Horror Cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Benjamin Balthaser
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Political Unconscious ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
The Road ◽  
Postindustrial City ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
A Site

In both art and politics, the deindustrialized city would seem to have taken on the qualities of the “unrepresentable,” a traumatic experience that can only be recorded by its attendant silence, or of depoliticized representation in genres such as “ruin porn.” Despite or perhaps because of this, the postindustrial city is ubiquitous within the genres of scifi/speculative, fantasy, and horror cinema, appearing consistently as backdrop, symbol, animus, and even in some cases, character. Given the wide literature on horror film, haunting, and traumatic memory, this article suggests we read the emergence of the “horror city” as a representation of the political unconscious of this historical conjuncture. Many films refer back to older mythologies of imperial and racial conquest, but also by doing so represent the symbol of modernity—the city—as travel back to a traumatic past. Yet within this return to history, there is a contest over allegory. Contrasting neoconservative narratives of films like The Road (dir. John Hillcoat, US, 2009) and the slasher film Hostel (dir. Eli Roth, US/Germany/Czech Republic/Slovakia/Iceland, 2005) suggests that the future has not vanished but rather has been spatially dislocated to the peripheries, as the modern site of production returns to inflict pain only on those unaware of its existence. And perhaps more radical still, two independent films, Vampz (dir. Steve Lustgarten, US, 2004) and Hood of the Living Dead (dir. Eduardo and Jose Quiroz, US, 2005), suggest that the abandoned city is still a site for the basic labor of human reproduction even as the infrastructure of full employment has vanished. As a counternarrative to both “ruin porn” and the “horror city,” these low-budget films offer the deindustrialized city as a site of mutuality and political contestation rather than a mystified object of horror and abjection.

scholarly journals Design of Optimal Rainfall Monitoring Network Using Radar and Road Networks

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 378
Author(s):  
Taeyong Kwon ◽  
Seongsim Yoon ◽  
Sanghoo Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Road Networks ◽  
Monitoring Network ◽  
Conditional Entropy ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
The Road ◽  
Dam Operation ◽  
A Site ◽  
High Degree

Uncertainty in the rainfall network can lead to mistakes in dam operation. Sudden increases in dam water levels due to rainfall uncertainty are a high disaster risk. In order to prevent these losses, it is necessary to configure an appropriate rainfall network that can effectively reflect the characteristics of the watershed. In this study, conditional entropy was used to calculate the uncertainty of the watershed using rainfall and radar data observed from 2018 to 2019 in the Goesan Dam and Hwacheon Dam watersheds. The results identified radar data suitable for the characteristics of the watershed and proposed a site for an additional rainfall gauge. It is also necessary to select the location of the additional rainfall gauged by limiting the points where smooth movement and installation, for example crossing national borders, are difficult. The proposed site emphasized accessibility and usability by leveraging road information and selecting a radar grid near the road. As a practice result, the uncertainty of precipitation in the Goesan and Hwacheon Dam watersheds could be decreased by 70.0% and 67.9%, respectively, when four and three additional gauge sites were installed without any restriction. When these were installed near to the road, with five and four additional gauge sites, the uncertainty in the Goesan Dam and Hwacheon Dam watersheds were reduced by up to 71.1%. Therefore, due to the high degree of uncertainty, it is necessary to measure precipitation. The operation of the rainfall gauge can provide a smooth site and configure an appropriate monitoring network.

scholarly journals Hunger strike and the force-feeding chair: Guantanamo Bay and corporeal surrender

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin Ibrahim ◽  
Anita Howarth
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Body ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Full Disclosure ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
Force Feeding ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
A Site ◽  
Corporeal Body

Through the biotechnology of the force-feeding chair and the hunger strike in Guantanamo, this paper examines the camp as a site of necropolitics where bodies inhabit the space of the Muselmann – a figure Agamben invokes in Auschwitz to capture the predicament of the living dead. Sites of incarceration produce an aesthetic of torture and the force-feeding chair embodies the disciplining of the body and the extraction of pain while imposing the biopolitics of the American empire on “terrorist bodies”. Not worthy of human rights or death, the force-fed body inhabits a realm of indistinction between animal and human. The camp as an interstitial space which is beyond closure as well as full disclosure produces an aesthetic of torture on the racialised Other through the force-feeding chair positioned between visibility and non-visibility. Through the discourse of medical ethics and the legal struggle for rights, the force-feeding chair emerges as a symbol of necropolitics where the hunger strike becomes a mechanism to impede death while possessing and violating the corporeal body.

The Road Back to Full Employment

1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-197
Author(s):  
Fred Argy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Road ◽  
Australian Economy ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
Wage Outcomes ◽  
Major Project

Over the last two years the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) carried out a major project: a vision for the Australian economy and practical policies to attain that vision by the year 2000. One of the key goals was to halve the official unemployment rate. The results are outlined in this article. Emphasis is placed on a policy and incentive structure that is skewed in favour of exports, productive investment and savings, a more structurally efficient and flexible labour market, responsible aggregate wage outcomes and acceptance that growth is only sustainable if the short—term costs of structural reform are borne equitably.

scholarly journals Moscow Boarding School Pupils in the Ural Rear: Reflection of Military Reality in Synchronous Ego-Documents

TECHNOLOGOS ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 123-133
Author(s):  
Potemkina Marina ◽  
Lushina Tatiana
Keyword(s):  
Practical Interest ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
School Students ◽  
The Road ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Clear Differentiation

The Relevance of studying the features of childrens’ perception of extreme conditions transformationis is dictated not only by the need to preserve the traumatic experience of the great Patriotic war. Ongoing military conflicts in the modern world lead to the fact that the victims are civilians including children. Their perception of extreme situations and adaptation mechanisms are of scientific and practical interest. Based on synchronous egodocuments written by children the author examines childrens' perception of the evacuation road to the Ural rear and the image of the enemy during the great Patriotic war. The purpose of this study is to examine the perception and representation of military reality in childrens' writings. The main part of the sources were school essays, notes and poems for the local wall newspaper, written by the Moscow boarding school’s pupils evacuated to Molotov region. The value of children's ego-documents is determined by the fact that they allow us to identify the value system of war children and the degree of influence of official propaganda on the child's psyche. The topic of children's perception in a military reality has been covered in Russian historiography, but researchers rarely use such sources as children's texts intended for wall newspapers. The methodology of the research is based on the theoretical positions and methods of military-historical anthropology, methods of studying and representing oral history. This study highlights the stories that left a mark on the child's psyche: the road to evacuation, living conditions and training of boarding school students in the Soviet rear, ideas about the war, the enemies and the Red Army. It is concluded that in the conditions of war there was a further militarization of children's consciousness. The peculiarities of children's perception of the war are emotionality, simplicity, a clear differentiation between friend or foe categoricalness. The image of the enemy is not different from the key national-Patriotic stereotypes associated with the great Patriotic war. Children's assessments of what is happening and their attitude to the enemy are mostly formed by rhetoric, ideology, and propaganda.

Site Unseen

Site Reading ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 149-156
Author(s):  
David J. Alworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Road ◽  
Sociological Thought ◽  
The Moment ◽  
A Site

This chapter argues that to perform a site reading of Cormac McCarthy's The Road is to appreciate how the text functions as a novel of purpose that aims to vivify the planet as what Latour would call a “matter of concern.” Still, The Road reads less as a critique of contemporary social problems than as a “thought-experiment,” a sort of literary climate model, forecasting a chillingly plausible correlation between a ruined site and a grisly social order. By imagining this correlation through narrative form, McCarthy offers his own striking contribution to environmental and sociological thought, a contribution that starts to become apparent the moment we ask how his setting functions as an actant, both in the novel itself and beyond.

Session 1

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Edna B. Foa ◽  
Elizabeth A. Hembree ◽  
Barbara Olasov Rothbaum ◽  
Sheila A. M. Rauch
Keyword(s):  
General Information ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Presenting Problems ◽  
Imaginal Exposure ◽  
Alcohol And Drugs ◽  
In The Beginning

In the beginning of this first PE session, the therapist presents the patient with an overall rationale for PE and describes the main tools of the therapy: imaginal exposure and in vivo exposure. The therapist uses the Trauma Interview to collect general information about the immediate presenting problems, the patient’s functioning, the traumatic experience(s), physical and mental health since the trauma, social support, and use of alcohol and drugs. The Trauma Interview is also designed to aid in the identification of the target trauma. This is the traumatic memory that will be the focus of treatment. Identifying the target trauma is a critical element of effective PE. The patient is also taught breathing retraining in this session.

The Road to Full Employment.

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Michael Collins ◽  
Sean Glynn ◽  
Alan Booth
Keyword(s):  
Full Employment ◽  
The Road

An Iron-Age Site near Radley, Berks.

1931 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-404
Author(s):  
E. Thurlow Leeds
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Limited Area ◽  
The South ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
The Road ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
South West ◽  
Westerly Direction ◽  
Northern Edge ◽  
A Site

In 1928 by courteous permission of Mr. Badcock, the owner, the Oxford University Archaeological Society, under the supervision of Mr. R. T. Lattey, was able to examine a site in a field bounded on the west by the road leading from Radley village to Abingdon and on the south by a second road leading eastwards towards Radley station. There, on the wall of a disused gravelpit, holes filled with earth had produced evidence of human occupation. Exploration of some of these resulted in the discovery of a series of trenches, the relation of which to one another could not be exactly determined owing to the limited area available for investigation. One piece of trench ran with a somewhat north-easterly trend up to the northern edge of the field, with a recessed pit about 4½ ft. across at one point, while a second longer stretch, after running in a north-westerly direction for a few yards, turned almost at right angles towards the south-west, and some distance farther on, at the point where the excavations had to cease, appeared to be bending southwards.

scholarly journals Trauma, Narrative and History: Representation of Traumatic Experience in the Works of Algirdas Landsbergis

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-323
Author(s):  
Gabija Bankauskaitė ◽  
Loreta Huber
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Individual Event ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stressful Experience ◽  
Event Based ◽  
Trauma Fiction

The twentieth century witnessed an abundant number of traumatic events related to dark history. Trauma caused by war, occupation, exile, repression, gave rise to migration or mass murder. To rely upon Cathy Caruth (1996: 3), the concept of trauma is understood as a physical wound; however, subsequently in medicine and the literature of psychiatry, especially in Freud’s works, the concept of trauma came to be understood as a psychological wound. In addition, trauma is not only a disturbing or stressful experience that affects an individual physically or psychologically, it may also be based on other factors created by society. Over time the field of trauma in various contexts expanded so that today it is widely used in sociology when analysing historical and cultural events. Cultural traumatic memory is mirrored in trauma fiction that conveys the experience of loss and suffering, there is a space for memories, introspection, recollections, flashbacks and awful remembrances that are colored by pain. Apart from individual, event-based trauma, there is another category of trauma variously called cultural or historical trauma, which affects groups of people. Numerous studies have been conducted on the latter topic, however, trauma and its expression in Lithuanian literature has not yet been sufficiently documented. The aim of this study is to discuss the concepts of cultural and historical trauma and the way trauma is reflected in Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis’ works. The authors of the study claim that Landsbergis – one of many Lithuanian writers-in-exile – wrote texts that fill a cultural vacuum and invite a re-discussion of what was most painful in the past.

scholarly journals Trauma as Social Vaccine in Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Cristian Vîjea
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Conservative View ◽  
Social Cause

This article looks into Scott’s use of trauma as a fictional construct. Despite Scott’s indebtedness to the Scottish Enlightenment Weltanschauung, his descriptions of trauma in Guy Mannering come incredibly close to the distinctions analyzed in trauma studies today. Very sensitive to the elements of absence and loss, Scott mirrors traumatic memory in his narrative strategy as well. Young Bertram and the readers are able to process the traumatic experience into a narrative and recover the lost ‘historical’ narrative only after a long process in which Bertram’s ‘acting out’ memories trigger responses in his former community which help him recover a narrative of the traumatic events. Scott fulfills the task of the ‘historian’ to detraumatize events (White 87). Trauma and the element of absence have a social cause and a deeper ripple. They function as a social vaccine, strengthening the weakened social structure against radical impulses. These impulses are at loggerheads with Scott’s conservative view, which unites Whig principles with a Torry perspective (Trumpener 715). Being at the center of a social imbalance caused by radical measures, trauma can be healed only with the help of the community whose immune mechanisms expel and neutralize the pathological development, of a society in which enlightened official forces cooperate with the marginal social strata and outcasts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document