scholarly journals Playing out the unspeakable: the rhetorics of trauma in The Day the Laughter Stopped digital game

Res Rhetorica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Magdalena Bednorz
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Teenage Girl ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

The article undertakes a detailed analysis of The Day the Laughter Stopped – a simple text-based browser game about rape, told from the perspective of a young teenage girl. While seemingly straightforward, the game uses choice poetics to build expectations of agency on the side of the player, only to subvert them at the most climactic moment, provoking emotional responses and serving as a commentary on the experience of loss of control and loss of words in the face of a traumatic event. Following existing approaches to rhetorical, emotion-evoking qualities and capabilities of digital games, the article explores the potential of the digital medium to communicate the unspeakable, overwhelming dimension of trauma, as illustrated by the game. The analysis not only explores the medium-specific means of expression which the game utilizes to encourage the audience to explore the perspective of a rape victim in an engaging way, but also leads to the conclusion that in doing so, the game aims to make persuasive statements about the social and cultural discourse around rape trauma and its representations, and therefore contributes to the larger socio-cultural discourse. As such, the article aspires to add to pre-existing studies on the specific rhetorical means of digital fiction, as well as on the approaches to cultural renditions of trauma.

Earbuds Are Good for Sharing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Bickford
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Portable Communication

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of children’s practices of sharing earbuds with friends and peers. Portable music technologies mediate face-to-face relationships among schoolchildren, and the social links they support provide an intimate environment for interaction that mostly excludes adults. These face-to-face interactions using digital audio technologies challenge theoretical perspectives from two fields. First, a prominent view of sound technologies as progressively isolating individuals from one another fails entirely to account for children’s sociable practices. Second, while approaches to portable communication technologies increasingly do privilege communication among intimates, in their focus on communication at a distance they neglect the face-to-face connections in which these devices are embedded. Technology studies are also largely unconcerned with portable music listening as “new media,” accepting the view that portable music is isolating. The opposite is true for children, for whom music devices make connections in materially and spatially grounded face-to-face relationships.

Un/re/production of Old Age inThe Taking of Deborah Logan

Somatechnics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-194
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Kotwasińska
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Progressive Loss ◽  
The Face ◽  
Female Embodiment ◽  
Main Protagonist

The article offers a re-examination of abjected femininity and old age through a close reading of The Taking of Deborah Logan (2015), a found footage horror movie centered on spectral possession. While to a large extent the movie replicates an infamous monstrous old woman trope, it also effectively questions typical Alzheimer's disease (AD) narratives, which tend to portray life with AD as a story of unmitigated loss and debility. In The Taking of Deborah Logan, potentially destabilizing moments occur when in the face of progressive loss of control, memory, and bodily functions, the main protagonist is momentarily experienced as resisting the dehumanisation and loss of agency conventionally associated with AD and possession alike. The aim of this article is thus three-fold. The first part sketches the processes through which possession narratives generate a highly ambivalent space for aging femininity in horror film, and how aging, disability, and AD intersect both in popular understanding and in film. In the second part, the author examines how The Taking of Deborah Logan, as a found footage horror, shapes a discussion about selfhood, agency, and monstrous embodiment. Finally, the author argues that it is through the concept of transaging that one can find ways to destabilise traditional understandings of old age, female embodiment, and AD, and offer new narratives that highlight monstrous, if ambivalent, agency.

Chemical Reactions of Iodoform in the Study of Post-Extraction Alveolites

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (10) ◽  
pp. 2378-2381
Author(s):  
Cristian Budacu ◽  
Mihai Constantin ◽  
Iulia Chiscop ◽  
Carmen Gabriela Stelea ◽  
Raluca Dragomir
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Maxillofacial Surgery ◽  
Post Treatment ◽  
Dental Extraction ◽  
Oral And Maxillofacial Surgery ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Mucosal Regeneration ◽  
Prophylactic Measures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

Post-operative alveolitis is a topical issue in dental practice, which is also reflected by the etiopathogenic aspects. The conservative principle requires the maintenance of dento-periodontal units in the arch for as long as possible, but there are situations where dental extraction is required. The healing process of the post-surgical wound is complex and involves processes of gingival mucosal regeneration and bone reshaping, involving several local factors: wound size, presence of infection, alveolar vascularization, intraalveolar foreign bodies, and general factors, especially general condition, age and body reactivity. The quality, structure, maintenance, and retraction of the clot are key factors in the formation of connective tissue during the healing of the post-extraction would. At the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinic of Gala�i, during a 2-year period between January 2015 and December 30, 2016, 2780 patients that required surgery - dental extraction were consulted and diagnosed. We found that among those 2780 patients with dental extractions 105 (3.77%) had post-treatment alveolitis. No post-surgical alveolitis from the case study was complicated by osteomyelitis of the jaws or by suppurations of the superficial or deep compartments of the face. The prophylactic measures in each dental extraction, together with the correct and timely curative treatment, combined with the dentist�s competence and responsibility, can shorten the time of suffering, actively combating the risk factor and accelerating the social reintegration of the patient with post-treatment alveolitis.

Ancient Israel's Neighbors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian R. Doak
Keyword(s):  
Nearest Neighbors ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Turmoil

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of Israel’s nearest neighbors—not only discovering what the Bible has to say about them but also what we can know from archaeology, ancient inscriptions, and other sources. The Bible itself presents these neighbors in nuanced and conflicting ways; sometimes they are friends or even related to Israel at a family level, and sometimes they are enemies, spoken of as though they must die in order for Israel to live. We are left wondering how the biblical portrayal might have affected our thinking about these people as historical groups, on their own terms. How would an Aramaean have described her own religion? How would an Edomite have described conflict with Israel? This book explores both the biblical portrayal of the smaller groups surrounding Israel and what people can know about these groups through their own literature, archaeology, and other sources. By uncovering the identity of the Philistines as settlers along the coast at the same time that early Israel carved out their place in the land, for example, one can better understand the social turmoil and political maneuvering that lies just beneath the surface of the biblical narrative, and can see more clearly just how the authors of the Bible saw themselves in the face of others.

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Germana
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial History ◽  
The Face

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist examines Ralph Ellison’s body of work as an extended and ever-evolving expression of the author’s philosophy of temporality—a philosophy synthesized from the writings of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche that anticipates the work of Gilles Deleuze. Taking the view that time is a multiplicity of dynamic processes, rather than a static container for the events of our lives, and an integral force of becoming, rather than a linear groove in which events take place, Ellison articulates a theory of temporality and social change throughout his corpus that flies in the face of all forms of linear causality and historical determinism. Integral to this theory is Ellison’s observation that the social, cultural, and legal processes constitutive of racial formation are embedded in static temporalities reiterated by historians and sociologists. In other words, Ellison’s critique of US racial history is, at bottom, a matter of time. This book reveals how, in his fiction, criticism, and photography, Ellison reclaims technologies through which static time and linear history are formalized in order to reveal intensities implicit in the present that, if actualized, could help us achieve Nietzsche’s goal of acting un-historically. The result is a wholesale reinterpretation of Ellison’s oeuvre, as well as an extension of Ellison’s ideas about the dynamism of becoming and the open-endedness of the future. It, like Ellison’s texts, affirms the chaos of possibility lurking beneath the patterns of living we mistake for enduring certainties.

Imperatives and commands in Japanese

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nerida Jarkey
Keyword(s):  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Face Threat ◽  
Contemporary Standard

This chapter examines the forms and usage of imperatives and command strategies in contemporary standard Japanese. Although commands are highly face-threatening acts in any language, speakers of Japanese encounter particular challenges in using them in socially acceptable ways. Commands are generally only given to those considered ‘below’ the speaker in the social hierarchy, and are normally considered appropriate only when used toward ‘in-group’ members. Further restrictions relate to the identity the speaker wishes to convey. Numerous command strategies have emerged to avoid using the most direct imperative forms, and some of these strategies have gradually come to be reinterpreted as imperative forms themselves, suggesting a loss of their original euphemistic qualities. Furthermore, when issuing commands, speakers often go to considerable lengths to soften the face threat, for example by giving reasons for the command, adding markers of hesitancy, or softening illocutionary particles, and using appropriate honorific language forms.

External sources promoting resilience in adults with intellectual disabilities: A systematic literature review

2020 ◽  
pp. 174462952096194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Femke Scheffers ◽  
Xavier Moonen ◽  
Eveline van Vugt
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Network Support ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Adults With Intellectual Disabilities

Background: Persons with an intellectual disability are at increased risk of experiencing adversities. The current study aims at providing an overview of the research on how resilience in adults with intellectual disabilities, in the face of adversity, is supported by sources in their social network. Method: A literature review was conducted in the databases Psycinfo and Web of Science. To evaluate the quality of the included studies, the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT) was used. Results: The themes: “ positive emotions,” “ network acceptance,” “ sense of coherence” and “ network support,” were identified as sources of resilience in the social network of the adults with intellectual disabilities. Conclusion: The current review showed that research addressing sources of resilience among persons with intellectual disabilities is scarce. In this first overview, four sources of resilience in the social network of people with intellectual disabilities were identified that interact and possibly strengthen each other.

Islamists between revolution and the state: an epilogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Ghani Imad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
New Type ◽  
Political Realities

The problematic addressed in this article is the challenge initiated by the Arab revolutions to reform the Arab political system in such a way as to facilitate the incorporation of ‘democracy’ at the core of its structure. Given the profound repercussions, this issue has become the most serious matter facing the forces of change in the Arab world today; meanwhile, it forms the most prominent challenge and the most difficult test confronting Islamists. The Islamist phenomenon is not an alien implant that descended upon us from another planet beyond the social context or manifestations of history. Thus it cannot but be an expression of political, cultural, and social needs and crises. Over the years this phenomenon has presented, through its discourse, an ideological logic that falls within the context of ‘advocacy’; however, today Islamists find themselves in office, and in a new context that requires them to produce a new type of discourse that pertains to the context of a ‘state’. Political participation ‘tames’ ideology and pushes political actors to rationalize their discourse in the face of daily political realities and the necessity of achievement. The logic of advocacy differs from that of the state: in the case of advocacy, ideology represents an enriching asset, whereas in the case of the state, it constitutes a heavy burden. This is one reason why so much discourse exists within religious jurisprudence related to interest or necessity or balancing outcomes. This article forms an epilogue to the series of articles on religion and the state published in previous issues of this journal. It adopts the methodologies of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘case studies’ in an attempt to examine the arguments presented by Islamists under pressure from the opposition. It analyses the experiences, and the constraints, that inhibit the production of a ‘model’, and monitors the development of the discourse, its structure, and transformations between advocacy, revolution and the state.

scholarly journals The Governance of Covid-19: Anthropogenic Risk, Evolutionary Learning, and the Future of the Social State

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-594
Author(s):  
Simon Deakin ◽  
Gaofeng Meng
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
External Shocks ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anthropogenic Risks ◽  
Industrialised Countries

Abstract We consider the implications of the Covid-19 crisis for the theory and practice of governance. We define ‘governance’ as the process through which, in the case of a given entity or polity, resources are allocated, decisions made and policies implemented, with a view to ensuring the effectiveness of its operations in the face of risks in its environment. Core to this, we argue, is the organisation of knowledge through public institutions, including the legal system. Covid-19 poses a particular type of ‘Anthropogenic’ risk, which arises when organised human activity triggers feedback effects from the natural environment. As such it requires the concerted mobilisation of knowledge and a directed response from governments and international agencies. In this context, neoliberal theories and practices, which emphasise the self-adjusting properties of systems of governance in response to external shocks, are going to be put to the test. In states’ varied responses to Covid-19 to date, it is already possible to observe some trends. One of them is the widespread mischaracterisation of the measures taken to address the epidemic at the point of its emergence in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January and February 2020. Public health measures of this kind, rather than constituting a ‘state of exception’ in which legality is set aside, are informed by practices which originated in the welfare or social states of industrialised countries, and which were successful in achieving a ‘mortality revolution’ in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Relearning this history would seem to be essential for the future control of pandemics and other Anthropogenic risks.

scholarly journals Intergroup and intragroup dimensions of COVID-19: A social identity perspective on social fragmentation and unity

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Abrams ◽  
Fanny Lalot ◽  
Michael A. Hogg
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Social Fragmentation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Management ◽  
Psychological Challenge ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
People’S Perceptions

COVID-19 is a challenge faced by individuals (personal vulnerability and behavior), requiring coordinated policy from national government. However, another critical layer—intergroup relations—frames many decisions about how resources and support should be allocated. Based on theories of self and social identity uncertainty, subjective group dynamics, leadership, and social cohesion, we argue that this intergroup layer has important implications for people’s perceptions of their own and others’ situation, political management of the pandemic, how people are influenced, and how they resolve identity uncertainty. In the face of the pandemic, initial national or global unity is prone to intergroup fractures and competition through which leaders can exploit uncertainties to gain short-term credibility, power, or influence for their own groups, feeding polarization and extremism. Thus, the social and psychological challenge is how to sustain the superordinate objective of surviving and recovering from the pandemic through mutual cross-group effort.

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