in the history of Eastern Europe. In 1956– 1989, the operational budget was used for the purchase and delivery to the population of Soviet-dominated Europe of about ten million publications in an effort to undermine communist rule there. This study adds new things to what is already known about the cultural Cold War. Concentrating mostly on Polish cases, the author examines relations between state and non-state actors inside the network of the book program. Using historical materials, he captures the complexity of the grassroots activists–US government interactions, which were finally successful, but this communication also proved difficult for both parties. Contributing to the discussion of hegemony and autonomy in state–private networks, the author points out cooperation and negotiation, not the co-optation of diaspora communities by the US government.

During a truce between the Christian armies taking part in the third Crusade, and the infidel forces under Sultan Salahuddin, Sir Kenneth, on his way to Syria, encountered a Saracen Emir, whom he unhorsed, and they then rode together, discoursing on love and necromancy, towards the cave of the hermit Theodoric of Engaddi. This hermit was in correspondence with the pope, and the knight was charged to communicate secret information. Having provided the travelers with refreshment, the anchorite, as soon as the Saracen slept, conducted his companion to a chapel, where he witnessed a procession, and was recognized by the Lady Edith, to whom he had devoted his heart and sword. He was then startled by the sudden appearance of the dwarfs, and, having reached his couch again, watched the hermit scourging himself until he fell asleep. About the same time Richard Coeur de Lion had succumbed to an attack of fever, and as he lay in his gorgeous tent at Ascalon, Sir Kenneth arrived accompanied by a Moorish physician, who had cured his squire, and who offered to restore the king to health. Philip of France at length persuaded him to refer the matter to the council, and Sir Kenneth was charged to watch the English standard until daybreak, with a favorite hound as his only companion. Soon after midnight, however, the dwarf Necbatanus approached him with Lady Edith's ring, as a token that his attendance was required to decide a wager she had with the queen; and during his absence from his post the banner was carried off, and his dog severely wounded. Overcome with shame and grief, he was accosted by the physician, who dressed the animal's wound, and, having entrusted Sir Kenneth with Salahuddin's desire to marry the Lady Edith, proposed that he should seek the Saracen ruler's protection against the wrath of Richard. The valiant Scot, however, resolved to confront the king and reveal the Sultan's purpose; but it availed him not, and he was sentenced to death, in spite of the intercessions of the queen and his lady-love; when the hermit, and then the physician, arrived, and Richard having yielded to their entreaties, Sir Kenneth was simply forbidden to appear before him again. A procession of the Christian armies and their leaders had already been arranged in token of amity to Richard; and as they marched past him, seated on horseback, with the slave holding the hound among his attendants, the dog suddenly sprang at the Marquis Conrade, who was thus convicted of having injured the animal, and betrayed his guilt by exclaiming, "I never touched the banner." Not being permitted to fight the Teuton himself, the king undertook to provide a champion, and Salahuddin to make all needful preparations for the battle. Accompanied by Queen Berengaria and Lady Edith, Richard was met by the Saracen with a brilliant retinue, and discovered, in the person of his entertainer, the physician who had cured his fever, and saved Sir Kenneth, whom he found prepared to do battle for him on the morrow, with the hermit as his confessor. The encounter took place soon after sunrise, in the presence of the assembled hosts, and Conrade, who was wounded and unhorsed, was tended by the Sultan in the grand-master's tent, while the victorious knight was unarmed by the royal ladies, and made known by Richard as the Prince Royal of Scotland. At noon the Sultan welcomed his guests to a banquet, but, as the grand-master was raising a goblet to his lips, Necbatanus uttered the words accipe hoc, and Salahuddin decapitated the templar with his saber; on which the dwarf explained that, hidden behind a curtain, he had seen him stab his accomplice the Marquis of Montserrat, obviously to prevent him from revealing their infamous plots, while he answered his appeal for mercy in the words he had repeated. The next day the young prince was married to Lady Edith, and presented by the Sultan with his talisman, the Crusade was abandoned, and Richard, on his way homewards, was imprisoned by the Austrians in the Tyrol.

The 13th volume of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies reflects some of the research presented at the 12th International conference on Baltic and Nordic studies titled "Rethinking multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and The Baltic Sea Region," which will be held on May 27-28, 2021, under the auspices of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. RethinkMulti-Kulti2021 was called to reflect on multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region 10 years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted the end of German multicultural society. Many politicians with Conservative leanings praised the confirmation that the half-century-cherished multi-kulti "utterly failed," and far-right gurus interpreted it as an omen. Furthermore, Merkel's track record as a committed democratic-minded politician, EU leader, and proponent of migrant integration has garnered near-universal support for this argument. Furthermore, in academia, Merkel's assertion has never been adequately questioned, but rather taken for granted. Meanwhile, policies governing multiculturalism and multilingualism in the EU and EEA have been stuck in a rut, particularly in what Fareed Zakaria properly refers to as illiberal democracies. The purpose of the conference was not to resurrect the political objective behind multi-kulti, but rather to critically reassess the role of multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy from the viewpoint of Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region. We see Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region as interrelated and partially overlapping by a plethora of historical, cultural, and social channels, hence papers dealing with multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy as reflected in these regions and wider Europe were planned. Papers on connections, liaisons, affiliations, divergences, animosity, legal or de facto statuses of cultures and languages in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region were also presented during the conference. How multilingualism, multiculturalism, and cultural diplomacy prospered or muddled through transitions from liberal nations to far-right or far-left governments and back were also addressed. The volume's first issue focuses on lingualism, bilingualism, and multilingualism as a path to diversity and how individuals reflected on it. Kari Alenius looks at the telling case of the Sámi minority in northern Finland and the disputes over whether or not to grant it wide autonomy, which was ultimately determined in favor of opponents of the proposal. Johanna Domokos examines the case studies of two contemporary multilingual writers, Sabira Sthlberg from Finland and Tzveta Sofronieva from Bulgaria, to demonstrate how they aspire to address cross-culturally to readers of all languages, backgrounds, and locations, concluding that "the reader is empowered to take part in not only piecing together but creating a better 'new' world." Sabira Sthlberg is the author and coauthor of two articles that address multiculturalism in a very solid and original manner. The first follows the partly mythical and partly tourist-tracking journey of international traveller and well-known Swedish-language author Göran Schildt, who sailed on his yacht Daphne in the Black Sea and the Danube Delta in the summer of 1963 as one of the first cracks in the curtain separating the two opposing ideological blocs. The latter, co-signed with Dorijan Hajdu, focuses on the relationships between family members, as expressed particularly in Swedish and Serbian language, allowing for a highly comprehensive knowledge of diversity from inside. Finally, Adél Furu's most recent article in our journal examines educational trends in the context of Russian and Estonian second language training in Finland, observing the shift from language loss to language maintenance. We hope that all of these pieces will spark new thought on the subject and help our readers better comprehend multiculturalism and multilinguism as they were perceived and implemented in Europe, particularly in our and the previous century.

This paper addresses the role of foreign correspondents during the Cold War. More specifically, it focuses on the case study of the relationship between former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and foreign correspondents in Germanyand abroad. A synthesis of historical research and qualitative analysis of documentsand interviews provides a behind-the-scenes look at media diplomacy during the 70s andearly 80s. From the perspective of system theory and the concept of mediatization, mediaand politics are understood as separate but equal social systems that interact with eachother. This case study is based on documents from the private archives of Helmut Schmidtand from the annals of his party, the German Social Democrats, as well as interviews conducted with Schmidt and former journalist and correspondent Gerd Ruge. Analysis of theinterviews and the private and secret correspondence of Schmidt with journalists affordsan inside view into the role foreign correspondents played during the Cold War when communicationacross the Iron Curtain was especially challenging. Our conclusions show howimportant foreign correspondents are in international relations, while also demonstrating that aspects of international diplomacy, though involving journalists, were not necessarily included in media coverage. This study helps to clarify the complex interactions between media and politics. On the basis of our explorative research, a model is proffered of possible relations and interactions between politicians and foreign correspondents. As sources of information and means of communication, foreign correspondents exert a strong influence on the fates of nations and governments, before and behind the scenes. Esta proposta aborda o papel dos correspondentes estrangeiros durante a Guerra Fria. Mais especificamente, centra-se no estudo de caso da relação entre o ex-chanceler alemão Helmut Schmidt e os correspondentes estrangeiros na Alemanha e no exterior. A síntese da pesquisa histórica e da análise qualitativa de documentos e entrevistas permite um olhar nos bastidores da diplomacia da mídia durante a década de 1970 e início de 1980. Do ponto de vista da teoria dos sistemas e do conceito de midiatização, mídia e política são entendidos como espaços separados, mas se constituem em sistemas sociais equivalentes e que interagem um com o outro. Este estudo de caso é baseado em documentos dos arquivos privados de Helmut Schmidt e dos anais do seu partido, o Social-Democrata alemão, bem como entrevistas realizadas com Schmidt e com o ex-jornalista e correspondente Gerd Ruge. A análise das entrevistas e da correspondência privada e secreta de Schmidt com os jornalistas proporciona uma visão interna sobre o papel desempenhado pelos correspondentes estrangeiros durante a Guerra Fria, quando acomunicação através da Cortina de Ferro foi especialmente desafiadora. Nossas conclusões mostram a importância dos os correspondentes estrangeiros nas relações internacionais, ao mesmo tempo, demonstrando que os aspectos da diplomacia internacional, mesmo quando envolviam jornalistas, não foram necessariamente incluídos na cobertura da mídia. Este estudo ajuda a esclarecer as complexas interações entre mídia e política. Com base na nossa pesquisa exploratória, apresentamos m modelo sobre as relações e interações possíveis entre os políticos e os correspondentes estrangeiros. Como fontes de informação e meios de comunicação, os correspondentes estrangeiros exercem uma forte influência nos destinos de nações e governos, atuando tanto na cena principal como nos bastidores.Cet submission aborde le rôle des correspondants à l’étranger pendant la guerre froide et s’attache plus précisément, dans le cadre d’une étude de cas, à examiner les rapports entre l’ancien chancelier allemand Helmut Schmidt et les correspondants en Allemagne et à l’étranger. La recherche historique, alliée à l’analyse qualitative de documents et d’entrevues, permet de jeter un regard dans les coulisses de la diplomatie médiatique des années 1970 et du début des années 1980. Du point de vue de la théorie systémique et du concept de médiatisation, les médias et la politique sont considérés comme des systèmes sociaux distincts mais d’importance équivalente qui interagissent l’un avec l’autre. Cette étude de cas s’appuie sur des documents extraits des archives privées de Helmut Schmidt et des archives de son parti, les sociaux-démocrates allemands, ainsi que sur des entrevues menées avec Schmidt et l’ancien journaliste et correspondant à l’étranger Gerd Ruge. L’analyse des entretiens et de la correspondance privée et confidentielle de Schmidt avec des journalistes offre un aperçu, depuis l’intérieur, du rôle qu’occupaient les correspondants à l’étranger pendant la guerre froide, lorsque le rideau de fer rendait la communication particulièrement délicate. Nos conclusions font d’une part la lumière sur l’importance des correspondants à l’étranger dans le cadre des relations internationales et montrent d’autre part que certains aspects de la diplomatie internationale, bien qu’impliquant des journalistes, n’étaient pas nécessairement intégrés dans la couverture médiatique. Cet submission offre ainsi des outils permettant de mieux comprendre les rapports complexes entre médias et politique. Nos recherches exploratoires servent de base au développement d’un modèle de relations et d’interactions possibles entre représentants politiques et correspondants à l’étranger. En leur qualité de sources d’informations et moyens de communication, les correspondants à l’étranger exerçaient une forte influence sur le sort des nations et des gouvernements, aussi bien sur le devant de la scène qu’en coulisses.

The Hollywood film industry prominently consists of white actors, and critically acclaimed films are centered around white storylines. When Hollywood makes an adaptation based on people of color, specifically Asian Americans, they will whitewash the film to make it appear more socially acceptable. Scholars in Asian American studies, film studies, and other academic fields have analyzed Hollywood’s lack of diversity with actors, producers, directors, and even storylines. My study aims to analyze the connection between Asian American actors, directors, and producers from smaller to larger projects. Additionally, what did they do once they gained recognition and changed how Hollywood operates. Research has shown that this network among American actors, directors, and producers helps them stand against Hollywood’s barriers and change the industry from the inside.

Abstract Fog makes a significant contribution to the hydrology of a wide range of important terrestrial ecosystems. The amount and frequency of fog immersion are affected by rapid ongoing anthropogenic changes but the impacts of these changes remain relatively poorly understood compared with changes in rainfall. Here, we present the design and performance of a novel experiment to actively manipulate low lying fog abundance in an old‐growth tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF) in Peru—the Wayqecha Amazon Cloud Curtain Ecosystem Experiment (WACCEE). The treatment consists of a 30 m high, 40 m wide mesh curtain suspended between two towers and extending down to the ground, and two supplementary curtains orientated diagonally inwards from the top of each tower and secured to the ground upslope. The curtains divert and intercept airborne water droplets in fog moving upslope, thereby depriving a ~420 m2 patch of forest immediately behind the curtains of this water source. We monitored inside the treatment and a nearby unmodified control plot various metrics of water availability (air humidity, vapour pressure deficit, leaf wetness and soil moisture) and other potentially confounding variables (radiation, air and soil temperature) above and below the forest canopy. The treatment caused a strong reduction in both air humidity and leaf wetness, and an increase in vapour pressure deficit, above the canopy compared to the control plot. This effect was most pronounced during the nighttime (20:00–05:00). Below‐canopy shifts within the treatment were more subtle: relative humidity at 2 m height above the ground was significantly suppressed during the daytime, while soil moisture was apparently elevated. The treatment caused a small but significant increase in air temperature above the canopy but a decrease in temperature in and near the soil, while mixed effects were observed at 2 m height above the ground. Above‐canopy radiation was slightly elevated on the treatment relative to the control, particularly during the dry season. Further application of the method in other systems where fog plays a major role in ecosystem processes could improve our understanding of the ecological impacts of this important but understudied climate driver.

Introduction In this article I suggest a reading of the magic trick from a politico-ideological perspective, using Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ideology, and in particular, the aspect of cynicism as a part of the functioning of a certain ideology by keeping a distance towards it at the same time. The structure of the magic trick – from the classic sleight of hand up to levitation in front of a live television (TV) audience – can be useful in understanding how politics and ideology function today, and perhaps more importantly, how the critique of ideology can paradoxically help rehabilitate the notion of ‘illusion’. The crucial question to be posed here, based on this theory, is one of the status of the illusion and the search for truth ‘behind the curtain’, in the ideological sense and the age of social media. The magic trick has two sides to it: what the audiences are supposed to see from one certain point of view, and the mechanics of the trick behind it, which are known only to the magician. The job of the magician is then to perform the trick in such a way that audiences, even if they know it is only a trick, still remain in awe of the mastery, and perhaps for a moment start to believe in ‘pure’ magic. Magicians or illusionists have traditionally guarded their secrets – not only for the trick to work but also to preserve the belief in something more than the banal reality. The once-famous illusionist and TV star David Copperfield considers this essential for magicians and what they represent: and all of them … share a common trait – they keep their secrets, hoarding them with the fervour of a miser, not because they represent wealth or personal prestige, but because divulging them to the uninitiated breaks the spell, ruins the fun, and tells the child inside us all not to dream. As some cognitive scientists have pointed out (see Pailhès and Kuhn), magicians also tend to influence the spectators/participants on an unconscious level, in card tricks, for example, by evoking (verbally or visually) certain images, shapes or colours in order for the participants to pick the right card. My argument is that even when we know how the trick works and that we are being manipulated, we can still believe in magic. The magic trick falls apart only if the performance itself fails and the spectators witness a fatal mistake that suddenly reveals the hidden wires (as it were): “no magician is allowed to miss a trick and escape that moment when applause turns to derision” (Copperfield). This might also be true for politicians: the mistake caught as it happens might spell doom for the not-so-skilled (ideological) illusionist. At the same time, what if any revelation after the fact still cannot break the illusion? Illusion and the Functioning of Ideology Revelation is the basic premise of Žižek’s definition of ideology today: it works even when we very well know that it is ideology. Based on his reading of Marx and Freud through Lacan, Žižek attempts to show the workings and pitfalls of ideology today and relies partly on Marx’s analysis of “commodity fetishism” in his Capital. Our attitude towards ideology is therefore “fetishistic” and is best displayed in the example of commodities. As soon as some product of labour becomes a commodity, it seems endowed with special powers, with “mystery, magic and necromancy” (Marx 47), it abounds in “metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (Marx 42). There is a certain something ‘more’, which has nothing to do with an object like a chair or table when they are outside of the marketplace. Based on this reading, Žižek paraphrases Marx’s formula of ideology: “they do not know it, but they are doing it”, and proposes a new approach: “they know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know” (Žižek, Sublime 30). Just like, for example, the foot fetishist who at the same time knows that the foot is ‘just’ a foot and something more at the same time – an object of their desire – we deal with money and commodities. Money is either paper or a number on a screen which can be worth something or suddenly lose its value, and become worthless, depending on social circumstances. The truth of commodity fetishism, and analogous to that also ideology, is therefore in the “doing”: we know very well that perhaps an idea of “freedom is masking a particular form of exploitation” (Žižek, Sublime 30), but we still believe in this idea of freedom, in our practical life we ‘stick to it’ – we are therefore ‘fetishists’ or cynics in practice. We also know very well that the late capitalist, ‘neoliberal’ system is in itself problematic, that it has “inherent contradictions” which produce its countless crises, but we still behave as if there is no alternative: “cynical distance is just one way – one of many ways – to blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy, even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them” (Žižek, Sublime 30, emphasis in original). The ideological trick, the deceiving character of the image is something that is connected to our perception of reality and is pertinent to understanding ideology. But it is simply not enough to disconnect the illusion from reality as a separate entity. The everyday notion of ‘illusion’ stands in the way of grasping the way ideology works and the way the critique of ideology could be truly effective. In Žižek’s view thus, ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension, it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our ‛reality’ itself: an ‛illusion’ which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel. (Sublime 45) This approach to ideology goes beyond ‘meta-narratives’, it stresses the subject's position within the network of social relations – to change one’s point of view might therefore lead to the disintegrating of an ideological edifice. Yet at the same time, this shift is not the move from the ideological illusion to reality itself; it is important to note here that ideologies, from organised religions to Nazism and antisemitism, from totalitarian socialist regimes to neoliberalism, all build substantially on certain facts, however distorted. To then simply confront an ideology with such facts is not ‘automatically’ a way out of its grasp. The Truth behind the Veil To sum up, there is magic and transcendence in our secular and ‘enlightened’ world even though we pretend to be pragmatics, all the while actually being fetishists in our actions who believe in otherworldly properties of money and commodities. It is therefore useless to simply look at the reality ‘as it is’, to turn to statistics, for instance, and to expect that the “veil of ideology” will then be lifted. Whether it is far-right extremism or the belief in neoliberal individualism, ideologies are rooted in reality and cannot be confronted or debunked by merely stating facts, however true and convincing they might be. The veil itself is the ruse. Žižek often quotes the classic Greek tale of Zeuxis and Parrhasios (as told by Jacques Lacan), two painters who competed in painting the more realistic painting. Zeuxis painted grapes that attracted birds who wanted to pick at them. Parrhasios simply painted a (very realistic) veil on a wall. Zeuxis, upon seeing the veil, asked Parrhasios to lift the veil and show him what he painted. Lacan draws from this the conclusion that: “the … example of Parrhasios makes it clear that if one wishes to deceive a man, what one presents to him is the painting of a veil, that is to say, something that incites him to ask what is behind it” (Lacan 112, emphasis added). The veil, therefore, captures our imagination and desire, the idea that there must be something behind it, the desire to know what goes on behind the scenes, and exactly here, we as spectators/political subjects fall into the ideological trap. Whether in wildest conspiracy theories or in fact-based investigative journalism, the same underlying mechanism is at play. The point therefore is not only that we are deceived by the surface, but we are also deceived by our own desire for the knowledge of what might be behind it. As previously mentioned, politicians as magicians have power as long as their ‘trick’ works in real-time. Afterwards, the revelations of crimes or corruption end up being futile and the ideological spell remains intact. This can be witnessed in many cases ranging from Nazism and Adolf Hitler to the “reactionary neoliberalism” (Fraser) of Donald Trump, as well as with other similarly nefarious figures and pernicious ideologies that persist even long after the facts about their crimes have been revealed. It is, therefore, being repeatedly contended across the media that we live in a so-called “post-truth” era (Harari), and it appears that in liberal democratic societies, the exposing of truth in the media has become, in a way, neutralised: no matter how often the ‘dirty tricks’ of corrupt politicians are publicised, they, as illusionists of our time par excellence, somehow manage to perform their tricks time and again and get away with it. Does then the shift that has been taking place for some time within the media, from television and film to social media and streaming, with its tendency for ‘revealing truths’, from reality shows to Hollywood making-of promotional videos, enable us, simply put, to see more or less? Magic in the Social Media Age YouTube and other social media platforms abound with the ‘making-of videos’ of Hollywood films as well as endless content that supposedly debunks diverse mysteries and illusions. Instead of keeping their craft (whatever it may be) a secret to protect the trade, it has become a part of the social media business to show ‘how things are done’, to intrigue us with a look behind the scenes. Fig. 1: Sean performing magic tricks and making tutorials on YouTube in 2023 (@SeanDoesMagic) Magicians have of course also discovered the potential of social media. One example is the young magician Sean (@SeanDoesMagic, fig. 1), with six million subscribers and yearly earnings estimated at up to US$150,000 (as of September 2023, see Socialblade). He combines performing magic tricks and showing how they work, creating tutorials, and short explanations of some basic magic tricks. This ostensible paradox of doing magic and explaining the trick is at the core of how social media work: they conceal and reveal at the same time. Again, we witness here that the trick can still work even when we know how it is done. The conceptual approach of many YouTubers, in general, can be read along the lines of Žižek’s definition of ideology and cynical distance – bloopers and mistakes often stay in, there is a meta-approach of commenting on oneself, not taking oneself seriously, thereby creating a counter-concept to the mainstream media’s professionalism. The social media magicians themselves are not immersed in their own world anymore, jealously guarding their secrets. This approach keeps them relevant in today’s social media culture. From David Copperfield’s ‘classic’ style of magic to the ‘postmodern’ social media magicians, a parallel could be drawn between the trajectory of the development of capitalist societies in the last forty years and the evolution of the magician as an entrepreneur, as well as the adaption of the capitalist system to cultural and economic changes. In a way, the ‘social media magic’ becomes the ‘magic of social media’: something inconceivable in the past – magicians revealing their magic tricks – is now part of the job of the social media magician as a content creator. The social media magician can profit from explaining the trick, making it the show of their ultimate power as magician (the social media presence of magicians is also seen by some as the “democratisation of the magic industry”; see Ryssdal and Hollenhorst). To show the workings, the mechanics of a magic trick is not ‘disillusionment’ – the trick still works even if we know how it is made. Does this mean that the illusion is stronger than reality, or does it simply imply that we can never truly disentangle the illusion from reality? This approach can also be taken in regard to politics proper: despite our knowledge of the systemic corruption and inherent flaws of capitalism, we still believe in the system by simply ‘doing it’, by not truly accepting the possibility of a true alternative. We know how money and finance work; we know very well that the capitalist system produces its financial crises and inequalities in society. Still, we act as if there cannot be any alternative to the current state of things. What seemingly prevents us from ‘ideological illusions’ (such as ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’ in their many iterations) simply produces another ideological illusion: the belief in the sole prospect that the world will end up being saved by the ‘magic’ of the finance market or ‘wizardry’ and humanism of Big Tech billionaires. The Real Magic of Politics What connects social media and the functioning of ideology in Žižek’s sense is therefore the desire to know what hides behind the curtain, which may have made the classic magician as a celebrity obsolete – we are seemingly no longer interested in ‘parlour tricks’, but in ‘the truth’, the ‘real thing’. Fig. 2: David Copperfield flying on live television in 1992 (CBS) We can thus oppose the decline of Copperfield’s magic TV shows (fig. 2) to the rise of the reality shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The spectacle of magic gave way to the spectacle of the “hyperreal” (Baudrillard) – from MTV’s Real World (1992) to Big Brother (1999) and many others. Someone like Copperfield, a household name during the 1980s and 1990s, could appear almost ridiculous and outdated in today’s social media-dominated world. The result is that instead of a few ‘greats’ like Kellar, Houdini, or Copperfield, there are a myriad of small content creators that can profit from the emerging new post-neoliberal order that Varoufakis calls the “techno-feudalism” of the new digital capitalism of Internet platforms, or, in Zuboff’s analysis, “surveillance capitalism” with its primary goal of collecting and selling user data for profit. Meanwhile, the magic tricks of financialised capitalism dominate – creating money out of thin air being the most popular one. Still, it is not sufficient to simply ‘debunk’ or expose this, however thoroughly or engagingly. We have witnessed attempts of this in popular culture: it is not enough to show us the dealings and debauchery behind the scenes, as in films like The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) or The Big Short (2015). When we watch the Wall Street brokers ‘work their magic’ it remains fascinating, the tricks still work and the illusion that perhaps ‘I also can still somehow make it’ persists. Paradoxically, in the age of ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ perhaps only illusions can save the day, but those of the ‘right kind’: the illusions of Greta Thunberg that planet Earth can actually be saved from the climate catastrophe, and the illusions of voters still believing in democracy and in a possibility of a transnational, class/gender/race-defying solidarity. In a way, for a society to work, a form of illusion is needed, and we should not fall into the trap of revealing the workings behind the scenes as being the solution, but accept the power of the illusion as such. The rift between the surface of the illusion and the truth is necessary, but it is the fetishising of ‘what lies beneath’ that is the ‘wrong’ illusion: what Žižek calls the ‘illusion of the real’. Instead, what is needed is the “real of the illusion” (Žižek, Lacan 59) – the truth that emerges from the trick itself, from the realisation that our reality is already structured by fantasy, that if we lose fantasy, we lose reality itself. In Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006), two rival magicians are ready to sacrifice everything in order to discover each other’s secrets, to outplay one another, and create the ultimate illusion on stage. One of them even deploys science, ‘real magic’, to achieve the impossible. In the end, it is the same magician who summarises what magic is about and what it means to him: the audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special. You really don’t know? It was... it was the look on their faces. (Prestige) It is clear that the audience knows what is going on, that they want to be fooled, and that the magician wants to capture their gaze. The ideological fantasy also thrives on this desire, and simply directing that gaze to look ‘behind the scenes’ does not break the illusion but opens up an abyss: coping with the “miserable world” by finding scapegoats (Jews, refugees, women, trans persons) to make the inconsistent and troubled system whole, which can only lead to a catastrophe. Conclusion The belief that the late capitalist system will go on forever and that the manifold crises will somehow get resolved by themselves is a dangerous dream after the disastrous financial crisis of 2008, the COVID crisis, and the ongoing Ukraine war, as well as the looming environmental catastrophe. Here it would be necessary to remain on the side of ‘true’ magic: not the ideological belief that the (already shaken) status quo will go on forever, but the conviction that things need to change: and at the moment, this is proclaimed unrealistic, and fantasy comes into play – the ‘real of the illusion’ which might provide an opening for a true and significant change. Fig. 3: Harry Houdini performing the Handcuff Escape in 1907 (David Folender) Perhaps Harry Houdini’s (fig. 3) legendary contempt for the “spiritualists” of his time (Tompkins 93), and his fight to expose them, can help us understand politics and ideology today through magic: we are in dire need of true magicians against those who simply try to deceive us by painting the veil that hides nothing. References Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan UP, 1999. Big Brother. John de Mol. 1999-present. Big Short, The. Dir. Adam McKay. Paramount Pictures, 2013. Copperfield, David. “A Delicate Sleight of Hand: Magic and the History of Illusion.” Omni 17.2 (1994): 6. Fraser, Nancy. “From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump—and Beyond.” American Affairs 1.4 (2017): 46–64. Harari, Yuval Noah. “Yuval Noah Harari Extract: ‘Humans Are a Post-Truth Species’.” The Guardian 5 Aug. 2018. 30 June 2023 &lt;https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/05/yuval-noah-harari-extract-fake-news-sapiens-homo-deus&gt;. Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XI. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998. Marx, Karl. Capital. Abridged ed. Oxford UP, 2008. Pailhès, Alice, and Gustav Kuhn. “Influencing Choices with Conversational Primes: How a Magic Trick Unconsciously Influences Card Choices.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 117.30 (2020): 17675–9. Prestige, The. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Brothers, 2006. Real World, The. MTV, 1992-2019. Ryssdal, Kai, and Maria Hollenhorst. “How the Internet Democratized the Magic Industry.” Marketplace Mar. 2019. 10 Sep. 2023 &lt;https://www.marketplace.org/2019/03/01/how-internet-democratized-magic-industry/&gt;. SeanDoesMagic. 7 Aug. 2023 &lt;https://www.youtube.com/@SeanDoesMagic&gt;. Socialblade. SeanDoesMagic Statistics. 7 Aug. 2023 &lt;https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/seandoesmagic&gt;. Tompkins, Matthew L. Die Kunst der Illusion: Magier, Spiritisten und wie wir uns täuschen lassen. Köln: Dumont, 2019. Varoufakis, Yanis. “Techno-Feudalism Is Taking Over.” Project Syndicate (2021). 5 Aug. 2023 &lt;https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/techno-feudalism-replacing-market-capitalism-by-yanis-varoufakis-2021-06&gt;. Wolf of Wall Street, The. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Paramount Pictures, 2013. Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 2009. ———. How To Read Lacan. London: Granta, 2006. Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future and the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile, 2019.

Abstract Background The World Health Organization recommends house screening as a tool for malaria control, yet evidence of the long-term durability, functionality and acceptability of this intervention is lacking. In this study, the sustainability and use of novel types of screened doors and windows was examined 4 years after installation in a Gambian village. Methods A survey of 31 houses, each with two screened doors and two screened windows, was conducted in the rainy season. There were four types of screened door and two types of screened window. Trained staff carried out the survey and interviews of room owners were conducted in the local language before translation into English. Results Structurally, the manufactured doors and windows were highly durable and in excellent condition. Most doors shut smoothly 50/61 (82%), although only 25/61 (41%) shut fully automatically with the latch slotting into the hole on the frame and holding fast. Door locks were less robust, with only (24/61) 39% present and working. Blinds proved especially flimsy, with only 4/109 (4%) of door blinds and 10/56 (18%) of window blinds present and in working order. Householders hung curtains inside most doors 50/61 (82%) and in 26/61 (43%) of the windows. Front doors were commonly found propped open 21/31 (68%) and 23/27 (85%) of those with a front door curtain, put their curtains down at night. Doors and windows were well liked, 19/31 (61%) of respondents were happy with them because they kept mosquitoes out 14/31 (45%) and provided security 12/31 (39%). The main reason given for the use of curtains was to provide privacy 26/28 (93% of those with curtains), especially while the door was open or had ‘see-through’ panels. Conclusions Overall, the screened doors and windows were in full-working order and undamaged after 4 years of use. The doors and windows were well liked, especially for their ability to reduce the entry of mosquitoes and for the security they afforded. Improvements to the lock design are needed before scale-up. Most householders hung curtains behind their doors for privacy. Installation of screening in buildings should be accompanied with recommendations that at night, when doors and windows are closed, curtains be lifted or drawn to one side—to improve ventilation and keep the house cool.

[Editors’ note: this lyric essay was presented as the keynote address at Edith Cowan University’s CREATEC symposium on the theme Catastrophe and Creativity in November 2012, and represents excerpts from the author’s publication Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Reproduced with the author’s permission].Essay and verse and anecdote are the ways I have chosen to apprentice myself to loss, grief, faith, memory, and the stories we use to tie and untie them. Cat’s cradle, Celtic lines, bends and hitches are familiar: however, when I write about loss, I find there are knots I cannot tie or release, challenging both my imagination and my craft. Over the last decade, I have been learning that writing poetry is also the art of tying together light and dark, grief and joy, of grasping and releasing. Language is a hinge that connects us with the flesh of our experience; it is also residue, the ash of memory and imagination. (Threading Light 7) ———Greek katastrophé overturning, sudden turn, from kata down + strophe ‘turning” from strephein to turn.Loss and catastrophe catapult us into the liminal, into a threshold space. We walk between land we have known and the open sea. ———Mnemosyne, the mother of the nine Muses, the personification of memory, makes anthropologists of us all. When Hermes picked up the lyre, it was to her—to Remembrance —that he sang the first song. Without remembrance, oral or written, we have no place to begin. Stone, amulet, photograph, charm bracelet, cufflink, fish story, house, facial expression, tape recorder, verse, or the same old traveling salesman joke—we have places and means to try to store memories. Memories ground us, even as we know they are fleeting and flawed constructions that slip through our consciousness; ghosts of ghosts. One cold winter, I stayed in a guest room in my mother’s apartment complex for three days. Because she had lost her sight, I sat at the table in her overheated and stuffy kitchen with the frozen slider window and tried to describe photographs as she tried to recall names and events. I emptied out the dusty closet she’d ignored since my father left, and we talked about knitting patterns, the cost of her mother’s milk glass bowl, the old clothes she could only know by rubbing the fabric through her fingers. I climbed on a chair to reach a serving dish she wanted me to have, and we laughed hysterically when I read aloud the handwritten note inside: save for Annette, in a script not hers. It’s okay, she said; I want all this gone. To all you kids. Take everything you can. When I pop off, I don’t want any belongings. Our family had moved frequently, and my belongings always fit in a single box; as a student, in the back of a car or inside a backpack. Now, in her ninth decade, my mother wanted to return to the simplicity she, too, recalled from her days on a small farm outside a small town. On her deathbed, she insisted on having her head shaved, and frequently the nursing staff came into the room to find she had stripped off her johnny shirt and her covers. The philosopher Simone Weil said that all we possess in the world is the power to say “I” (Gravity 119).Memory is a cracked bowl, and it fills endlessly as it empties. Memory is what we create out of what we have at hand—other people’s accounts, objects, flawed stories of our own creation, second-hand tales handed down like an old watch. Annie Dillard says as a life’s work, she’d remember everything–everything against loss, and go through life like a plankton net. I prefer the image of the bowl—its capacity to feed us, the humility it suggests, its enduring shape, its rich symbolism. Its hope. To write is to fashion a bowl, perhaps, but we know, finally, the bowl cannot hold everything. (Threading Light 78–80) ———Man is the sire of sorrow, sang Joni Mitchell. Like joy, sorrow begins at birth: we are born into both. The desert fathers believed—in fact, many of certain faiths continue to believe—that penthos is mourning for lost salvation. Penthus was the last god to be given his assignment from Zeus: he was to be responsible for grieving and loss. Eros, the son of Aphrodite, was the god of love and desire. The two can be seen in concert with one another, each mirroring the other’s extreme, each demanding of us the farthest reach of our being. Nietzsche, through Zarathustra, phrased it another way: “Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you have also said Yes to all Woe as well. All things are chained, entwined together, all things are in love.” (Threading Light 92) ———We are that brief crack of light, that cradle rocking. We can aspire to a heaven, or a state of forgiveness; we can ask for redemption and hope for freedom from suffering for ourselves and our loved ones; we may create children or works of art in the vague hope that we will leave something behind when we go. But regardless, we know that there is a wall or a dark curtain or a void against which we direct or redirect our lives. We hide from it, we embrace it; we taunt it; we flout it. We write macabre jokes, we play hide and seek, we walk with bated breath, scream in movies, or howl in the wilderness. We despair when we learn of premature or sudden death; we are reminded daily—an avalanche, an aneurysm, a shocking diagnosis, a child’s bicycle in the intersection—that our illusions of control, that youthful sense of invincibility we have clung to, our last-ditch religious conversions, our versions of Pascal’s bargain, nothing stops the carriage from stopping for us.We are fortunate if our awareness calls forth our humanity. We learn, as Aristotle reminded us, about our capacity for fear and pity. Seeing others as vulnerable in their pain or weakness, we see our own frailties. As I read the poetry of Donne or Rumi, or verse created by the translator of Holocaust stories, Lois Olena, or the work of poet Sharon Olds as she recounts the daily horror of her youth, I can become open to pity, or—to use the more contemporary word—compassion. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that works of art are not only a primary means for an individual to express her humanity through catharsis, as Aristotle claimed, but, because of the attunement to others and to the world that creation invites, the process can sow the seeds of social justice. Art grounds our grief in form; it connects us to one another and to the world. And the more we acquaint ourselves with works of art—in music, painting, theatre, literature—the more we open ourselves to complex and nuanced understandings of our human capacities for grief. Why else do we turn to a stirring poem when we are mourning? Why else do we sing? When my parents died, I came home from the library with stacks of poetry and memoirs about loss. How does your story dovetail with mine? I wanted to know. How large is this room—this country—of grief and how might I see it, feel the texture on its walls, the ice of its waters? I was in a foreign land, knew so little of its language, and wanted to be present and raw and vulnerable in its climate and geography. Writing and reading were my way not to squander my hours of pain. While it was difficult to live inside that country, it was more difficult not to. In learning to know graveyards as places of comfort and perspective, Mnemosyne’s territory with her markers of memory guarded by crow, leaf, and human footfall, with storehouses of vast and deep tapestries of stories whispered, sung, or silent, I am cultivating the practice of walking on common ground. Our losses are really our winter-enduring foliage, Rilke writes. They are place and settlement, foundation and soil, and home. (Threading Light 86–88) ———The loseability of our small and larger worlds allows us to see their gifts, their preciousness.Loseability allows us to pay attention. ———“A faith-based life, a Trappistine nun said to me, aims for transformation of the soul through compunction—not only a state of regret and remorse for our inadequacies before God, but also living inside a deeper sorrow, a yearning for a union with the divine. Compunction, according to a Christian encyclopaedia, is constructive only if it leads to repentance, reconciliation, and sanctification. Would you consider this work you are doing, the Trappistine wrote, to be a spiritual journey?Initially, I ducked her question; it was a good one. Like Neruda, I don’t know where the poetry comes from, a winter or a river. But like many poets, I feel the inadequacy of language to translate pain and beauty, the yearning for an embodied understanding of phenomena that is assensitive and soul-jolting as the contacts of eye-to-eye and skin-to-skin. While I do not worship a god, I do long for an impossible union with the world—a way to acknowledge the gift that is my life. Resonance: a search for the divine in the everyday. And more so. Writing is a full-bodied, sensory, immersive activity that asks me to give myself over to phenomena, that calls forth deep joy and deep sorrow sometimes so profound that I am gutted by my inadequacy. I am pierced, dumbstruck. Lyric language is the crayon I use, and poetry is my secular compunction...Poets—indeed, all writers—are often humbled by what we cannot do, pierced as we are by—what? I suggest mystery, impossibility, wonder, reverence, grief, desire, joy, our simple gratitude and despair. I speak of the soul and seven people rise from their chairs and leave the room, writes Mary Oliver (4). Eros and penthos working in concert. We have to sign on for the whole package, and that’s what both empties us out, and fills us up. The practice of poetry is our inadequate means of seeking the gift of tears. We cultivate awe, wonder, the exquisite pain of seeing and knowing deeply the abundant and the fleeting in our lives. Yes, it is a spiritual path. It has to do with the soul, and the sacred—our venerating the world given to us. Whether we are inside a belief system that has or does not have a god makes no difference. Seven others lean forward to listen. (Threading Light 98–100)———The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a rare thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. – Simone Weil (169)I can look at the lines and shades on the page clipped to the easel, deer tracks in the snow, or flecks of light on a summer sidewalk. Or at the moon as it moves from new to full. Or I can read the poetry of Paul Celan.Celan’s poem “Tenebrae” takes its title from high Christian services in which lighting, usually from candles, is gradually extinguished so that by the end of the service, the church is in total darkness. Considering Celan’s—Antschel’s—history as a Romanian Jew whose parents were killed in the Nazi death camps, and his subsequent years tortured by the agony of his grief, we are not surprised to learn he chose German, his mother’s language, to create his poetry: it might have been his act of defiance, his way of using shadow and light against the other. The poet’s deep grief, his profound awareness of loss, looks unflinchingly at the past, at the piles of bodies. The language has become a prism, reflecting penetrating shafts of shadow: in the shine of blood, the darkest of the dark. Enlinked, enlaced, and enamoured. We don’t always have names for the shades of sorrows and joys we live inside, but we know that each defines and depends upon the other. Inside the core shadow of grief we recognise our shared mortality, and only in that recognition—we are not alone—can hope be engendered. In the exquisite pure spot of light we associate with love and joy, we may be temporarily blinded, but if we look beyond, and we draw on what we know, we feel the presence of the shadows that have intensified what appears to us as light. Light and dark—even in what we may think are their purest state—are transitory pauses in the shape of being. Decades ago my well-meaning mother, a nurse, gave me pills to dull the pain of losing my fiancé who had shot himself; now, years later, knowing so many deaths, and more imminent, I would choose the bittersweet tenderness of being fully inside grief—awake, raw, open—feeling its walls, its every rough surface, its every degree of light and dark. It is love/loss, light/dark, a fusion that brings me home to the world. (Threading Light 100–101) ———Loss can trigger and inspire creativity, not only at the individual level but at the public level, whether we are marching in Idle No More demonstrations, re-building a shelter, or re-building a life. We use art to weep, to howl, to reach for something that matters, something that means. And sometimes it may mean that all we learn from it is that nothing lasts. And then, what? What do we do then? ———The wisdom of Epictetus, the Stoic, can offer solace, but I know it will take time to catch up with him. Nothing can be taken from us, he claims, because there is nothing to lose: what we lose—lover, friend, hope, father, dream, keys, faith, mother—has merely been returned to where it (or they) came from. We live in samsara, Zen masters remind us, inside a cycle of suffering that results from a belief in the permanence of self and of others. Our perception of reality is narrow; we must broaden it to include all phenomena, to recognise the interdependence of lives, the planet, and beyond, into galaxies. A lot for a mortal to get her head around. And yet, as so many poets have wondered, is that not where imagination is born—in the struggle and practice of listening, attending, and putting ourselves inside the now that all phenomena share? Can I imagine the rush of air under the loon that passes over my house toward the ocean every morning at dawn? The hot dust under the cracked feet of that child on the outskirts of Darwin? The gut-hauling terror of an Afghan woman whose family’s blood is being spilled? Thich Nhat Hanh says that we are only alive when we live the sufferings and the joys of others. He writes: Having seen the reality of interdependence and entered deeply into its reality, nothing can oppress you any longer. You are liberated. Sit in the lotus position, observe your breath, and ask one who has died for others. (66)Our breath is a delicate thread, and it contains multitudes. I hear an echo, yes. The practice of poetry—my own spiritual and philosophical practice, my own sackcloth and candle—has allowed me a glimpse not only into the lives of others, sentient or not, here, afar, or long dead, but it has deepened and broadened my capacity for breath. Attention to breath grounds me and forces me to attend, pulls me into my body as flesh. When I see my flesh as part of the earth, as part of all flesh, as Morris Berman claims, I come to see myself as part of something larger. (Threading Light 134–135) ———We think of loss as a dark time, and yet it opens us, deepens us.Close attention to loss—our own and others’—cultivates compassion.As artists we’re already predisposed to look and listen closely. We taste things, we touch things, we smell them. We lie on the ground like Mary Oliver looking at that grasshopper. We fill our ears with music that not everyone slows down to hear. We fall in love with ideas, with people, with places, with beauty, with tragedy, and I think we desire some kind of fusion, a deeper connection than everyday allows us. We want to BE that grasshopper, enter that devastation, to honour it. We long, I think, to be present.When we are present, even in catastrophe, we are fully alive. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more fully we engage with our losses—the harder we look, the more we soften into compassion—the more we cultivate resilience. ———Resilience consists of three features—persistence, adaptability transformability—each interacting from local to global scales. – Carl FolkeResilent people and resilient systems find meaning and purpose in loss. We set aside our own egos and we try to learn to listen and to see, to open up. Resilience is fundamentally an act of optimism. This is not the same, however, as being naïve. Optimism is the difference between “why me?” and “why not me?” Optimism is present when we are learning to think larger than ourselves. Resilience asks us to keep moving. Sometimes with loss there is a moment or two—or a month, a year, who knows?—where we, as humans, believe that we are standing still, we’re stuck, we’re in stasis. But we aren’t. Everything is always moving and everything is always in relation. What we mistake for stasis in a system is the system taking stock, transforming, doing things underneath the surface, preparing to rebuild, create, recreate. Leonard Cohen reminded us there’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. But what we often don’t realize is that it’s we—the human race, our own possibilities, our own creativity—who are that light. We are resilient when we have agency, support, community we can draw on. When we have hope. ———FortuneFeet to carry you past acres of grapevines, awnings that opento a hall of paperbarks. A dog to circle you, look behind, point ahead. A hip that bends, allows you to slidebetween wire and wooden bars of the fence. A twinge rides with that hip, and sometimes the remnant of a fall bloomsin your right foot. Hands to grip a stick for climbing, to rest your weight when you turn to look below. On your left hand,a story: others see it as a scar. On the other, a newer tale; a bone-white lump. Below, mist disappears; a nichein the world opens to its long green history. Hills furrow into their dark harbours. Horses, snatches of inhale and whiffle.Mutterings of men, a cow’s long bellow, soft thud of feet along the hill. You turn at the sound.The dog swallows a cry. Stays; shakes until the noise recedes. After a time, she walks on three legs,tests the paw of the fourth in the dust. You may never know how she was wounded. She remembers your bodyby scent, voice, perhaps the taste of contraband food at the door of the house. Story of human and dog, you begin—but the wordyour fingers make is god. What last year was her silken newborn fur is now sunbleached, basket dry. Feet, hips, hands, paws, lapwings,mockingbirds, quickening, longing: how eucalypts reach to give shade, and tiny tight grapes cling to vines that align on a slope as smoothlyas the moon follows you, as intention always leans toward good. To know bones of the earth are as true as a point of light: tendernesswhere you bend and press can whisper grace, sorrow’s last line, into all that might have been,so much that is. (Threading Light 115–116) Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Lekkie Hopkins and Dr. John Ryan for the opportunity to speak (via video) to the 2012 CREATEC Symposium Catastrophe and Creativity, to Dr. Hopkins for her eloquent and memorable paper in response to my work on creativity and research, and to Dr. Ryan for his support. The presentation was recorded and edited by Paul Poirier at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My thanks go to Edith Cowan and Mount Saint Vincent Universities. ReferencesBerman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses. New York: Bantam, 1990.Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.Folke, Carl. "On Resilience." Seed Magazine. 13 Dec. 2010. 22 Mar. 2013 ‹http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_resilience›.Franck, Frederick. Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976.Hausherr, Irenee. Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1982.Neilsen Glenn, Lorri. Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Nietzsche, Frederick. Thus Spake Zarathustra. New York: Penguin, 1978. Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Oliver, Mary. “The Word.” What Do We Know. Boston: DaCapo Press, 2002.Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. (Tenth Elegy). Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Random House/Vintage Editions, 2009.Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots. London: Taylor &amp; Francis, 2005 (1952).Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. London: Routledge, 2004.Further ReadingChodron, Pema. Practicing Peace in Times of War. Boston: Shambhala, 2006.Cleary, Thomas (trans.) The Essential Tao: An Initiation into the Heart of Taoism through Tao de Ching and the Teachings of Chuang Tzu. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1993.Dalai Lama (H H the 14th) and Venerable Chan Master Sheng-yen. Meeting of Minds: A Dialogue on Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1999. Hirshfield, Jane. "Language Wakes Up in the Morning: A Meander toward Writing." Alaska Quarterly Review. 21.1 (2003).Hirshfield, Jane. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Arthur Waley. Chatham: Wordsworth Editions, 1997. Neilsen, Lorri. "Lyric Inquiry." Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Eds. J. Gary Knowles and Ardra Cole. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008. 88–98. Ross, Maggie. The Fire and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire. York: Paulist Press, 1987.

"... sphincters have no souls."-- Germaine Greer. "Love." The Whole Woman. 222. "Place your hands on my (w?)hole, run your fingers through my soul..." -- Gary Stringer. "Place Your Hands." Glow. A remarkable pseudo-sodomitical sight gag in the Hollywood comedy film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me brings to mainstream discourse two new queer desiring and desired figures: the man-fisting woman and the woman-fisted man. The simulated act of anal fisting occurs in a tent between leading male and female agents Austin Powers (Mike Myers) and Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). While Powers is on all fours, Shagwell inserts her hand and forearm into his utility bag and removes various objects including an opening umbrella and a gerbil. However, to a posse of astounded males hiding in the bushes, it appears in silhouette that Shagwell has inserted her fist into Power's rectum and is slowly removing the objects from deep inside his anal canal. This subversive heterosexual performance draws upon marginalised visual narratives of female and male sodomites. The queer man-fisting woman comprises a revolutionary feminist figure. Before surfacing to stake her claim in Austin Powers, the figure of the fisting woman gathered representational momentum in underground pornographic and erotic visual art discourses. Until recently, queer female sodomites penetrated males by finger or dildo, not by whole hand. For example, an erotic sadomasochistic (SM) drawing from the 1930s by Bernard Montorgueil (Néret backflap) depicts several clothed women stimulating the ani of various naked tied-up ejaculating men with small mechanical dildos. A pornographic photograph from the 1950s features a bikini-wearing woman with her strapped-on dildo in the anus of a naked reclining spread-legged man (Waugh 20). By the 1990s images of female-in-male fisting acts had appeared in coffee table art monographs. Jacqueline Kennedy's photograph Other Chambers (Salaman 138) depicts such a scene with only the braceleted arm and male torso showing. Andres Serranos' photograph The History of Sex (The Fisting) shows a fully-dressed erect woman with her fist in the anus of a naked man who poses on all fours at the bottom of the picture. One of Doris Kloster's SM photographs shows a man sandwiched between two women. The strapped-on dildo of one woman fills the man's mouth while that of the other woman projects into his rectum. These female sodomites seemingly merge the figures of the SM dominatrix and the female penetrator of males, to form a new creation that could be named the 'penetratrix'. Queer performance artist Annie Sprinkle, who (as "Queen of the Hellfire" SM club) fist-fucked a man up to her elbow (Heidenry 161), is one such pioneering penetratrix. Another is queer writer Zoë Schramm-Evans, who has documented her fistfucking relationship with a gay man in British journal, Body Politic. Schramm-Evans probably speaks for other penetratrices when she declares of her desires to fist the male anus: "I like a man who will lie on his back with his legs in the air -- who will offer his secrets in the way I offer mine. I consider this an equilibrium" (cited in Dowsett 28). The man-fisting penetratrix is a queer production that brings narratives of corporeal cross-sexual power relationships full circle: the penetrator is now the penetrated. The inscription of Felicity as 'top' would not work without Austin as 'bottom' -- a heterosexual male persona that embodies the pleasure of being penetrated by a female agent. The image of anal-receptive Austin draws on the pantheon of fisted gay, bisexual and heterosexual men that have featured in representations of the fisting female sodomite, such as those already mentioned. Other influential works might include Andres Serrano's photograph The History of Sex (Christiaan and Rose) (1996), which depicts a woman pressing the dildo worn over her vulva against a man's buttocks. The cover of Enema of the State, a compact disc by all-male heterosexual band Blink-182, contains a photograph of a smiling female nurse pulling a blue glove over her raised hand. The extended Shagwell-in-Powers fisting gag entails from a history of 'red hanky' SM representations of gay male anal erotica which has tested the diametric limits of the most dilatable orifice in the male body. Examples include Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph Helmut and Brooks, N.Y.C., 1978 (Danto plate 107), which shows one man's large forearm in another's anus, and the Mo' Bigga' Butt video which has two male hands in a male anus. One patron of the Hellfire reportedly could take "an entire rack of billiard balls up his rectum" (Heidenry 161). Such inter-male sexual practices produce "intense sexual pleasure while bypassing, to a greater or lesser extent, the genitals themselves" and involve "the eroticisation of non-genital regions of the body" (Halperin 47). In countenance to standard heterosexual productions in which "the phallus is monolithic and absolute", in these gay male productions "attraction to the penis, contextualized in a holistically eroticized body, is not always the focus of sexual desire" (Jackson 147). In Homosexual Desire, Guy Hocquenghem contended that the gay sauna, a private inter-male consensual sex sphere of the 1970s, would provide a pornutopian space for such "primary sexual communism" (111). In the contemporary popular screen production Austin Powers, the fisted man has become a public, post-orgasmic, de-phallicised object of heterosexual female desire. Man-fisting females and woman-fisted males con-fuse the modern sex/gender identities deployed this century to categorise desiring agents. At the end of his article "What Is Sexuality?", Gary Dowsett asks of the Schramm-Evans female-in-male fisting relationship, "in being fist-fucked by a woman is the gay man still homosexual? In committing sodomy with her arm, is Schramm-Evans still woman?" (29). We could ask similar questions about the gender identities and sexual desires of the queer women, men, and transgenderists, who have contributed to the imag(in)ing of the 'penetratrix'. The simple answer may be that all are 'bisexual/s'. However, gay, lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual categories of identity hinge upon desires for specific (similar and/or different) genital morphologies. These identities are upset by performances such as anal-fisting which inscribe organs with omnisexual, non-genital morphologies as objects of desire. In lesbian-in-gay fisting performances "not only has gender been exposed as a masquerade in the service of modern heterosexuality, sexuality has become a field of possibilities where the entanglements of bodies and pleasures and the manufacture of meaning are already bursting through their century-long confinement" (Dowsett 29). Feminists such as Germaine Greer have reformulated sexual metaphors to challenge narratives that define woman as castrated lack. In The Whole Woman, Greer explains that her earlier feminist text, The Female Eunuch, "attempted to provide a different version of female receptivity by speaking of the vagina ... as if it sucked on the penis and emptied it out rather than simply receiving the ejaculate" (39). She now notes that such "cunt-power" has "still to manifest itself". Instead, "penetration mania, the outsize dildo and the fist, [and] the world split open" (39) have manifested "in the last third of the twentieth century [when] more women were penetrated deeper and more often than in any preceeding era" (6). On all these accounts Greer is correct but offers only part of the story. Her desire to change (heterosexual) women's views of their (and male) anatomies is admirable, but such new (hetero)sexual metaphors alone may have negligible effects on male viewpoints. Let's also note that, in the last thirty years, more men were penetrated through the anus (and other orifices) deeper, wider, and more often than ever before (in medical and sexual, indeed, any contexts). Also significantly, more women actively penetrated more men (and more women) deeper, wider and more often than ever before. Man's world and body are also splitting open, and women, too, are wielding dildos and fists and medical equipment to make them split. Queer women who directly act on their desires to infiltrate male bodies (while doing as they desire with their own vulvae) also create cunt-power. It may be most difficult for theorists, including some queer theorists, who have cast the lesbian feminist "with or without dildo" as "the dreaded figure of castration and lack" (Probyn 46) to so typify a queer woman who twists her fist into a male anus. The potential power of the newly arrived male-fisting penetratrix is palpable for women and men. Thus, the penetratrix, as an image "freed from its post within a structure of law, lack, and signification, can begin to move all over the place. It then causes different ripples and affects, effects of desire and desirous affects. Turning away from the game of matching signifiers to signifieds, we can begin to focus on the movement of images as effecting and affecting movement" (Probyn 59). The moving image of Felicity Shagwell with her forearm supposedly in Austin Power's anus has the potential to unleash a new chain of queer sexual metaphors. It may be most difficult for theorists, including some queer theorists, who have cast the lesbian feminist "with or without dildo" as "the dreaded figure of castration and lack" (Probyn 46) to so typify a queer woman who twists her fist into a male anus. The potential power of the newly arrived male-fisting penetratrix is palpable for women and men. Thus, the penetratrix, as an image "freed from its post within a structure of law, lack, and signification, can begin to move all over the place. It then causes different ripples and affects, effects of desire and desirous affects. Turning away from the game of matching signifiers to signifieds, we can begin to focus on the movement of images as effecting and affecting movement" (Probyn 59). The moving image of Felicity Shagwell with her forearm supposedly in Austin Power's anus has the potential to unleash a new chain of queer sexual metaphors. What better way for men to understand some of the pleasure and pain involved in vaginal births or deep vaginal penetrations than to have (at least imagined) a large object going in and out of their rectum? Rather than trying to formulate such rhetoric, Greer claims that men are correct to resist regular ano-digital examinations for prostate problems. Now that heterosexual men have begun to experience physical insertions that rupture their monolithic masculinity, Greer discourages them. Critical reactions to the groundbreaking images of the male-penetrating female in Austin Powers have been mixed. In the national newspaper Evan Williams remarked rather uncomfortably that "the silhouetted extraction of assorted paraphernalia from Austin's backside -- go[es] on much too long". On national youth radio Michael Tunn rather excitedly praised the gag as "the funniest I've seen". At the cinema I attended, several adults giggled during the scene. I was bent over in hysterics while a young woman up behind me laughed most powerfully. Did the sudden stunned silence of a teenage male who had been sniggering with desire for Heather Graham's body hide his excited discomfort at the realisation of her phallic desiring power and his desire to be penetrated? Clearly, a chord had been struck deep within him. The positive subversive effects on children exposed to the graphic imaging of reversed bodily sex and gender rôles should also not be underestimated. The queer man-fisting woman reconfigures standard feminist sexual (pre)positions. To the heterocentric paradigm of woman-on-top and man-on-bottom have been added the queer figures of the woman-as-top and the man-as-bottom. The genito-centric anti-penetration agenda espoused in The Whole Woman denies the desires and effects of such man-penetrating female and woman-penetrated male agents. Austin Powers, on the other hand, celebrates these desiring figures in a climactic gender-fucking pièce de résistance. This Hollywood film only flirts with notions of fistfucking but is a credit to collaborating heterosexual actors Mike Myers and Heather Graham. Their queer simulated penetration scene comprises the film's most graphic and comedic representation of a (hetero)sexual act. At the end of the millennium, some women are taking matters of queer politics in hand, by raising their clenched feminist fists for a new sexual revolution. Some men are opening their ani wide to them and the pleasures and pains of (pomo)sexual equality, with rippling desires to become fulfilled queer male (w)holes. References Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Dir. M. Jay Roach. New Line Cinema, 1999. Blink-182. Enema of the State. MCA 1999. Danto, Arthur C. Mapplethorpe. New York: Random House, 1992. Dowsett, Gary. "What Is Sexuality?: A Bent Answer to a Straight Question." Meanjin 55.1 (1996): 16-30. Greer, Germaine. The Whole Woman. London: Doubleday. 1999. Halperin, David M. "Becoming Homosexual: Michel Foucault on the Future of Gay Writing." Island 63 (Winter 1995): 44-51. Heidenry, John. What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution. Port Melbourne, Vic.: William Heinemann, 1997. Hocquenghem, Guy. Homosexual Desire. 1972. Trans. Daniella Dangoor. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1993. Jackson, Earl. "Explicit Instruction: Teaching Gay Male Sexuality in Literature Classes." Professions of Desire: Lesbian and Gay Studies in Literature. Ed. George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman. New York: MLA, 1995: 136-155. Kloster, Doris. Doris Kloster: Photographs. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1996. Mo' Bigga' Butt. Dir. Steven Scarborough. Plain Wrapped Video, 1997. Néret, Gilles, ed. Erotica Universalis. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1996. Probyn, Elspeth. Outside Belongings. New York: Routledge, 1996. Salaman, Naomi, ed. What She Wants: Women Artists Look at Men. London: Verso, 1994. Schramm-Evans, Zoë. "Internal Politics." Body Politic 4 (1993). Serrano, Andres. The History of Sex (The Fisting). 1996. ---. The History of Sex (Christiaan and Rose). 1996. Stringer, Gary, voc. "Place Your Hands." Glow. By Reef. Sony, 1997. Tunn, Michael. Lunch. Triple J. 4JJJ, Brisbane. 28 June 1999. Waugh, Thomas. Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. Williams, Evan. "Knickers in a Twist." Weekend Australian Review 19-20 June 1999: 21. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. "Newly Desiring and Desired: Queer Man-Fisting Women." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] &lt;http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/queer.php&gt;. Chicago style: Simon-Astley Scholfield, "Newly Desiring and Desired: Queer Man-Fisting Women," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), &lt;http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/queer.php&gt; ([your date of access]). APA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. (1999) Newly desiring and desired: queer man-fisting women. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). &lt;http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/queer.php&gt; ([your date of access]).

Introduction Tiffany and Co. is an American luxury jewellery and specialty retailer with its headquarters in New York City. Each piece of jewellery, symbolically packaged in a blue box and tied with a white bow, encapsulates the brand’s unique diamond pieces, symbolic origin story, branded historical contributions and representations in culture. Cultural brands are those that live and thrive in the minds of consumers (Holt). Their brand promise inspires loyalty and trust. These brands offer experiences, products, and personalities and spark emotional connotations within consumers (Arvidsson). This case study uses Tiffany &amp; Co. as a successful example to reveal the importance of understanding consumers, the influential nature of media culture, and the efficacy of strategic branding, advertising, and marketing over time (Holt). It also reveals how Tiffany &amp; Co. earned and maintained its place as an iconic cultural brand within consumer culture, through its strong association with New York and products from abroad. Through its trademarked logo and authentic luxury jewellery, encompassed in the globally recognised “Tiffany Blue” boxes, Tiffany &amp; Co.’s cultural significance stems from its embodiment of the expected makings of a brand (Chernatony et al.). However, what propels this brand into what Douglas Holt terms “iconic territory” is that in its one hundred and seventy-nine years of existence, Tiffany’s has lived exclusively in the minds of its consumers.Tiffany &amp; Co.’s intuitive prowess in reaching its target audience is what allows it to dominate the luxury jewellery market (Halasz et al.). This is not only a result of product value, but the alluring nature of the “Tiffany's from New York” brand imagery and experience (Holt et al.), circulated and celebrated in consumer culture through influential depictions in music, film and literature over time (Knight). Tiffany’s faithfully participates in the magnetic identity myth embodied by the brand and city, and has become globally sought after by consumers near and far, and recognised for its romantic connotations of love, luxury, and New York (Holt). An American Dream: New York Affiliation &amp; Diamond OriginsIt was Truman Capote’s characterisation of Holly Golightly in his book (1958) and film adaption, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) that introduced the world to New York as the infatuating “setting,” upon which the Tiffany’s diamond rested. It was a place, that enabled the iconic Holly Golightly to personify the feeling of being abroad in New York and to demonstrate the seductive nature of a Tiffany’s store experience, further shaping the identity myth encompassed by the brand and the city for their global audience (Holt). Essentially, New York was the influential cultural instigator that propelled Tiffany &amp; Co. from a consumer product, to a cultural icon. It did this by circulating its iconography via celebrity affiliations and representations in music, film, and literature (Knight), and by guiding strong brand associations in the minds of consumers (Arvidsson). However, before Tiffany’s became culturally iconic, it established its place in American heritage through historical contributions (Tiffany &amp; Co.) and pledged an association to New York by personifying the American Dream (Mae). To help achieve his dream in a rapidly evolving economy (Elliott), Charles Lewis Tiffany purportedly brought the first substantial gemstones into America from overseas, and established the first American jewellery store to sell them to the public (Halasz et al.). The Tiffany &amp; Co. origin story personifies the alluring nature of products from abroad, and their influence on individuals seeking an image of affluence for themselves. The ties between New York, Tiffany’s, and its consumers were further strengthened through the established, invaluable and emblematic nature of the diamond, historically launched and controlled by South African Diamond Cartel of De Beers (Twitchell). De Beers manipulated the demand for diamonds and instigated it as a status symbol. It then became a commoditised measurement of an individual’s worth and potential to love (Twitchell), a philosophy, also infused in the Tiffany &amp; Co. brand ideology (Holt). Building on this, Tiffany’s further ritualised the justification of the material symbolisation of love through the idealistic connotations surrounding its assorted diamond ring experiences (Lee). This was projected through a strategic product placement and targeted advertising scheme, evident in dominant culture throughout the brand’s existence (Twitchell). Idealistically discussed by Purinton, this is also what exemplified, for consumers, the enticing cultural symbolism of the crystal rock from New York (Halasz et al.). Brand Essence: Experience &amp; Iconography Prior to pop culture portraying the charming Tiffany’s brand imagery in mainstream media (Balmer et al.), Charles Tiffany directed the company’s ascent into luxury jewellery (Phillips et al.), fashioned the enticing Tiffany’s “store experience”, and initiated the experiential process of purchasing a diamond product. This immediately intertwined the imagery of Tiffany’s with New York, instigating the exclusivity of the experience for consumers (Holt). Tiffany’s provided customers with the opportunity to participate in an intricately branded journey, resulting in the diamond embodiment which declared their love most accurately; a token, packaged and presented within an iconic “Tiffany Blue” box (Klara). Aligning with Keller’s branding blueprint (7), this interactive process enabled Tiffany &amp; Co. to build brand loyalty by consistently connecting with each of its consumers, regardless of their location in the world. The iconography of the coveted “blue box” was crafted when Charles Tiffany trademarked the shade Pantone No. 1837 (Osborne), which he coined for the year of Tiffany’s founding (Klara). Along with the brand promise of containing quality luxury jewellery, the box and that particular shade of blue instantly became a symbol of exclusivity, sophistication, and elegance, as it could only be acquired by purchasing jewellery from a Tiffany’s store (Rawlings). The exclusive packaging began to shape Tiffany’s global brand image, becoming a signifier of style and superiority (Phillips et al.), and eventually just as iconic as the jewellery itself. The blue box is still the strongest signifier of the brand today (Osborne). Ultimately, individuals want to participate in the myth of love, perfection and wealth (Arvidsson), encompassed exclusively by every Tiffany’s “blue box”. Furthermore, Tiffany’s has remained artistically significant within the luxury jewellery landscape since introducing its one-of-a-kind Tiffany Setting in 1886. It was the first jewellery store to fully maximise the potential of the natural beauty possessed of diamonds, while connotatively reflecting the natural beauty of every wearer (Phillips et al.). According to Jeffrey Bennett, the current Vice President of Tiffany &amp; Co. New York, by precisely perching the “Tiffany Diamond” upon six intricately crafted silver prongs, the ring shines to its maximum capacity in a lit environment, while being closely secured to the wearer’s finger (Lee). Hence, the “Tiffany Setting” has become a universally sought after icon of extravagance and intricacy (Knight), and, as Bennett further describes, even today, the setting represents uncompromising quality and is a standard image of true love (Lee). Alluring Brand Imagery &amp; Influential Representations in CultureEmpirical consumer research, involving two focus groups of married and unmarried, ethnically diverse Australian women and conducted in 2015, revealed that even today, individuals accredit their desire for Tiffany’s to the inspirational imagery portrayed in music, movies and television. Through participating in the Tiffany's from New York store experience, consumers are able to indulge in their fantasies of what it would feel like to be abroad and the endless potential a city such as New York could hold for them. Tiffany’s successfully disseminated its brand ideology into consumer culture (Purinton) and extended the brand’s significance for consumers beyond the 1960s through constant representation of the expensive business of love, lust and marriage within media culture. This is demonstrated in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Legally Blonde (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), The Great Gatsby (2013), and in the influential television shows, Gossip Girl (2007—2012), and Glee (2009—2015).The most important of these was the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and the iconic embodiment of Capote’s (1958) Holly Golightly by actress Audrey Hepburn (Wasson). Hepburn’s (1961) portrayal of the emotionally evocative connotations of experiencing Tiffany’s in New York, as personified by her romantic dialogue throughout the film (Mae), produced the image that nothing bad could ever happen at a Tiffany’s store. Thus began the Tiffany’s from New York cultural phenomenon, which has been consistently reiterated in popular media culture ever since.Breakfast at Tiffany’s also represented a greater struggle faced by women in the 1960s (Dutt); that of gender roles, women’s place in society, and their desire for stability and freedom simultaneously (Sheehan). Due to Hepburn’s accurate characterisation of this struggle, the film enabled Tiffany &amp; Co. to become more than just jewellery and a symbol of support (Torelli). Tiffany’s also allowed filming to take place inside its New York flagship store to which Capote’s narrative so idealistically alludes, further demonstrating its support for the 1960s women’s movement at an opportune moment in history (Torelli). Hence, Tiffany’s from New York became a symbol for the independent materialistic modern woman (Wasson), an ideal, which has become a repeated motif, re-imagined and embodied by popular icons (Knight) such as, Madonna in Material Girl (1985), and the characterisations of Carrie Bradshaw by Sarah Jessica Parker, Charlotte York by Kristin Davis (Sex and the City), and Donna Paulsen by Sarah Rafferty (Suits). The iconic television series Sex and the City, set in New York, boldly represented Tiffany’s as a symbol of friendship when a fellow female protagonist parted with her lavish Tiffany’s engagement ring to help her friend financially (Sex and the City). This was similarly reimagined in the popular television series Suits, also set in New York, where a protagonist is gifted two Tiffany Boxes from her female friend, as a token of congratulations on her engagement. This allowed Tiffany &amp; Co. to add friendship to its symbolic repertoire (Manning), whilst still personifying a symbol of love in the minds of its consumers who were tactically also the target audiences of these television shows (Wharton).The alluring Tiffany’s image was presented specifically to a male audience through the first iconic Bond Girl named Tiffany Case in the novel Diamonds Are Forever (Fleming). The film adaption made its cultural imprint in 1971 with Sean Connery portraying James Bond, and paired the exaggerated brand of “007” with the evocative imagery of Tiffany’s (Spilski et al.). This served as a reminder to existing audiences about the powerful and seductive connotations of the blue box with the white ribbon (Osborne), as depicted by the enticing Tiffany Case in 1956.Furthermore, the Tiffany’s image was similarly established as a lyrical status symbol of wealth and indulgence (Knight). Portrayed most memorably by Marilyn Monroe’s iconic performance of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Even though the song only mentions Tiffany’s lyrically twice (Vito et al.), through the celebrity affiliation, Monroe was introduced as a credible embodiment of Tiffany’s brand essence (Davis). Consequently, she permanently attached her image to that of the alluring Tiffany Diamonds for the target audience, male and female, past and present (Vito et al.). Exactly thirty-two years later, Monroe’s 1953 depiction was reinforced in consumer culture (Wharton) through an uncanny aesthetic and lyrical reimagining of the original performance by Madonna in her music video Material Girl (1985). This further preserved and familiarised the Tiffany’s image of glamour, luxury and beauty by implanting it in the minds of a new generation (Knight). Despite the shift in celebrity affiliation to a current cultural communicator (Arvidsson), the influential image of the Tiffany Diamond remains constant and Tiffany’s has maintained its place as a popular signifier of affluence and elegance in mainstream consumer culture (Jansson). The main difference, however, between Monroe’s and Madonna’s depictions is that Madonna aspired to be associated with the Tiffany’s brand image because of her appreciation for Marilyn Monroe and her brand image, which also intrinsically exuded beauty, money and glamour (Vito et al.). This suggests that even a musical icon like Madonna was influenced by Tiffany &amp; Co.’s hold on consumer culture (Spilski et al.), and was able to inject the same ideals into her own loyal fan base (Fill). It is evident that Tiffany &amp; Co. is thoroughly in tune with its target market and understands the relevant routes into the minds of its consumers. Kotler (113) identifies that the brand has demonstrated the ability to reach its separate audiences simultaneously, with an image that resonates with them on different levels (Manning). For example, Tiffany &amp; Co. created the jewellery that featured in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 cinematic adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Through representing a signifier of love and lust induced by monetary possessions (Fitzgerald), Tiffany’s truthfully portrayed its own brand image and persuaded audiences to associate the brand with these ideals (Holt). By illustrating the romantic, alluring and powerful symbolism of giving or obtaining love, armed with a Tiffany’s Diamond (Mae), Tiffany’s validated its timeless, historical and cultural contemporary relevance (Greene).This was also most recently depicted through Tiffany &amp; Co.’s Will You (2015) advertising campaign. The brand demonstrated its support for marriage equality, by featuring a real life same-sex couple to symbolise that love is not conditional and that Tiffany’s has something that signifies every relationship (Dicker). Thus, because of the brand’s rooted place in central media culture and the ability to appeal to the belief system of its target market while evolving with, and understanding its consumers on a level of metonymy (Manning), Tiffany &amp; Co. has transitioned from a consumer product to a culturally relevant and globally sought-after iconic brand (Holt). ConclusionTiffany &amp; Co.’s place-based association and representational reflection in music, film, and literature, assisted in the formation of loyal global communities that thrive on the identity building side effects associated with luxury brand affiliation (Banet-Weiser et al.). Tiffany’s enables its global target market to revel in the shared meanings surrounding the brand, by signifying a symbolic construct that resonates with consumers (Hall). Tiffany’s inspires consumers to eagerly exercise their brand trust and loyalty by independently ritualising the Tiffany’s from New York brand experience for themselves and the ones they love (Fill). Essentially, Tiffany &amp; Co. successfully established its place in society and strengthened its ties to New York, through targeted promotions and iconographic brand dissemination (Nita).Furthermore, by ritualistically positioning the brand (Holt), surrounding and saturating it in existing cultural practices, supporting significant cultural actions and becoming a symbol of wealth, luxury, commitment, love and exclusivity (Phillips et al.), Tiffany’s has steadily built a positive brand association and desire in the minds of consumers near and far (Keller). 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Music from Another Time – One Perth Night in 2009The following extract is taken from fieldwork notes from research into the enduring Northern Soul dance scene in Perth, Western Australia.It’s 9.30 and I’m walking towards the Hyde Park Hotel on a warm May night. I stop to talk to Jenny, from London, who tells me about her 1970s trip to India and teenage visits to soul clubs in Soho. I enter a cavernous low-ceilinged hall, which used to be a jazz venue and will be a Dan Murphy’s bottle shop before the year ends. South West Soul organiser Tommy, wearing 34-inch baggy trousers, gives me a Northern Soul handshake, involving upturned thumbs. ‘Spread the Faith’, he says. Drinkers are lined up along the long bar to the right and I grab a glass of iced water. A few dancers are out on the wooden floor and a mirror ball rotates overhead. Pat Fisher, the main Perth scene organiser, is away working in Monaco, but the usual suspects are there: Carlisle Derek, Ivan from Cheltenham, Ron and Gracie from Derby. Danny is back from DJing in Tuscany, after a few days in Widnes with old friends. We chat briefly mouth to ear, as the swirling strings and echo-drenched vocals of the Seven Souls’ 45 record, ‘I still love you’ boom through the sound system. The drinkers at the bar hit the floor for Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move on up’ and the crowd swells to about 80. When I move onto the floor, Barbara Acklin’s ‘Am I the Same Girl?’ plays, prompting reflection on being the same, older person dancing to a record from my teenage years. On the bridge of the piano and conga driven ‘’Cause you’re mine’, by the Vibrations, everybody claps in unison, some above their heads, some behind their backs, some with an expansive, open-armed gesture. The sound is like the crack of pistol. We are all living in the moment, lost in the music, moving forward and backward, gliding sideways, and some of us spinning, dervish-like, for a few seconds, if we can still maintain our balance.Having relocated their scene from England south to the Antipodes, most of the participants described on this night are now in their sixties. Part of the original scene myself, I was a participant observer, dancing and interviewing, and documenting and exploring scene practices over five years.The local Perth scene, which started in 1996, is still going strong, part of a wider Australian and New Zealand scene. The global scene goes back nearly 50 years to the late 1960s. Northern Soul has now also become southern. It has also become significantly present in the USA, its place of inspiration, and in such disparate places as Medellin, in Colombia, and Kobe, in Japan.The feeling of ‘living in the moment’ described is a common feature of dance-oriented subcultures. It enables escape from routines, stretches the present opportunity for leisure and postpones the return to other responsibilities. The music and familiar dance steps of a long-standing scene like Northern Soul also stimulate a nostalgic reverie, in which you can persuade yourself you are 18 again.Dance steps are forward, backward and sideways and on crowded dancefloors self-expression is necessarily attenuated. These movements are repeated and varied as each bar returns to the first beat and in subcultures like Northern Soul are sufficiently stylised as to show solidarity. This solidarity is enhanced by a unison handclap, triggered by cues in some records. Northern Soul is not line-dancing. Dancers develop their own moves.Place of Origin: Soul from the North?For those new to Northern Soul, the northern connection may seem a little puzzling. The North of England is often still imagined as a cold, rainy wasteland of desolate moors and smoky, industrial, mostly working-class cities, but such stereotyping obscures real understanding. Social histories have also tended to focus on such phenomena as the early twentieth century Salford gang members, the “Northern Scuttlers”, with “bell-bottomed trousers … and the thick iron-shod clogs” (Roberts 123).The 1977 Granada television documentary about the key Northern Soul club, Wigan Casino, This England, captured rare footage; but this was framed by hackneyed backdrops of mills and collieries. Yet, some elements of the northern stereotype are grounded in reality.Engels’s portrayal of the horrors of early nineteenth century Manchester in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was an influential exploration of the birth pains of this first industrial city, and many northern towns and cities have experienced similar traumas. Levels of social disadvantage in contemporary Britain, whilst palpable everywhere, are still particularly significant in the North, as researched by Buchan, Kontopantelis, Sperrin, Chandola and Doran in North-South Disparities in English Mortality 1965–2015: Longitudinal Population Study.By the end of the 1960s, the relative affluence of Harold Wilson’s England began to recede and there was increased political and counter-cultural activity. Into this social climate emerged both skinheads, as described by Fowler in Skins Rule and the Northern Soul scene.Northern Soul scene essentially developed as an extension of the 1960s ‘mod’ lifestyle, built around soul music and fashion. A mostly working-class response to urban life and routine, it also evidenced the ability of the more socially mobile young to get out and stay up late.Although more London mods moved into psychedelia and underground music, many soul fans sought out obscure, but still prototypical Motown-like records, often from the northern American cities Detroit and Chicago. In Manchester, surplus American records were transported up the Ship Canal to Trafford Park, the port zone (Ritson and Russell 1) and became cult club hits, as described in Rylatt and Scott’s Central 1179: The Story of Manchester's Twisted Wheel.In the early 1970s, the rare soul fans found a name for their scene. “The Dave Godin Column” in the fanzine Blues and Soul, published in London, referred for the first time to ‘Northern Soul’ in 1971, really defining ‘Northern’ directionally, as a relative location anywhere ‘north of Watford’, not a specific place.The scene gradually developed specific sites, clothes, dances and cultural practices, and was also popular in southern England, and actually less visible in cities such as Liverpool and Newcastle. As Nowell (199) argues, the idea that Northern Soul was regionally based is unfounded, a wider movement emerging as a result of the increased mobility made possible by railways and motorways (Ritson and Russell 14).Clubs like the Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino were very close to motorway slip roads and accessible to visitors from further south. The initial scene was not self-consciously northern and many early clubs, like the ‘Golden Torch’, in Tunstall were based in the Midlands, as recounted by Wall (441).The Time and Space of the DancefloorThe Northern Soul scene’s growth was initially covered in fanzines like Blues and Soul, and then by Frith and Cummings (23-32). Following Cosgrove (38-41) and Chambers (142), a number of insider accounts (Soul Survivors: The Wigan Casino Story by Winstanley and Nowell; Too Darn Soulful: The Story of Northern Soul by Nowell; The In-Crowd: The Story of the Northern &amp; Rare Soul Scene by Ritson &amp; Russell) were followed by academic studies (Milestone 134-149; Hollows and Milestone 83-103; Wall 431-445). The scene was first explored by an American academic in Browne’s Identity Scene and Material Culture: The Place of African American Rare Soul Music on the British Northern Soul Scene.Many clubs in earlier days were alcohol-free, though many club-goers substituted amphetamines (Wilson 1-5) as a result, but across the modern scene, drug-taking is not significant. On Northern Soul nights, dancing is the main activity and drinking is incidental. However, dance has received less subtle attention than it deserves as a key nexus between the culture of the scene and black America.Pruter (187) referred to the earlier, pre-disco “myopia” of many music writers on the subject of dance, though its connection to leisure, pleasure, the body and “serious self-realization” (Chambers 7) has been noted. Clearly Northern Soul dancers find “evasive” pleasure (Fiske 127) and “jouissance” (Barthes v) in the merging of self into record.Wall (440) has been more nuanced in his perceptions of the particular “physical geography” of the Northern Soul dance floor, seeing it as both responsive to the music, and a vehicle for navigating social and individual space. Dancers respond to each other, give others room to move and are also connected to those who stand and watch. Although friends often dance close, they are careful not to exclude others and dancing between couples is rare. At the end of popular records, there is often applause. Some dance all night, with a few breaks; others ‘pace’ themselves (Mercieca et al. 78).The gymnastics of Northern Soul have attracted attention, but the forward dives, back drops and spins are now less common. Two less noticed markers of the Northern Soul dancing style, the glide and the soul clap, were highlighted by Wall (432). Cosgrove (38) also noted the sideways glide characteristic of long-time insiders and particularly well deployed by female dancers.Significantly, friction-reducing talcum powder is almost sacramentally sprinkled on the floor, assisting dancers to glide more effectively. This fluid feature of the dancing makes the scene more attractive to those whose forms of expression are less overtly masculine.Sprung wooden floors are preferred and drink on the floor is frowned upon, as spillage compromises gliding. The soul clap is a communal clap, usually executed at key points in a record. Sometimes very loud, this perfectly timed unison clap is a remarkable, though mostly unselfconscious, display of group co-ordination, solidarity and resonance.Billy from Manchester, one of the Perth regulars, and notable for his downward clapping motion, explained simply that the claps go “where the breaks are” (Mercieca et al. 71). The Northern Soul clap demonstrates key attributes of what Wunderlich (384) described as “place-temporality in urban space”, emerging from the flow of music and movement in a heightened form of synchronisation and marked by the “vivid sense of time” (385) produced by emotional and social involvement.Crucially, as Morris noted, A Sense of Space is needed to have a sense of time and dancers may spin and return via the beat of the music to the same spot. For Northern Soul dancers, the movements forwards, backwards, sideways through objective, “geometric space” are paralleled by a traversing of existential, “conceived space”. The steps in microcosm symbolise the relentless wider movements we make through life. For Lefebvre, in The Production of Space, these “trialectics” create “lived space”.A Sense of Place and Evolving IdentitySpaces are plastic environments, charged with emerging meanings. For Augé, they can also remain spaces or be manipulated into “Non-Places”. When the sense of space is heightened there is the potential for lived spaces to become places. The space/place distinction is a matter of contention, but, broadly, space is universal and non-relational, and place is particular and relational.For Augé, a space can be social, but if it lacks implicit, shared cultural understandings and requires explicit signs and rules, as with an airport or supermarket, it is a non-place. It is not relational. It lacks history. Time cannot be stretched or temporarily suspended. As non-places proliferate, urban people spend more time alone in crowds, ”always, and never, at home” (109), though this anonymity can still provide the possibility of changing identity and widening experience.Northern Soul as a culture in the abstract, is a space, but one with distinct practices which tend towards the creation of places and identities. Perth’s Hyde Park Hotel is a place with a function space at the back. This empty hall, on the night described in the opening, temporarily became a Northern Soul Club. The dance floor was empty as the night began, but gradually became not just a space, but a place. To step onto a mostly empty dance floor early in the night, is to cross liminal space, and to take a risk that you will be conspicuous or lonely for a while, or both.This negotiation of space is what Northern Soul, like many other club cultures has always offered, the promise and risk of excitement outside the home. Even when the floor is busy, it is still possible to feel alone in a crowd, but at some stage in the night, there is also the possibility, via some moment of resonance, that a feeling of connection with others will develop. This is a familiar teenage theme, a need to escape bonds and make new ones, to be both mobile and stable. Northern Soul is one of the many third spaces/places (Soja 137) which can create opportunities to navigate time, space and place, and to find a new sense of direction and identity. Nicky from Cornwall, who arrived in Perth in the early 1970s, felt like “a fish out of water”, until involvement in the Northern Soul scene helped him to achieve a successful migration (Mercieca et al. 34-38). Figure 1: A Perth Northern Soul night in 2007. Note the talcum powder on the DJ table, for sprinkling on the dancefloor. The record playing is ‘Helpless’, by Kim Weston.McRobbie has argued in Dance and Social Fantasy that Northern Soul provides places for women to define and express themselves, and it has appealed to more to female and LGBTQIA participants than the more masculine dominated rock, funk and hip-hop scenes. The shared appreciation of records and the possibilities for expression and sociality in dance unite participants and blur gender lines.While the more athletic dancers have tended to be male, dancing is essentially non-contact, as in many other post-1960s ‘discotheque’ styles, yet there is little overt sexual display or flirtation involved. Male and female styles, based on foot rather than arm movements, are similar, almost ungendered, and the Soul scene has differed from more mainstream nightlife cultures focussed on finding partners, as noted in Soul Survivors: The Wigan Casino Story by Winstanley and Nowell. Whilst males, who are also involved in record buying, predominated in the early scene, women now often dominate the dance floor (Wall 441).The Perth scene is little different, yet the changed gender balance has not produced more partner-seeking for either the older participants, who are mostly in long-term relationships and the newer, younger members, who enjoy the relative gender-blindness, and focus on communality and cultural affinity. Figure 2: A younger scene member, ‘Nash’, DJing in Perth in 2016. He has since headed north to Denmark and is now part of the Nordic Northern Soul scene.In Perth, for Stan from Derby, Northern Soul linked the experiences of “poor white working class kids” with young black Americans (Mercieca et al. 97). Hollows and Milestone (87-94) mapped a cultural geographic relationship between Northern Soul and the Northern cities of the USA where the music originated. However, Wall (442) suggested that Northern Soul is drawn from the more bi-racial soul of the mid-1960s than the funky, Afro-centric 1970s and essentially deploys the content of the music to create an alternative British identity, rather than to align more closely with the American movement for self-determination. Essentially, Northern Soul shows how “the meanings of one culture can be transformed in the cultural practices of another time and place” (Wall 444).Many contemporary Australian youth cultures are more socially and ethnically mixed than the Northern Soul scene. However, over the years, the greater participation of women, and of younger and newer members, has made its practices less exclusive, and the notion of an “in-crowd” more relaxed (Wall 439). The ‘Northern’ connection is less meaningful, as members have a more adaptable sense of cultural identity, linked to a global scene made possible by the internet and migration. In Australia, attachment seems stronger to locality rather than nation or region, to place of birth in Britain and place of residence in Perth, two places which represent ‘home’. Northern Soul appears to work well for all members because it provides both continuity and change. As Mercieca et al. suggested of the scene (71) “there is potential for new meanings to continue to emerge”.ConclusionThe elements of expression and directional manoeuvres of Northern Soul dancing, symbolise the individual and social negotiation of direction, place, space, identity and time. The sense of time and space travelled can create a feeling of being pushed forward without control. It can also produce an emotional pull backwards, like an elastic band being stretched. For those growing older and moving far from places of birth, these dynamics can be particularly challenging. Membership of global subcultures can clearly help to create successful migrations, providing third spaces/places (Soja 137) between home and host culture identities, as evidenced by the ‘Southern’ Northern Soul scene in Australia. For these once teenagers, now grandparents in Australia, connections to time and space have been both transformed and transcended. They remain grounded in their youth, but have reduced the gravitational force of home connections, projecting themselves forward into the future by balancing aspects of both stability and mobility. Physical places and places and their connections with culture have been replaced by multiple and overlapping mappings, but it is important not to romanticise notions of agency, hybridity, third spaces and “deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia). In a globalised world, most people are still located geographically and labelled ideologically. 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