A Critical Model of European Carnival

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-52
Author(s):  
Alessandro Testa
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Vijay Iyer

Improvisation has been construed as Western art music’s Other. This chapter urges music theorists to take the consequences of this configuration seriously. The decision to exclude improvisation as inherently unstable is not neutral, but is bound up with the endemic racism that has characterized social relations in the West and that is being brought to the fore in Black Lives Matter and other recent social and political movements. Traditional music theory is not immune from such institutional racism—its insistence on normative musical behaviors is founded on the (white) phallogocentrism of Western thought. Does the resurgent academic interest in improvisation offer a way out? No, at least not as it is currently studied. Even an apparently impartial approach such as cognitive science is not neutral; perception is colored by race. To get anywhere, this chapter argues, improvisation studies must take difference seriously. Important impetus for a more inclusive critical model comes from such fields as Black studies, Women’s studies, subaltern studies, queer studies, and disability studies.


Author(s):  
Lauren Eriks Cline

Caliban’s semantic slipperiness derives from page descriptions and stage performances that excessively mark Caliban’s bodies with vilifying language, while at the same time destabilizing the referential value of that language through their very excessiveness. ‘Fish’, ‘beast’, and ‘Hag-seed’ spawn the incoherent stage signs of fins, fur, scales, and skin disease. Following monstrous vectors of contagion along rhizomatic lines, my readings will concern themselves with the de- and re-territorializations of Caliban’s bodies on page and stage: first by focusing on the tracings of language that inscribe Caliban’s identity, and second by mapping the movements of ‘becoming-animal’ and ‘becoming-imperceptible’ that signal his lines of flight. I ultimately argue for the usefulness of Caliban’s monstrous becomings not as a finished analytical product but as a working critical model: an exercise in treating the fragmentation and opacity of the performing body not as a limitation but a possibility.


2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Jia Rao ◽  
Guo-Yi Zhu ◽  
Guang-Ming Zhang

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (21) ◽  
pp. 5790-5809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuyan Liu ◽  
Xin-Zhong Liang

Abstract An observational climatology of the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) diurnal cycle, specific to surface characteristics, is derived from 58 286 fine-resolution soundings collected in 14 major field campaigns around the world. An objective algorithm determining PBLH from sounding profiles is first developed and then verified by available lidar and sodar retrievals. The algorithm is robust and produces realistic PBLH as validated by visual examination of several thousand additional soundings. The resulting PBLH from all existing data is then subject to various statistical analyses. It is demonstrated that PBLH occurrence frequencies under stable, neutral, and unstable regimes follow a narrow, intermediate, and wide Gamma distribution, respectively, over both land and oceans. Over ice all exhibit a narrow distribution. The climatological PBLH diurnal cycle is strong over land and oceans, with a distinct peak at 1500 and 1200 LT, whereas the cycle is weak over ice. Relative to midlatitude land, the PBLH variability over tropical oceans is larger during the morning and at night but much smaller in the afternoon. This study provides a unique observational database for critical model evaluation on the PBLH diurnal cycle and its temporal/spatial variability.


Author(s):  
Cosme Jesús Gómez Carrasco ◽  
Ramón López Facal ◽  
Belen María Castro Fernandez

This chapter presents the results of a study carried out at the Universities of Murcia and Santiago de Compostela in Spain regarding the perceptions of trainee primary education teachers about educational knowledge of history education. The decision was taken to employ a quantitative non-experimental design via a Likert-type questionnaire (values from 1 to 5). Significant data have been obtained making it possible to carry out a diagnosis of their professional competencies. The results show that the majority of trainee primary education teachers identify with a critical model of teacher, one who must use active teaching methods and promote ethical values related with social justice. However, this idea contrasts with an implicit model which is much more traditional in its theoretical and methodological conceptions. In the conclusions, its propose the need to improve teacher training linking it more directly with the carrying out of teaching practice.


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