Ad Astra Research Articles

Between Eco-Anxiety and Solastalgia: Aspirational and Exiled Astronaut Eco-Imaginaries

ABSTRACT Although space travel is not often discussed in relation to the environmental crisis, it is proposed here that how the core agent of space travel, namely the astronaut, is imagined is of cardinal importance to environmental issues. Two astronaut types are identified in the analysis: the aspirational astronaut planning to escape Earth out of a looming sense of eco-anxiety amidst increasing signs of ecological disaster; and the exiled astronaut who experiences overwhelming environmental distress or solastalgia as home becomes stranger every day. The selected images of astronauts are interpreted as eco-imaginaries that embody a particular disposition in terms of their geo-locality and climate changes. The aspirational astronaut is explored by a brief slice into two film depictions, namely Approaching the Unknown (Mark Elijah Rosenburg, 2016) and Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019). The exiled astronaut originates from sub-Saharan Africa through the filmed performance work of the Kinshasha-based duo Michel Ekeba and Eléonore Hellio, working as the Kongo Astronauts (2021–2022), and an eco-film by Maisha Maene, entitled Mulika (2022). It is proposed that the diverging eco-imaginaries are products of where one places Earth in climate debates.

The Dilemma of Schizoid Adaptation on the Example of the Films “First Man” and “Ad Astra”

The Dilemma of Schizoid Adaptation on the Example of the Films “First Man” and “Ad Astra”

Modulation of WNT signalling by inflammatory factor TWEAK, and its consequences on fibroblast-epithelial communication

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: A single layer of epithelial cells that are supported by resident mucosal fibroblasts, provides an intestinal barrier against pathogens. In Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), this barrier is disrupted by mechanisms which are poorly understood. Intestinal fibroblasts produce WNT, BMP and Notch mediators that contribute to epithelial homeostasis and an impairment on these signals results in the loss of barrier integrity which has been observed in IBD. In fact, fibroblasts producing these signals may be lost during inflammation. Yet the mediators and mechanism that drive this loss of homeostatic stromal-derived signals are unknown. TWEAK is a member of the tumour necrosis factor superfamily (TNFSF) that was found to be upregulated in IBD biopsies and dysregulated tissue repair and promote chronic inflammation in in vivo murine models. However, whether TWEAK exerts its effects on fibroblasts and how these may contribute to barrier breakdown remains unknown. My central hypothesis is that TWEAK dysregulates the crosstalk between fibroblasts and epithelial cells in the intestinal tract by impairing a homeostatic signalling network. METHODS: To assess the effect of TWEAK on WNT signalling and wound healing in fibroblasts and epithelial cells, the expression of WNT ligands and receptors were assessed. Primary human colonic fibroblasts and human colonic epithelial cells were stimulated with TWEAK at various time points and analysed by qPCR, Western blot and Flow cytometry and scratch wound assay. RESULTS: Both Fibroblasts and epithelial cells displayed abundant Fn14 surface receptor, although epithelial cells at a level lower than that found on colonic fibroblasts. Transcriptional signatures at gene RSPO2 (0.5-fold ± decrease, *p<0.05, n=4), WNT5A (1 fold ± decrease, **p<0.01, n=4) and BMP6 (1 fold ± decrease, ***p<0.001, n=4) and protein level RSPO2 (50% ± decrease respectively, n=5) showed a TWEAK-mediated suppression after prolonged exposure (24-48h), but not in epithelial cells. Moreover, TWEAK delayed fibroblast healing capacity after 24h (50% ± decrease in wound closure, n=4) in a wound-scratch assay. CONCLUSION: TWEAK represses the expression of homeostatic factors in colonic fibroblasts but not on epithelial cells, suggesting this mechanism could be specific to the intestinal stroma. The effect that this impairment of WNT signals in stromal cells may have on their differentiation and communication with the epithelium will be subject for further study. UCD Ad Astra PhD Scholarship. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Twins And Telomeres-In Space!

As part of the NASA Twins Study, our investigations related to telomeres and DNA damage responses (genome stability) during long-duration spaceflight have important implications for the health and performance of astronauts participating in exploration missions, as well as for long-term aging and disease risk outcomes. Together with the other Twins Study investigations, results will guide future studies and development of personalized medicine approaches for evaluating health effects for individual astronauts as we make our way back to the moon and beyond. Particularly as the number and diversity of space travelers and even space tourists increases over the coming years, identifying individual differences in response to the extreme environment, experiences and chronic exposures associated with space travel, exploration, and eventual habitation of other planets, represents a critical next step for ensuring future astronaut performance and health during, and improving disease and aging courses following, such missions. Ad astra!

Ad Astra - an Ar-Based Education Standard

Ad Astra - an Ar-Based Education Standard

A fall from the stars: a critical psychoanalytic reading of James Gray’s film ‘Ad Astra (to the stars)’

ABSTRACT This reading of James Gray’s science fiction film ‘Ad Astra’ explores, largely from a post-Kleinian perspective, phantasised restrictions on object relations that may result in a developmental arrest in late adolescence. The phantasy of omnipotence, with its dominating impact on the mind, is considered, including how this may link with socio-contextual impingements on boys’ developing masculine identities, especially where a father is absent during their late adolescent years.

XXI century as a cultural turn in American space fiction cinema

The purpose of this article is the analysis of new stage in American space fiction cinema’s history, which started from the XXI century and set the new directions for genre, which were shown in movies “The Martian” (2015, director — R. Scott), “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014, director — J. Gunn), “Interstellar” (2014, director — K. Nolan), “Thor” (2011, director — K. Brannah), “Ad Astra” (2019, director — J. Gray), “Avengers” (2012, director — J. Whedon).
 The methodology of this article includes the use of historical, comparative and systematic methods. Each of these methods helps to reveal the place of space fiction’s new era in the whole history of this genre in XX–XXI centuries, and to find the cultural senses and messages, which the new stage proposes to society.
 The results of this work present a detailed survey of newest stage of American cinema space fiction in XXI century and key directions, for which the new films are produced. Moreover, this work reveals how these directions from new stage influence on the genre’s perspectives and development in the future.
 The scientific novelty of the research. This work fills the gap of cultural studies dedicated to the topic of the article, as the vast majority of materials that analyze the theme of fantasy in cinema are humanitarian.
 The practical significance of the article. The article will be useful for scholars who want to expand their knowledge on the topic mentioned in the title, as well as for anyone interested in cinema, science fiction, American cinematography and media culture in general.

Psychological portrait of astronaut in modern American space fiction films of XXI century

This paper discloses a general psychological portrait of astronaut, which is shown in latest American space fiction films of XXI century. The purpose of this article is to find the most typical psychological features of astronauts, which are presented in films “Interstellar” (2014, director — K. Nolan), “The Martian” (2015, director — R. Scott), “Ad Astra“ (2019, director — J. Gray).
 The methodology of this article includes the using of axiological, systematic and comparative methods. Each of these methods helps to discover three important moral traits, which form the astronaut’s nature and personality.
 The results of this article are a primary investment to the researches, which are dedicated to the modern era of American cinema space fiction.
 The scientific novelty of this work lies in systematic review of American space fiction films, which belong to modern and actual realistic vector of storytelling, where the space fiction genre realizes it’s development nowadays.

Per aspera ad astra simul: Through difficulties to the stars together

In this article, we detail the strategic partnerships "Per Aspera Ad Astra Simul" and "European Collaborating Astronomers Project: Espana-Czechia-Slovakia", and the educational activities that have been carried out as part of these grants. This highlights the potential of Key Action 2 of the ERASMUS+ programme to support projects international educational projects, as well as the great impact that such projects can have on the general public and on the continued development of early career researchers.

Romantic Interpretation of the Human and the World in Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė’s Novel Ad Astra

Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė was an active participant in the Lithuanian national revival of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. She was a book smuggler, a supporter of the distributors of the banned Lithuanian press, a teacher, a journalist, and a writer. She based her novel Ad Astra on the principle of memories in order to artistically reconstruct the process of national revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, its events, and the activities of individual social strata and personalities. The author’s choice of Maria Konopnicka’s motto ‘I believe in the necessary, conscious invasion of people into powerful ideas of rights and equality’ clearly drew its semantic ideological line.Living in a friend’s manor and interacting with the landlords of the Polish mindset, Elzė feels a sharp cultural divide between ‘own’ and ‘foreign’. Everything related to the old Lithuanian ethnic and cultural identity belongs to the category of ‘own’: the mother tongue, the harmony of one’s own home, myths of the childhood, and family history. In the novel, the ‘foreignness’ is represented by the Polish mindset (owners of the manor), a hedonistic worldview (young people, old ladies), and even the living environment of the manor characterised by a certain relationship with the representatives of the repressive government apparatus (the colonel).Elzė is depicted through a fundamentally new form of female consciousness in society of that time. This awareness is primarily represented by attention and social sensitivity to the lower strata of society (self-care and full care of the seriously ill Eliutė, Pėželienė’s daughter), respect for the nation’s historical memory and historical heritage, courageous efforts to preserve her language (she speaks Lithuanian with a young man), censorship, lively interest in the success of new cultural phenomena (she is interested in Lithuanian books secretly published in Prussia). For a long time, Elzė’s Lithuanian identity seems to be off-centre; it gains total power when the girl meets Bataitis, a student. The influence of his ideas and the girl’s intense self-esteem determine the formation of an integral female ego, a new model of a woman’s active existence. She is determined to follow Bataitis’s ideals of bringing the nation together and fighting for the rights of her compatriots, and this stimulates her new spiritual ambitions and activates new activities of her consciousness.At the epicentre of the depicted world events, the woman becomes a powerful force that unconditionally invades new experiences of discovery, succumbing to new quests and movements. Elzė’s self-identification is not the discovery of a specific stable and unchanging situation, but a constant change of states and positions in order to establish the woman’s new social ego. Following the stereotype of the ideal spiritual woman, participating in the work of nation-building, and experiencing inspiring elation, Elzė feels she has discovered herself, the full-bloodedness of life that can manifest itself without becoming a mother or wife and is experiencing a constant contact with transcendence.

Heidegger’s Idea of Dwelling: Narrative Style in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

Heidegger’s Idea of Dwelling: Narrative Style in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying Colleen Shuching Wu William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a novel that consists of several major characters’ monologues and narratives, each narrated in the first person. There is no grand narrator or authorial voice who acts as arbiter, telling the reader which character is more truthful or what to make of narrative discrepancies. Faulkner once stated that he was interested “in people, in man in conflict with himself, with his fellow man, or with his time and place, his environment” (Faulkner in the University 19). Nonetheless, for Faulkner, conflict might not occur in direct confrontation between the self and others or between the self and the environment. In fact, the characters in As I Lay Dying do not usually communicate what is on their minds in conversations. Instead, each of them forms a universe of their own while voicing their thoughts and contemplating what Addie’s death means in their own monologues. They might live close to each other but are distant in their minds while each narrates “the perpetual present of consciousness” as J. Hillis Miller notes (93). In “Ad Astra,” Faulkner wrote, “We are like men trying to move in water . . . watching one another’s terrific stasis without touch, without contact, robbed of all save the impotence and the need” (407). Faulkner is more interested in how one exists and dwells in the world while forming relations with others than in how one’s relations with others define one’s living and existence. Heidegger’s idea of dwelling and his definition of subiectum suggest a similar concern with the very condition of how one lives in the world. Heidegger’s major example of “things” where dwelling occurs is the bridge. As the bridge dwells and gathers things around it in its own way, it is no longer an object that passively receives meanings given by subjects. Heidegger’s discussion sheds light on how symbolism and [End Page 199] metaphor work in Faulkner’s fiction because Faulkner tends to show how a detail turns into a metaphor through contextual contingencies instead of making a fictional object representative of a specific symbolic meaning. Heidegger’s thinking of dwelling and being also further explains characterization and narrative construction in As I Lay Dying. The novel is composed of various characters’ perspectives, but each one does not carry the same weight. Instead, there is a narrative hierarchy. In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard uses the terms “metadiscourse” (or “metanarrative”) and “grand narrative” when defining modern and postmodern as concepts. Metadiscourse or metanarrative represents “legitimate knowledge” and decides what grand narrative can stand for “truth.” Lyotard defines “postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives” (xxiv). In other words, in a postmodern culture, there is no metadiscourse to justify or legitimate a grand narrative as the truth. Lyotard’s idea of “incredulity toward metanarratives” is significant in the discussion of As I Lay Dying because the novel lacks a dominant metanarrative that grants legitimacy to a narrative and consequently resolves discrepancy among characters’ narratives. From this perspective, As I Lay Dying speaks to a conspicuous trait of the postmodern—a hierarchy of narratives where the supposed grand one is ready to fall and the one forthcoming probably cannot sustain itself as well. Faulkner’s presentation of the unstable narrative hierarchy does not offer a metadiscourse to justify a grand narrative and thus casts doubt on Heidegger’s “Being of beings.” Faulkner’s narrative style not only questions the positiveness of coexisting diverse perspectives and narratives but also challenges attempts to resolve their potential conflicts or their dialectical relations, such as Heidegger’s Being. Heidegger’s Idea of Dwelling For Heidegger, dwelling is being. Therefore, “I am” means that “I dwell.” As I will elaborate later, Heidegger defines “subject” to explain Being and introduces a thing, an object, a “bridge” to elucidate “dwelling.” He defines the concept of subject exactly the same way he presents “the bridge” to explain “dwelling”—i.e., gathering things around. In “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Heidegger suggests that the three are essentially the same. Dwelling presides over buildings, and “to...

MUNDANE SCIENCE FICTION: LOSS OF DREAMS OR MATURITY?

The aim of the paper is to study the role of the mundane in contemporary culture based on the mundane science fiction (MSF). The term originated in 2004 thanks to «The Mundane Manifesto» by Geoff Ryman and his anonymous co-authors who argued for a focus on the modern science paradigm instead of dreams of outer space. The Manifesto outlines SF subgenre, where the setting is in the near future on the Earth or within the Solar System, excluding interstellar travel or contact with aliens. MSF suggests the believable use of technology and science, as it exists at the current time or a plausible extension of existing technology. There is a debate about the genre limits and its canonical works since it also covers cyberpunk, dystopia, etc. Remarkably, in the Soviet literature, such a genre called «near-future science fiction» existed in the 1940s and 1950s. It is a subgenre of «hard» SF focusing on the inventions useful for the national economy and lacking psychological depth of characters. This literature mostly had low artistic quality because of the Soviet ideological pressure and many limitations.The benefits of the paper are the following. First, the author distinguishes between two ma in approaches to SF, namely a more practical and literal reception and a more metaphorical reception. The former is characteristic of readers of realistic literature who try to find the true-to-life elements in SF blamed as escapism. The latter is close to the SF fans. However, blaming SF for escapism seems an excessive sociologizing of literature and ignoring the great role of metaphor in cultural development. Consequently, MSF is an effort to bridge a gap between SF and realistic literature. Second, the paper presents the first attempt to compare MSF to the Soviet «near-future SF». The author argues that since such a «near-future SF» occupies a niche in Western literature, it is a sign of the global changesthat are taking place during the lifetime of the current generation, bringing, in addition to progress, the acute threat of environmental catastrophe. Moreover, the role of neo Marxism, on the one hand, and technophobia, on the other hand, are emphasized. Third, for the first time the possible connections between MSF and the frontier myth important for the American national cultural mythology are studied. At the core of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel «Aurora» (2015) and James Gray’s movie «Ad Astra» (2019), MSF is regarded as a rejection of the ideology «space: the final frontier». Both works shift the focus from the global to the personal, from the unusual to the mundane, from expansion and colonization to the internal problems. The author concludes that the anthropological turn occurs in SF as well: there is a loss of metaphor, allegory, and archetypal basis, an abandonment of escapism, Enlightenment utopianism, belief in progress, romanticism, and industrialism in favor of more realistic view on the future of humankind. Unfortunately, in many cases, «mundane» means not only «mature» but «boring» here, making SF more science than fiction.

Whose line is it anyway: graphic anthology drawing the line as a counter to mainstream rape reportage in India

ABSTRACT Published by Delhi’s feminist press Zubaan Book and Toronto’s Ad Astra Comix, Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back is an anthology of graphic narratives by fourteen young women. The book came into being as a result of a workshop held in the wake of the brutal gang rape and murder of a young female medical student in Delhi in December 2012; the incident received extensive national and international media coverage and triggered massive civic protests across the country. The ensuing national conversation around rape was shaped in a significant manner by media reportage which ranged from fact-based reports of the night’s events to impassioned opinion pieces. However, as scholars like Deepa Fadnis and Shakuntala Rao have pointed out, the newsgathering and reporting process is heavily influenced by patriarchal socialisation; as a result, the conversation rarely moves beyond the language of surveillance and control of female bodies under the rhetoric of women’s safety. An anthology like Drawing the Line, I argue, offers a valuable counter-narrative to the problematic public discussion around rape. The anthology explores, in the black-and-white of newsprint and documentary photojournalism, a gamut of issues that undergird rape culture; these include punitive beauty standards, enforced heteronormativity, restrictions on mobility, lack of economic independence, street harassment etc. Equally importantly, the stories articulate a desire for what Shilpa Phadke calls the right to risk and pleasure. My paper, therefore, will explore this graphic anthology as an image-text archive that resists the hegemony of the mainstream discourse by significantly broadening its concerns and offering perspectives that interrogate the status quo’s espousal of the rhetoric of safety.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and Pregnancy: “Per Aspera Ad Astra”

Introduction Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) has evolved in the past 20 years from an invariably fatal disease to a long-lasting, chronic disorder that can be treated with different targeted drugs and that allows survival expectations approaching those of age-matched controls.

The Virtues of Being Human: Faith, Hope, and Love in James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), The Lost City of Z (2016), and Ad Astra (2019)

James Gray’s three most recent features reflect on the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, revealed and developed through encounters with others. The Immigrant (2013) reveals the way faith informs familial commitments, social bonds, and a life-giving response to suffering and injustice. The Lost City of Z (2016) portrays a dreamer, a man whose hopeful vision of another world animates every aspect of his being. And Gray’s most recent feature, Ad Astra (2019) traces a man’s turn toward relationship as he discovers what it means to love. In each case, as Gray’s characters display these virtues, the characters transcend their boundedness, giving us a picture of the way these virtues guide us outside of ourselves, to our neighbors, and ultimately to God.

Ad astra per aspera (Through Hardships to the Stars): Lessons Learned from the First National Virtual APDS Meeting, 2020

ObjectiveAfter COVID-19 rendered in-person meetings for national societies impossible in the spring of 2020, the leadership of the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS) innovated via a virtual format in order to hold its national meeting.DesignAPDS leadership pre-emptively considered factors that would be important to attendees including cost, value, time, professional commitments, education, sharing of relevant and current information, and networking.SettingThe meeting was conducted using a variety of virtual formats including a web portal for entry, pre-ecorded poster and oral presentations on the APDS website, interactive panels via a web conferencing platform, and livestreaming.ParticipantsThere were 298 registrants for the national meeting of the APDS, and 59 participants in the New Program Directors Workshop. The registrants and participants comprised medical students, residents, associate program directors, program directors, and others involved in surgical education nationally.ResultsThere was no significant difference detected for high levels of participant satisfaction between 2019 and 2020 for the following items: overall program rating, topics and content meeting stated objectives, relevant content to educational needs, educational format conducive to learning, and agreement that the program will improve competence, performance, communication skills, patient outcomes, or processes of care/healthcare system performance.ConclusionsA virtual format for a national society meeting can provide education, engagement, and community, and the lessons learned by the APDS in the process can be used by other societies for utilization and further improvement.

Ad Astra: Forensic Psychiatry in Space

Written by James Gray, Ethan Gross. Directed by James Gray. Released in the United States by 20th Century Fox on September 20, 2019. Ad Astra is a film that follows astronaut Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt) during a space mission to find his father. When strange power surges imperil humanity, U.S

(Invited) Exchanging Degradation for Durability: Accelerated Stress Test Protocols for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and Electrolysers

The longer lifetimes of solid oxide cells (SOC) – obtained and still required, both in fuel cell and electrolysis operation – exacerbate the need for accelerated stress tests, since neither reliable degradation models are currently available nor validated methodologies to evaluate expected stack durability in a practical timeframe. The project AD ASTRA ( “HArnessing Degradation mechanisms to prescribe Accelerated Stress Tests for the Realization of SOC lifetime prediction Algorithms”) started operations to tackle this on January 1st 2019, funded by the European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking. Generally, a great number of operational parameters influence SOC degradation during lifetime, each contributing according to characteristic times and intensities, often in convoluted or even contrasting fashion. Aggravation of test input parameters can thus lead to non-representative accelerated degradation of a component where concurring effects are differently influenced, leading to a biased end state of the component investigate. To systematically address, harness and accelerate the selected failure modes, a matrix was set up of degradation mechanisms, test items, test procedures and characterization methods, that was translated to protocols in such a way that consistent measurement data are generated, helping subsequent analysis and correlation of phenomena and parameters by the project’s modelling and simulation activities. The testing approach consists of a dual-focus campaign targeting: • macroscopic stack testing procedures, where short stacks will be operated in situ, in aggravated conditions with the objective of identifying test settings that will stress the stack in a representative way but minimizing testing time and resource expenditure • specific component ageing tests, to reproduce (ex-situ) the degraded condition of critical stack components or interfaces in a faster time, based on analysis of the components extracted from stacks that have been field-tested. A radical innovation of the project consists in the integration of these two methods: components specifically aged ex situ assembled into otherwise “new” stacks for in-situ testing, so that their effect on stack performance can be easily isolated from other components that in real-world conditions would also degrade. These tests allow to observe from the start (t=0) the end-of-service stack degradation, radically reducing in-situ testing time and providing powerful means to validate models simulating the long-term effects of component degradation in a stack.

Making “The Beast”: An Interview with Patrick McCurdy

In this interview, Jordan B. Kinder discusses The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet with Patrick McCurdy. The Beast is a 2018 graphic novel published by independent Canadian publisher Ad Astra Comix. It is the result of a collaboration between communications scholar Patrick McCurdy, writer Hugh Goldring, and artist Nicole Marie Burton. Emerging from McCurdy’s work on the MediaToil database project—a database that gathers together competing visual representations of the Athabasca Oil Sands from several stakeholders—the graphic novel addresses themes that arise from these representations while creatively exploring and navigating the tensions at the core of trying to live well in our current petroculture, a culture underwritten by neoliberalism and economic precarity.

Dislocating Reality in "The Leg"

Dislocating Reality in "The Leg" Solveig Dunkel In late 1925, as he was traveling through Europe, William Faulkner wrote to his mother: "I've written a queer short story, about a case of reincarnation" (Selected Letters 31). Since reincarnation is an unusual topic for Faulkner, to say the least, it seems evident that the story in question was "The Leg." Although this strange tale was not published until 1934, in Doctor Marttino and Other Stories, Joseph Blotner speculates that it was inspired by Faulkner's tour of England and France in 1925, when he was twenty-eight years old (169). Faulkner's writings in the 1920s were very much affected by his walks through Northern France and Brittany. André Bleikasten recounts that while in France in 1925, Faulkner's first trip out of Paris was to go see the battlefields around Rennes, Rouen, Amiens, Compiègne and Ponte-Sainte-Maxence (105), the sites where American troops fought during the Great War. His letters demonstrate that this touristic experience deeply affected him. In early October 1925, after visiting Northern France, a region radically different from the fashionable French Riviera his American counterparts favored,1 Faulkner took the ferry from Dieppe to reach England. World War I looms large in a number of Faulkner's productions of the decade, in his first published novel Soldiers' Pay in 1926, and also poems ("The Lilacs," 1920), short stories ("Mistral," probably written in 1926, "Ad Astra," 1927), and even the unpublished review essay "Literature and War,"2 written around 1924. The First World War haunted Faulkner's literary imagination throughout his career. Yet Faulkner never experienced the war directly, a frustration that Bleikasten describes as follows: [End Page 53] Faulkner's nonexperience of the war may indeed be said to have proved as traumatic to him as actual participation in it had to other Americans of his generation. The wound was there, even though, unlike Hemingway's, it was an imaginary one, and it would keep festering for many years. (Ink of Melancholy 17) Faulkner's Great War was borrowed from veterans' stories and authors' writings, mythicized, and perhaps above all, fantasized. But none of Faulkner's other war narratives ever plunged quite as deep into fantasy territory as "The Leg." On paper, "The Leg" is a war story. At least, it starts as one, before taking a surprising turn. The plot begins in 1914 in England, before the war, and centers around two Oxford students, David and George, and their friendship. Suddenly and without fanfare, the war breaks out, and George is killed during the battle of Givenchy while David is seriously injured and loses a leg. The important word here is the verb "lose": it is used not only metaphorically, as the expression suggests, but also quite literally, as David's amputated leg has gone rampant—a literal phantom limb. In the military hospital, David, after the amputation, starts to engage in conversations with the ghost of his dead friend George, begging him to find his leg and make sure that it is genuinely dead. But the leg has other plans. At the end of the story, David discovers that his lost limb has been reincarnated in an altered version of himself, a Doppelgänger of sorts, which wreaks chaos and causes a series of tragic deaths while David is recovering in the Observers School and getting used to his prosthetic leg. "[A] queer short story, about a case of reincarnation"—indeed. "The Leg" is an anomaly in the Faulknerian corpus, for multiple reasons. For one, Faulkner is not known for writing fantastic pieces. Also, while "The Leg" displays few elements that are characteristic of Faulkner's work, the story also foregrounds Faulkner's experimentations with the Gothic. But should it be considered exclusively in the light of Faulkner's work of the 1930s, or rather as an autonomous piece, interesting for its specificities? Additionally, it has received relatively little critical attention.3 We can certainly agree it is a baffling, disconcerting story. [End Page 54] Numerous critics, as Edmond Volpe documents, have tended to dismiss it as a substandard supernatural tale (57), unworthy of Faulkner's most emblematic...