Alien Force Research Articles

Borderscape Antarctica: The uncanny geographical imaginaries of Terra Australis Incognita

The harsh beauty of the Antarctic continent has always fascinated explorers, scientists, policymakers, and global audiences alike. From the 18th century onwards, national expeditions competed to discover and claim Terra AustralisIncognita, the fantastical Great Southern Land believed to be located in the southern Asia-Pacific. This article investigates the worldmaking potential of Antarctica as an uncanny borderscape where humans confront the familiar yet otherworldly ice. I argue this encounter produces a double-sided imaginary of Antarctica as a geography of exception – both as a utopian world elevated above the everyday politics that dominates international relations elsewhere and as a dystopian world where monsters and madness lurk just beneath the icy surface. This double-sided imaginary enabled diplomatic agreement at the 1959 Washington Conference that froze competing sovereignty claims and preserved Antarctica as a frozen laboratory for collaborative science. At the same time, it inspires fears of a potentially thawed Antarctica as a place of horror where alien forces threaten to overwhelm human rationality. Drawing on primary accounts of exploration, archival material, and science and speculative fiction, my intertextual analysis demonstrates how this imaginary was created, represented, and reproduced to create utopian and dystopian visions of our collective planetary future.

Pre-Independence Kenya in Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s Trilogy: A Postcolonial Reading of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat

Colonization is one of the most topical issues in the African Literature of the sixties. Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o like many other African intellectuals, restores and exalts the African past not only for the enlightenment of the Africans’ detractors (the settlers) but, above all, for the education of his own people (the Kikuyu). His trilogy made of Weep not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat is surely appropriate space in which pre-independence Kenya are depicted. As a hierophant of his times, Ngũgĩ shows, how the Kikuyu community, taken as the microcosm of any other people under a colonial power, collapsed with its exposure to the West and cracked with the pressure of an alien force embodied by the British settlers. They lost the precious values that held them together: family life, human dignity but above all, their ancestral land. Ngũgĩ, as a writer in a new nation, appeals this dehumanized people to an awareness in order to understand the real meaning of ‘uhuru’ (independence) and the sacrifices made to achieve it. Yet, he suggests them some necessary strategies for reaching this goal.

Buber’s Pedagogy of Inclusion in Fostering Genuine Classroom Relationship

The study is aimed at directing our collective consciousness towards the needs to develop the values of authentic relationship through the pedagogy of inclusion. The existential potency of positive, meaningful and reasonable learning that is directed toward sustainable and holistic development has been recognized to be hinged on the values of human relationship. This is what Buber’s existentialism projected to achieve by the philosophical consideration of the pedagogy of inclusion which is based on the existentiality of ‘I-Thou’ relationship. This promotes the “we-ness” of development that recognized the commonness of human existence, and for the recognition of the forces of isolation, segregation and alienation. The paper recognized that the hostilities that exist in contemporary human relationship that can be healed through the adoption of the pedagogy of inclusion of every individual, especially by fostering genuine classroom relationship by obedience to the values of ‘I-Thou’ philosophy of life and living, Employing expository method of analysis, the study concluded that genuine classroom relationship can be achieved through the proper understating the pedagogical values of the Buber’s existentialism, and which, in extension, will help to develop the commonness of societal development in love, equity, harmony and justice. Keywords: Classroom, Development Education, Inclusion, ‘I-Thou’ Relationship, Pedagogy, Philosophy of Dialogue

Actually existing intersectionality: The place-based and embodied politics of animal and human rights activism

Critiques of intersectionality as an additive and simplistic model of understanding identity politics has led to calls for renewed concepts that better grasp the complexity and potential of shared struggle. In this article, we contend that the experiences of activists attempting to practice an intersectional human and animal rights politics are a crucial yet overlooked resource in the development of such conceptual imaginaries and ethical practice. Drawing on an historical case study conducted with activists involved in the 1990s anarchist collective ‘One Struggle’ in Israel/Palestine, we argue that an ethic of shared human and animal rights struggle cannot be separated from place-based and embodied politics. We show that activists cultivating intersectional politics in practice must negotiate affective forces of discomfort, alienation and exhaustion that wear down and constrain the potential for intersectional coalitions and joint struggles. These affects are generated through state disincentives, violence the cultural politics of nationalism and incommensurable differences. In this context, intersectional politics are a precarious achievement, dependent on the capacities of activists to continue to compromise and negotiate affectively charged encounters in everyday settings. To better capture the precarious, contingent and provisional nature of animal and human rights activism, we therefore propose the concept of ‘actually existing intersectionality’, illustrating how intersectionality is retheorised via emplaced, embodied activist practices. In so doing we make visible the work through which intersectional politics coheres through negotiation by actors in particular places and times.

The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature

The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature

Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will

<i>Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will</i>

Rituals of Coexistence: Bodies and Technology during Pandemics

Pandemics not only challenge health systems and the economy, they also deeply transform our everyday lives and the ways in which we coexist. People have to find new definitions of what it means to be close to one another, to show empathy and to comfort each other. With social distancing, we must learn how to use digital technologies to create novel forms of closeness. Viruses becomes the new other, alien forces that invisibly permeate social life. They find hosts predominantly in the places where humans get close to each other. Rituals such as eating, drinking, and dancing are the links that hold an otherwise largely disembodied culture together. I will combine a perspective on human cognitive evolution as an embodied process, the hedonist drive towards bodily encounter in Sigmund Freud’s sense and the development of technology and the current tendency toward a culture of disembodiment. The article asks what the role of bodily ritual is in public space. Here I will argue that this is a vital role because it is the only way to create feelings of resonance and connectedness amongst larger groups of people. The pandemic prohibits these rituals, so we need to ask further: Does the pandemic lead to new forms of being together? This is closely linked to the accelerated development of technology. The more precise question is: Does technology afford new forms of embodiment? My aim is to introduce ideas of philosophical posthumanism to think in a productive way about incorporating technology in order to satisfy human needs for contact and resonance.

Intervention Relationship in Sleep in Fitness Yoga

With the acceleration of the development of modern science and technology, material production and spiritual production and their products have become alien forces and gradually the ruling tools, People have gradually become the products of science and technology. In this case, pressure and anxiety lead to increased insomnia among people year by year. This paper aims to study the role of fitness yoga in improving sleep disorders and sleep quality in contemporary people. Using fitness yoga and sleep as the keywords, we searched CNKI, Weibo, Wanfang, and other databases. Relevant master's theses and doctoral dissertations, journal articles, conference abstracts and other documents were included for this analysis. Through the analysis of literature, the relationship of fitness yoga to promote sleep and the practical significance of fitness yoga for sleep were examined. The findings showed that yoga exercises are rhythmic whole-body muscle relaxation exercises that reduce skeletal muscle tone, cerebral cortex arousal, and oxygen consumption to improve sleep; Secondly, interest adjustment is rhythmic abdominal deep breathing technique, which increases chest oxygen content, activates parasympathetic nerves, reduces psychological stress, and promotes sleep. Finally, meditation will guide practitioners to focus on their emotions and feelings and encourage them to accept the environment with peace of mind and promote sleep. Students' total sleep index score, subjective sleep quality, sleep disturbance, and daytime function scores in the yoga group decreased significantly. Among them, total sleep index score and subjective sleep quality were highly significant. Sleep disorders among participants in the yoga group were reduced and their daytime function were improved. Subjective sleep quality and overall sleep improved significantly. Yoga is a combination of physical posture, breathing, and meditation, which focuses on not only the practice of posture, but also spiritual practice. Meditation can enable participants to better regulate their emotions, which emphasizes not only physical relaxation, but also psychological relaxation. One-on-one intervention form, meditation practice, gong therapy, yoga breathing practice, intervention type, weekly intervention, two-three times interventions are effective ways to improve sleep quality and reduce sleep disorders. The short-term effect of yoga is significant; however, future research with high quality needs to examine the long-term effect of yoga on sleep quality.

LEO TOLSTOY AND ENGLISH FAMILY NOVEL: CONTINUITY AND CONTROVERSY. LEO TOLSTOY AND ENGLISH FAMILY NOVEL

In this article the family theme of Tolstoy’s novels is compared with the one of novels of his English contemporary authors. The problems of the novel “Anna Karenina” looks like the problems of the English novels, but is solved quite different. If the heroes of English novels drive from the foreign terrible world to the comfortable home world, then the heroes of Tolstoy novels are attacked by an alien force, destroying their happiness.

Character and Perspective in Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft and Kiernan

AbstractDespite their overt focus on inexplicable alien forces, cosmic horror stories are also determined by their human cast. Far from being merely fodder for horror, the characters significantly contribute to the generation of meaning, including that of the supernatural entity or phenomenon itself. The same holds for the narrators’ (implicitly) political perspectives on the world of which they are part. Much of the perspective propounded in Lovecraft’s cosmic horror stories partakes of myth, adopting in particular the latter’s universal view and pronounced sidelining of humanity as a whole, which it intensifies to the point of horror. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this universal perspective is consistent with the racism permeating and structuring Lovecraft’s writing. Though eschewing racism and universalism, the cosmic horror of Kiernan’s “Tidal Forces” negotiates literary reflections of colonialism from an unreflective white perspective.

The right to the virtual city: Rural retreatism in open-world video games

This article uses Lefebvre’s spatial triad and his concept of The Right to the City to categorise open-world video games as contested virtual spatial experiences, interconnected with the non-virtual spaces in which they are produced and played and replete with the same spatial, capital forces of alienation to be negotiated and maintained. We use qualitative gameplay data ( n = 15), unpacking players’ journeys through Lefebvre’s conceived, lived and perceived spaces, to show, respectively, how open-world games can be (1) fundamentally about space, (2) spaces interconnected with the non-virtual world and (3) disruptive spatial experiences. In utilising The Right to the Virtual City and our players’ tendency to retreat into the wild spaces of our case study game, Red Dead Redemption 2, we evoke the same alienating forces of commodification and capitalism to which Lefebvre spoke, positioning open-world video games as both contested spatial experiences and opportunities to challenge spatialised inequalities.

When ‘we’ are the alien forces: Misremembering the Conquest of America through the ‘Triumph over alien forces’ schematic narrative template

National narratives about the past play a central role in the construction of collective memory and national identity. Drawing on Wertsch’s notion of a schematic narrative template, the purpose of this article is to explore how Spanish university students’ narratives of the Conquest of America and the Latin American independence processes are informed by the ‘triumph over alien forces’ general scheme. The author proposes that this particular scheme mediates the misremembering of these foundational events while supporting key features of national narratives, such as the naturalized nature of the nation and national identity and the nation’s bond with a natural territory. Using a qualitative analysis, students’ narratives were confronted with the ‘triumph over alien forces’ plot. The results indicate that most students’ narratives conformed to the ‘triumph over alien forces’ scheme, misleading their understanding of the past. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the powerful presence of this scheme for developing collective memory and its impact in hindering historical understanding.

Margiad Evans (1909–1958): A writer's epileptic experiences and their reflections in her work

Margiad Evans, in the period 1930–1950, an acclaimed English writer, developed convulsive seizures at age 41 and died at age 50 from the tumor that had caused them. In her book “A Ray of Darkness”, she describes in profound analytic detail her seizure experiences, especially the isolated auras that had preceded her first convulsion by many years. Their ultimate strangeness echoed a long-standing fascination by the indescribable, which is a recurrent theme in her literary work. Another aspect of her poetry, a focus on the experience of the moment that cannot be retained is likewise reminiscent of the volatility of her aura experiences.Of three texts that are presently being published posthumously, one (“The Nightingale Silenced”) is a fragmentary continuation of her epileptic experience. She considered that she still had a lot to describe, contributing the inside of the “outside inside story” of epilepsy, clues on which neurology could work to obtain a deeper understanding. To have a focal motor seizure feels like being invaded by an alien force. An urge to run and heautoscopy are other recorded symptoms. Evans documents the experience of a long-lasting, predominantly nonconvulsive status epilepticus merging into aura continua where her earlier aura experiences appear transformed into a quasipsychotic state. But even in the account of “this appalling, this hellish condition”, she is careful to maintain her high literary standards. Together, the two reports on her disease seem to represent the only comprehensive inside case history of epilepsy, a most valuable legacy.

ENGLISH EDUCATION AND LITERATURE IN THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE IN NORTHEAST INDIA

The place of English in the whole scheme of the education has been a subject of much heated debate, since English is a foreign language. Inspite of all this we are ardent admirers of English. English education has admittedly done us great good. English language is one of the richest languages in the world in respect of literature and culture.The use of English in Northeast India had started during the pre-independence period, with the arrival the Christian missionaries and the spread of English education. Western ideas and Christianity has spread widely in this region. English language has as such become the lingua franca in most of the states in Northeast India. Thus the study of English language is both a necessity and an advantage in this region.In this paper I would like to focus on “English Education and Literature in the Culture of violence in Northeast India”. Northeast India is known to the world for its beautiful landscape, different races, different cultures and sub-cultures. Unfortunately peace could not be sustained in this region over the years and there is conflict and insurgency amongst the different ethnic tribes asserting their identity. The negligence and indifference from the mainland had spread insecurity in the region too.The writers of Northeast have something very different to say because of the distinct regional sensibility of Northeast India. Northeast India is precariously situated, linked to the country only by the bottle neck at Siliguri. The moment Siliguri is dislodged by any alien force; the entire Northeast will be cut off from the rest of Indian sub-continent. There was this fearful possibility during the 1962 Chinese aggression. Therefore political myopia, in this important and highly sensitive area can have grave consequences. “If the Siliguri gap were ever to fall to the Chinese, Bhutan. NEFA, Assam and Nagaland would be cut off from India”. (Mehta, 1973, p. 257).The social, cultural and political nature of the English writings depict violence in the region as a result of times that the states had experienced in the contemporary times. Most of the writings of Northeast Indian writers have been translated into English to educate and evoke empathy for the violent socio-political situations the region has faced They provide an insight into the contemporary culture and environment of Northeast India and awaken the readers’ sensitivity to the region. Since the Northeast is going through a crisis of values in the social and political life; disregard shown to basic values like honesty and tolerance has become a matter of grave concern. Crime, violence, cruelty, greed and apathy to human suffering have spread to all aspects of life –political, economic, and social.After decades of violence it is but natural that the writers from the region express their sufferings, of fear and terror they had endured, the loss of faith, the bitterness, the anger, and pain of shattered dreams; and in spite of all, hopes for a better future through their writings. They have been portraying such events of their life which has left a permanent impression in their mind.Looking at the current situation, the goals of peace, secularism, social justice and democracy to which human kind has declared its ideological commitment have come under severe strain in the region. Forces of social and national disintegration have become active, putting our democratic social order to its severest test, which has seriously affected the quality of life of the masses and has caused social tensions and unrest. All these problems can be effectively tackled through efforts -- educational and social. Ccommunication of messages of peace, prosperity and development amongst the masses can happen much better in English language and literature, since this is an international language and understood by most of the masses in the region.What we need under the present circumstances is to educate the learners to a good life. English education and literature in Northeast India is in a process of transmission of values in our education--something that we consider as good and desirable for the learner to acquire both for the learner’s own and the society’s good.

Comparing official and literary discourses оn sino-soviet border crossings of 1962

Оfficial discourse (soviet and Chinese) interpreted the reasons of ethnic groups exodusetatist – border defense, L control over population migrations, economic losses and maintenance ofbilateral relations at certain level. Q.Zhumadilov drew the line of affirmation of Kazakhs migration fromChina as salvation, but essential ethno-demographic resource for maintenance of ethnic potential ofKazakhs in soviet Kazakhstan. The official soviet discourse being diplomatic in form, especially, when itconcerned the regulating technicalities with the Chinese officials, was civic in nature. The Soviet Unioninterpreted the right to patronize the former Russian/ soviet citizens residing in China through the missionor responsibility to protect. Although the main motivation was to gain as many loyal to the sovietregime human force for realization of state building projects within the USSR. The Chinese discoursewas mainly political administrative in form, and legal in nature, as it referred to the right to supervise thepopulation of the province and prevent intervention of alien forces into it domestic sphere

Working at the boundaries: Middle managerial work as a source of emancipation and alienation

The current article examines the experience of middle management through the concept of boundary work, characterized as the work of negotiating between multiple roles in the interstices of organizational groups. Through an ethnographic study of a Brazilian accounting firm, we explore the ambivalent experience of boundary work as characteristic of professional middle managerial workers. Our managers described themselves as proactive and reflexive agents, on the one hand, yet also as lacking autonomy and a sense of belonging, on the other. We examine this tension as a contrast between forces of emancipation (i.e. sense of mastery, autonomy, empowerment and reflexivity) and alienation (i.e. fatigue, lack of self-determination, and detachment from their profession and coworkers). We discuss these forces and their implications for managerial work in the light that, in our findings, managers routinely shift between being agential and reflexive mediators (boundary subjects) and interfacing and coordination devices (boundary objects).

A Surrealist Writer’s Diary of a Twenty-One-Month Anthropological Expedition

A Surrealist Writer’s Diary of a Twenty-One-Month Anthropological Expedition

Huta Pieniacka: Interpretations of a Major Site of Wartime Massacre in Ukraine

The article tells the story of the conflicting narratives of the memory of Huta Pieniacka, a village in Western Ukraine that was burned down together with its inhabitants in 1944, during World War II. The Polish-Ukrainian rivalry over the territory overlapped with the anti-German resistance of Soviet and Polish partisans and factional rivalry among various guerrilla formations, which eventually led to the gruesome massacre. Today this entangled history is differentiated into competing one-sided narratives, claiming an exclusive privilege of suffering for a particular group as a powerful resource of political mobilization and legitimization. For the Soviets, the murdered villagers served as vindication of the USSR's rule over Western Ukraine as the regime that crushed the Nazis and their Ukrainian nationalist allies (who were held responsible for the massacre). For the Poles, the victims in Huta Pieniacka symbolized the Polish nation, which was driven from its historical territory by Ukrainians (both nationalists and citizens of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). In the Ukrainian nationalistic narrative, Huta Pieniacka plays a marginal role as a conflict between alien forces – Polish national activists and Soviet and German invaders – while the main attention is given to the glorification of national freedom fighters. A true reconciliation process requires an open public debate and acknowledgment of the complexity of the historical past, which implies acceptance of responsibility for the conflict (at different stages, to a different degree) by all sides.

Argentine Graphic Narrative

Argentine Graphic Narrative David William Foster (bio) The Eternaut Héctor Oesterheld Francisco Solano López, Illustrator Fantagraphics www.fantagraphics.com 368 Pages; Print, $49.99 Fantagraphics publication of the English translation of Héctor Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López's El Eternauta is a watershed. While it has been translated into many other languages, with Fantagraphics this is a first—and a significant retrospective gesture to recognize its significant place in Argentine graphic fiction. Indeed, El Eternauta is customarily considered the capo lavoro of Argentine graphic fiction. First published between 1957 and 1959 in the Argentine magazine Hora Cero Semanal, El Eternauta in retrospect may be seen to have been a watershed in the transition from comic book production to narratives with mature sociopolitical content not necessarily directed at puerile readers, allowing for serious contestational readings vis-à-vis the historical record being represented. Cartoon art in Argentina has a long history with enormous commercial success, and it would be inaccurate to say there were no sustained narratives prior to El Eternauta and unfair to say that they were strictly puerile in nature. Many, in fact, are read today as important windows on the complex evolution of Argentine society in the twentieth century. However, it is El Eternauta that definitively inaugurates a cultural production that vies for attention with the most valued texts of Argentine narrative. One of the most distinctive features of El Eternauta concerns the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Oesterheld during the early years of the 1976-83 neofascist military regime in Argentina. Although Oesterheld had never been involved in political activism, his four daughters were, and it is apparent that they drew their father into the orbit of their left-wing militancy. Two of his daughters disappeared in 1976 at the beginning of what the military called the Dirty War against subversion, and in 1977 Oesterheld disappeared along with his other two daughters (partners of the daughters also disappeared). Although it is unlikely that Oesterheld's disappearance had anything to do with El Eternauta, it did serve to highlight certain aspects of the narrative, and his presumed death, likely accompanied by torture, at the hands of the military made him one of the most iconic figures of the many writers, artists, and intellectuals to fall victims to the Dirty War. El Eternauta tells the story of a heroic resistance to the invasion of Buenos Aires by an alien force, whose snow-like ash descends on the city, destroying all life that comes in contact with it. The main character, Juan Salvo, who lives with his wife and young daughter in one of the many middle-class suburbs of Buenos Aires, is playing cards one night with some of his friends. Apparently, the house is well-sealed, and the fine ash finds no entrance. Juan Salvo (his name evokes an Argentine Everyman, with Salvo related to the verb salvar "to save"; the first-person singular salvo means "I save") is something of an inventor, and he soon fits his family and friends out with improvised isolation gear: His own contains a face mask that looks like scuba diving equipment, and this is the most recognized image for the strip. The men soon form a resistance band and venture forth to discover and vanquish what they discover to be an invading army; in the process, they are joined by other individuals. Some survive and some perish, but the men persevere, and the narrative texture of the strip centers on the recurring encounters with agents of the enemy until they meet their mastermind, whom they discover is, in turn, someone who has been "robotized" by a higher force. Salvo rescues him from his control by the aliens, the "Them," as they are called by their robot agent, but it is clear that the threat of alien destruction remains a distinct likelihood. The original story ends with Salvo returning to his wife and daughter, but Oesterheld undertook remakes and continuations in 1969 and 1975 (the latter in conjunction with another famed artist, Alberto Breccia, who drew a much darker version of the story), while Solano López collaborated with others in further versions. The upshot of the...

Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black RadicalismRadical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism

Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black RadicalismRadical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism