scholarly journals "Dragon-Ridden" Days: Yeats, Apocalypse, and the Anthropocene

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Malcolm Sen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Alice In Wonderland ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Epistemological Uncertainty ◽  
Game Of Thrones

Dragons, being imaginary creatures, escape the umbra of extinction shadowing multiple species on earth today. We can trace their lineage from Homer (at least in the European tradition) to the personal mount of of Daenerys Targaryen, Drogon, in Game of Thrones; or, from Beowulf to J. R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Because they are textual creatures, dragons display a re-silience and capacity to mutate that makes them eloquent ontological signifiers in mythic narratives, as motifs of epistemological uncertainty in folklore and cultural memory, and as embodiments of extra-human/pre-modern intrusions in the workings of history. Whereas Chinese dragons are often beneficial to the human species, European variants (including those found in Celtic folklore) are not. Dragons spell death and destruction; they demand human sacrifices, as in the legend of St. George. Their appearance suggests power and menace of extraordinary dimensions, as in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock. (The Jabber-wock was first illustrated by John Tenniel in 1871 as a dragon, and the tradition continues well into the present day, in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, for example.) Dragons collude with destructive forces; their power to annihilate everything that stands for “human” is unwittingly referred to in Kanye West’s words above.2 I suggest in this essay that the image of the dragon offers us a portal into the highly ornate symbolic structures of W. B. Yeats’s historiography and his vision of the apocalyptic.

Drinking Animals: Sobriety, Intoxication and Interspecies Assemblages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Genosko
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Ethanol Fermentation ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
Biological Factors ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Wine Bottle

While Deleuze explored the temporalities of alcoholism in American literature in The Logic of Sense, and Jean Clet Martin, among others, has extended this inquiry by further extracting the alcoholic’s lines of flight from the same literature, this chapter breaks the mould by understanding alcohol, distilled and in its pure form of ethanol, as well as its imbibition, as a question of a component that passes through anthropocentric, and across multiple non-anthropocentric assemblages. The exploitation of ethanol fermentation, for example, exists across species. Indeed, as we entertain more overtly human cultural examples, such as ‘wine’ for cats, a recent Japanese pet trend, the metabolic communion of interspecies companionship requires that the material expressivity of the substance is overcoded because the ‘wine’ is not only non-alcoholic but liquid catnip in a ‘wine’ bottle. Indeed, theorization of the pursuit of shared pleasures – using Guattari’s ethological terms, we might say deterritorializing from deterministic biological factors yet also modifying these in some measure as well (Machinic Unconscious) – and engaging multiple species is this chapter’s goal, achievable by plotting the passages of alcohol and its related components across assemblages and their material and socio-cultural expressive trajectories beyond strictly anthropocentric and Western prerogatives.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN TOXICITY TESTING OF LONG ACTING DEPOT CONTRACEPTIVES

1974 ◽  
Vol 77 (1_Suppla) ◽  
pp. S315-S354 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Neumann ◽  
R. von Berswordt-Wallrabe ◽  
W. Elger ◽  
K.-J. Gräf ◽  
S. H. Hasan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biological Effects ◽  
Histological Finding ◽  
Toxicity Testing ◽  
Prolactin Secretion ◽  
List Type ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Prolactin Plasma Level ◽  
Human Use ◽  
Long Acting ◽  
Reproductive Processes

ABSTRACT Two types of so-called "depot contraceptives", long-acting steroids which are of interest for human use, were studied in animals. Norethisterone oenanthate, mainly gestagenic in the human and other species, turned out to be predominantly oestrogenic in rats. This oestrogenicity caused indirectly, via an enhanced hypophysial prolactin secretion, the well-known hypophysial and mammary tumours in rats. Another synthetic gestagen, 4,6-dichloro- 17- acetoxy- 16α-methyl-4,6-pregnadiene-3,20-dione, which might be considered in its biological actions similar to preparations containing chlormadinone acetate or medroxy-progesterone acetate, induced no signs of oestrogenicity in dogs. It is surmised that its gestagenic influence indirectly, and probaby, via an enhanced hypophysial prolactin secretion caused "mammary nodules" in this "non-rodent" species. These studies have born out mainly two facts: A synthetic steroid, norethisterone oenanthate, exerted different biological effects in different species: it was a gestagen in the rabbit, whereas in rats, its predominant influence was oestrogenic. The hypophysial prolactin secretion was enhanced in various species by different mechanisms: in rats, the oestrogenicity caused an increased prolactin plasma level, whereas in dogs, a gestagen with obviously no inherent oestrogenicity, 4,6-dichloro-17-acetoxy-16α-methyl-4,6-pregnadiene-3,20-dione, converted the histological appearance of the anterior pituitary into a condition with a greatly increased number of eosinophils. This histological finding was interpreted as an indicator for a hypersecretion of prolactin. Hence, animal work with "gestagens" has only limited predictive value with respect to their possible effects in the human species. Therefore, inflexible recommendations are not helpful in solving the safety problem of long-acting steroids which affect primarily reproductive processes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document