Violently Oscillating: Science, Repetition and Affective Transmutation in Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Elena del Río
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Berlin Alexanderplatz

This essay looks at Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz to trace the  film's transformation of a mechanistic scientific discourse into  affective indeterminacy. Through patterns of repetition of a key event, the film considers its protagonist as a complex web of constantly shifting forces – a network of biological, social, political and semiotic flows coalescing in a body that exists in a state of perpetual oscillation between force and mutilation, ecstasy and pain. The role of physics and other materialist discourses in the film is thus not to fixate subjectivity, but rather to provide a passage into its affective transformations and the intense desubjectification that results.

From rationalization to rationality: (In)sustainability of strategic narratives in  science communication, ranging from climatic change to hydro-meteorological extremes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica Ribau ◽  
Rui Perdigão ◽  
Julia Hall
Keyword(s):  
Climatic Change ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Living Condition ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Strategic Narratives

<p>Strategic narratives (persuasive use of story systems) in science communication have been gathering<br>increasing support, especially in the face of misunderstandings about high-impact climatic change and hydrometeorologic extremes.<br>The use of these narratives reveals, in line with linguistic research, that traditional scientific discourse<br>conception has become outdated. Should scientific discourse be centered on the description of discoveries?<br>Should the role of political discourse be to convince someone to act? Before answering these, it is necessary to<br>understand the crucial function that uncertainty plays in communication, along with its consequences in the<br>concepts of objectivity and truth. More importantly, understanding its role in scientific society and sustainability.<br>Unable to eliminate uncertainty altogether, science becomes an essential escort to recognize, manage<br>and communicate its pertinency. However, the most popular strategic narratives sideline uncertainty as a threat.<br>Denialists follow a similar approach, though they communicate uncertainty to discredit evidence. Comparatively,<br>in their latest Assessment Report, the IPCC characterized uncertainty whilst stating: “uncertainty about impacts<br>does not prevent immediate action”.<br>Scientific discourse outputs and social reality constructions influence each other. The moralization of<br>science communication reveals how XVII century revolutionary skepticism can now be perceived as a threat, and<br>facts expected from science can be deemed dogmatic truths and perceived as decrees through rationalism and as<br>an extension of Judeo-Christian philosophical influence. Equally important, uncertainty reinforces individual<br>freedom, while society grasps and recognizes certainty as security and demands it from institutions, accepting<br>degrees of authoritarianism to maintain a tolerable living condition.<br>From “Climate Emergency” to “Thousand-Year Flood”, public interest in climatic change and extremes<br>increases following high-impact events, yet trust in science plunges into a deep polarized divide among absolute<br>acceptance and outright rejection relative to the bold headlines conveyed not only in the media but also in some<br>scientific literature.<br>Political, religious and activist leaders strike one as prophets acting in the name of science. From<br>rationalism to rationality, scientific culture is pivotal to the analysis of complexity, objectivity, and uncertainty in<br>the definition of truth (absent from epistemological discussions for centuries). Humor/sarcasm, literature or<br>dialectic are examples of how to communicate entropy of scientific models, while reflecting about the role,<br>uncertainty, and mistake, retain in life.<br>“People want certainty, not knowledge”, said Bertrand Russel. However, neither science nor democracy<br>work like that, rather taking reality as having shades of grey instead of a reduced black-or-white dichotomy.<br>Science is not about giving just one single number to problems clearly not reducible to such, as that gives a false<br>sense of certainty and security in an entropic world where we cannot control everything.<br>In order to objectively analyze discourses in light of their uncertainty features, detecting whether they<br>contain polarized, absolutistic narrative patterns, we introduce a new process-consistent Artificial Intelligence<br>framework, building from Perdigão (2020, https://doi.org/10.46337/200930). The complementarity of our<br>approach relative to both social and information technologies is brought out, along with ways forward to reinforce<br>the fundamental role of uncertainty in scientific communication, and to strengthen public confidence in the<br>scientific endeavor.</p>

Agency in scientific discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (62) (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Tobias WEBER ◽  
Mia KLEE
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Research Endeavour

In recent times, the trend of aiming for objectivity and reproducibility in science has arrived in linguistic discourse. A critical point in this debate is the agency in speakers’ language use and, simultaneously, in the researchers’ description and interpretation. The aim of objectivity demotes, by default, the role of the subjects, often by imposing structures to limit agency. We can see various scenarios where researchers can purposefully bend rules, thus exerting their agentive stance in the research endeavour. This paper aims to address issues pertaining to agency as opposed to the goal of reproducibility, where the researchers’ and consultants’ agency on different aspects of the research process shape its outcomes. Training early career researchers and students in using

Derrida and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Earlie
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Key Questions

This book offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida’s thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida’s response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche’s relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, from the relationship between memory and the archive to the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok, and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, the book argues that Derrida’s writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent ‘textualist’ reading of Derrida’s work, it explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror.

Maps, Power, and the Pacification of La Araucanía-Chile, 1850–1900

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Azócar Fernández ◽  
Zenobio Saldivia Maldonado
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Critical Cartography ◽  
History Of Cartography ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The 19Th Century

In the history of cartography and in critical cartography, there is a link between the role of maps and power relations, especially during the conquest and domination of territories by national states. Such cartographic products have frequently been used—for both their scientific and persuasive content—in different places, such as in Chile in the Araucanía region during the so-called pacification process, led by the Chilean state during the second half of the 19th century. From a cartographic perspective, the “epistemological and unintentional silences on the maps” can be observed for maps produced during this process. It implied that the “scientific discourse” and the “social and political discourse” of the cartographic images generated during this process of conquest and domination were relevant for the expansionist objectives of the Republic of Chile.

The Role of Metaphorical Thinking in the Creativity of Scientific Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria-Jose Sanchez-Ruiz ◽  
Manuela Romo Santos ◽  
Juan Jiménez Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Metaphorical Thinking

Our gods don't wear spandex

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-113
Author(s):  
Angelika Funek
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Main Series ◽  
Human Need ◽  
One Step ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Impact

The Comparison between the comic books’ superheroes and gods often appears in the scientific discourse. This phenomenon is linked to the human need for creating new idols. In their comic book titled The Wicked and the Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are going one step further and decide to create a whole new pantheon, designed to fit our century. Creators did not design new gods, they used various pantheons and reincarnated them in new, different bodies. In this article, I will be considering the role of divinity and its place in the modern world. In order to achieve this, I will use comparative analysis between the main series of The Wicked and the Divine and two special one-shots — first set in the twenties of the twentieth century, second in the beginning of the nineteenth century — to highlight the differences in the role of gods and divinity in different period of time. The article will also concentrate on the form of the bodies that the gods gain due to the reincarnation, and the impact of this phenomenon on the place that they take in society.

We, ourselves and who else?

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Rundblad
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Medical Research ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Significant Health

The role of passive voice as a device used in medical and scientific discourse to mystify the author is clearly articulated and well-known. Through analysis of the Methods section of nine medical research articles, this paper shows that metonymy is another frequently used impersonalisation strategy in medical discourse. Furthermore, this paper argues that impersonalisation is not restricted to the authors and that two types of impersonalisation need be distinguished: generalisation and socialisation. Discourse agents were categorised into the ‘present authors’ versus ‘other researchers and health professionals not part of the research team’. Agents were investigated in relation to impersonalisation and social identity. Results show that possessive/causative metonyms are used to produce genderless, generic ‘present authors’ as well as ‘other researchers’. In contrast, more significant ‘health professionals’ are often referred to in terms of representational/locative metonyms highlighting their authoritative social identity. The study also shows that for these non–authorial professionals co-occurrence of metonymy and passive voice is generally avoided. Although ‘present authors’ are mainly absent, this analysis reveals a higher than expected author presence resulting in a significantly higher degree of impersonalisation for non-authorial agents.

From epistemic (ergotic) actions to scientific discourse

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolff-Michael Roth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Function ◽  
School Science ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Science Laboratory ◽  
Laboratory Activities ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
And Shifts

The role of gestures in communication is still debated: Some claim that gestures are merely ancillary forms of expressions, whereas others suggest a central role of gestures in the development of language. In this article, I provide data in support of the overarching hypothesis that gestures have a transitional function between ergotic/epistemic movements of hands and symbolic expressions. The context for the study of these transitions is constituted by school science laboratory activities conducted by students who are also asked to describe and explain while still within proximity of the materials of their investigations. It is hypothesized that communication is distributed across the context (verbal, gestural, material) and shifts increasingly into a verbal modality as students become familiar with the phenomena they are to learn about. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that initial temporal delays between gestures and the corresponding words decrease and finally disappear so that gestural and verbal modalities coincide. It is suggested that engaging in communication in the presence of material has an important cognitive function in that it affords a distribution of cognition across different modalities until individuals have developed the competence to express themselves effectively in the verbal modality.

scholarly journals Editing: Problems of Terminology

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Piotr P. Zhauniarovich ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Book Publishing ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Discipline Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Definition Of

Taking into consideration the fact that editing is considered to be a field of scientific knowledge, a sphere of practical activity, and a discipline, problems of terminology appear. The aim of the research is to reveal definitions and statements that tend to take the role of terms and contain conflicting statements obstructing the scientific comprehension of terms. The research focuses on the comparison of different definitions of the term “editing” and of its types given by Russian and foreign theorists and practitioners, as well as on the analysis of new terms introduced into scientific discourse. The author touches upon various definitions of the concept of editing, considers its types as well as differences between the notions of editing and literary editing, compares the interpretations of these concepts in Russian, British, and American (editing, copyediting), Ukrainian and Polish scientific discourses, offers his vision of the problems. Textbooks and reference books do not always provide proper differences between the two main components of editorial activity—editorial analysis (evaluation) and editing. There are significant developments of Russian researchers in the direction of the history of editing ahead of the Western research. One can state that Russia has a school of editing history, and university researchers make a great contribution to its development. The author suggests adhering to the established traditions in the interpretation of editing and using it in journalism in the same sense as in book publishing, since initially it was the publishing of books that caused the need in editing as a professional activity. The result of the research demonstrates that it is impossible to refer editing as a sphere of scientific knowledge only to book publishing or philology. The author proposes his own definition of editing, tries to optimize the number of types of editing (particularly, duplication of the notions “editing” and “literary editing”, “editing” and “copyediting” is stated), and introduces a terminological combination “history of editing” into scientific discourse. The author proves that the replacement of the concepts “editing” and “editorial analysis” with such notions as “text activity” and “criticism of speech”, respectively, is not justified in scientific terms.

scholarly journals The Text-Organizing Function of Compression in English Scientific Discourse

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2 (16)) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Astghik Chubaryan ◽  
Lilit Sargsyan
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Text Compression ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Cognitive Levels ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
The Given

English scientific discourse can be characterized as a key area of the economy principle realization in the form of text compression. The latter carries out a major text-organizing function due to its potential to form implicit meanings and presuppositions thereby minimizing the use of linguistic units while enhancing the informativity of the text. Thus, the given paper is an attempt to provide a general overview of the role of compression in the production of scientific discourse by examining its concrete manifestations at the syntactic and semantic-cognitive levels in the light of some key pragmatic parameters of communication.

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