Immersed in Pop

In 2019, Dolby Atmos Music launched on Tidal HiFi and Amazon Prime Music HD, integrating 3D sound with music streaming services for the first time. This is one of several recent incursions by popular music into immersive and interactive mediums, which also includes technologies such as virtual reality and 360-degree video. As immersive productions become more normal in popular music, they are increasingly critical to examine. How are aesthetic features of pop compositions altered or maintained in these productions? And how do these different spatial mediums affect compositional design, subject positioning, artists’ performativity, and staging? This article aims to address these questions by presenting a model for 3D music analysis that relates various notions of music technology and production to musicological concepts on performance environment, staging, and subject position. This model is then demonstrated in a hermeneutic close reading of the song ‘Blinding Lights’ by R&B superstar The Weeknd, which was released in both stereo and Dolby Atmos mediums in 2019. The goal of the analysis is to demonstrate some of the ways different mediums impinge on various interpretive stances and the relationship between the performer and listener in immersive popular music.

Is IR Theory White? Racialised Subject-Positioning in Three Canonical Texts

Racism is a historically specific structure of modern global power which generates hierarchies of the human and affirms White supremacy. This has far-reaching material and epistemological consequences in the present, one of which is the production and naturalisation of White-racialised subject positions in academic discourse. This article develops a framework for analysing Whiteness through subject-positioning, synthesising insights from critical race scholarship that seek to dismantle its epistemological tendencies. This framework identifies White subject-positioning as patterned by interlocking epistemologies of immanence, ignorance, and innocence. The article then interrogates how these epistemological tendencies produce limitations and contradictions in international theory through an analysis of three seminal and canonical texts: Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979), Robert Keohane’s After Hegemony (1984) and Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999). It shows that these epistemologies produce contradictions and weaknesses within the texts by systematically severing the analysis of the international system and the ‘West’ from its actual imperial conditions of possibility. The article outlines pathways for overcoming these limitations and suggests that continued inattention to the epistemological consequences of race for International Relations (IR) theory is intellectually unsustainable.

THERE ARE MALE TEARS IN THAT COMMENT SECTION. THE DISCURSIVE NEGOTIATION OF MASCULINITY IN ITALIAN ONLINE MEN'S GROUPS

Despite the consolidation of works on the heterogeneous nature of the so-called Manosphere, a lot of these studies consider masculinity as an overall governing force of men’s behaviors. This is has led to overlooking how subject positioning is always negotiated in multiple and contradictory discourses that are not easily captured by structurally oriented frameworks such as hegemonic or toxic masculinity. By focusing on the recent third development in men’s critical studies of masculinity, this work seek to investigates the discursive construction of masculinity in digital environment, in order to identify the various resources, in the form of established repertoires, that men use to position themselves in relation to conventional discourses of the masculine, and how masculinity both impinges upon and is transformed by those practices. Using a qualitative methodology, we analyze the content of two Facebook Pages dedicated to men's rights issues, called Antisessismo (Antisexism) and Diritti Maschili – Equità e Umanità (Men’s rights – Equity and Humanity). Our findings suggest that in these groups, masculinity is rarely negotiated or discussed but it is assumed as a common sense, providing a basis for shared social understandings. However, there is no unitary meaning to this common sense of masculinity, on the contrary, it contains many contradictory or competing arguments. Individuals are positioned by discourses, but, as our data demonstrate, these identity positions are by no means stable and consistent: users can shift between different modes of masculinity and actively re-create positions for themselves, especially in response to “trouble”.

Ideological discursive formations in an emerging democracy

The inaugural address has received a fair bit of scholarly attention due to the strength in the argument that it occupies an important position amongst discourses that can be termed political; and of course, the recognition that it performs an important political function within the state. The primary interest in the inaugural address has mainly been from the field of rhetoric and composition. This study approaches the inaugural from a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective that allows for an examination of the discourse of governance as it is ideologically expressed in the inaugural address. Four (4) inaugural addresses of four (4) presidents within Ghana’s Fourth Republican tradition were purposefully selected to create a mini corpus for the study. Using the dialectical relational approach and drawing specifically on the concepts of subject positioning, agency in discourse and intertextuality, the analysis examines the ideological discursive formations of governance expressed in the inaugurals as discourse types as well as looks at the issues of subject positioning and agency and their ideological implications in the inaugural addresses. The analysis reveals that though there is an extent to which the ideological discursive formation of collectivism has been naturalised in the addresses, there exist differences in terms of how the subject is characterised within this collectivism. It also reveals that there are differences in how the principals of the two political traditions express agency within the addresses. We argue that these differences do construct and are constrained by the different ideological discursive formations of the two political traditions that have dominated Ghana’s political space.

Silent myelin-weighted magnetic resonance imaging

Background: Inhomogeneous Magnetization Transfer (ihMT) is an emerging, uniquely myelin-specific magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast. Current ihMT acquisitions utilise fast Gradient Echo sequences which are among the most acoustically noisy MRI sequences, reducing patient comfort during acquisition. We sought to address this by modifying a near silent MRI sequence to include ihMT contrast. Methods: A Magnetization Transfer preparation module was incorporated into a radial Zero Echo-Time sequence. Repeatability of the ihMT ratio and inverse ihMT ratio were assessed in a cohort of healthy subjects. We also investigated how head orientation affects ihMT across subjects, as a previous study in a single subject suggests this as a potential confound. Results: We demonstrated that ihMT ratios comparable to existing, acoustically loud, implementations could be obtained with the silent sequence. We observed that the ihMT ratio varied with the orientation of the head. Conclusions: Silent ihMT imaging is a comparable alternative to conventional, noisy, alternatives. For all future ihMT studies we recommend careful attention should be paid to subject positioning within the scanner.

'Boosting resilience' and 'safeguarding youngsters at risk': Critically examining the European Commission's educational responses to radicalization and violent extremism

Despite the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) being tasked with being a core policy tool of the European Union and helping to shape its research funding agenda on preventing violent extremism, very little is known about how it operates, the practices and activities it engages with and the discourses it mobilizes to do so. This study fills this gap through an in-depth investigation into RAN's working group on education, critically examining the construction and enactment of discourses and practices related to the prevention of violent extremism through education. Combining a critical engagement of organizational practices with a discourse analysis of the various RAN EDU outputs, such as manifestos, policy papers and videos, it offers an examination of the discursive terrain of the European Commission, revealing the normative values and ideological assumptions underpinning it, as well as the subject-positioning of students and teachers involved.

Bridging Self and Sociality

‘Identity’, Berger and Luckmann (1991: 195) maintained, ‘remains unintelligible unless it is located in a world’. In order to ‘locate’ identity, this chapter provides, first, a theoretical underpinning for an essentially social understanding of identity construction by conceptualizing identities as arising at the intersection of, and in the interaction between, people’s personal lifeworlds and environing social worlds. Second, it discusses the implications of such a view, summarizing the principles underpinning a social constructivist perspective in terms of five p’s: identity as positioning, performance, (co)production, process, and (an act or effect of) power. Third, it locates identity construction in four different worlds or social circuits where we might observe the interaction between self and sociality ‘in action’: (1) inner conversations (self-directed positioning), (2) self–other definitions (relational positioning), (3) situated interactions (reciprocal positioning), and (4) institutional dynamics (subject positioning). By sketching what to look for (the five p’s) and where to look (the four circuits), this chapter assists scholars in deploying identity as an analytical bridge between agency and structure.