The Dialogic Expansion of Garcia’s We: Chronotopes, Ethics, and Politics in The Expanse Series

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-191
Author(s):  
Eamon Reid
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Discrete Events ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
Generic System

Abstract Popular culture could be understood as a political battleground where conflicting meanings are inscribed into the “ordinary objects” that constitute that public sphere. This is also true for science fiction television series. This article critically examines how political matters and ethical agencies are represented within The Expanse, a series that takes place within a speculative twenty-fourth century milky way. Firstly, I will situate The Expanse within its generic “system of reference.” Then, I will illustrate how political matters are represented as conjoined with the ethical. While the ethical refers to actions of persons, politics refers to fictional conceptions of what Tristan Garcia’s terms we-ourselves, understood as conflicting and overlapping conceptions of “we.” The conjunction between the political and the ethical in The Expanse is spatiotemporal: the characters, the events they are entangled in, and the spaces that connect discrete events develop through fictional and literal time. I argue that the science fictional representations of “we-ourselves,” and the specific spatiotemporal representational capacities of the television series format, can be understood through the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotope and the dialogic. That is, The Expanse’s we-representations are chronotopic and the refractive rhetoric of television is dialogic.

Fighting for the Future

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Star Trek ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Moment

The first two seasons of the television series Star Trek: Discovery, the newest instalment in the long-running and influential Star Trek franchise, received media and academic attention from the moment they arrived on screen. Discovery makes several key changes to Star Trek’s well-known narrative formulae, particularly the use of more serialized storytelling, appealing to audiences’ changed viewing habits in the streaming age – and yet the storylines, in their topical nature and the broad range of socio-political issues they engage with, continue in the political vein of the franchise’s megatext. This volume brings together eighteen essays and one interview about the series, with contributions from a variety of disciplines including cultural studies, literary studies, media studies, fandom studies, history and political science. They explore representations of gender, sexuality and race, as well as topics such as shifts in storytelling and depictions of diplomacy. Examining Discovery alongside older entries into the Star Trek canon and tracing emerging continuities and changes, this volume will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in Star Trek and science fiction in the franchise era.

scholarly journals Networking Magic: Andrew Lang and the Science of Self-Interest

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supritha Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
Andrew Lang

This article examines Andrew Lang’s anthropological writings on magic and religion in relation to a broader network of literary and sociological discourses. Lang’s work, along with that of others, highlights the labors nineteenth-century anthropologists expended to segregate magic from science, religion, and utilitarian action in the capitalist public sphere. Despite such efforts at segregation, however, nineteenth-century anthropological writings expose the genealogical continuities between magic, science, religion, and self-interest. These continuities, the essay contends, also surface in anthropology’s sibling discourses: literature and political economy. Lang’s contemporaries, such as H. Rider Haggard and Thomas Hardy, drew on anthropological findings in their fictional representations of magical rites and beliefs either in rural Britain or at the colonial periphery. Magic’s proximity to science, religion, and capitalist self-interest also undergirds Herbert Spencer’s systems theories and reverberates in the political economists that drew on Spencer’s work. The essay thus demonstrates not only how Lang functions as a node within a broad disciplinary network, but also how the concept of magic traverses numerous discursive fields.

scholarly journals Recognition, collaboration and community: science fiction representations of robot carers in Robot & Frank, Big Hero 6 and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2019-011744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yugin Teo
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Social ◽  
Community Science ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
Affective Relations

In the 2010s, a small number of science fiction films and television series exploring the theme of the robot carer and how humans respond to them were released. This paper explores three works in this regard: the films Robot & Frank (dir. Jake Schreier, USA 2012), Big Hero 6 (dir. Don Hall/Chris Williams, USA 2014) and the television series Humans (UK/USA, Channel 4/AMC, 2015–2018). Examining these works with some of the ethical issues currently being discussed in the use of robot technology in care work, this paper demonstrates how they align themselves with, but also challenge some of these ideas, and ultimately direct viewers to consider their own expectations of personalised healthcare. The essay begins by examining the fears of the care industry deploying robots to replace the work of human carers, followed by a discussion of the effectiveness of robots as carers as depicted in these fictional representations, and the final section considers the social environment that these robot carers are situated in, and how the robots become a reflection of human lives and a repository of memories of affective relations. These texts suggest alternate ways of thinking about human–robot interactions and care work, advocating for a more mutually dependent and reciprocal working relationship that might lead to a better quality of care.

Cyprus

2019 ◽  
pp. 479-491
Author(s):  
Sabine Fourrier
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the widespread and multifaceted aspects of Phoenician presences on the island are underlined: Phoenician presence was not confined to Kition and Phoenician influence did not exclusively spread in the island from Kition.

scholarly journals Look at me, I’m on TV: the political dimensions of reality television participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110369
Author(s):  
Bethany Klein ◽  
Stephen Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Political Dimensions

It has been over 20 years since the reality television genre attracted the attention of fans, critics and scholars. Reality programmes produced high viewing figures, suggesting a strong appetite for the form; critics dismissed the programmes as mindless and the participants as desperate for fame; and scholars assessed the formats, audiences and meanings of reality television, offering a complex, if rarely celebratory, account. While some commentators and scholars made connections between vote-based formats and electoral systems, or between opportunities afforded audiences for the deliberation of social issues and the idealized public sphere, the civic dimension of participation itself has not been explored. In this article, we take a closer look at reality television participants, drawing on press interviews and coverage in order to highlight how participants enact representative performances that might supplement more formal modes of democratic representation.

The Chaste Parricide: Murder, Femininity and the Subversion of Authority in the Reception of the First Performance of Shelley’s The Cenci, 1886

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-211
Author(s):  
Lee Michael-Berger
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
True Story ◽  
The Public Sphere

The story of The Cenci’s first production is intriguing, since the play, based on the true story of a sixteenth-century Roman family and revolving around the theme of parricide, was published in 1819 but was denied a licence for many years. The Shelley Society finally presented it in 1886, although it was vetoed by the Lord Chamberlain, and to avoid censorship it had to be proclaimed as a private event. This article examines the political and social context of the production, especially the reception of actress’s Alma Murray’s rendition of Beatrice, the parricide, thus probing the ways in which The Cenci question was reframed, and placed in the public sphere, despite censorship. The staging of the play became the site of a political debate and the performance – an act of defiance against institutionalised power, but also an act of defiance against the alleged tyranny of mass culture.

Inflation, Unemployment, and Government Collapse

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN D. ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Discrete Events ◽  
Significant Evidence ◽  
Initial Application ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Incumbent Regime

As democracies enter an era of economic retrenchment, the political costs associated with economic decline have come under close scrutiny by students of comparative politics and public policy. Of particular concern is the linkage between inflation, unemployment, and the collapse of incumbent governments. The present study provides an initial application of an alternative approach to measuring this linkage across 8 European democracies, and offers significant evidence linking political costs for cabinet governments with rising prices and the growing unemployment. By utilizing the Poisson method of determining probabilities of discrete events, increasing probabilities of government collapse are significantly associated with rising inflation and unemployment in European democracies between January 1958 and December 1979. Subsequent use of the Sanders and Herman's (1977) and Warwick (1979) analyses of cabinet stability provides a useful means to disaggregate the nation sample of the study into four discrete subsets of nations. After applying the model developed in the current study to these separate subsets, it is concluded that the more significant the change in rates of inflation and unemployment, the more likely the pattern of government collapse will be interrupted by the unexpected termination of an incumbent regime.

scholarly journals Heiner Goebbels's Stifters Dinge and the Arendtian Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Luke Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collaborative Working ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Working Processes

Heiner Goebbels’s works are examples of “postdramatic” theatre works that engage with the political by seeking to challenge socially ingrained habits of perception rather than by presenting traditional, literary-based theatre of political didacticism or agitation. Goebbels claims to work toward a “non-hierarchical” theatre in the contexts of his arrangement of the various theatrical elements, in fostering collaborative working processes between the artists involved, and in the creation of audience-artist relationships. In offering a reading of Goebbels’s “no-man show” Stifters Dinge, this paper seeks to situate Goebbels’s practice within a theoretical tradition that also encompasses Hannah Arendt’s deployment of the theatre as a metaphor for the public sphere. Within this analysis, I suggest, theatre can be seen to offer the possibility of a participatory democracy through its attention to disappearance and absence.

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