“A minha solidão é tão hedionda quanto a dos outros” – A (im)possibilidade de dar corpo ao passado na novela de Patrícia Reis / "My loneliness is just as hideous as that of others” – The (im)possibility of embodying the past in Patrícia Reis’s novel

Resumo: Partindo da tentativa de decifração do título atribuído à novela de Patrícia Reis – O que nos separa dos outros por um copo de whisky (2014) –, buscaremos compreender os motivos pelos quais um professor universitário se encontra em Macau, a beber desenfreadamente – fato implícito a uma narrativa ininterrupta em forma de monólogo. Com o intuito de preencher o vazio da existência, na esperança de ser salvo, tal personagem busca recuperar imagens fantasmáticas de seu passado por meio de vestígios memorialísticos que se sobrepõem nas malhas textuais. Como aparato teórico na busca por decifrar o enigma acerca do que separa o narrador-personagem dos outros, outras vozes se unirão à nossa. Ao mencionar questões em torno da morte da memória, das artimanhas da ironia e do humor, convocaremos as reflexões críticas de Lélia Parreira Duarte, em seu livro Ironia e humor na literatura (2006), e a questão do “salto no vazio” será trazida pelas mãos de Vladimir Safatle, através de O circuito dos afetos: corpos políticos, desamparo e o fim do indivíduo (2018).Palavras-chave: O que nos separa dos outros por um copo de whisky; Patrícia Reis; memória; ironia; morte. Abstract: Starting from the attempt to decipher the title attributed to Patrícia Reis’s novel – O que nos separa dos outros por um copo de whisky (2014) –, we will try to understand the reasons why a university professor is in Macau, drinking wildly – implicit fact to an uninterrupted narrative in the form of a monologue. In order to fill the emptiness of existence, in the hope of being saved, such a character seeks to recover ghostly images of his past through memorialistic traces that overlap in textual meshes. As a theoretical apparatus in the quest to decipher the enigma about what separates the narrator-character from others, other voices will join ours. When mentioning issues surrounding the death of memory, the antics of irony and humor, we will call on the critical reflections of Lélia Parreira Duarte, in her book Ironia e humor na literatura (2006), and the question of “jumping into the void” will be brought up through the hands of Vladimir Safatle, through O circuito dos afetos: corpos políticos, desamparo e o fim do indivíduo (2018).Keywords: O que nos separa dos outros por um copo de whisky; Patrícia Reis; memory; irony; death.

Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962), the Photographs in His Popular Science Literature

The case of Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962) is symptomatic of a time when sciences like anthropology and ethnology supported the fascist ideology and gave it scientific approval in a crucial political moment for Benito Mussolini’s regime (1930–1940), which enacted racist laws and institutionalized the establishment of racial segregation in the colonies as well as within the boundaries of the motherland. Over the past thirty years historiography has focused some attention on the issue, but in this contribution I would like to highlight a point that has only been mentioned in passing in studies dedicated to the Florentine anthropologist, namely the questions surrounding the use of his massive photographic corpus. Since the use of imagery to nourish a collective imagination had become crucial for the fascist regime, an analysis of these images and their circulation may allow us to better explore the interrelationship between a totalitarian political power, the social body impregnated with propaganda, and the physical anthropology practiced by Cipriani, who produced a colossal visual corpus that suited the fascist theoretical apparatus.

Signs, forms, and models: Thomas A. Sebeok’s enduring legacy for semiotics

Thomas A. Sebeok has left semiotics a comprehensive theoretical apparatus for studying semiosis across species and across systems (biological and artificial). Uniting the notions of form, sign, and model into an integrative purview of meaning-making, known as modeling systems theory, Sebeok has provided a conceptual and terminological apparatus for studying all forms of meaning in terms of the fundamental “standing-for principle” that undergirds all semiotic theories. This essay revisits the Sebeokian perspective, delineating its main components in a retrospective way, highlighting its value not only to semiotics but to computer science as well. Above all else, Sebeok has made it possible concretely to establish specific interconnections between semiotics and cognate disciplines in ways that are relatively free of terminological complexities and ambiguities which have beset semiotics in the past.

Symbolic revolutions. Mobilizing a neglected Bourdieusian concept for historical sociology

The article builds on a recent literature that has sought to underscore the relevance of Bourdieu’s field theory for historical-sociological analysis. It draws attention to symbolic revolutions, a concept that has been given short shrift in this literature and even in Bourdieu’s own expositions of his field-theoretical apparatus. The article argues that symbolic revolutions denote a universal mechanism of field-internal change which extends and complements a conceptual battery of mostly structural universals of fields. In a synoptic reading of Bourdieu’s field-theoretical work, the article fleshes out an ideal type of symbolic revolutions, with special regard to its dialectical features. It adds further analytical purchase to the concept by highlighting continuities and parallels with the work of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Mannheim. Finally, it argues that more recent studies by other authors on transformations in the psychiatric field, the field of social and human sciences, and the political field are in fact discussing instances of symbolic revolutions. It thus shows how the concept can help identify common properties among highly heterogeneous phenomena, opening up new avenues for historical-sociological investigations that can more systematically relate the general and the particular.

Business Combinations under Common Control: The Gain/loss Group Perspective. What the IASB Project Leaves Unaddressed

Although BCUCCs are widespread, a clear treatment is missing under IFRS. Most contributions have taken partial views. This article innovatively provides a systematic theoretical apparatus of the role accounting plays for all the affected members of a group, with a focus on gain or loss opportunities below the consolidated statements. The method used is international technical accounting analysis under IFRS and U.S. GAAP. It shows how a BCUCC may be driven to achieve gain/loss in separate financial statements and how cross-company consistency in policies and substance may reveal gain/loss arbitrage; the interaction of principles for disposals, demergers, and business combinations; and the position of sub-holdings, which in real practice is more relevant than the ultimate parent company. This paper is timely, as the IASB has recently published a Discussion Paper. The IASB project fails to give answers to these points as it only looks at the receiving entity and consolidated statements.

Strategy and Steering in Governance: The Changing Fates of the Argentine Planning Council

Based on a detailed study of the return of national-level planning in Argentina as embodied by COFEPLAN, the national planning council, we develop a conceptual framework to analyse the possibilities and limits of steering in governance. We lean on the theoretical apparatus of evolutionary governance theory and use the concepts of goal dependency, interdependency, path dependency and material dependency (effects in governance) to analyse the reality effects of strategy (effects of governance). Methodologically, our study relies on archival work and semi-structured interviews with planning scholars and public officials from different levels of government. We show that, although material and discursive reality effects were abundant in the evolution of Argentine planning policies, dependencies and discontinuities undermined both the central steering ambitions of the government and the innovative potential of the new planning schemes. The dramatic history of the Argentine planning system allows us to grasp the nature of dependencies in a new way. Shocks in general undermine long-term perspectives and higher-level planning, but they can also create windows of opportunity. The internal complexity and the persistence of Peronist ideology in Argentina can account for the revivals of national-level planning, in very different ideological contexts, but the recurring shocks, the stubborn difference between rhetoric and reality, the reliance on informality, created a landscape of fragmented governance and often weak institutional capacity. In that landscape, steering through national-level planning becomes a tall order.

The Value of Small Live Music Venues: Alternative Forms of Capital and Niche Spaces of Cultural Production

Small live music venues rely on complex systems of cultural and social capital to bring revenue into each venue space. Although these intangible forms of value are quickly exchanged for economic capital over the bar or through the ticket vendor, their initial state conveys the intrinsic value of small venues as spaces of sociality and cultural production. Throughout this article I demonstrate the intrinsic value of small venues through an analysis of how alternative forms of capital – social, cultural, and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986, 1997, 2002) – are generated and mobilised by individuals working in small venues, and the venue spaces themselves. This utilisation of Bourdieu and his theoretical apparatus forms the conceptual framework of this article, as I assert that much of the ‘work’ that small venues ‘do’ is intangible, and thus difficult to measure in quantitative terms. However, Bourdieu’s alternative forms of capital allow us to qualitatively assess the intrinsic value of small live music venues, demonstrating the significance of this value whilst also prompting a discussion of the nature of intrinsic and instrumental value. This article is both a review of the literature connecting Bourdieu to the study of small live music venues and an analysis of how theories of value and Bourdieusian capital(s) play out in niche spaces of cultural production such as small live music venues.

Biotechnology: The Seed Panopticon Encounters Arts of Resistance

James C. Scott’s prodigious work has influenced numerous fields of inquiry, often profoundly, as documented in this forum. This essay suggests how an extension of Scott's theoretical apparatus might provide fresh understanding of stalemated contentious politics of great importance to rural well-being.

Methods for studying the library fund: state and development

The socio-historical factors in the development of methods for studying the library fund through the prism of the formation of the conceptual and scientific-theoretical apparatus of fund science, as well as the process of improving the methodology of library science research are characterized. The formation of these methods is analyzed in connection with the development of the theory and methodology of fund science as an integral part of library science in the context of the transformation of the forms of library activity, the expansion of new methods of organizing and methods of analyzing the library fund, due to the emergence of information and digital technologies.

The Political Economy of Revolution: Karl Polanyi in Tahrir Square

The causes and consequences of revolutionary change have long been the subject of scholarly debate. Through a systematic integration of political economic elements into an analysis of contemporary social transformations, this article joins this conversation by asking how Karl Polanyi’s double movement framework can clarify, and be extended by, the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. By embedding a nuanced account of neoliberalism in Egypt’s modern politics and by bringing those in dialogue with Polanyi’s theoretical apparatus, this article contends that there is a broad alignment between the first movement and the Egyptian neoliberal experience, a partial alignment between the second movement and the Egyptian Revolution, and a multilayered entanglement that implicates and encircles both movements. Not only does this research demonstrate that contemporary Egyptian history can find new currency in and be further illuminated by Polanyi’s political economy, it also critiques, complicates, reconceptualizes and extends Polanyi’s theoretical framework. In so doing, it redresses the underfocus of Polanyian political economy on the theory of revolution in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, problematizes extant accounts on neoliberalism and the double movement, and extends analyses between neoliberalism and revolution in political economy literatures. By clarifying our understanding of contemporary social change, this essay underscores how Polanyi’s work remains a pertinent, viable and valuable prism to examine momentous social transformations.