Of British Representational Practices in the Age of Capitalism/Territorialism (1743-1776)

The issue addressed in this essay is how the notion of history was altered by the embedding of commerce into the discursive field of eighteenth-century Britain. Even though current eighteenth-century, and Enlightenment, studies draw attention to historiographic questions challenging traditional modes of periodization, the methods by which we acquire and organize knowledge, or the extent to which accounts of the eighteenth century have been driven by the imperatives of the times, this project argues that one historiographic issue that has been significantly underplayed is a different concept of history produced in eighteenth-century Britain by the fundamental operation of mercantile society, its logic of exchange, and the predominance of trade within it. David Hume and Adam Smith’s historiographic trajectory was obscured (and, ultimately, eliminated) by the scientific or materialist notion of history advanced in nineteenth-century historiography.

Groteska kroppar i folkhemmets sverige

Grotesque bodies in the Swedish folkhem: Improper aesthetic and rhetoric in the magazine PUSS 1968–1974 In an analysis of the Swedish satirical magazine PUSS (1968–1974) this article explores what is considered as improper rhetoric and aesthetic in the public sphere. It draws on theories of representation and the culture of carnival laughter and the grotesque as well as research on the Swedish folkhem and satire and democracies. I coin the concept demogrotesque-atic in order to capture how PUSS, by using comics, grotesque bodies and carnivalesque, improper rhetoric and aesthetics, makes visible fundamental challenges to democratic societies. I argue that the magazine’s representational practices highlight the function of what is often considered ‘filth’ in the public sphere and the central role the grotesque body plays in upholding – and breaking – boundaries of propriety. I interpret this as important democratic work, and demonstrate that while the satire in PUSS is situated in a specific time and place, it is also part of a longstanding literary and artistic tradition.

Queer Capital: Transgender Representation in Contemporary American Cinema

<p>From The Crying Game’s shocking gender reveal in 1993, to the resounding success of Pose in 2018, trans characters and narratives have become increasingly visible across media platforms. Most significantly, trans characters have become a key part of American Indiewood cinema. Films like Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl, Stonewall, and 3 Generations demonstrate the growing visibility of these roles within the American independent tradition. Moreover, these films’ critical and financial successes, in particular those of Dallas Buyers Club, signal the potential value these characters offer studios as a marker of cultural progressiveness. However, while trans characters in Indiewood films inspire more mainstream conversations about queer identity and community, interrogating these representations reveals how these depictions may reinforce harmful myths about trans identities and experiences. Analysing these representational practices through textual, generic, and industrial analyses, I will demonstrate how trans performances benefit the wider film industry, and question the impact of cis-gender casting on these films’ representational strategies. The purpose of this project is thus to examine performances of transgender identity in contemporary indie and Indiewood films, spotlighting industrial influences on transgender representations. By using Dallas Buyers Club as a case study to explore how queer Indiewood films appeal to mainstream audiences; and using Tangerine to illustrate alternative representational strategies, this thesis demonstrates how contemporary Indiewood cinema excludes most trans writers, directors, and actors, how this process benefits cis-gender industry elites, and how paratexts mitigate the potential threat that trans identities pose to gender categories. More specifically, I pose the questions: how are filmic performances of transgender identity informed by industrial power relations; and, what are the cultural implications of the dynamic between the two.</p>

Queer Capital: Transgender Representation in Contemporary American Cinema

<p>From The Crying Game’s shocking gender reveal in 1993, to the resounding success of Pose in 2018, trans characters and narratives have become increasingly visible across media platforms. Most significantly, trans characters have become a key part of American Indiewood cinema. Films like Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl, Stonewall, and 3 Generations demonstrate the growing visibility of these roles within the American independent tradition. Moreover, these films’ critical and financial successes, in particular those of Dallas Buyers Club, signal the potential value these characters offer studios as a marker of cultural progressiveness. However, while trans characters in Indiewood films inspire more mainstream conversations about queer identity and community, interrogating these representations reveals how these depictions may reinforce harmful myths about trans identities and experiences. Analysing these representational practices through textual, generic, and industrial analyses, I will demonstrate how trans performances benefit the wider film industry, and question the impact of cis-gender casting on these films’ representational strategies. The purpose of this project is thus to examine performances of transgender identity in contemporary indie and Indiewood films, spotlighting industrial influences on transgender representations. By using Dallas Buyers Club as a case study to explore how queer Indiewood films appeal to mainstream audiences; and using Tangerine to illustrate alternative representational strategies, this thesis demonstrates how contemporary Indiewood cinema excludes most trans writers, directors, and actors, how this process benefits cis-gender industry elites, and how paratexts mitigate the potential threat that trans identities pose to gender categories. More specifically, I pose the questions: how are filmic performances of transgender identity informed by industrial power relations; and, what are the cultural implications of the dynamic between the two.</p>

NEOLIBERAL CARTOGRAPHY: A VISUAL-SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THREE NAVIGATION APPS

The proposed presentation adopts visual-semiotic tools to analyze the virtual environment conjured by the apps Waze, Moovit and Gett. Recent work has pointed to the complicated relationship between maps and the spaces they purportedly depict, interpreting maps as simulacra that are intimately intertwined in the ideology and design of gaming. In the presentation, we develop a semiotic walkthrough method that allows us to identify four representational practices of these widely used navigation apps: the map is personalized and adopts the perspective of the user – in Waze the arrow represents the user rather than e.g. the North; the map is commercial in that it is informed by the economic model of the app, e.g Waze presenting only those gas stations that pay the company; the map offers a visual depiction of time – arguably, time rather than space is its raison d’être; and lastly, the map is reflexive, incorporating users’ data both to regulate their behavior (speed alert) and to seemingly subvert surveillance (police alert). In this cartographic regime, the map user adopts a “self as business” (Gershon, 2017) logic in which navigation must constantly create value, as the map becomes less a tool for regulating behavior and more, a tool for producing it (Zuboff, 2019).

The “Nature” of American Literature: Race, Place, and Textuality in John Crowe Ransom and Elizabeth Madox Roberts

“The ‘Nature’ of American Literature” explores how John Crowe Ransom and his less-studied contemporary Elizabeth Madox Roberts advanced a theory of literary objects that emerged from nature itself. This theory formed the basis of Ransom’s bid, in “Criticism, Inc.,” for disciplinary stratification and productivity. Through a set of representational practices this article gathers under the terms “natural reading” and “natural writing,” Roberts and Ransom framed valuable aesthetic objects as the product of a carefully cultivated relationship between human observers and landscape. For both, however, this rarified relationship was grounded in and served to reinforce racial hierarchy. Even as the discipline turns away from the cultural elitism associated with New Criticism, Ransom’s understanding of the literary object as natural and thus subject to disciplinary study continues to inform contemporary critical practice. This article thus invites engagement with the often submerged racial politics of the ways we constitute objects and processes of disciplinary literary studies.

‘Leadership’ as a Project: Neoliberalism and the Proliferation of ‘Leaders’

It is increasingly common for anyone with formal, hierarchical status at work to be called a ‘leader’. Though widespread, this relatively recent change in day-to-day discourse is largely passing by unnoticed. We argue that using ‘leader’ in this way is not simply fashion or empty rhetoric; rather it can be understood in relation to neoliberalism. We argue that the language of ‘leadership’ represents a particularly subtle but powerful opportunity for the pursuit of individual elite interests to be disguised so that it looks as if it is for the benefit of all. This opportunity has arisen because using ‘leader’ has tangible effects that reinforce implied values and assumptions about human relationships at work. In terms of implied values, the label ‘leader’ is celebratory and predisposes us to see elites in overly positive ways. In terms of implied assumptions, referring to executives as ‘leaders’ draws a veil over the structured antagonism at the heart of the employment relationship and wider sources of inequality by celebrating market values. Making ‘leadership’ recognizable as a political project is not intended primarily to suggest intentionality, but to help challenge representational practices that are becoming dominant. ‘Project-ing’ leadership also helps us to emphasize the risks inherent in taking this label for granted; which, we argue, is an important contribution because the language of leadership is increasingly used but is hardly questioned within much contemporary organizational life as well as organization theory.

VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIVE AMERICANS IN COLONIAL AMERICA

The article presents some of the most common visual representations of Native Americans from the colonial period and the Age of Exploration of the Americas. Visual representations were a part of a broader colonial discourse and were based on the representational practices applied by the dominant Western European culture. After establishing a broader theoretical framework based on the post-colonial and cultural studies insights, the author singles out and analyzes several visual representations of Native Americans. The emphasis is on the Noble vs. Ignoble Savage stereotypes and tropes and how they are reflected in visual arts.

Integrating Inferentialism about Physical Theories and Representations: a Case for Phase Space Diagrams

This paper argues for an integrated inferential conception about theories and representations and its role in accounting for the theoretical value of philosophically disregarded representational practices, such as the systematic use of phase space diagrams within the theoretical context of statistical mechanics. This proposal would rely on both inferentialism about scientific representations (Suárez 2004) and inferentialism about particular physical theories (Wallace 2017). I defend that both perspectives somehow converge into an integrated inferentialism by means of the thesis of theories as being composed of representations, as defended from the representational semantic conception defended by Suárez and Pero (2019).

Pop-up non-governmental organizations: (Re)producing colonial helping relations

This qualitative study engages a postcolonial lens to examine the (re)production and disruption of neocolonial, racist power relations in Pop-Up Non-Governmental Organizations’ (PUNs) transnational helping relationships. Recognizing the historical and contemporary use of representations to further colonizing, racist goals, the analysis examines the use of text-based self-representations and refugee representations. This study utilizes five critical discourse analysis tools on four PUN websites’ texts through which the PUNs self-describe, share their work, and seek support. In analyzing these websites, this research aims to identify how the four PUNs navigate the inherent power imbalance between their Northern organizations and the Southern refugees they seek to support. Ultimately, the analysis presents evidence that, although the four PUNs endeavour to disrupt colonial practices, the websites’ representational practices (re)produce colonial, racialized helping relations. It is hoped that this research will support others working from White, Northern perspectives to reflect on their approach and consider alternatives.