Journal articles on the topic 'Queer tid'

This article examines how utopian and ecological thinking connect in light of the ongoing eco-catastrophe. While the dystopic genre might be timely as it depicts an affective landscape of fear and hopelessness and communicates ideas about how things can get much worse, the article suggests that utopian imagination is necessary but only possible if it connects with an existing ecology. It presents three utopian perspectives on the entanglements of reproduction and ecological sustainability –Inger Christensen’s circular energy, Donna Haraway’s non-reproduction, and Hiromi Ito’s radical kinship – that link utopian imagination, feminist temporalities and questions of sustainability. The focus on birth, childhood and kinship illustrates how biology, social practices and phantasms affect one another and how ecology brings these levels together, while connecting intimate questions and global problematics. The analyzed texts articulate instances of “utopian kinship” that sidestep the mechanisms of reproductive futurism or reproduction understood as a confirmation and continuation of the way things are. As such, they point to the reproductive sphere as a place for resistance: queer growth, multispecies kinship, nature’s work against capitalism’s principles of development.

Fatness can be considered queer through the lens of fat studies and queer theory. Fatness as queer is explored through looking at bariatric weight loss procedures as a way that fat people may “transition” from fat to thin, much like how transgender individuals transition medically and/or surgically from one perceived gender to another.

Abstract In this self-reflexive paper, co-written by scholars currently collaborating on the Polish translation of Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter, we discuss the political and activist stakes of translating a canonical queer theory text over 25 years after its original publication, in the context of anti-lgbtq+ public discourse in today’s Poland. We argue that the collective character of our translation process turns it into an activist workshop that negotiates social norms and works on the invention and application of their alternatives. This activist practice results in a programmatically accessible translation, written in gender-inclusive and queer-sensitive language that follows the poststructuralist philosophical underpinnings of the 1993 source text and its gendered language. Discussing examples of Butler’s use of grammatical gender and her politicized style in our translation, the article contributes to understanding the queer activist practice of translation and, specifically, underwritten questions of translating queer theory in a contemporary Polish (linguistic) context.

I handen håller jag en rektangulär häftad och grå smårutig skrivbok med rödfärgade kanter. Boken har tillhört min gammelmormor Ingeborg Göransson. Hon föddes i en jordbrukarfamilj i Offerdals socken i Jämtland 1893. Det är under hennes tid som seminarist i Östersund under åren 1912 till 1914 och sedermera lärarinna i byn Enarsvedjan i Offerdal från 1914 till 1918, som anteckningarna i boken är skrivna. I denna artikel gör jag en queerläsning såväl av Ingeborgs egna anteckningar som av berättelser om hennes liv utifrån muntliga utsagor. Min läsning av Ingeborgs texter innebär en dubbel analytisk akt: att samtidigt både ifrågasätta heteronormativitet som tolkningsram för livshistorier oavsett tid och rum och problematisera det som i vår tid blivit till normativa föreställningar om hur och var queera liv kan levas.

In an analysis based upon an original cartoon image by artist Michael Scalzo, this sociological essay proposes an allegory of critical consciousness within the context of our contemporary sociocultural landscape. Likening the role of critical consciousness to that of an oxygen tank for a fish surrounded by polluted water, I draw upon theoretical literature engaging critical epistemological and pedagogical praxis, as well as Marxist, critical race, feminist, and queer sociological theories to frame the role of critical pedagogy in elucidating the relationships between hegemonic ideology and structural oppression.

There is a Yorkshire expression, that many people are fond of quoting, to account for strange behaviour: “There's nowt so queer as folk”. Some folk, always other folk and never oneself, are more queer than others (and many Englishmen would claim that Yorkshire folk are stranger than most, but that's another story).The expression came to mind when I read a column in Icaro, the magazine of Varig, the Brazilian airline. I am not fond of flying at the st of times and finding a magazine called Icaro in the seat pocket of a fully-laden jet increased my anxiety. Icaro, presumably, is Portuguese for that legendary character Icarus who, in attempting to escape from Crete, flew so high that the sun melted the wax that held his wings on with the consequence that he fell in the sea. A stranger title for an airline magazine would be hard to find.

Neste dealbar de século já não se questiona a presença das tecnologias de informação e comunicação na escola mas sim a forma como são utilizadas, em particular na sala de aula, para o ensino-aprendizagem. Emanando de uma investigação de doutoramento, de metodologia de natureza mista, predominantemente qualitativa, em curso na Universidade Aberta de Portugal, cujo objeto central reside na procura de respostas sobre a forma como as lideranças de dois agrupamentos de escolas, sediados em concelhos com características sociais e económicas distintas, situados em diferentes regiões de Portugal, e também diferentes quer nas dimensões físicas quer no corpo docente, se apropriam das TIC e no modo como contaminam os docentes dos agrupamentos de escolas que lideram para a sua utilização, este é um artigo, sobretudo, de natureza empírica, que apresenta alguns resultados preliminares e parciais obtidos através de um dos instrumentos utilizados na investigação – o questionário. Desses resultados ressaltam, como principais conclusões, o facto de que os docentes consideram pouco influente o impulso dado pelas lideranças à utilização das TIC e que, na escola pública portuguesa, continua a ser, ainda, algo difícil a penetração das TIC na sala de aula e a sua utilização para o ensino-aprendizagem. Palavras-chave: TIC. Lideranças. Diretor. Coordenadores de departamento. Professores.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals disproportionately experience intimate partner violence (IPV) and resulting negative health consequences compared to cisgender heterosexual individuals. This study builds on prior recent work by examining specific trauma-informed care (TIC) components most associated with a comprehensive set of health and psychosocial risks among 298 LGBTQ IPV survivors who sought and accessed trauma-related services (e.g., mental health counseling). Results indicated that TIC components are differentially associated with LGBTQ clients’ health and well-being. Specifically, greater perceptions of providers who fostered agency and mutual respect were associated with better outcomes, whereas greater perceptions of providers who focused on culture and increasing opportunities to connect with other survivors were related to negative outcomes. These findings underscore the need for providers to prioritize LGBTQ clients’ sense of agency and mutual respect and identify for whom focusing on culture and connecting with other LGBTQ survivors might be beneficial.

Botanical expeditions in Laos through a collaboration between Thailand (Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden) and Laos (Pha Tad Ke Botanic Garden) to document plant diversity and collect plants for ex situ conservation, led to the discovery of two species of Gesneriaceae previously believed to be endemic to Thailand: Damrongia trisepala (Barnett) D.J.Middleton & A.Weber and Didymocarpus formosus Nangngam & D.J.Middleton. Information on these species is provided.

O movimento queer nasce no final da década de 1970, inicialmente nos EUA, se propagando pelos demais países do ocidente como uma ação política que percebia e reivindicava as formas de normalidade heterossexual, nos contextos macros e micropolíticos, da vida homossexual, se afirmando desobediente aos padrões que engendravam o próprio movimento homossexual gay/lésbico da época. Suas estratégias de ações contraintuitivas, estavam voltadas para afirmação, reivindicação e visibilidade dos corpos tidos como estranhos e abjetos dos padrões hegemônicos. Influenciados/as pelas audaciosas obras de Michel Foucault e Jacques Derrida, pelas correntes do pós-estruturalismo e dos estudos culturais, o movimento começa a tomar os espaços científicos e políticos como uma teoria, e avança resultando em demais formas analíticas e desconstrutivistas das relações de poder que excluem sujeitos e subalternizam suas vidas. Através do entendimento do percurso epistemológico que traça o pensamento queer, busquei estabelecer uma forma pós-secular e queer de análise das religiões, visualizando, por meio das leituras de Foucault, Derrida e Judith Butler, que as teologias das demais manifestações de crenças, compõem-se de discursos políticos que promovem formas de regulamentação de corpos, criando relações desiguais de poder entre eles. Denominei esse tipo de estratégia reguladora de “teopolíticas”, teologias que informam padrões de comportamentos e assujeitam os indivíduos a caminharem sobre eles. O Vale do Amanhecer é uma doutrina espiritualista cristã composta por um imenso hibridismo religioso, o que faz com que ela tenha um articulado discurso produtor de condutas para os seus adeptos. Datada de 1960, a crença tem como fundadora a médium clarividente Neiva Chaves Zelaya, mais conhecida com Tia Neiva, sendo ela a agente principal de produções teológicas. Partindo deste contexto espiritualista, o objetivo desta dissertação é fazer uma análise queer das teopolíticas do Vale do Amanhecer sobre as questões de gênero e sexualidade. Essa análise leva em conta os discursos dos seus principais agentes, deixados através de cartas, vídeos e livros. O diálogo traçado com a religião tem o intentio de fazer-se refletir sobre como suas teologias podem conduzir a uma forma árdua de normalização dos sujeitos, principalmente no que diz respeito às vidas dissidentes das normas de gênero e sexo.

Introduction Approximately 1.4 million transgender and gender diverse (TGD) adults in the United States have unique health and health care needs, including anatomy-driven cancer screening. This study explored the general healthcare experiences of TGD people in the Washington, DC area, and cancer screening experiences in particular. Methods Twenty-one TGD people were recruited through word of mouth and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ)-specific community events. Participant interviews were conducted and recorded via WebEx (n = 20; one interview failed to record). Interviews were transcribed using Rev.com. Two coders conducted line-by-line coding for emergent themes in NVivo 12, developed a codebook by consensus, and refined the codebook throughout the coding process. Member checking was conducted to ensure credibility of findings. Results Three major themes served as parent nodes: health-care seeking behaviors, quality care, and TGD-specific health care experiences. Within these parent nodes there were 14 child nodes and 4 grand-child nodes. Subthemes for health care seeking behaviors included coverage and costs of care, convenience, trust/mistrust of provider, and provider recommendations for screening. Subthemes for quality of care included professionalism, clinical competence in transgender care, care coordination, provider communication, and patient self-advocacy. Overall, transgender men were less satisfied with care than transgender women. Conclusions Results suggest a need for improved provider communication skills, including clear explanations of procedures and recommendations for appropriate screenings to TGD patients. Results also suggest a need for improved clinical knowledge and cultural competency. Respondents also wanted better care coordination and insurance navigation. Overall, these findings can inform health care improvements for TGD people.

AimsChanges in the severity of tics in Tourette's syndrome (TS), as seen with variations in the intensity or frequency of tics, can be moderated by a variety of independent factors such as external or internal stimuli. Identifying such moderators has important clinical implications as it can aid clinicians in adjusting interventions. Hence, based on our previous review of tic-severity moderators, we developed a clinical inventory of moderating variables for motor and vocal tics for inclusion in the new version of the Queen Square Proforma for Tourette's Syndrome to aid initial assessments in the National Tourette Syndrome Service's Outpatient Clinic for Adults.MethodA review of tic-severity moderators was previously carried out by the authors to investigate the kinds of moderators and their worsening, improving or neutral effects on tic severity. Based on this a semantic thematic analysis of the identified moderators was carried out and themes were developed based on appropriate and relevant MeSH terms in order to create the categories and items of the clinical inventory.ResultSeventy-three different tic severity moderators were identified, the most common being exercise, sleep, peer victimisation, psychosocial stress, watching TV, academic activities and distraction. Twenty-nine themes emerged from the thematic analysis which were then used to update the clinical inventory of tic severity moderators. The review also highlighted the subjectivity of these moderators’ effects on tic severity as some moderators were tic-worsening in some individuals and tic-improving or neutral in others, which is contrary to the current dichotomous understanding.ConclusionThe updated clinical inventory of tic severity moderators invites researchers and clinicians to be more aware of the existence, variability and subjective effects of these tic severity moderators in individuals with TS, as these have been previously looked in a dichotomous way. By better identifying tic-severity moderators and their worsening, improving or neutral effects on tic severity this clinician rated inventory will have potentially important, direct implications for the management and treatment of tics.

Esta investigación aborda un texto familiar: 1 Corin-tios 11,27-29, donde el apóstol Pablo habla de participar de la cena del Señor de forma digna. Comienza situando la correspondencia corin-tia en el contexto de la comunidad que recibe el texto original. Pablo, lejos de querer enfocarse en el mundo de lo introspectivo, exhorta a la incipiente comunidad corintia de seguidores del Señor a que viva, como ekklesia, según los valores del nuevo anfitrión, Jesús el Cristo, y no según las expectativas sociales del entorno basadas en el honor y el privilegio. El estudio del banquete grecorromano, como institución, revela el cambio concreto que el apóstol espera de la comunidad corintia

BackgroundStroke is a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Major advances have occurred in secondary prevention of stroke/transient ischaemic attack (TIA) during the past three decades. Primary care is a critical point of contact with patients in the implementation of secondary prevention, with the majority of patients with past stroke/TIA being managed in the community.AimTo assess current practice at the New Queen Street and Stanground Surgeries, Peterborough, in reference to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on secondary prevention of stroke/TIA.MethodAn audit at the above practices was undertaken by searching the SystmOne computer system for adult patients with previous stroke/TIA (311), excluding those with haemorrhagic stroke and those on aspirin. The patient records of the remaining group (37) were investigated to find whether they were on appropriate antithrombotic therapy and, if not, why.ResultsOf post-stroke/TIA patients, 234/236 were receiving antithrombotic therapy unless contraindicated. For those not on antithrombotics, risk of bleeding was the reason given in 10/13 of cases, though many of these patients did not have active bleeding (exact number unclear due to poor documentation). In 2/13 cases there was no documented reason given and informed dissent in one of the 13 cases.ConclusionIt was found that both practices implemented the guidelines to a satisfactory degree. However, to further improve secondary prevention outreach, bleeding risk should be assessed using a tool such as S2TOP-BLEED before withholding antithrombotic therapy, as, on balance, antithrombotic therapy may still be preferable. In addition, accurate and detailed documentation of the indications/contraindications to anticoagulation is paramount for such assessment.

AbstractOur romantic lives are influenced, to a large extent, by our perceptions of physical attractiveness – and the societal beauty standards that shape them. But what if we could free our desires from this fixation on looks? Science fiction writer Ted Chiang has explored this possibility in a fascinating short story – and scientific developments might, in the future, move it beyond the realm of fiction. In this paper, I lay out the prudential case for using “attraction-expanding technology,” and then consider it from a moral point of view. Using the technology would, in one respect, be morally good: it would benefit those whom prevailing beauty standards marginalize. But attraction-expanding technology also raises a moral concern – one that can be cast in non-harm-based and harm-based terms. I argue that the non-harm-based objection should be rejected, because it is incompatible with a moral principle central to queer rights. And the harm-based objection, I argue, is outweighed by the benefits of attraction-expanding technology, and undermined by the prerogative you have over your personal romantic choices. I conclude by considering whether, from the perspective of society, the development of attraction-expanding technology would be desirable.

This paper presents an 11-level symmetrical inverter with reduced number of semiconductor switches for the solar photovoltaic (PV) applications. The genetic algorithm (GA) and queen bee assisted genetic algorithm (QBAGA) are performing a major task for the proposed Multilevel Inverter (MLI). The proposed symmetrical MLI topology has reduced number of semiconductor devices compared to the conventional MLI. However, the modulation index threshold related to the drop in the number of inverter output voltage levels is higher than that of the MLI. The objective of this paper is to find the optimal value of modulation index ([Formula: see text]) using optimization algorithms in order to attain the maximum power point (MPP) from the solar PV array. An 11-level symmetrical inverter is taken into consideration whose optimal modulation index ([Formula: see text]) is calculated in order to eliminate the harmonics. The total harmonic distortion (THD) measurement is used to estimate the quality of inverter the output voltage which implies the improvement of power quality. The simulations are carried out in MATLAB/Simulink and the experimental prototype is implemented with field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based processor. The simulation and experimental results show lesser THD with the absence of filter components which expose the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Abstract Introduction Ensuring correct medications are prescribed for all patients admitted with neck of femur fractures is essential for presurgical optimisation, analgesia and perioperative care. This quality improvement project examines patients over the age of 65 who were managed following the orthogeriatric pathway for all neck of femur fractures at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. Guidelines exist that include a list of medications that should be prescribed for all of such patients on admission, including VTE prophylaxis, analgesia, antiemetics, laxatives, IV fluids and preload. The aim is to improve the rate of following this guidance on prescription by clerking doctors on admission. Method Data was collected retrospectively for all patients admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital between 03.12.19–15.01.20 with a neck of femur fracture. Interventions were then introduced to improve medication prescriptions and took place at the start of February 2020. This involved tutorial sessions and raising awareness through posters. Data collection for cycle 1 following interventions took place from 03.02.20–14.03.20 and can be compared with the original baseline data set. Results Data was collected from 34 patients for the baseline population and 28 patients in Cycle 1. Baseline data suggests that certain medications, such as preload and TEDs stockings were often missed by the admissions team, with only 8.82% of patients receiving 9 pm preload, 17.6% receiving 6 am preload and 38.2% prescribed TED stockings. Following interventions, medication prescriptions by the clerking doctors improved in all parameters, with significant improvements seen with VTE prophylaxis. Conclusion Induction sessions and accessible guidelines are essential to ensure guidelines are followed and patients receive correct medications on admission. Improving medication prescriptions is vital for medical optimisation prior to surgery and to lower rates of perioperative complications. Clerking doctors responsible for this task should receive correct training and support to ensure this is done correctly.

Abstract. The presence of melt ponds on the Arctic sea ice strongly affects the energy balance of the Arctic Ocean in summer. It affects albedo as well as transmittance through the sea ice, which has consequences on the heat balance and mass balance of sea ice. An algorithm to retrieve melt pond fraction and sea ice albedo (Zege et al., 2014) from the MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) data is validated against aerial, ship borne and in situ campaign data. The result show the best correlation for landfast and multiyear ice of high ice concentrations (albedo: R = 0.92, RMS = 0.068, melt pond fraction: R = 0.6, RMS = 0.065). The correlation for lower ice concentrations, subpixel ice floes, blue ice and wet ice is lower due to complicated surface conditions and ice drift. Combining all aerial observations gives a mean albedo RMS equal to 0.089 and a mean melt pond fraction RMS equal to 0.22. The in situ melt pond fraction correlation is R = 0.72 with an RMS = 0.14. Ship cruise data might be affected by documentation of varying accuracy within the ASPeCT protocol, which is the reason for discrepancy between the satellite value and observed value: mean R = 0.21, mean RMS = 0.16. An additional dynamic spatial cloud filter for MERIS over snow and ice has been developed to assist with the validation on swath data. The case studies and trend analysis for the whole MERIS period (2002–2011) show pronounced and reasonable spatial features of melt pond fractions and sea ice albedo. The most prominent feature is the melt onset shifting towards spring (starting already in weeks 3 and 4 of June) within the multiyear ice area, north to the Queen Elizabeth Islands and North Greenland.

Baixe o pdf para visualizar o arquivo completo. Apresentação do dossiê E-learning e B-learning: pesquisas e experiências docentes Construindo comunidades virtuais de aprendizagem no Facebook O presente estudo aborda as potencialidades das comunidades virtuais em interfaces da internet fundamentadas no paradigma da Sociedade da Informação. Apresenta um relato de experiência de ensino de inglês em curso técnico de nível básico por meio do site de rede social Facebook. Inicialmente discutiremos a evolução e o estado do conceito de comunidade virtual de aprendizagem e por fim, apresentamos o relato e a análise da experiência do uso do Facebook como espaço de construção de uma comunidade virtual para suporte a aprendizagem no curso de Inglês em Nível Básico do SENAC-AL. Os resultados dessa experiência sinalizam para a necessidade de ampliação do uso de espaços como o Facebook para suporte às práticas de formação dos sujeitos bem como para reconhecimento e valorização do profissional que atua nesses espaços. 2. Educação a distância como estratégia de educação continuada As intensas mudanças que atingem o mundo do trabalho vêm obrigando os indivíduos a lutarem de forma intensa contra a obsolescência profissional. Com o advento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC) e a abundância de informações veiculadas pela Internet, uma das principais questões envolvidas diz respeito à transformação desse conteúdo em conhecimento. Nesse sentido, a investigação proposta neste ensaio teórico vislumbra apresentar a Educação a Distância (EAD) como estratégia de educação continuada em processos de desenvolvimento de pessoas em instituições públicas. A pesquisa fundamenta-se na metodologia qualitativa que se revela como uma forma adequada para entender a natureza de um fenômeno social. Infere-se dos dados e argumentos apresentados neste artigo que os programas de treinamento e desenvolvimento, de forma geral, introduziram a ideia da educação à distância como instrumento de desenvolvimento de competências organizacionais nas instituições públicas e em outras organizações. 3. TIC nas escolas portuguesas: contributos das lideranças Neste dealbar de século já não se questiona a presença das tecnologias de informação e comunicação na escola mas sim a forma como são utilizadas, em particular na sala de aula, para o ensino-aprendizagem. Emanando de uma investigação de doutoramento, de metodologia de natureza mista, predominantemente qualitativa, em curso na Universidade Aberta de Portugal, cujo objeto central reside na procura de respostas sobre a forma como as lideranças de dois agrupamentos de escolas, sediados em concelhos com características sociais e económicas distintas, situados em diferentes regiões de Portugal, e também diferentes quer nas dimensões físicas quer no corpo docente, se apropriam das TIC e no modo como contaminam os docentes dos agrupamentos de escolas que lideram para a sua utilização, este é um artigo, sobretudo, de natureza empírica, que apresenta alguns resultados preliminares e parciais obtidos através de um dos instrumentos utilizados na investigação – o questionário. Desses resultados ressaltam, como principais conclusões, o facto de que os docentes consideram pouco influente o impulso dado pelas lideranças à utilização das TIC e que, na escola pública portuguesa, continua a ser, ainda, algo difícil a penetração das TIC na sala de aula e a sua utilização para o ensino-aprendizagem. 4. Interferência da tecnologia na educação superior: importância crescente do ensino a distância na difusão do conhecimento Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar a importância da Educação a Distância (EAD) para atender às demandas da Educação Superior no Brasil, principalmente levando em consideração a necessidade de instrução em nível superior no País. Impulsionado pela difusão dos meios de comunicação, o ensino a distância surgiu como alternativa para a democratização do acesso ao saber e para proporcionar maior desenvolvimento econômico e social. Dada essa relevância, várias políticas públicas foram implantadas e deram sustentação legal para sua difusão no Brasil. Os métodos utilizados tiveram por base a análise e descrição dos elementos que compõe a EAD e subsidiaram o entendimento de que a EAD tem se tornado modalidade regular de ensino, e tem contribuído para atender parte significativa da demanda por cursos de graduação e pós-graduação no Brasil e no mundo, demonstrando sua capacidade em atender aos atuais anseios da sociedade. 5. Oficinas de formação de professores. Uma estratégia formativa para a introdução de ferramentas tecnológicas no ensino da geografia É hoje evidente que existe um desfasamento entre as exigências criadas pela atual sociedade de informação e comunicação, marcada por uma ampla difusão de ferramentas tecnológicas, e as práticas escolares. Torna-se, assim, imperativo que escola se aproprie destas ferramentas, o que implicará uma revisão do modo como os professores ensinam e os alunos aprendem. Entende-se que esta revisão passará pela adoção de metodologias de orientação construtivista, possibilitando uma maior autonomia e criatividade do aluno. Por outro lado, considera-se que o desenvolvimento do raciocínio espacial é um aspecto fundamental na formação de cidadãos competentes e interessados. Apesar de os WebSIG (sistemas de informação geográfica disponibilizados na internet) possibilitarem a aquisição da literacia geográfica, a sua integração no ensino tarda em chegar. É objetivo deste estudo analisar o contributo das oficinas de formação de professores para a difusão da utilização de WebSIG no ensino da Geografia. A análise permite-nos inferir que os WebSIG são uma ferramenta tecnológica adequada ao ensino; a formação e a informação são essenciais para a apropriação destas ferramentas; a formação de professores realizada de uma forma adequada e intencional demonstra ser eficaz; que persistem algumas condicionantes para a utilização destas ferramentas. 6. Universidade Aberta do Brasil Mediada por Software Livre O objetivo é descrever e analisar criticamente, em termos da inclusão e intercultura, a tecnologia educacional em rede mediada por software livre do Sistema Universidade Aberta do Brasil (UAB) no Núcleo de Tecnologia Educacional (NTE) da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) que abriga a modalidade educacional a distância. A abordagem metodológica contempla um estudo de caso com apresentação, situação-limite e viável-possível para os resultados destacados. Desta forma, criamos parâmetros unificadores (categorias) para análise na perspectiva da educação como prática da liberdade. Ao final, apresentamos, como conclusões, um mapeamento da situação atual sinalizando uma prospecção viável-possível e inovadora-sustentável para potencializar inclusão e diálogo intercultural nas comunidades colaborativas de softwares livres na educação aberta brasileira. 7. Desafios da formação contemporânea e os caminhos da educação a distância influenciados pelo e-learning O principal objetivo deste artigo é enfatizar as recentes mudanças de paradigmas educacionais ocorridas em função do uso das tecnologias na educação, pois a sociedade está cruzando uma nova fronteira, e vive-se praticamente em um mundo digital, graças ao potencial oferecido pelas novas tecnologias de comunicação. O desenvolvimento das tecnologias digitais e a profusão das redes interativas colocam a humanidade diante de novas necessidades do modelo capitalista, criando um cenário de incertezas. Neste contexto, a educação a distância tem sido considerada como uma modalidade de ensino em crescente ascensão, sendo vista como uma das possibilidades de expansão do ensino superior. Neste trabalho citamos parte de estudos teóricos já existentes sobre o uso do e-learning com ênfase na educação mediada por tecnologias e utilizamos o método bibliográfico do tipo explicativo numa abordagem de cunho qualitativo. Este estudo demonstra que as novas tecnologias trazem consigo muitas facilidades, mas também introduzem novas exigências e competências no paradigma educacional, impondo adaptações e novos desafios na formação inicial ou continuada dos profissionais. Na educação, surge um novo paradigma que sugere um ambiente escolar diferenciado, proporcionando uma nova forma de cognição, que levará o aluno e professores a produzirem conhecimentos, tendo como suporte as tecnologia de informação e comunicação, dentro de um contexto interativo que envolve a realidade atual, o tempo e o espaço. 8. Atribuições e desafios do coordenador de curso de graduação EAD: caminhos possíveis a uma gestão democrática no ensino superior Considerando as exigências do atual cenário de mudanças no Ensino Superior à gestão universitária, investigaram-se quais são para os Coordenadores de Curso EAD de uma Instituição Federal de Ensino Superior do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, suas atribuições e seus desafios no desempenho desta função, na busca de uma gestão democrática no Ensino Superior. Por meio de um estudo de caso de abordagem qualitativa, os dados foram produzidos por meio de questionários e análise documental, tratados com base na análise de conteúdo a partir das categorias: funções políticas, gerenciais, acadêmicas e institucionais. Identificaram-se funções com destaque nas quatro dimensões, sendo que estas estão diretamente relacionadas com a rotina e a dinâmica dos cursos e da Instituição, apontando possibilidades para o desenvolvimento de uma gestão democrática neste nível de ensino. 9. Ensino a distância e ensino presencial. Uma análise das principais diferenças socioeconômicas e das condições de oferta de curso aos graduandos em química licenciatura da UFS O presente trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar e discutir os principais aspectos socioeconômicos, bem como as condições de oferta de curso disponibilizadas aos licenciandos em Química da Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS), nas duas modalidades de ensino, que são: Ensino a Distância (EAD) e Ensino Presencial (EP). Utilizou-se como instrumento para coleta dados o questionário - em módulos específicos para cada categoria de participantes da pesquisa (alunos, professores e tutores). Por meio da análise dos dados, podemos afirmar que quanto as características dos alunos do EP e do EAD no tocante aos aspectos socioeconômicos, estas diferem em maior intensidade no que se refere a faixa etária de ingresso no curso, quanto ao exercício profissional e quanto a idade atual. Observou-se que os graduandos do EAD apresentam uma maior idade, em relação aos alunos do EP, tanto no momento de ingresso no curso quanto na faixa etária atual e que em sua totalidade exercem uma atividade profissional. Quanto às condições de oferta do curso, no EAD pode-se perceber a dificuldade no acesso a livros, bem como a falta de participação dos alunos dessa modalidade em grupos de pesquisa; outro destaque reside na baixa disponibilidade de tempo para estudar. 10. A inclusão na contemporaneidade e as discussões sobre as tecnologias assistivas em um curso a distância Promover uma educação de qualidade que contemple as necessidades das pessoas é um dos novos desafios da contemporaneidade. Com a sua função socializadora e formativa do ser humano, os processo educacionais devem estar em prol da promoção humana. Em meio a esses novos desafios estar a Educação a Distância democratizando o ensino, diminuindo as distâncias e transformando realidades sociais. Nesse campo de transformação estar o processo de escolarização das pessoas com necessidades educacionais especiais numa perspectiva inclusiva. O presente artigo tem por objetivos discutir a importância da Educação a Distância, refletir sobre o papel das Tecnologias Assistivas no processo de inclusão das pessoas com deficiência e analisar as propostas do Curso de Aperfeiçoamento para Professores da Educação Inclusiva na modalidade EAD. Traz como metodologia análises documentais acerca da EAD e da Tecnologia Assistiva assim como uma apreciação do material do curso em questão, seguido de alguns depoimentos e como resultados apresenta-se análise dos benefícios proporcionados pela capacitação. Espera-se que o estudo contribua com as discussões acerca da inserção das tecnologias na inclusão e na escolarização de pessoas com necessidades especiais. 11. A expansão da EAD no Brasil e a política para formação de professores Este artigo tem por objetivo relacionar a expansão da Educação a Distância (EaD) no Brasil do século XXI, com as políticas para a formação de professores a partir da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação (LDB), Lei 9.394/1996. A pesquisa bibliográfica e documental analisa a normatização da EaD e os Programas para Formação de Docentes nessa modalidade, entre os anos de 1996 e 2012. Enfatiza que o crescimento da EaD no País está historicamente vinculado aos projetos governamentais para solucionar o crônico problema da carência de professores para a Educação Básica (EB). 12. Educação a distância online na universidade federal de Uberlândia: um percurso em consolidação A educação a distância (EaD) desde que foi contemplada na legislação vigente de nosso país, vem conquistando espaço em nossa sociedade e se consolidando como modalidade de ensino. Nessa perspectiva, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar essa modalidade de ensino na legislação educacional brasileira, bem como apresentar a sua constituição na Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU). Trata-se de um estudo bibliográfico e documental, com coleta de dados no website institucional do Centro de Educação a Distância da UFU (CEaD/UFU). A partir desses levantamentos apresentamos um breve histórico com base na LDB 9394/96 e sua implantação como modalidade de ensino no Brasil, bem como o percurso e sua constituição na UFU. Ao final, consideramos que o percurso na instituição tem avançado e vem conquistando espaço dentro do ambiente acadêmico, confirmando assim, os esforços desenvolvidos pelo CEaD, gestor da EaD na UFU. 13. Mediações educativas do bibliotecário: letramento informacionalEste estudo teve por finalidade conhecer em relação aos usuários da biblioteca, majoritariamente alunos dos cursos de enfermagem e nutrição, como avaliam o serviço de atendimento e os serviços e produtos de informação oferecidos pela biblioteca, e, através da avaliação decorrente, como propiciar o desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços que melhorem a gestão da informação e o provimento mais adequado das necessidades refletidas na pesquisa. Da análise dos dados coletados (91 questionários respondidos) foram criados um projeto para dinamização da coleção de periódicos impressos da biblioteca e o acesso virtual às bases de dados; diversos tutoriais e um curso on line (em teste) para o letramento informacional na área de saúde. 14. Aprendizagem com mobilidade no ensino de conhecimentos químicos: reflexões de uma pesquisa realizada com professores em formação inicial Na cibercultura tudo parece estar em rede e a rede está em todos os lugares (Paz, Neves e Alves, 2012). Ser conectado está no cerne dos governos, negócios, ciência, cultura e educação. A possibilidade de acessar informações no ciberespaço utilizando dispositivos móveis com acesso à Internet com conexão sem fio está revolucionando os processos de aprendizagem e o funcionamento de diversas instituições, entre elas, a escola. No entanto, a literatura acadêmica aponta que para incorporar as TIC de forma pedagógica e que resultem em verdadeira modificação no processo de ensino-aprendizagem é preciso repensar os currículos das licenciaturas, identificando e transformando as práticas dos futuros docentes a empregarem pedagogicamente essa tecnologia móvel em sua práxis pedagógica. Este trabalho apresenta uma pesquisa exploratória desenvolvida através de cooperação e colaboração por duas formadoras que elaboraram um estudo dirigido para ser utilizado em dispositivos móveis, com o objetivo de potencializar o processo de ensino aprendizagem dos acadêmicos do curso de Licenciatura em Química da Universidade Federal de Rondônia (UNIR), propiciando uma prática pedagógica para além do contexto formal físico e presencial. Apesar da grande expectativa de emprego desta tecnologia na área educacional, a pesquisa foi realizada em caráter voluntário, pois apenas alguns poucos acadêmicos tiveram acesso aos dispositivos móveis e também, com plataforma de trabalho compatível a utilizada neste trabalho. A pesquisa apresenta que a aprendizagem com mobilidade aumenta o interesse, a motivação e principalmente, a curiosidade dos acadêmicos em aprender de uma maneira diferente, mas, as limitações técnicas e sociais dos acadêmicos ainda são um grande problema a ser enfrentado. 15. O editor de apresentação como suporte e subsídio para as aulas de streaming: um recurso para aulas de matemática na modalidade a distância O streaming representa, atualmente, uma tecnologia que oferece vídeos comprimidos, o que permite a transmissão de imagens de TV por meio da internet, ao vivo ou não, em velocidade surpreendente, sem haver a necessidade de se salvar o arquivo no computador. Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar de que maneira o Editor de Apresentação pode ser utilizado como recurso e estratégia didática em aulas de streaming. Através do streaming torna-se possível e viável a transmissão rápida e ininterrupta de qualquer mídia eletrônica, representando um importante recurso a ser utilizado em aulas de matemática. Nessa modalidade de aulas de matemática podem ser transmitidas mídias no formato de vídeo e áudio. Assim, é possível a alunos, professores e tutores assistirem e escutarem mídias neste formato através da Internet e até mesmo participarem de eventos à distância ou de videoconferências ao vivo. Prof. Dr. António Moreira Departamento de Educação Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Las redes sociales y el internet soy hoy en día un potencial para las empresas, para el fortalecimiento de su imagen y su forma rápida de llegar a los clientes. En este trabajo se analiza el impacto del marketing digital en las PYMES de la provincia de Chimborazo en el Ecuador. Los resultados revelaron que las PYMES tienen una participación del 8,72% en las redes sociales, donde las microempresas llevan el 90,81%. La provincia de Chimborazo obtuvo una participación del 3,18%, donde Pichincha y Guayas obtienen 23,75% y 18,95% respectivamente. En el año 2015 las PYMES invirtieron alrededor de 15 millones de dólares en redes sociales. Finalmente se concluye que las ventas han ido creciendo en los últimos años, en un total de 116 millones y en las PYMES en 774 miles de dólares en el año 2018.
 Palabras Clave: análisis financiero, marketing digital, redes sociales.
 Referencias
 [1]M. Vega y G. Romero, Salvador; Guzman, “Marketing Digital Y Las Finanzas De Las Pymes Digital Marketing and the Finances of Smes,” RITI J., vol. 6, 2018.
 [2]J. L. Colvée, “Estrategias de marketing digital para pymes.,” Fimal Cent. S. L., pp. 13–196, 2013, [En línea]. Disponible: https://www.antoniovchanal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ANETCOM-Estrategias- de-mk-digital-para-pymes1.pdf.
 [3]Observatorio Regional de ia Sociedad de la Información de Castilla y León, “Marketing digital para Pymes,” Man. eCommerce, vol. 67, no. 11, p. 02, 2012,doi: CIF B85208577.
 [4]S. Cortés, “MARKETING DIGITAL Como Herramienta de Negocios para PyMES,” Univ. Chile Fac. Econ. y Negocios Ing. Comer., p. 147, 2011, [En línea]. Disponible:http://repositorio.uchile.cl/bitstream/handle/2250/116571/ec-cortes_v.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
 [5]Á. Sustaeta, “La importancia del SEO y el SEM en el emprendimiento,” p. 97, 2014, [En línea]. Disponible: https://repositorio.unican.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10902/6459/SUSTAETANAVARROANGELMANUEL. pdf?sequence=1.
 [6]F. Bilello, “Plan de social media adaptado a la empresa Queen ’ s,” 2016.
 [7]M. Mora, “Facebook Como Medio Publicitario,” Esc. Comun. Soc., vol. 1, pp. 1–137, 2009.
 [8]F. Meunier Rosas, “El uso de la red social Twitter como herramienta para la difusión de la información pública,” Razón y palabra, no. 81, pp. 48–8, 2012.
 [9]J. Martínez, “Guia empezar en linkedin,” pp. 1–22, 2012.
 [10]J. López, “Youtube Como Herramienta Para La Construcción De La Sociedad Del Conocimiento,” Publicación cuatrimestral. Edición continúa. Año, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–16, 2018.
 [11]G. Villanueva, Julián; Aced, Cristina; Armelini, “Cuadernos Del,” pp. 1–24, 2013.
 [12]R. E. Ron Amores y V. A. Sacoto Castillo, “Las PYMES ecuatorianas: Su impacto en el empleo como contribución del PIB PYMES al PIB total,” Espacios, vol. 38, no. 53, 2017.
 [13]G. S. Peña, Y. Caicedo, y S. A. Delgado, “Importancia de implementar el marketing digital en las pymes Colombianas frente al tratado de libre comercio con Estados Unidos,” Doc. Trab. ECACEN, vol. 0, no. 1, 2017, [En línea]. Disponible: http://hemeroteca.unad.edu. co/index.php/working/article/view/2558.
 [14]D. J. Baños, J. M. Oleas, y P. E. Ricaurte, “Evolución de las PYMES de la ciudad de RIOBAMABA mediante análisis multivariado en las competencias dela destión empresarial,” pp. 47–60, 2017.
 [15]R. A. Fornero, “Análisis Financiero con Información Contable,” p. 20, 2016, [En línea]. Disponible: http://www.unsa.edu.ar/afinan/dfe/trabajos_practicos/afic/AFIC Cap 1 Bases An%E1lisis financiero.pdf.
 [16]M. Maranto, Marisol; González, “Fuentes de Información Fuentes de Información,” pp. 1–17, 2015.
 [17]R. I. J. Andino, “Directorio de empresas y establecimientos 2018,” pp. 1–15, 2018, [En línea]. Disponible: http://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/documentos/webinec/Inflacion/2018/Enero-2018/01 ipc Presentacion_IPC_enero2018.pdf.
 [18]INEC, “Módulo de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) de las Encuestas de Manufactura y Minería, Comercio Interno y Servicios.” QU, 2015, [En línea]. Disponible: https://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/tecnologias-de-la-informacion-y-comunicacion-empresas/.
 [19]J. P. Del Alcázar Ponce, “Ecuador Estado Digital Ene/19,” Mentinno, p. 37, 2019, [En línea]. Disponible: https://drive.google.com/file/d/116eZRcn-FH-cLVWm-GGlt3jAn_SdG1aTL/view.
 [20]K. Bricio Samaniego, J. Calle Mejía, y M. Zambrano Paladines, “El marketing digital como herramienta en el desempeño laboral en el entorno ecuatoriano: estudio de caso de los egresados de la Universidad de Guayaquil,” Rev. Univ. y Soc., vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 103–109, 2018.

Abstract This article traces the historical moment when queer theory first arrived in mainland China in the early 2000s by comparing and contrasting two translated texts in Chinese: Wang Fengzhen’s book Guaiyi Lilun [Peculiar Theory] and Li Yinhe’s book Ku’er Lilun [A Cool Kid Theory]. Juxtaposing the two translators’ positioning and marketing strategies, along with their use of paratexts such as book cover design and translator’s prefaces, this article aims to explain why Ku’er Lilun ended up being a more popular and widely circulated text than Guaiyi Lilun. It also pinpoints the cultural specificities of queer theory’s reception in the postsocialist Chinese context at the beginning of the new millennium. This article hopes to provide critical insights into the politics of translating academic theories transnationally, with a focus on paratextual, extratextual, and contextual factors which work in tandem to shape the reception of these theories in a non-Western context.

reciente implantación en los estudios superiores, independientemente de las materias o áreas de las que se trate. Esto ha conllevado una falta de formación específica del profesorado universitario para atender demandas del alumnado. El objetivo de este trabajo fue validar la escala denominada POTAE-17, cuya finalidad es la de medir y valorar la práctica orientadora y tutorial en el alumnado y egresados universitarios. La muestra representativa, siguiendo un sistema de muestreo aleatorio proporcional, estuvo compuesta por 4003 estudiantes matriculados en 2º y 4º curso de las 24 titulaciones comunes en las universidades españolas de Granada y Jaén, máster y doctorado (35,22% hombres; 64,77% mujeres). A la misma se suman las otras instituciones participantes en el estudio general, Instituto Politécnico de Coímbra (Portugal) y Queen Mary University of London (Reino Unido), si bien los sujetos que aportan no presentan proporcionalidad al no haber coincidencia de estudios en estos países. Para el análisis de los datos se utilizó el paquete R Project for Statistical Computing y Lavaan de R. La escala POTAE-17 reflejó una estructura de 4 factores (orientación académica, orientación personal, orientación profesional, y orientación y TIC), mostrando la multidimensionalidad de la escala y una adecuada fiabilidad y validez. Estos resultados se apoyan en la necesidad de disponer de una medida que sea útil para el profesorado y alumnado en el ámbito de la orientación y la tutoría en el contexto universitario y, por ende, de fomentar la formación en acciones orientadoras universitarias.

IntroductionFirmly located within the discourse of visible culture as the lofty preserve of art exhibitions and museum artefacts, the noun “curate” has gradually transformed into the verb “to curate”. Williams writes that “curate” has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded to describe a creative activity. Designers no longer simply sell clothes; they “curate” merchandise. Chefs no longer only make food; they also “curate” meals. Chosen for their keen eye for a particular style or a precise shade, it is their knowledge of their craft, their reputation, and their sheer ability to choose among countless objects which make the creative process a creative activity in itself. Writing from within the framework of “curate” as a creative process, this article discusses how the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by Irish President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in May 2011, was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity. The paper will focus in particular on how the menu for the banquet was created and how the banquet’s brief, “Ireland on a Plate”, was fulfilled.History and BackgroundFood has been used by nations for centuries to display wealth, cement alliances, and impress foreign visitors. Since the feasts of the Numidian kings (circa 340 BC), culinary staging and presentation has belonged to “a long, multifaceted and multicultural history of diplomatic practices” (IEHCA 5). According to the works of Baughman, Young, and Albala, food has defined the social, cultural, and political position of a nation’s leaders throughout history.In early 2011, Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant in Dublin, was asked by the Irish Food Board, Bord Bía, if he would be available to create a menu for a high-profile banquet (Mahon 112). The name of the guest of honour was divulged several weeks later after vetting by the protocol and security divisions of the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lewis was informed that the menu was for the state banquet to be hosted by President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland the following May.Hosting a formal banquet for a visiting head of state is a key feature in the statecraft of international and diplomatic relations. Food is the societal common denominator that links all human beings, regardless of culture (Pliner and Rozin 19). When world leaders publicly share a meal, that meal is laden with symbolism, illuminating each diner’s position “in social networks and social systems” (Sobal, Bove, and Rauschenbach 378). The public nature of the meal signifies status and symbolic kinship and that “guest and host are on par in terms of their personal or official attributes” (Morgan 149). While the field of academic scholarship on diplomatic dining might be young, there is little doubt of the value ascribed to the semiotics of diplomatic gastronomy in modern power structures (Morgan 150; De Vooght and Scholliers 12; Chapple-Sokol 162), for, as Firth explains, symbols are malleable and perfectly suited to exploitation by all parties (427).Political DiplomacyWhen Ireland gained independence in December 1921, it marked the end of eight centuries of British rule. The outbreak of “The Troubles” in 1969 in Northern Ireland upset the gradually improving environment of British–Irish relations, and it would be some time before a state visit became a possibility. Beginning with the peace process in the 1990s, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a state visit was firmly set in motion by the visit of Irish President Mary Robinson to Buckingham Palace in 1993, followed by the unofficial visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland in 1995, and the visit of Irish President Mary McAleese to Buckingham Palace in 1999. An official invitation to Queen Elizabeth from President Mary McAleese in March 2011 was accepted, and the visit was scheduled for mid-May of the same year.The visit was a highly performative occasion, orchestrated and ordained in great detail, displaying all the necessary protocol associated with the state visit of one head of state to another: inspection of the military, a courtesy visit to the nation’s head of state on arrival, the laying of a wreath at the nation’s war memorial, and a state banquet.These aspects of protocol between Britain and Ireland were particularly symbolic. By inspecting the military on arrival, the existence of which is a key indicator of independence, Queen Elizabeth effectively demonstrated her recognition of Ireland’s national sovereignty. On making the customary courtesy call to the head of state, the Queen was received by President McAleese at her official residence Áras an Uachtaráin (The President’s House), which had formerly been the residence of the British monarch’s representative in Ireland (Robbins 66). The state banquet was held in Dublin Castle, once the headquarters of British rule where the Viceroy, the representative of Britain’s Court of St James, had maintained court (McDowell 1).Cultural DiplomacyThe state banquet provided an exceptional showcase of Irish culture and design and generated a level of preparation previously unseen among Dublin Castle staff, who described it as “the most stage managed state event” they had ever witnessed (Mahon 129).The castle was cleaned from top to bottom, and inventories were taken of the furniture and fittings. The Waterford Crystal chandeliers were painstakingly taken down, cleaned, and reassembled; the Killybegs carpets and rugs of Irish lamb’s wool were cleaned and repaired. A special edition Newbridge Silverware pen was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to sign the newly ordered Irish leather-bound visitors’ book. A new set of state tableware was ordered for the President’s table. Irish manufacturers of household goods necessary for the guest rooms, such as towels and soaps, hand creams and body lotions, candle holders and scent diffusers, were sought. Members of Her Majesty’s staff conducted a “walk-through” several weeks in advance of the visit to ensure that the Queen’s wardrobe would not clash with the surroundings (Mahon 129–32).The promotion of Irish manufacture is a constant thread throughout history. Irish linen, writes Kane, enjoyed a reputation as far afield as the Netherlands and Italy in the 15th century, and archival documents from the Vaucluse attest to the purchase of Irish cloth in Avignon in 1432 (249–50). Support for Irish-made goods was raised in 1720 by Jonathan Swift, and by the 18th century, writes Foster, Dublin had become an important centre for luxury goods (44–51).It has been Irish government policy since the late 1940s to use Irish-manufactured goods for state entertaining, so the material culture of the banquet was distinctly Irish: Arklow Pottery plates, Newbridge Silverware cutlery, Waterford Crystal glassware, and Irish linen tablecloths. In order to decide upon the table setting for the banquet, four tables were laid in the King’s Bedroom in Dublin Castle. The Executive Chef responsible for the banquet menu, and certain key personnel, helped determine which setting would facilitate serving the food within the time schedule allowed (Mahon 128–29). The style of service would be service à la russe, so widespread in restaurants today as to seem unremarkable. Each plate is prepared in the kitchen by the chef and then served to each individual guest at table. In the mid-19th century, this style of service replaced service à la française, in which guests typically entered the dining room after the first course had been laid on the table and selected food from the choice of dishes displayed around them (Kaufman 126).The guest list was compiled by government and embassy officials on both sides and was a roll call of Irish and British life. At the President’s table, 10 guests would be served by a team of 10 staff in Dorchester livery. The remaining tables would each seat 12 guests, served by 12 liveried staff. The staff practiced for several days prior to the banquet to make sure that service would proceed smoothly within the time frame allowed. The team of waiters, each carrying a plate, would emerge from the kitchen in single file. They would then take up positions around the table, each waiter standing to the left of the guest they would serve. On receipt of a discreet signal, each plate would be laid in front of each guest at precisely the same moment, after which the waiters would then about foot and return to the kitchen in single file (Mahon 130).Post-prandial entertainment featured distinctive styles of performance and instruments associated with Irish traditional music. These included reels, hornpipes, and slipjigs, voice and harp, sean-nόs (old style) singing, and performances by established Irish artists on the fiddle, bouzouki, flute, and uilleann pipes (Office of Public Works).Culinary Diplomacy: Ireland on a PlateLewis was given the following brief: the menu had to be Irish, the main course must be beef, and the meal should represent the very best of Irish ingredients. There were no restrictions on menu design. There were no dietary requirements or specific requests from the Queen’s representatives, although Lewis was informed that shellfish is excluded de facto from Irish state banquets as a precautionary measure. The meal was to be four courses long and had to be served to 170 diners within exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes (Mahon 112). A small army of 16 chefs and 4 kitchen porters would prepare the food in the kitchen of Dublin Castle under tight security. The dishes would be served on state tableware by 40 waiters, 6 restaurant managers, a banqueting manager and a sommélier. Lewis would be at the helm of the operation as Executive Chef (Mahon 112–13).Lewis started by drawing up “a patchwork quilt” of the products he most wanted to use and built the menu around it. The choice of suppliers was based on experience but also on a supplier’s ability to deliver perfectly ripe goods in mid-May, a typically black spot in the Irish fruit and vegetable growing calendar as it sits between the end of one season and the beginning of another. Lewis consulted the Queen’s itinerary and the menus to be served so as to avoid repetitions. He had to discard his initial plan to feature lobster in the starter and rhubarb in the dessert—the former for the precautionary reasons mentioned above, and the latter because it featured on the Queen’s lunch menu on the day of the banquet (Mahon 112–13).Once the ingredients had been selected, the menu design focused on creating tastes, flavours and textures. Several draft menus were drawn up and myriad dishes were tasted and discussed in the kitchen of Lewis’s own restaurant. Various wines were paired and tasted with the different courses, the final choice being a Château Lynch-Bages 1998 red and a Château de Fieuzal 2005 white, both from French Bordeaux estates with an Irish connection (Kellaghan 3). Two months and two menu sittings later, the final menu was confirmed and signed off by state and embassy officials (Mahon 112–16).The StarterThe banquet’s starter featured organic Clare Island salmon cured in a sweet brine, laid on top of a salmon cream combining wild smoked salmon from the Burren and Cork’s Glenilen Farm crème fraîche, set over a lemon balm jelly from the Tannery Cookery School Gardens, Waterford. Garnished with horseradish cream, wild watercress, and chive flowers from Wicklow, the dish was finished with rapeseed oil from Kilkenny and a little sea salt from West Cork (Mahon 114). Main CourseA main course of Irish beef featured as the pièce de résistance of the menu. A rib of beef from Wexford’s Slaney Valley was provided by Kettyle Irish Foods in Fermanagh and served with ox cheek and tongue from Rathcoole, County Dublin. From along the eastern coastline came the ingredients for the traditional Irish dish of smoked champ: cabbage from Wicklow combined with potatoes and spring onions grown in Dublin. The new season’s broad beans and carrots were served with wild garlic leaf, which adorned the dish (Mahon 113). Cheese CourseThe cheese course was made up of Knockdrinna, a Tomme style goat’s milk cheese from Kilkenny; Milleens, a Munster style cow’s milk cheese produced in Cork; Cashel Blue, a cow’s milk blue cheese from Tipperary; and Glebe Brethan, a Comté style cheese from raw cow’s milk from Louth. Ditty’s Oatmeal Biscuits from Belfast accompanied the course.DessertLewis chose to feature Irish strawberries in the dessert. Pat Clarke guaranteed delivery of ripe strawberries on the day of the banquet. They married perfectly with cream and yoghurt from Glenilen Farm in Cork. The cream was set with Irish Carrageen moss, overlaid with strawberry jelly and sauce, and garnished with meringues made with Irish apple balsamic vinegar from Lusk in North Dublin, yoghurt mousse, and Irish soda bread tuiles made with wholemeal flour from the Mosse family mill in Kilkenny (Mahon 113).The following day, President McAleese telephoned Lewis, saying of the banquet “Ní hé go raibh sé go maith, ach go raibh sé míle uair níos fearr ná sin” (“It’s not that it was good but that it was a thousand times better”). The President observed that the menu was not only delicious but that it was “amazingly articulate in terms of the story that it told about Ireland and Irish food.” The Queen had particularly enjoyed the stuffed cabbage leaf of tongue, cheek and smoked colcannon (a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with curly kale or green cabbage) and had noted the diverse selection of Irish ingredients from Irish artisans (Mahon 116). Irish CuisineWhen the topic of food is explored in Irish historiography, the focus tends to be on the consequences of the Great Famine (1845–49) which left the country “socially and emotionally scarred for well over a century” (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher 161). Some commentators consider the term “Irish cuisine” oxymoronic, according to Mac Con Iomaire and Maher (3). As Goldstein observes, Ireland has suffered twice—once from its food deprivation and second because these deprivations present an obstacle for the exploration of Irish foodways (xii). Writing about Italian, Irish, and Jewish migration to America, Diner states that the Irish did not have a food culture to speak of and that Irish writers “rarely included the details of food in describing daily life” (85). Mac Con Iomaire and Maher note that Diner’s methodology overlooks a centuries-long tradition of hospitality in Ireland such as that described by Simms (68) and shows an unfamiliarity with the wealth of food related sources in the Irish language, as highlighted by Mac Con Iomaire (“Exploring” 1–23).Recent scholarship on Ireland’s culinary past is unearthing a fascinating story of a much more nuanced culinary heritage than has been previously understood. This is clearly demonstrated in the research of Cullen, Cashman, Deleuze, Kellaghan, Kelly, Kennedy, Legg, Mac Con Iomaire, Mahon, O’Sullivan, Richman Kenneally, Sexton, and Stanley, Danaher, and Eogan.In 1996 Ireland was described by McKenna as having the most dynamic cuisine in any European country, a place where in the last decade “a vibrant almost unlikely style of cooking has emerged” (qtd. in Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 136). By 2014, there were nine restaurants in Dublin which had been awarded Michelin stars or Red Ms (Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 137). Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant, who would be chosen to create the menu for the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, has maintained a Michelin star since 2008 (Mac Con Iomaire, “Jammet’s” 138). Most recently the current strength of Irish gastronomy is globally apparent in Mark Moriarty’s award as San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 (McQuillan). As Deleuze succinctly states: “Ireland has gone mad about food” (143).This article is part of a research project into Irish diplomatic dining, and the author is part of a research cluster into Ireland’s culinary heritage within the Dublin Institute of Technology. The aim of the research is to add to the growing body of scholarship on Irish gastronomic history and, ultimately, to contribute to the discourse on the existence of a national cuisine. If, as Zubaida says, “a nation’s cuisine is its court’s cuisine,” then it is time for Ireland to “research the feasts as well as the famines” (Mac Con Iomaire and Cashman 97).ConclusionThe Irish state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011 was a highly orchestrated and formalised process. From the menu, material culture, entertainment, and level of consultation in the creative content, it is evident that the banquet was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity.The effects of the visit appear to have been felt in the years which have followed. Hennessy wrote in the Irish Times newspaper that Queen Elizabeth is privately said to regard her visit to Ireland as the most significant of the trips she has made during her 60-year reign. British Prime Minister David Cameron is noted to mention the visit before every Irish audience he encounters, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague has spoken in particular of the impact the state banquet in Dublin Castle made upon him. Hennessy points out that one of the most significant indicators of the peaceful relationship which exists between the two countries nowadays was the subsequent state visit by Irish President Michael D. Higgins to Britain in 2013. This was the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a President of Ireland and would have been unimaginable 25 years ago. The fact that the President and his wife stayed at Windsor Castle and that the attendant state banquet was held there instead of Buckingham Palace were both deemed to be marks of special favour and directly attributed to the success of Her Majesty’s 2011 visit to Ireland.As the research demonstrates, eating together unites rather than separates, gathers rather than divides, diffuses political tensions, and confirms alliances. It might be said then that the 2011 state banquet hosted by President Mary McAleese in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, curated by Ross Lewis, gives particular meaning to the axiom “to eat together is to eat in peace” (Taliano des Garets 160).AcknowledgementsSupervisors: Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire (Dublin Institute of Technology) and Dr Michael Kennedy (Royal Irish Academy)Fáilte IrelandPhotos of the banquet dishes supplied and permission to reproduce them for this article kindly granted by Ross Lewis, Chef Patron, Chapter One Restaurant ‹http://www.chapteronerestaurant.com/›.Illustration ‘Ireland on a Plate’ © Jesse Campbell BrownRemerciementsThe author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.ReferencesAlbala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. 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IntroductionIn 2017, both the disability community and popular culture are using the term “inspiration porn” to describe one form of discrimination against people with disability. ABC’s Speechless, “a sitcom about a family with a son who has a disability, (has) tackled why it’s often offensive to call people with disabilities ‘inspirational’” (Wanshel). The reasons why inspiration porn is considered to be discriminatory have been widely articulated online by people with disability. Amongst them is Carly Findlay, a disabled writer, speaker, and appearance activist, who has written that:(inspiration porn) shows non-disabled people doing good deeds for disabled people—feeding them chips at McDonald’s—’serving us all lessons in kindness’: or taking them to the high school dance. These stories usually always go viral. The person with disability probably never gave their permission for the photo or story to be used in a meme or told to the media (Findlay).The definition and dynamics of inspiration porn as illustrated in this quote will be expanded upon in this paper’s critical analysis of captions. Here, the term captions is used to describe both writing found on memes and on Facebook posts (created by a “poster”), and the comments written below these posts (created by “commenters”). Facebook threads underneath posts about people with disability both “reflect and create” (Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 202) current societal attitudes towards disability. That is, such threads not only illustrate negative societal attitudes towards disability, but can also perpetuate these attitudes by increasing people’s exposure to them. This paper will focus on a specific case study of inspiration porn on Facebook—the crowning of a student with autism as prom king—and consider both the conflict of whether people’s kind words are patronising use of language, as well as the concerns of over-disclosure used in this thread.What Is Inspiration Porn?The genesis of the term inspiration porn is commonly attributed to the late Stella Young, a disabled woman who was an advocate for people with disability. However, the term has been traced to a blog post written in February 2012 (bear). Anecdotal evidence from Lisa Harris, a disability consultant and advocate with over 20 years’ disability education experience, suggests that the term was blogged about as far back as 2006 on Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s Webpage Disability and Representation (Harris). However, it was Young who popularised the term with her 2012 article We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration and 2014 TED Talk I’m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much. Young defined inspiration porn as “an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary—like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball—carrying a caption like ‘your excuse is invalid’ or ‘before you quit, try’”.It is worth noting that the use of the word porn has been considered controversial in this context. Yet it can be argued that the perception of the person with disability having achieved something great gives the person without disability a hit of positive “inspired” emotion. In this way, such inspiration could be termed as porn as it serves the purpose of fulfilling the “pornographic” self-gratification of people without disability.The term inspiration porn has historically been used in disability studies in two ways. Firstly, it has been used to describe the “ableist gaze” (Davis), which is when a person with disability is ‘seen’ through the eyes of someone without disability. Indeed, just as the “male gaze” (Mulvey) is implicit in sexualised porn, so too the “ableist gaze” is implicit in inspiration porn. Secondly, it has been used to highlight the lack of power experienced by people with disability in cultural representation (Barnes, Mercer, and Shakespeare 201). This study is a good example of the latter—it is not uncommon for people with disability to be refuted when they speak out against the inherent discrimination found within captions of (intended) kindness on Facebook threads.Inspiration porn is also a form of “objectification” (Perry) of people with disability, and is based on stereotypes (Haller and Zhang 22) about disability held by people without disability. According to Dr. Paul Sinclair, a disability scholar with 15 years’ experience in disability education, objectification and stereotyping are essential factors to understanding inspiration porn as discrimination:when a person with disability engages in their daily life, it is possible that a person without disability sees them as inspirational by superimposing his/her stereotypical perception of, or understanding about, people with disability onto the identity of the person, as a human being.Such objectification and stereotyping of people with disability is evident across various media captioning. This is particularly so in social media which often includes memes of images with “inspiring” captions—such as the ones Young highlighted as clear examples of inspiration porn, which “feature the Hamilton quote (‘The only disability in life is a bad attitude’)”. Another example of this kind of captioning is found in news items such as the 2015 article Disabled Teen Crowned Homecoming Queen in Awesome Way as featured in the article USA Today (Saggio). This article described how a student not identified as having a disability gave her homecoming queen crown to a student with a disability and captioned the YouTube clip of these students with, “High school senior [Name] was hoping she’d be crowned homecoming queen. She has cerebral palsy and has never felt like she fit in at school. What happened during the crowning ceremony will warm your heart” (Saggio). The fact that the young woman was pleased with getting the crown does not mitigate the objectifying dynamics of inspiration porn present within this example. Captioning such as this both creates and reflects some of the existing attitudes—including charity and its appeal to emotionality—that perpetuate inspiration porn.Measuring Inspiration Porn with Sentiment AnalysisThe challenge for the researcher analysing Facebook threads is how to meaningfully interpret the captions’ numerous contexts. The methodology of this research used a quantitative approach to gather numerical data about selected Facebook captions. This paper discusses data gained from a sentiment analysis (Pang and Lee; Thelwall et al.; Driscoll) of these captions within the contexts of my own and other researchers’ analyses of inspiration porn, as well as the perspectives of people with disability.The sentiment analysis was conducted using SentiStrength, a software tool that extracts both positive and negative sentiment strengths “from short informal electronic text” (Thelwall et al., 2545), and ranks it “on a numerical scale” (Driscoll 3). Sentiment analysis and SentiStrength are useful, but not perfect, tools with which to analyse Facebook captions. For example, SentiStrength determines two scales: a positive emotion measurement scale ranging from +1 (neutral) to +5 (most positive), and a negative emotion measurement scale ranging from –1 (neutral) to –5 (most negative). It calculates the positive and negative scores concurrently rather than averaging them out in order to acknowledge that captions can and do express mixed emotion (Driscoll 5).News articles about people with disability attending proms and comparable events, such as the homecoming queen example described above, are often criticised by disability activists for perpetuating inspiration porn (Mort; Findlay; Brown). Based on this criticism, sentiment analysis was used in this research to measure the emotional strength of captions—particularly their possible use of patronising language—using the Autism Speaks Facebook post as a case study. The post featured an image of a high school student with autism who had been crowned prom king.The Autism Speaks Facebook page was set up to fund “research into the causes, prevention, treatments and a cure for autism; increas(e) awareness of autism spectrum disorders; and advocat(e) for the needs of individuals with autism and their families” (Autism Speaks). The location of the prom was not specified; however, Autism Speaks is based in New York. This particular Facebook page was selected for this study based on criticism that Autism Speaks receives from disability advocates. One of the major critiques is that “(its) advertising depends on offensive and outdated rhetoric of fear and pity, presenting the lives of autistic people as tragic burdens on our families and society” (Boycott Autism Speaks). Autism Speaks has also been described as a problematic example of an organisation that “dictate(s) how disability should be perceived and dealt with. Often without input of disabled people either in the design or implementation of these organizations” (crippledscholar). This article goes on to state that “charities always frame what they do as positive and helpful even when the people who are the intended recipients disagree.”The prom king post included a photo of a young man with autism after he was crowned. He was standing beside a woman who wasn’t identified. The photo, posted by the young man’s aunt on the Autism Speaks Facebook page, included a status update that read:My autistic nephew won PROM KING today! Just so you all know, having a disability doesn’t hold you back if you don’t let it! GO [NAME]. #AutismAwareness (Autism Speaks)The following caption from the comment thread of the same Facebook post is useful as an example of how SentiStrength works. The caption read:Tears of Joy! Thank you for posting!!! Wow this gives me hope for his and my son’s and everyone’s special wonderful child nephew and niece! Way cool!However, because SentiStrength does not always accurately detect and measure sarcasm or idiomatic language usage, ”Tears” (the only negatively interpreted word in this caption) has been scored as –4, while the overall positive sentiment was scored as 3. Therefore, the final SentiStrength score of this caption was 3, –4, thereby demonstrating both the utility and limitations of SentiStrength as a sentiment analysis tool. This is useful to understand when analysing the data it produces.When analysing the entire thread, the sentiment analysis results across 238 captions, showed that 2 was the average strength of positive emotion, and that –1.16 was the average strength of negative emotion. The following section will analyse how a specific caption chosen from the most positively-scored captions from these data indicates that inspiration porn is possibly evident within.Use of Language: Kind, or Patronising?This discussion analyses the use of language in one caption from this thread, focusing on the way it likely demonstrated the ableist gaze. The caption was the most positive one from these data as scored by SentiStrength (5, –1) and read, ”CONGRATULATIONS SWEETIE!!!”. While it is noted that basing this analysis primarily on one caption provides limited insight into the dynamics of inspiration porn, this analysis forms a basis from which to consider other “inspirational” Facebook posts about people with disability. As well as this caption, this discussion will also draw upon other examples mentioned in this paper—from the homecoming queen article in USA Today to another caption on the Autism Speaks thread—to illustrate the dynamics of inspiration porn.On the surface, this congratulatory caption seems like a kind thing to post. However, inspiration porn has been identified in this analysis based on the caption’s effusive use of punctuation coupled with use of capital letters and the word “sweetie”. The excitement depicted through use of multiple exclamation marks and capital letters implies that the commenter has a personal connection with the prom king, which is a possibility. However, this possibility becomes less feasible when the caption is considered within the context of other captions that display not dissimilar use of language, as well as some that also display intimate emojis, such as grin faces and love heart eyes. Further, when this use of language is used with any consistency across a thread and is not coupled with textual information that implies a personal connection between the commenter/s and the prom king, it could be interpreted as patronising, condescending and/or infantilising. In addition, “sweetie” is a term of endearment commonly used in conversation with a romantic partner, child, or someone the speaker/writer knows intimately. While, again, it is possible that these commenters knew the prom king intimately, a more likely possibility is that he was being written to by strangers, yet using language that implied he was close to them—which would then have the same patronising connotations as above. It can therefore be argued that there is a strong possibility that this heightened use of intimate and emotional language was chosen based on his autism diagnosis.The conclusion drawn above is based in part on contextual similarities between the Autism Speaks post and its associated thread, and the aforementioned homecoming queen news article. In the former, it is likely that the young prom king was congratulated effusively because of his autism diagnosis. Similarly, in the latter article, the young woman was crowned not because she was named homecoming queen, but because the crown was given to her because of her diagnosis of cerebral palsy. As both gestures appear to have been based on others’ perceptions of these individuals’ disabilities rather than on their achievements, they are both likely to be patronising gestures.Over-DisclosureIn addition to use of language, another noteworthy issue in the captions thread on the Autism Speaks Facebook page was that many of them were from parents disclosing the diagnosis of their child. One example of this was a post from a mother that read (in part):I’ll be over here worried & concerned with the other 9,999 & ½ things to deal with, keeping up with new therapies, current therapy, we came in progress from any past therapies, meltdowns, dietary restrictions, educational requirements, The joy and difficulties of not just learning a new word but actually retaining that word, sleep, being hit, keeping him from hitting himself, tags on clothes etc. etc. [sic] (Autism Speaks)The above commenter listed a number of disability-specific issues that she experienced while raising her son who has autism. The context for her caption was a discussion, unrelated to the original post, that had sparked underneath a sub-thread regarding whether the use of person-first language (“person with autism”) or identity-first language (“Autistic person”) was best when referring to someone with autism. The relationship between inspiration porn and this intimately negative post about someone with disability is that both types of post are examples of the “ableist gaze”: inspiration porn demonstrates an exaggerated sense of positivity based on someone’s disability, and this post demonstrates disregard for the privacy of the person being posted about—perhaps due to his disability. The ease with which this negative comparison (over-disclosure) can be made between ‘inspirational’ and ‘negative’ posts illustrates in part why inspiration porn is a form of discrimination—intentional or otherwise.Furthermore, some of the children who were disclosed about on the main thread were too young to be asked consent, and it is unclear whether those who were old enough had the capacity to provide informed consent. Research has found that online over-disclosure in general is a matter of concern.The specific practice of online over-disclosure from parents about their children—with or without disability—has been raised by Leaver (151), “what happens before young people have the agency, literacy or skills to take the reins of their own selves online? Parents, guardians, loved ones and others inevitably set the initial identity parameters for young people online.” Over-disclosure is therefore also an issue that concerns people with disability, and the people closest to them.There exists both anecdotal evidence and academic research regarding online over-disclosure about people with disability. The research states that when people with physical disability disclose online, they employ strategic approaches that involve the degree to which they disclose (Furr, Carreiro, and McArthur). This suggests that there are complex factors to consider around such disclosure. Also relevant is that the practice of over-disclosure about another person’s disability, regardless of whether that disclosure is made by a close family member, has been critiqued by people (Findlay; Stoltz) within the disability community: “would you publicly share this information about your other children, an aging parent, or yourself?” (Stoltz). Finally, the practice of disability over-disclosure by anyone other than the person themselves supports the understanding that inspiration porn is not about the “object” of inspiration; rather, it serves to give pleasure (and/or pain) to the objectifier.ConclusionInspiration porn via the ableist gaze is discriminatory because it focuses on a (societally) undesirable trait in a way that serves the “gazer” at the expense of the “gazed-at”. That is, people with disability are objectified and exploited in various ways that can initially appear to be positive to people without disability. For example, when someone with disability posts or is posted about on Facebook, a person without disability might then add a caption—possibly with good intentions—that serves as their “inspired” response to what it “must” be like to have a disability. It can be argued that such captions, whether on news articles or when framing social media images, therefore either reflect or create existing social inequalities—and possibly do both.In continuing to use the term inspiration porn to describe one form of discrimination against people with disability, both the disability community and popular culture are contributing to an important narrative that scholarship needs to continue to address. Indeed, the power imbalance that is celebrated within inspiration porn is in some ways more insidious than malicious discrimination against people with disability, because it is easier to mistake as kindness. The research sample presented in this paper supports the countless expressions of anecdotal evidence given by people with disability that this “kindness” is inspiration porn; a damaging expression of the ableist gaze.ReferencesAutism Speaks. Facebook 21 May 2017 <https://www.facebook.com/autismspeaks>.Barnes, Colin, Geof Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare. Exploring Disability. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.bear, romham a. “Inspiration Porn.” radical access mapping project 7 Apr. 2014. 21 May 2017 <https://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/inspiration-porn/>.The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, et al. “Why Boycott.” Boycott Autism Speaks, 6 Jan. 2014. 21 May 2017 <http://www.boycottautismspeaks.com/why-boycott-1.html>.Brown, Lydia X.Z. “Disabled People Are Not Your Feel-Good Back-Pats.” Autistic Hoya 11 Feb. 2016. 21 May 2017 <http://www.autistichoya.com/2016/02/disabled-people-are-not-your-feel-good-back-pats.html>.Crippledscholar. “Inspiration Porn Is Not Progress, It’s a New Kind of Oppression.” crippledscholar 5 May 2015. 21 May 2017 <https://crippledscholar.com/2015/05/05/inspiration-porn-is-not-progress-its-a-new-kind-of-oppression/>.Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995.Driscoll, Beth. “Sentiment Analysis and the Literary Festival Audience.” Continuum 29.6 (2015): 861–873.Findlay, Carly. “Inspiration and Objectification of People with Disability – A Resource for Teachers and Parents.” Tune into Radio Carly 5 Feb. 2017. 21 May 2017 <http://carlyfindlay.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/inspiration-and-objectification-of.html>.Findlay, Carly. “When Parents Overshare Their Children’s Disability.” Sydney Morning Herald 23 July 2015. 21 May 2017 <http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/when-parents-overshare-their-childrens-disability-20150724-gijtw6.html>.Furr, June B., Alexis Carreiro, and John A. McArthur. “Strategic Approaches to Disability Disclosure on Social Media.” Disability & Society 31.10 (2016): 1353–1368.Haller, Beth, and Lingling Zhang. “Stigma or Empowerment? What Do Disabled People Say about Their Representation in News and Entertainment Media?” Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal 9.4 (2014).Harris, Lisa. “Genesis of Term ‘Inspiration Porn’?” Letter. 5 Oct. 2016.Leaver, Tama. “Born Digital? Presence, Privacy, and Intimate Surveillance.” Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia. Studies in Narrative, Language, Identity, and Knowledge. Eds. John Hartley and Weigou Qu. Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2015. 23 May 2017 <https://www.academia.edu/11736307/Born_Digital_Presence_Privacy_and_Intimate_Surveillance>.Mulvey, Laura. “Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure.” Visual and Other Pleasures. 1975.Mort, Mike. “Pity and the Prom.” Disabled Identity 9 May 2016. 21 May 2017 <https://disabledidentity.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/pity-and-the-prom/>.Pang, Bo, and Lillian Lee. “Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis.” Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval 2.1-2 (2008): 1–135.Perry, David M. “How ‘Inspiration Porn’ Reporting Objectifies People with Disabilities.” The Establishment 25 Feb. 2016. 23 May 2017 <https://theestablishment.co/how-inspiration-porn-reporting-objectifies-people-with-disabilities-db30023e3d2b>.Saggio, Jessica. “Disabled Teen Crowned Homecoming Queen in Awesome Way.” USA Today 13 Nov. 2015. 21 May 2017 <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/humankind/2015/11/13/disabled-teen-crowned-homecoming-queen-awesome-way/75658376/>.Sinclair, Paul. “Inspiration Porn: Email Interview.” Letter. 21 Oct 2016.Stoltz, Melissa. “Parents of Children with Disabilities: Are We Speaking with or for a Community?” Two Thirds of the Planet 22 Jan. 2016. 21 May 2017 <http://www.twothirdsoftheplanet.com/parents-disability/>.Thelwall, Mike, et al. “Sentiment Strength Detection in Short Informal Text.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61.12 (2010): 2544–2558.Wanshel, Elyse. “This Show Just Schooled Everyone on ‘Inspiration Porn’.” Huffington Post 16 Jan. 2017. 21 May 2017 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/speechless-disability-porn_us_5877ddf6e4b0e58057fdc342>.Young, Stella. “I’m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much.” TED Talk Apr. 2014. 21 May 2017 <https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much>.Young, Stella. “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration.” ABC Ramp Up 1 July 2012. 21 May 2017 <http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2012/07/02/3537035.htm>.

We take as our subject what many would deem a waste of good celluloid: the degraded cultural form of the stoner film. Stoner films plot the experiences of the wasted (those intoxicated on marijuana) as they exhibit wastefulness—excessiveness, improvidence, decay—on a number of fronts. Stoners waste time in constantly hunting for pot and in failing to pursue more productive activity whilst wasted. Stoners waste their minds, both literally, if we believe contested studies that indicate marijuana smoking kills brains cells, and figuratively, in rendering themselves cognitively impaired. Stoners waste their bodies through the dangerous practice of smoking and through the tendency toward physical inertia. Stoners waste money on marijuana firstly, but also on such sophomoric accoutrements as the stoner film itself. Stoners lay waste to convention in excessively seeking pleasure and in dressing and acting outrageously. And stoners, if the scatological humour of so many stoner films is any index, are preoccupied with bodily waste. Stoners, we argue here, waste whiteness as well. As the likes of Jesse and Chester (Dude, Where’s My Car?), Wayne and Garth (Wayne’s World), Bill and Ted (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Jay and Silent Bob (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) make clear, whiteness looms large in stoner films. Yet the genre, we argue, disavows its own whiteness, in favour of a post-white hybridity that lavishly squanders white privilege. For all its focus on whiteness, filmic wastedness has always been an ethnically diverse and ambiguous category. The genre’s origins in the work of Cheech Marin, a Chicano, and Tommy Chong, a Chinese-European Canadian, have been buttressed in this regard by many African American contributions to the stoner oeuvre, including How High, Half Baked and Friday, as well as by Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and its Korean-American and Indian-American protagonists. Cheech and Chong initiated the genre with the release of Up in Smoke in 1978. A host of films have followed featuring protagonists who spend much of their time smoking and seeking marijuana (or—in the case of stoner films such as Dude, Where’s My Car? released during the height of the War on Drugs—acting stoned without ever being seen to get stoned). Inspired in part by the 1938 anti-marijuana film Reefer Madness, and the unintended humour such propaganda films begat amongst marijuana smokers, stoner films are comedies that satirise both marijuana culture and its prohibition. Self-consciously slapstick, the stoner genre excludes more serious films about drugs, from Easy Rider to Shaft, as well as films such as The Wizard of Oz, Yellow Submarine, the Muppet movies, and others popular amongst marijuana smokers because of surreal content. Likewise, a host of films that include secondary stoner characters, such as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, are commonly excluded from the genre on the grounds that the stoner film, first and foremost, celebrates stonerism, that is “serious commitment to smoking and acquiring marijuana as a lifestyle choice.” (Meltzer). Often taking the form of the “buddy film,” stoner flicks generally feature male leads and frequently exhibit a decidedly masculinist orientation, with women, for the most part reduced to little more than the object of the white male gaze.The plot, such as it is, of the typical stoner film concerns the search for marijuana (or an accessory, such as junk food) and the improbable misadventures that ensue. While frequently represented as resourceful and energetic in their quest for marijuana, filmic stoners otherwise exhibit ambivalent attitudes toward enterprise that involves significant effort. Typically represented as happy and peaceable, filmic stoners rarely engage in conflict beyond regular clashes with authority figures determined to enforce anti-drug laws, and other measures that stoners take to be infringements upon happiness. While Hollywood’s stoners thus share a sense of entitlement to pleasure, they do not otherwise exhibit a coherent ideological orthodoxy beyond a certain libertarian and relativistic open-mindedness. More likely to take inspiration from comic book heroes than Aldous Huxley or Timothy Leary, stoners are most often portrayed as ‘dazed and confused,’ and could be said to waste the intellectual tradition of mind expansion that Leary represents. That stoner films are, at times, misunderstood to be quintessentially white is hardly suprising. As a social construct that creates, maintains and legitimates white domination, whiteness manifests, as one of its most defining features, an ability to swallow up difference and to insist upon, at critical junctures, a universal subjectivity that disallows for difference (hooks 167). Such universalising not only sanctions co-optation of ethnic cultural expression, it also functions to mask whiteness’s existence, thus reinforcing its very power. Whiteness, as Richard Dyer argues, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. It obfuscates itself and its relationship to the particular traits it is said to embody—disinterest, prudence, temperance, rationality, bodily restraint, industriousness (3). Whiteness is thus constructed as neither an ethnic nor racial particularity, but rather the transcendence of such positionality (Wiegman 139). While non-whites are raced, to be white is to be “just human” and thus to possess the power to “claim to speak for the commonality of humanity” whilst denying the accrual of any particular racial privilege (Dyer 2). In refuting its own advantages—which are so wide ranging (from preferential treatment in housing loans, to the freedom to fail without fear of reflecting badly on other whites) that they are, like whiteness itself, both assumed and unproblematic—whiteness instantiates individualism, allowing whites to believe that their successes are in no way the outcome of systematic racial advantage, but rather the product of individual toil (McIntosh; Lipsitz). An examination of the 1978 stoner film Up in Smoke suggests that whatever the ethnic ambiguity of the figure of the stoner, the genre of the stoner film is all about the wasting of whiteness. Up in Smoke opens with two alternating domestic scenes. We first encounter Pedro De Pacas (Cheech Marin) in a cluttered and shadowy room as his siblings romp affectionately upon his back, waking him from his slumber on the couch. Pedro rises, stepping into a bowl of cereal on the floor. He stumbles to the bathroom, where, sleepy and disoriented, he urinates into the laundry hamper. The chaos of Pedro’s disrupted sleep is followed in the film by a more metaphoric awakening as Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong) determines to leave home. The scene takes place in a far more orderly, light and lavish room. The space’s overpowering whiteness is breached only by the figure of Anthony and his unruly black hair, bushy black beard, and loud Hawaiian shirt, which vibrates with colour against the white walls, white furnishings and white curtains. We watch as Anthony, behind an elaborate bar, prepares a banana protein shake, impassively ignoring his parents, both clothed in all-white, as they clutch martini glasses and berate their son for his lack of ambition. Arnold Stoner [father]: Son, your mother and me would like for you to cozy up to the Finkelstein boy. He's a bright kid, and, uh... he's going to military school, and remember, he was an Eagle Scout. Tempest Stoner [mother]: Arnold…Arnold Stoner: [shouts over/to his wife] Will you shut up? We’re not going to have a family brawl!Tempest Stoner: [continues talking as her husband shouts]…. Retard.Arnold Stoner: [to Anthony] We've put up with a hell of a lot.[Anthony starts blender] Can this wait? ... Build your goddamn muscles, huh? You know, you could build your muscles picking strawberries.You know, bend and scoop... like the Mexicans. Shit, maybe I could get you a job with United Fruit. I got a buddy with United Fruit. ... Get you started. Start with strawberries, you might work your way up to these goddamn bananas! When, boy? When...are you going to get your act together?Anthony: [Burps]Tempest Stoner: Gross.Arnold Stoner: Oh, good God Almighty me. I think he's the Antichrist. Anthony, I want to talk to you. [Anthony gathers his smoothie supplements and begins to walk out of the room.] Now, listen! Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you! You get a goddamn job before sundown, or we're shipping you off to military school with that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid! Son of a bitch!The whiteness of Anthony’s parents is signified so pervasively and so strikingly in this scene—in their improbable white outfits and in the room’s insufferably white décor—that we come to understand it as causative. The rage and racism of Mr. Stoner’s tirade, the scene suggests, is a product of whiteness itself. Given that whiteness achieves and maintains its domination via both ubiquity and invisibility, what Up in Smoke accomplishes in this scene is notable. Arnold Stoner’s tortured syntax (“that goddamn Finkelstein shit kid”) works to “mak[e] whiteness strange” (Dyer 4), while the scene’s exaggerated staging delineates whiteness as “a particular – even peculiar – identity, rather than a presumed norm” (Roediger, Colored White 21). The belligerence of the senior Stoners toward not only their son and each other, but the world at large, in turn, functions to render whiteness intrinsically ruthless and destructive. Anthony’s parents, in all their whiteness, enact David Roediger’s assertion that “it is not merely that ‘Whiteness’s is oppressive and false; it is that ‘Whiteness’s is nothing but oppressive and false” (Toward the Abolition 13).Anthony speaks not a word during the scene. He communicates only by belching and giving his parents the finger as he leaves the room and the home. This departure is significant in that it marks the moment when Anthony, hereafter known only as “Man,” flees the world of whiteness. He winds up taking refuge in the multi-hued world of stonerism, as embodied in the scene that follows, which features Pedro emerging from his home to interact with his Chicano neighbours and to lovingly inspect his car. As a lowrider, a customised vehicle that “begin[s] with the abandoned materials of one tradition (that of mainstream America), … [and is] … then transformed and recycled . . . into new and fresh objects of art which are distinctly Chicano,” Pedro’s car serves as a symbol of the cultural hybridisation that Man is about to undergo (quoted in Ondine 141).As Man’s muteness in the presence of his parents suggests, his racial status seems tentative from the start. Within the world of whiteness, Man is the subaltern, silenced and denigrated, finding voice only after he befriends Pedro. Even as the film identifies Man as white through his parental lineage, it renders indeterminate its own assertion, destabilising any such fixed or naturalised schema of identity. When Man is first introduced to Pedro’s band as their newest member, James, the band’s African American bass player, looks at Man, dressed in the uniform of the band, and asks: “Hey Pedro, where’s the white dude you said was playing the drums?” Clearly, from James’s point of view, the room contains no white dudes, just stoners. Man’s presumed whiteness becomes one of the film’s countless gags, the provocative ambiguity of the casting of a Chinese-European to play a white part underscored in the film by the equally implausible matter of age. Man, according to the film’s narrative, is a high school student; Chong was forty when the film was released. Like his age, Man’s whiteness is never a good fit. That Man ultimately winds up sleeping on the very couch upon which we first encounter Pedro suggests how radical and final the break with his dubious white past is. The “Mexicans” whom his father would mock as fit only for abject labour are amongst those whom Man comes to consider his closest companions. In departing his parents’ white world, and embracing Pedro’s dilapidated, barrio-based world of wastedness, Man traces the geographies narrated by George Lipsitz in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Historically, Lipsitz argues, the development of affluent white space (the suburbs) was made possible by the disintegration of African American, Chicano and other minority neighbourhoods disadvantaged by federal, state, and corporate housing, employment, health care, urban renewal, and education policies that favoured whites over non-whites. In this sense, Man’s flight from his parents’ home is a retreat from whiteness itself, and from the advantages that whiteness conveys. In choosing the ramshackle, non-white world of stonerism, Man performs an act of racial treachery. Whiteness, Lipsitz contends, has “cash value,” and “is invested in, like property, but it is also a means of accumulating property and keeping it from others,” which allows for “intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations” (vii-viii). Man’s disavowal of the privileges of whiteness is a reckless refusal to accept this racial birthright. Whiteness is thus wasted upon Man because Man wastes his whiteness. Given the centrality of prudence and restraint to hegemonic constructions of whiteness, Man’s willingness to squander the “valuable asset” that is his white inheritance is especially treasonous (Harris 1713). Man is the prodigal son of whiteness, a profligate who pours down the drain “the wages of whiteness” that his forbearers have spent generations accruing and protecting (Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness). His waste not only offends the core values which whiteness is said to comprise, it also denigrates whiteness itself by illuminating the excess of white privilege, as well as the unarticulated excess of meanings that hover around whiteness to create the illusion of transcendence and infinite variety. Man’s performance, like all bad performances of whiteness, “disrupt[s] implicit understandings of what it means to be white” (Hartigan 46). The spectre of seeing white domination go ‘up in smoke’—via wasting, as opposed to hoarding, white privilege—amounts to racial treason, and helps not only to explicate why whites in the film find stonerism so menacing, but also to explain the paradox of “pot [making] the people who don’t smoke it even more paranoid than the people who do” (Patterson). While Tommy Chong’s droll assertion that "what makes us so dangerous is that we're harmless" ridicules such paranoia, it ultimately fails to account for the politics of subversive squandering of white privilege that characterise the stoner film (“Biographies”). Stoners in Up in Smoke, as in most other stoner films, are marked as non-white, through association with ethnic Others, through their rejection of mainstream ideas about work and achievement, and/or through their lack of bodily restraint in relentlessly seeking pleasure, in dressing outrageously, and in refusing to abide conventional grooming habits. Significantly, the non-white status of the stoner is both voluntary and deliberate. While stonerism embraces its own non-whiteness, its Otherness is not signified, primarily, through racial cross-dressing of the sort Eric Lott detects in Elvis, but rather through race-mixing. Stoner collectivity practices an inclusivity that defies America’s historic practice of racial and ethnic segregation (Lott 248). Stonerism further reveals its unwillingness to abide constrictive American whiteness in a scene in which Pedro and Man, both US-born Americans, are deported. The pair are rounded up along with Pedro’s extended family in a raid initiated when Pedro’s cousin “narcs” on himself to la migra (the Immigration and Naturalization Service) in order to get free transport for his extended family to his wedding in Tijuana. Pedro and Man return to the US as unwitting tricksters, bringing back to the US more marijuana than has ever crossed the Mexican-US border at one time, fusing the relationship between transnationalism and wastedness. The disrespect that stoners exhibit for pregnable US borders contests presumed Chicano powerlessness in the face of white force and further affronts whiteness, which historically has mobilised itself most virulently at the threat of alien incursion. Transgression here is wilful and playful; stoners intend to offend normative values and taste through their actions, their dress, and non-white associations as part of the project of forging a new hybridised, transnational subjectivity that threatens to lay waste to whiteness’s purity and privilege. Stoners invite the scrutiny of white authority with their outrageous attire and ethnically diverse composition, turning the “inevitability of surveillance” (Borrie 87) into an opportunity to enact their own wastedness—their wasted privilege, their wasted youth, their wasted potential—before a gaze that is ultimately confounded and threatened by the chaotic hybridity with which it is faced (Hebdige 26). By perpetually displaying his/her wasted Otherness, the stoner makes of him/herself a “freak,” a label cops use derisively throughout Up in Smoke to denote the wasted without realising that stoners define themselves in precisely such terms, and, by doing so, obstruct whiteness’s assertion of universal subjectivity. Pedro’s cousin Strawberry (Tom Skerritt), a pot dealer, enacts freakishness by exhibiting a large facial birthmark and by suffering from Vietnam-induced Post Traumatic Stress disorder. A freak in every sense of the word, Strawberry is denied white status by virtue of physical and mental defect. But Strawberry, as a stoner, ultimately wants whiteness even less than it wants him. The defects that deny him membership in the exclusive “club” that is whiteness prove less significant than the choice he makes to defect from the ranks of whiteness and join with Man in the decision to waste his whiteness wantonly (“Editorial”). Stoner masculinity is represented as similarly freakish and defective. While white authority forcefully frustrates the attempts of Pedro and Man to “score” marijuana, the duo’s efforts to “score” sexually are thwarted by their own in/action. More often than not, wastedness produces impotence in Up in Smoke, either literally or figuratively, wherein the confusion and misadventures that attend pot-smoking interrupt foreplay. The film’s only ostensible sex scene is unconsummated, a wasted opportunity for whiteness to reproduce itself when Man sleeps through his girlfriend’s frenzied discussion of sex. During the course of Up in Smoke, Man dresses as a woman while hitchhiking, Pedro mistakes Man for a woman, Man sits on Pedro’s lap when they scramble to change seats whilst being pulled over by the police, Man suggests that Pedro has a “small dick,” Pedro reports liking “manly breasts,” and Pedro—unable to urinate in the presence of Sgt. Stedenko—tells his penis that if it does not perform, he will “put [it] back in the closet.” Such attenuations of the lead characters’ masculinity climax in the penultimate scene, in which Pedro, backed by his band, performs “Earache My Eye,” a song he has just composed backstage, whilst adorned in pink tutu, garter belt, tassle pasties, sequined opera mask and Mickey Mouse ears: My momma talkin’ to me tryin’ to tell me how to liveBut I don't listen to her cause my head is like a sieveMy daddy he disowned me cause I wear my sister's clothesHe caught me in the bathroom with a pair of pantyhoseMy basketball coach he done kicked me off the teamFor wearing high heeled sneakers and acting like a queen“Earache My Eye” corroborates the Othered natured of stonerism by marking stoners, already designated as non-white, as non-straight. In a classic iteration of a bad gender performance, the scene rejects both whiteness and its hegemonic partners-in-crime, heterosexuality and normative masculinity (Butler 26). Here stoners waste not only their whiteness, but also their white masculinity. Whiteness, and its dependence upon “intersection … [with] interlocking axes [of power such as] gender … [and] sexuality,” is “outed” in this scene (Shome 368). So, too, is it enfeebled. In rendering masculinity freakish and defective, the film threatens whiteness at its core. For if whiteness can not depend upon normative masculinity for its reproduction, then, like Man’s racial birthright, it is wasted. The stoner’s embodiment of freakishness further works to emphasise wasted whiteness by exposing just how hysterical whiteness’s defense of its own normativity can be. Up in Smoke frequently inflates not only the effects of marijuana, but also the eccentricities of those who smoke it, a strategy which means that much of the film’s humour turns on satirising hegemonic stereotypes of marijuana smokers. Equally, Cheech Marin’s exaggerated “slapstick, one-dimensional [portrayal] of [a] Chicano character” works to render ridiculous the very stereotypes his character incarnates (List 183). While the film deconstructs processes of social construction, it also makes extensive use of counter-stereotyping in its depictions of characters marked as white. The result is that whiteness’s “illusion of [its] own infinite variety” is contested and the lie of whiteness as non-raced is exposed, helping to explain the stoner’s decision to waste his/her whiteness (Dyer 12; 2). In Up in Smoke whiteness is the colour of straightness. Straights, who are willing neither to smoke pot nor to tolerate the smoking of pot by others/Others, are so comprehensively marked as white in the film that whiteness and straightness become isomorphic. As a result, the same stereotypes are mobilised in representing whiteness and straightness: incompetence, belligerence, hypocrisy, meanspiritedness, and paranoia, qualities that are all the more oppressive because virtually all whites/straights in the film occupy positions of authority. Anthony’s spectacularly white parents, as we have seen, are bigoted and dominating. Their whiteness is further impugned by alcohol, which fuels Mr. Stoner’s fury and Mrs. Stoner’s unintelligibility. That the senior Stoners are drunk before noon works, of course, to expose the hypocrisy of those who would indict marijuana use while ignoring the social damage alcohol can produce. Their inebriation (revealed as chronic in the DVD’s outtake scenes) takes on further significance when it is configured as a decidedly white attribute. Throughout the film, only characters marked as white consume alcohol—most notably, the judge who is discovered to be drinking vodka whist adjudicating drug charges against Pedro and Man—therefore dislodging whiteness’s self-construction as temperate, and suggesting just how wasted whiteness is. While stonerism is represented as pacific, drunkenness is of a piece with white/straight bellicosity. In Up in Smoke, whites/straights crave confrontation and discord, especially the angry, uptight, and vainglorious narcotics cop Sgt. Stedenko (Stacey Keech) who inhabits so many of the film’s counter-stereotypes. While a trio of white cops roughly apprehend and search a carload of innocent nuns in a manner that Man describes as “cold blooded,” Stedenko, unawares in the foreground, gives an interview about his plans for what he hopes will be the biggest border drug bust in US history: “[Reporter:] Do you expect to see any violence here today? [Sgt. Stedenko:] I certainly hope so.” Stedenko’s desire to act violently against stoners echoes mythologies of white regeneration in the Old West, wherein whiteness refurbished itself through violent attacks on Native Americans, whose wasteful cultures failed to make “civilised” use of western lands (Slotkin 565).White aggression is relentlessly depicted in the film, with one important exception: the instance of the stoned straight. Perhaps no other trope is as defining of the genre, as is the scene wherein a straight person accidentally becomes stoned. Up in Smoke offers several examples, most notably the scene in which a motorcycle cop pulls over Pedro and Man as they drive a van belonging to Pedro’s Uncle Chuey. In a plot twist requiring a degree of willing suspension of disbelief that even wasted audiences might find a stretch, the exterior shell of the van, unbeknownst to Pedro and Man, is made entirely of marijuana which has started to smoulder around the exhaust pipe. The cop, who becomes intoxicated whilst walking through the fumes, does not hassle Pedro and Man, as expected, but instead asks for a bite of their hot dog and then departs happily, instructing the duo to “have a nice day.” In declining, or perhaps simply forgetting, to exercise his authority, the cop demonstrates the regenerative potential not of violent whiteness but rather of hybrid wastedness. Marijuana here is transformative, morphing straight consciousness into stoner consciousness and, in the process, discharging all the uptight, mean-spirited, unnecessary, and hence wasteful baggage of whiteness along the way. While such a utopian potential for pot is both upheld and satirised in the film, the scene amounts to far more than an inconsequential generic gag, in that it argues for the disavowal of whiteness via the assumption of the voluntary Otherness that is stonerism. Whiteness, the scene suggests, can be cast off, discarded, wasted and thus surmounted. Whites, for want of a better phrase, simply need to ‘just say no’ to whiteness in order to excrete the brutality that is its necessary affliction and inevitable result. While Up in Smoke laudably offers a powerful refusal to horde the assets of whiteness, the film fails to acknowledge that ‘just saying no’ is, indeed, one of whiteness’s exclusive privileges, since whites and only whites possess the liberty to refuse the advantages whiteness bestows. Non-whites possess no analogical ability to jettison the social constructions to which they are subjected, to refuse the power of dominant classes to define their subjectivity. Neither does the film confront the fact that Man nor any other of Up in Smoke’s white freaks are disallowed from re-embracing their whiteness, and its attendant value, at any time. However inchoate the film’s challenge to racial privilege, Up in Smoke’s celebration of the subversive pleasures of wasting whiteness offers a tentative, if bleary, first step toward ‘the abolition of whiteness.’ Its utopian vision of a post-white hybridised subjectivity, however dazed and confused, is worthy of far more serious contemplation than the film, taken at face value, might seem to suggest. Perhaps Up in Smoke is a stoner film that should also be viewed while sober. ReferencesBill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Dir. Stephen Herek. Orion Pictures Corporation, 1989.“Biographies”. 10 June 2010 ‹http://www.cheechandchongfans.com/biography.html›. Borrie, Lee. "Wild Ones: Containment Culture and 1950s Youth Rebellion”. Diss. University of Canterbury, 2007.Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 17-32.Chavoya, C. Ondine. “Customized Hybrids: The Art of Ruben Ortiz Torres and Lowriding in Southern California”. CR: The New Centennial Review 4.2 (2004): 141-84.Clerks. Dir. Kevin Smith. Miramax Films, 1994. Dazed and Confused. Dir. Richard Linklater. Cineplex Odeon Films, 1993. Dude, Where’s My Car? Dir. Danny Leiner. Twentieth Century Fox, 2000.Dyer, Richard. White: Essays on Race and Culture. London: Routledge, 1997.“Editorial: Abolish the White Race—By Any Means Necessary”. Race Traitor 1 (1993). 9 June 2010 ‹http://racetraitor.org/abolish.html›.Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Dir. Amy Heckerling. Universal Pictures, 1982.Friday. Dir. F. Gary Gray. New Line Cinema, 1995.Half Baked. Dir. Tamra Davis. Universal Pictures, 1998.Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004.Harris, Cheryl. “Whiteness as Property”. Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 1707-1791. Hartigan, John Jr. “Objectifying ‘Poor Whites and ‘White Trash’ in Detroit”. White Trash: Race and Class in America. Eds. Matt Wray, and Annalee Newitz. NY: Routledge, 1997. 41-56.Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.How High. Dir. Jesse Dylan. Universal Pictures, 2001.Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit fromIdentity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2006. List, Christine. "Self-Directed Stereotyping in the Films of Cheech Marin”. Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance. Ed. Chon A. Noriega. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. 183-94.Lott, Eric. “Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness”. The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1999. 241-55.McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. 10 June 2010 ‹http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf›.Meltzer, Marisa. “Leisure and Innocence: The Eternal Appeal of the Stoner Movie”. Slate 26 June 2007. 10 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.slate.com/id/2168931›.Toni Morrison. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Patterson, John. “High and Mighty”. The Guardian 7 June 2008. 10 June 2010 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/jun/07/2›.Roediger, David. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002.Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Rev. ed. London: Verso Books, 1999.———. Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Class and Politics. London: Verso Books, 1994.Shome, Raka. “Outing Whiteness”. Critical Studies in Media Communication 17.3 (2000): 366-71.Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1973.Up in Smoke. Dir. Lou Adler. Paramount Pictures, 1978.Wayne’s World. Dir. Penelope Spheeris. Paramount Pictures, 1992.Wiegman, Robyn. “Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity”. boundary 2 26.3 (1999): 115-50.

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

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare.Bernard LevinPsoriatic arthritis, in its acute or “generalised” stage, is unbearably painful. Exacerbating the crippling of the joints, the entire surface of the skin is covered with lesions only moderately salved by anti-inflammatory ointment, the application of which is as painful as the ailment it seeks to relieve: NURSE MILLS: I’ll be as gentle as I can.Marlow’s face again fills the screen, intense concentration, comical strain, and a whispered urgency in the voice over—MARLOW: (Voice over) Think of something boring—For Christ’s sake think of something very very boring—Speech a speech by Ted Heath a sentence long sentence from Bernard Levin a quiz by Christopher Booker a—oh think think—! Really boring! A Welsh male-voice choir—Everything in Punch—Oh! Oh! — (Potter 17-18)Marlow’s collation of boring things as a frantic liturgy is an attempt to distract himself from a tumescence that is both unwanted and out of place. Although bed-ridden and in constant pain, he is still sensitive to erogenous stimulation, even when it is incidental. The act of recollection, of garnering lists of things that bore him, distracts him from his immediate situation as he struggles with the mental anguish of the prospect of a humiliating orgasm. Literary lists do many things. They provide richness of detail, assemble and corroborate the materiality of the world of which they are a part and provide insight into the psyche and motivation of the collator. The sheer desperation of Dennis Potter’s Marlow attests to the arbitrariness of the list, the simple requirement that discrete and unrelated items can be assembled in linear order, without any obligation for topical concatenation. In its interrogative form, the list can serve a more urgent and distressing purpose than distraction:GOLDBERG: What do you use for pyjamas?STANLEY: Nothing.GOLDBERG: You verminate the sheet of your birth.MCCANN: What about the Albigensenist heresy?GOLDBERG: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?MCCANN: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?(Pinter 51)The interrogative non sequitur is an established feature of the art of intimidation. It is designed to exert maximum stress in the subject through the use of obscure asides and the endowing of trivial detail with profundity. Harold Pinter’s use of it in The Birthday Party reveals how central it was to his “theatre of menace.” The other tactic, which also draws on the logic of the inventory to be both sequential and discontinuous, is to break the subject’s will through a machine-like barrage of rhetorical questions that leave no time for answers.Pinter learned from Samuel Beckett the pitiless, unforgiving logic of trivial detail pushed to extremes. Think of Molloy’s dilemma of the sucking stones. In order for all sixteen stones that he carries with him to be sucked at least once to assuage his hunger, a reliable system has to be hit upon:Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced with a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced with the stone that was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. And when the desire to suck took hold of me again, I drew again on the right pocket of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time. And while I sucked it I rearranged the other stones in the way I have just described. And so on. (Beckett, Molloy 69)And so on for six pages. Exhaustive permutation within a finite lexical set is common in Beckett. In the novel Watt the eponymous central character is charged with serving his unseen master’s dinner as well as tidying up afterwards. A simple and bucolic enough task it would seem. But Beckett’s characters are not satisfied with conjecture, the simple assumption that someone must be responsible for Mr. Knott’s dining arrangements. Like Molloy’s solution to the sucking stone problem, all possible scenarios must be considered to explain the conundrum of how and why Watt never saw Knott at mealtime. Twelve possibilities are offered, among them that1. Mr. Knott was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that he was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.2. Mr. Knott was not responsible for the arrangement, but knew who was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.(Beckett, Watt 86)This stringent adherence to detail, absurd and exasperating as it is, is the work of fiction, the persistence of a viable, believable thing called Watt who exists as long as his thought is made manifest on a page. All writers face this pernicious prospect of having to confront and satisfy “fiction’s gargantuan appetite for fact, for detail, for documentation” (Kenner 70). A writer’s writer (Philip Marlow) Dennis Potter’s singing detective struggles with the acute consciousness that words eventually will fail him. His struggle to overcome verbal entropy is a spectre that haunts the entire literary imagination, for when the words stop the world stops.Beckett made this struggle the very stuff of his work, declaring famously that all he wanted to do as a writer was to leave “a stain upon the silence” (quoted in Bair 681). His characters deteriorate from recognisable people (Hamm in Endgame, Winnie in Happy Days) to mere ciphers of speech acts (the bodiless head Listener in That Time, Mouth in Not I). During this process they provide us with the vocabulary of entropy, a horror most eloquently expressed at the end of The Unnamable: I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. (Beckett, Molloy 418)The importance Beckett accorded to pauses in his writing, from breaks in dialogue to punctuation, stresses the pacing of utterance that is in sync with the rhythm of human breath. This is acutely underlined in Jack MacGowran’s extraordinary gramophone recording of the above passage from The Unnamable. There is exhaustion in his voice, but it is inflected by an urgent push for the next words to forestall the last gasp. And what might appear to be parsimony is in fact the very commerce of writing itself. It is an economy of necessity, when any words will suffice to sustain presence in the face of imminent silence.Hugh Kenner has written eloquently on the relationship between writing and entropy, drawing on field and number theory to demonstrate how the business of fiction is forever in the process of generating variation within a finite set. The “stoic comedian,” as he figures the writer facing the blank page, self-consciously practices their art in the full cognisance that they select “elements from a closed set, and then (arrange) them inside a closed field” (Kenner 94). The nouveau roman (a genre conceived and practiced in Beckett’s lean shadow) is remembered in literary history as a rather austere, po-faced formalism that foregrounded things at the expense of human psychology or social interaction. But it is emblematic of Kenner’s portrait of stoicism as an attitude to writing that confronts the nature of fiction itself, on its own terms, as a practice “which is endlessly arranging things” (13):The bulge of the bank also begins to take effect starting from the fifth row: this row, as a matter of fact, also possesses only twenty-one trees, whereas it should have twenty-two for a true trapezoid and twenty-three for a rectangle (uneven row). (Robbe-Grillet 21)As a matter of fact. The nouveau roman made a fine if myopic art of isolating detail for detail’s sake. However, it shares with both Beckett’s minimalism and Joyce’s maximalism the obligation of fiction to fill its world with stuff (“maximalism” is a term coined by Michel Delville and Andrew Norris in relation to the musical scores of Frank Zappa that opposes the minimalism of John Cage’s work). Kenner asks, in The Stoic Comedians, where do the “thousands on thousands of things come from, that clutter Ulysses?” His answer is simple, from “a convention” and this prosaic response takes us to the heart of the matter with respect to the impact on writing of Isaac Newton’s unforgiving Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the law’s strictest physical sense of the dissipation of heat, of the loss of energy within any closed system that moves, the stipulation of the Second Law predicts that words will, of necessity, stop in any form governed by convention (be it of horror, comedy, tragedy, the Bildungsroman, etc.). Building upon and at the same time refining the early work on motion and mass theorised by Aristotle, Kepler, and Galileo, inter alia, Newton refined both the laws and language of classical mechanics. It was from Wiener’s literary reading of Newton that Kenner segued from the loss of energy within any closed system (entropy) to the running silent out of words within fiction.In the wake of Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic turn in thinking in the 1940s, which was highly influenced by Newton’s Second Law, fiction would never again be considered in the same way (metafiction was a term coined in part to recognise this shift; the nouveau roman another). Far from delivering a reassured and reassuring present-ness, an integrated and ongoing cosmos, fiction is an isometric exercise in the struggle against entropy, of a world in imminent danger of running out of energy, of not-being:“His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat…” Four nouns, and the book’s world is heavier by four things. One, the hat, “Plasto’s high grade,” will remain in play to the end. The hand we shall continue to take for granted: it is Bloom’s; it goes with his body, which we are not to stop imagining. The peg and the overcoat will fade. “On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off.” Four more things. (Kenner 87)This passage from The Stoic Comedians is a tour de force of the conjuror’s art, slowing down the subliminal process of the illusion for us to see the fragility of fiction’s precarious grip on the verge of silence, heroically “filling four hundred empty pages with combinations of twenty-six different letters” (xiii). Kenner situates Joyce in a comic tradition, preceded by Gustave Flaubert and followed by Beckett, of exhaustive fictive possibility. The stoic, he tells us, “is one who considers, with neither panic nor indifference, that the field of possibilities available to him is large perhaps, or small perhaps, but closed” (he is prompt in reminding us that among novelists, gamblers and ethical theorists, the stoic is also a proponent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) (xiii). If Joyce is the comedian of the inventory, then it is Flaubert, comedian of the Enlightenment, who is his immediate ancestor. Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) is an unfinished novel written in the shadow of the Encyclopaedia, an apparatus of the literate mind that sought complete knowledge. But like the Encyclopaedia particularly and the Enlightenment more generally, it is fragmentation that determines its approach to and categorisation of detail as information about the world. Bouvard and Pécuchet ends, appropriately, in a frayed list of details, pronouncements and ephemera.In the face of an unassailable impasse, all that is left Flaubert is the list. For more than thirty years he constructed the Dictionary of Received Ideas in the shadow of the truncated Bouvard and Pécuchet. And in doing so he created for the nineteenth century mind “a handbook for novelists” (Kenner 19), a breakdown of all we know “into little pieces so arranged that they can be found one at a time” (3): ACADEMY, FRENCH: Run it down but try to belong to it if you can.GREEK: Whatever one cannot understand is Greek.KORAN: Book about Mohammed, which is all about women.MACHIAVELLIAN: Word only to be spoken with a shudder.PHILOSOPHY: Always snigger at it.WAGNER: Snigger when you hear his name and joke about the music of the future. (Flaubert, Dictionary 293-330)This is a sample of the exhaustion that issues from the tireless pursuit of categorisation, classification, and the mania for ordered information. The Dictionary manifests the Enlightenment’s insatiable hunger for received ideas, an unwieldy background noise of popular opinion, general knowledge, expertise, and hearsay. In both Bouvard and Pécuchet and the Dictionary, exhaustion was the foundation of a comic art as it was for both Joyce and Beckett after him, for the simple reason that it includes everything and neglects nothing. It is comedy born of overwhelming competence, a sublime impertinence, though not of manners or social etiquette, but rather, with a nod to Oscar Wilde, the impertinence of being definitive (a droll epithet that, not surprisingly, was the title of Kenner’s 1982 Times Literary Supplement review of Richard Ellmann’s revised and augmented biography of Joyce).The inventory, then, is the underlining physio-semiotics of fictional mechanics, an elegiac resistance to the thread of fiction fraying into nothingness. The motif of thermodynamics is no mere literary conceit here. Consider the opening sentence in Borges:Of the many problems which exercised the reckless discernment of Lönnrot, none was so strange—so rigorously strange, shall we say—as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti. (Borges 76)The subordinate clause, as a means of adjectival and adverbial augmentation, implies a potentially infinite sentence through the sheer force of grammatical convention, a machine-like resistance to running out of puff:Under the notable influence of Chesterton (contriver and embellisher of elegant mysteries) and the palace counsellor Leibniz (inventor of the pre-established harmony), in my idle afternoons I have imagined this story plot which I shall perhaps write someday and which already justifies me somehow. (72)In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a single adjective charmed with emphasis will do to imply an unseen network:The visible work left by this novelist is easily and briefly enumerated. (Borges 36)The annotation of this network is the inexorable issue of the inflection: “I have said that Menard’s work can be easily enumerated. Having examined with care his personal files, I find that they contain the following items.” (37) This is a sample selection from nineteen entries:a) A Symbolist sonnet which appeared twice (with variants) in the review La conque (issues of March and October 1899).o) A transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry’s Le cimitière marin (N.R.F., January 1928).p) An invective against Paul Valéry, in the Papers for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (37-38)Lists, when we encounter them in Jorge Luis Borges, are always contextual, supplying necessary detail to expand upon character and situation. And they are always intertextual, anchoring this specific fictional world to others (imaginary, real, fabulatory or yet to come). The collation and annotation of the literary works of an imagined author (Pierre Menard) of an invented author (Edmond Teste) of an actual author (Paul Valéry) creates a recursive, yet generative, feedback loop of reference and literary progeny. As long as one of these authors continues to write, or write of the work of at least one of the others, a persistent fictional present tense is ensured.Consider Hillel Schwartz’s use of the list in his Making Noise (2011). It not only lists what can and is inevitably heard, in this instance the European 1700s, but what it, or local aural colour, is heard over:Earthy: criers of artichokes, asparagus, baskets, beans, beer, bells, biscuits, brooms, buttermilk, candles, six-pence-a-pound fair cherries, chickens, clothesline, cockles, combs, coal, crabs, cucumbers, death lists, door mats, eels, fresh eggs, firewood, flowers, garlic, hake, herring, ink, ivy, jokebooks, lace, lanterns, lemons, lettuce, mackeral, matches […]. (Schwartz 143)The extended list and the catalogue, when encountered as formalist set pieces in fiction or, as in Schwartz’s case, non-fiction, are the expansive equivalent of le mot juste, the self-conscious, painstaking selection of the right word, the specific detail. Of Ulysses, Kenner observes that it was perfectly natural that it “should have attracted the attention of a group of scholars who wanted practice in compiling a word-index to some extensive piece of prose (Miles Hanley, Word Index to Ulysses, 1937). More than any other work of fiction, it suggests by its texture, often by the very look of its pages, that it has been painstakingly assembled out of single words…” (31-32). In a book already crammed with detail, with persistent reference to itself, to other texts, other media, such formalist set pieces as the following from the oneiric “Circe” episode self-consciously perform for our scrutiny fiction’s insatiable hunger for more words, for invention, the Latin root of which also gives us the word inventory:The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the Presbyterian moderator, the heads of the Baptist, Anabaptist, Methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. (Joyce, Ulysses 602-604)Such examples demonstrate how Joycean inventories break from narrative as architectonic, stand-alone assemblages of information. They are Rabelaisian irruptions, like Philip Marlow’s lesions, that erupt in swollen bas-relief. The exaggerated, at times hysterical, quality of such lists, perform the hallucinatory work of displacement and condensation (the Homeric parallel here is the transformation of Odysseus’s men into swine by the witch Circe). Freudian, not to mention Stindberg-ian dream-work brings together and juxtaposes images and details that only make sense as non-sense (realistic but not real), such as the extraordinary explosive gathering of civic, commercial, political, chivalric representatives of Dublin in this foreshortened excerpt of Bloom’s regal campaign for his “new Bloomusalem” (606).The text’s formidable echolalia, whereby motifs recur and recapitulate into leitmotifs, ensures that the act of reading Ulysses is always cross-referential, suggesting the persistence of a conjured world that is always already still coming into being through reading. And it is of course this forestalling of Newton’s Second Law that Joyce brazenly conducts, in both the textual and physical sense, in Finnegans Wake. The Wake is an impossible book in that it infinitely sustains the circulation of words within a closed system, creating a weird feedback loop of cyclical return. It is a text that can run indefinitely through the force of its own momentum without coming to a conclusion. In a text in which the author’s alter ego is described in terms of the technology of inscription (Shem the Penman) and his craft as being a “punsil shapner,” (Joyce, Finnegans 98) Norbert Wiener’s descriptive example of feedback as the forestalling of entropy in the conscious act of picking up a pencil is apt: One we have determined this, our motion proceeds in such a way that we may say roughly that the amount by which the pencil is not yet picked up is decreased at each stage. (Wiener 7) The Wake overcomes the book’s, and indeed writing’s, struggle with entropy through the constant return of energy into its closed system as a cycle of endless return. Its generative algorithm can be represented thus: “… a long the riverrun …” (628-3). The Wake’s sense of unending confounds and contradicts, in advance, Frank Kermode’s averring to Newton’s Second Law in his insistence that the progression of all narrative fiction is defined in terms of the “sense of an ending,” the expectation of a conclusion, whereby the termination of words makes “possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle” (Kermode 17). It is the realisation of the novel imagined by Silas Flannery, the fictitious author in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, an incipit that “maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning” (Calvino 140). Finnegans Wake is unique in terms of the history of the novel (if that is indeed what it is) in that it is never read, but (as Joseph Frank observed of Joyce generally) “can only be re-read” (Frank 19). With Wiener’s allegory of feedback no doubt in mind, Jacques Derrida’s cybernetic account of the act of reading Joyce comes, like a form of echolalia, on the heels of Calvino’s incipit, his perpetual sustaining of the beginning: you stay on the edge of reading Joyce—for me this has been going on for twenty-five or thirty years—and the endless plunge throws you back onto the river-bank, on the brink of another possible immersion, ad infinitum … In any case, I have the feeling that I haven’t yet begun to read Joyce, and this “not having begun to read” is sometimes the most singular and active relationship I have with his work. (Derrida 148) Derrida wonders if this process of ongoing immersion in the text is typical of all works of literature and not just the Wake. The question is rhetorical and resonates into silence. And it is silence, ultimately, that hovers as a mute herald of the end when words will simply run out.Post(script)It is in the nature of all writing that it is read in the absence of its author. Perhaps the most typical form of writing, then, is the suicide note. In an extraordinary essay, “Goodbye, Cruel Words,” Mark Dery wonders why it has been “so neglected as a literary genre” and promptly sets about reviewing its decisive characteristics. Curiously, the list features amongst its many forms: I’m done with lifeI’m no goodI’m dead. (Dery 262)And references to lists of types of suicide notes are among Dery’s own notes to the essay. With its implicit generic capacity to intransitively add more detail, the list becomes in the light of the terminal letter a condition of writing itself. The irony of this is not lost on Dery as he ponders the impotent stoicism of the scribbler setting about the mordant task of writing for the last time. Writing at the last gasp, as Dery portrays it, is a form of dogged, radical will. But his concluding remarks are reflective of his melancholy attitude to this most desperate act of writing at degree zero: “The awful truth (unthinkable to a writer) is that eloquent suicide notes are rarer than rare because suicide is the moment when language fails—fails to hoist us out of the pit, fails even to express the unbearable weight” (264) of someone on the precipice of the very last word they will ever think, let alone write. Ihab Hassan (1967) and George Steiner (1967), it would seem, were latecomers as proselytisers of the language of silence. But there is a queer, uncanny optimism at work at the terminal moment of writing when, contra Dery, words prevail on the verge of “endless, silent night.” (264) Perhaps when Newton’s Second Law no longer has carriage over mortal life, words take on a weird half-life of their own. Writing, after Socrates, does indeed circulate indiscriminately among its readers. There is a dark irony associated with last words. When life ceases, words continue to have the final say as long as they are read, and in so doing they sustain an unlikely, and in their own way, stoical sense of unending.ReferencesBair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978.Beckett, Samuel. Molloy Malone Dies. The Unnamable. London: John Calder, 1973.---. Watt. London: John Calder, 1976.Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.Calvino, Italo. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Trans. 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