Familiar Connections Research Articles

Coding Labour

As well as introducing the Coding Labour section, the authors explore the diffusion of code across the material contexts of everyday life, through the objects and tools of mediation, the systems and practices of cultural production and organisational management, and in the material conditions of labour. Taking code beyond computation and software, their specific focus is on the increasingly familiar connections between code and labour with a focus on the codification and modulation of affect through technologies and practices of management within the contemporary work organisation. In the grey literature of spreadsheets, minutes, workload models, email and the like they identify a violence of forms through which workplace affect, in its constant flux of crisis and ‘prodromal’ modes, is regulated and governed.

Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger by David Simpson

David Simpson. Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. 288. $31. Stunning in its breadth and bold in its implications, David Simpson's Romanticism and the Question of the Stranger tracks the figure of the and the strangeness of figurative language--and of literature more generally-- in and beyond British Romanticism. In both the Romantic period and our own, Simpson diagnoses an attitude he calls the the primary symptom of which is a pervasive ambivalence toward the stranger, foreigner, or intruder. Following the logic of Derrida's pharmakon--the medicine that may poison, and the poison that may heal--the describes a continuous dialectic in which the is both desired and abjected, loved and feared, welcomed and yet always suspect. It is an inexhaustible oscillation between hospitality and hostility that reminds us never to conceive of kindness and cruelty as utterly (229). Divided into three movements, the book shifts with impressive ease from author-centered chapters to chapters focusing on literary techniques of estrangement and translation, to chapters organized typologically around the figures of the slave and the woman who exemplify the way we abject most the strangers we most need. Even more striking, though, is the bold agility with which Simpson moves between close readings of literary texts from the Romantic period and overt criticism of the political and ethical contradictions of our contemporary culture. In the former he finds that (and its dispersion of both troops and refugees), revolution, the Terror, the abolition movement, and the constitution and reconstitution of nation states put enormous pressure on acts and attitudes of hospitality, causing a distinct ramping up of the depth and scope of the syndrome (10). Likewise, he finds our own everywhere in the U.S. after 9/11, and he is startlingly explicit, without being heavy-handed, about its detrimental effects on our culture. The book is thus a compelling reminder of the political relevance of work in the humanities, as Simpson explores contemporary attitudes in the U.S. toward immigration and refugees, the legitimacy of violence and the state of exception, welfare and the poverty crisis, sexual violence, and the decision to go to in Iraq (which Simpson approaches through a reading of Donald Rumsfeld's warmongering tongue twister about known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns [3]). In Romantic literature, Simpson finds not the source of our latter-day syndrome, but rather a resource for understanding and articulating our own contradictions and ambivalences. Simpson's juxtaposition of the Romantic period with our own goes beyond the familiar connection between the post-revolutionary Terror and post 9/11 war on terror, since he identifies terror as but one of many ways that the logic of the pharmakon shapes the period's political and ethical life. Both today and in the 1790s, terror works by doing double duty as friend and enemy, as that which protects the state and that which the state most fears and must suppress (2). But terror is only one instance of this logic among an extraordinary list of (sometimes unlikely) strangers in Romantic texts: pineapple, woman, discharged soldier, footnote, slave, opium, Jew, glossed word, tea, chocolate, Arab, textile, albatross, metaphor, enemy. The force of Simpson's book comes from the strangeness of these juxtapositions. Indeed, the risk of such a heterogeneous list might be that the term stranger would become so ubiquitous (as the title to his introduction After 9/11: The Ubiquity of Others suggests) as to lose its meaning; yet Simpson's precise historical research and careful close readings allow him to move effortlessly from pineapple to enemy without losing either specificity or rigor. The book's introduction provides an impressive, expansive account of the philosophy of the (who is not necessarily foreign) in a range of thinkers, including Freud, Habermas, Husserl, Levinas, Schmitt, and Ricoeur. …

ABCD of beta ensembles and topological strings

We study β-ensembles with B N , C N , and D N eigenvalue measure and their relation with refined topological strings. Our results generalize the familiar connections between local topological strings and matrix models leading to A N measure, and illustrate that all those classical eigenvalue ensembles, and their topological string counterparts, are elated one to another via various deformations and specializations, quantum shifts and discrete quotients. We review the solution of the Gaussian models via Macdonald identities, and interpret them as conifold theories. The interpolation between the various models is plainly apparent in this case. For general polynomial potential, we calculate the partition function in the multi-cut phase in a perturbative fashion, beyond tree-level in the large-N limit. The relation to refined topological string orientifolds on the corresponding local geometry is discussed along the way.

Bodies in narratives of doctoral students' learning and experience

Existing research on doctoral education documents levels of satisfaction, the difficulties students face and variations according to demographic variables. Cognitive dimensions of learning are emphasised, and calls to attend to bodies in doctoral education remain largely unheeded. This article draws on theoretical work that rejects Cartesian mind/body opposition, asking ‘in what ways do doctoral students’ bodies matter?' Thirty-three students were interviewed, and through analysis four themes identified: being with body, bodies in space, bodily practices and bodily experiences. The bodily dimensions of familiar issues, including race, gender, fatigue, and stress, are highlighted, and connections made between bodies and doctoral writing, thinking, age and the spaces in which students live and work. The themes provide new ways of understanding what it means to be and learn as a doctoral student. Taking bodies into account offers a fuller picture of how doctoral work is accomplished and the tolls this exerts on students.

Invoking the God: Interpreting Invocations in Mesopotamian Prayers and Biblical Laments of the Individual

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Since the earliest comparative analyses of biblical and Mesopotamian materials, scholars have noted a striking difference between the form of the Psalter's laments of the individual and the Akkadian suilla-prayers.1 The latter begin with an invocation and hymnic prologue; the former have only a very brief invocation, often consisting of nothing more than a word or two. Several influential biblical interpreters have attached great significance to this difference, making comparative and even theological generalizations that inevitably exalt Israel over its imperial Mesopotamian neighbor. Although this difference between the Hebrew and Akkadian prayers is unmistakable, I argue in this brief study that the comparison is illformed. Based on a well-known social model of prayer and an idea formulated in ritual studies that the level of formality in ritual is often directly related to the social distance or proximity between the parties involved, I offer a more anthropologically grounded explanation for each form of invocation and the comparative contrast noted above. Turning to the observation that the brief invocation in the Hebrew laments of the individual is actually more comparable to the invocation in the Akkadian dingir.sa.dib.ba-prayers-supplications for the abatement of a personal god's wrath,2 I suggest that the invocations in both the Hebrew laments of the individual and the Akkadian dingir.sa.dib.ba-prayers are brief because both reflect a more familiar connection between the supplicant and the deity entreated than do the suillas. This interpretation provides further support for seeing a personal aspect to the god presented in the Psalter's laments of the individual. Besides countering improper comparative generalizations and thereby contributing another example for the critical assessment of theological bias in the history of our field, this brief study exemplifies a methodological paradigm that may prove fruitful for future comparative work. I. PRAYER INVOCATIONS AND PAST INTERPRETERS In most laments of the individual in the Hebrew Psalter the invocation is simply ..., (see, e.g., Pss 3:2; 6:2) or, as would be expected in the Elohistic Psalter, ...), God (see, e.g., Pss 43:1; 51:3). Other invocations are just as short, consisting of a single word (Ps 59:2, ...), god), or only slightly longer, made so by placing two very brief invocations in parallel in the opening line or two (see Pss 28:1, ..., Yahweh/my rock; 70:2, ...), God/O Yahweh; 25:1-2, ..., Yahweh/my god; and 130:1-2, ..., Yahweh /my lord). The longest invocations consist of only three words: Ps 5:2-3, which places ... in parallel with ..., my king and god; Ps 22:2-3, showing ..., my god, in parallel with ..., god; and Ps 88:2 and its questionable formulation, ..., Yahweh, god of salvation.3 Put simply: the invocations in the Hebrew laments of the individual are brief and direct. Suilla-prayers in Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the prayers to which the Hebrew laments of the individual are most frequently compared, typically have a very different, extended hymnic invocation. For example, a prayer to Ea begins with the following: O wise king, perceptive creator, Lofty prince, ornament of the Eabsu, Enlilbanda, artful, venerated one, Hero of Eridu, sage of the Igigi, Lord of the E[engur]ra, protection of the Eunir, Bringer of the high waters (that cause) abundance, who makes the rivers joyful, In oceans and in reed thickets you make plenteous prosperity, In the meadows you create the livelihood of the peoples. Anu and Enlil rejoice because of you, The Anunna-gods bless you in their holy places, The peoples of the land extol your weighty command, You give counsel to the great gods. O Ea, the moribund need not die, thanks to your life-giving spell. …

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JACOBI COHOMOLOGY, LOCAL GEOMETRY OF MODULI SPACES, AND HITCHIN CONNECTIONS

We develop some cohomological tools for the study of the local geometry of moduli and parameter spaces in complex Algebraic Geometry. Notably, we develop canonical formulae for the differential operators of arbitrary order and their natural action on suitable `natural' modules (for example, functions); in particular, we obtain a formula, in terms of the moduli problem, for the Lie bracket of vector fields on a moduli space. As an application, we obtain another construction and proof of flatness for the familiar KZW or Hitchin connection on moduli spaces of curves.

Should Egalitarians be Perfectionists?

Political philosophers often worry about the potentially elitist implications of perfectionism as the basis of distributive justice. Richard Arneson challenges this familiar connection between perfectionism and elitism by developing an egalitarian theory of distributive justice with distinctively perfectionist grounds. In this article, I argue that Arneson's theory is implausible, because an egalitarian political morality renders perfectionism either irrelevant or arbitrary.

The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630-1660 by Nicholas McDowell (review)

MLRy 100.3, 2005 781 allegedly purposeful and controlled. She is involved in an 'encyclopedie, comprehen? sive literary project' whose purpose is to pursue 'a conscious and deliberate explo? ration ofthe various forms and genres available to her at the time' (p. 9), and to engage in 'experiments in genre' (p. 196) to develop original hybrid forms which are more appropriate for her purposes, which include challenging traditional constructions of both gender and genre. Sara Mendelson's intriguing piece sees Cavendish's plays demolishing the line between fiction and life-writing, arguing that they combine thinly disguised autobiography with 'dreamlike inversions of Cavendish's own life experi? ences', which Mendelson calls 'anti-autobiography' (p. 201). Gisele Venet argues that her 'entirely new creative approaches' require an 'aesthetic of fragmentation' as a way of breaking away from conventions and of staging new attitudes towards others or a new convention of the self (p. 213). It is easier to assert purposeful irony than to prove it,however, and some essays seem to imply a particular insight into Cavendish's intentions which is not always borne out by the evidence. The collection's Cavendish is purposeful rather than incoherent. Moreover, far from being ignorant, she is well-read, and is engaged in a critical debate with other authors and scientists. Thus James Fitzmaurice convincingly reads The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle as a purposefully hybrid form which combines narrative, scrapbook, household accounts, and maxims, and as a critique of Plutarch; Lisa T. Sarasohn reads the Philosophical Letters as a critique of Descartes, Hobbes, and other contemporary scientists; and Sarah Hutton goes so far as to read the Description of a New World Called the Blazing World as a wholesale 'satire on contemporary science' (p. 161) modelled on Lucian of Samosata. This collection of eleven 'international and interdisciplinary' (p. 8) essays, many by established Cavendish scholars, began as a series of conference papers, and attempts to cover the whole range of Cavendish's writing, from scientific and philosophical writings to life-writings, poetry, prose fiction, and plays. It attempts 'to locate her within literary conventions as a "complete author"', an enterprise 'never before attempted ' (p. 10). It is more coherent than many essay collections, but at the price of some repetition. Moreover, Cavendish sometimes seems to inspire in her critics contradictions resembling those attributed to her. Line Cottegnies's essay sees her both as a postmodern subject deconstructing the unitary self and as celebrating the myth of the stable self, and as both critiquing memory and fearing oblivion. While there is much here that will interest academies working on Cavendish, it is not likely to find a wider audience. University of Manchester Jacqueline Pearson The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion and Revolution, 1630-1660. By Nicholas McDowell. (Oxford English Monographs) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. x + 2i9pp. ?45. ISBN 0-19-926051-6. The rather tired generalities and predictable collocations of the title of this study do not in the least prepare the reader for its challenging and exciting contents. This is no bland general overview of Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, et al. rehearsing the familiar connections between masterless men, mechanic preachers, the gift of free grace, and social insubordination. On the contrary,its business is to 'revise our understanding of radicalism in the English revolution' by challenging the 'starkly adversarial' relation? ship between 'radical belief and elite culture' presented both by seventeenth-century radicals themselves and by their twentieth-century champions (p. 1). Nicholas Mc? Dowell disputes both the socially underprivileged origins of seventeenth-century radicalism and its dependence upon oral and untutored cultural and literary habits of expression. 782 Reviews That a heterodox lower-class culture, ignorant of the intellectual heritage of the Renaissance, found its voice during the 1640s and 1650s was, of course, Christo? pher Hill's recurrent theme, and this view still constitutes the prevailing scholarly orthodoxy. Hill argued that this grass-roots movement did not suddenly appear from nowhere: it had been a feature of English life at least since Wyclif and the Lollards, and probably for longer. What brought it into view was the revolutionary fervour of the 1640s, coupled with the power...

Dänische Künstlerinnen in Deutschland ‐ unter besonderer berücksichtigung der Ausbildungsmöglichkeiten

Summary Contrary to Paxis Germany was visited only by a small number of Danish women artists completing their artistic training in the years 1870 to 1914. It is important to question the role of Germany for Danish women artists at a time when in Denmark as well as in Germany no possibility exsisted for women to gain the same artistic training as their male colleagues at the academies. The familiar connections of the women artists to male colleagues were important for their artistic training. An alternative to the ateliers which were run by male artists were schools founded by women artists. The “Verein der Kunstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen” the first school of drawing and painting for women in Germany was founded in Berlin in 1868. It was followed by a department for the education of female drawing teachers at the “Konigliche Kunstgewerbeschule” in Munich in 1872. 1882 a club of female artists was organized in Munich to which two years later a ladies’ academy was attached. A second ladies’ academy was op...

Graphical Display of Estimates Having Differing Standard Errors

A graphical method is proposed to display a number of point estimates while allowing for their differing standard errors. More generally, it can be viewed as a representation of interval estimates by points on a bivariate plot. The method exploits a familiar connection between standardized estimates and regression through the origin and has several advantages over some alternative plots used in the literature. It is particularly useful when there may be a mixture of parameters, as illustrated by the problem of “mixed ages” in fission track dating.

Logic and Computers

1. Historical and philosophical background. Familiar connections between mathematical logic and automatic computers are the possibility of representing basic building blocks of computers by (sequential) Boolean functions and the close resemblance between programming languages and symbolisms of logic. As a result, both for the construction and for the use of computers, a certain degree of acquaintance with logic becomes indispensable. As early as 1656, Leibniz dreamed of a universal scientific language in his first published work; and many people today are actively seeking for a universal language for computers. Gottlob Frege wished to reduce arithmetic to logic from 1879 on, and in an oblique way the performance of arithmetic operations in computers by means of electronic circuits which are essentially logical functions may be said to accomplish the task in a particularly down-to-earth manner. A more basic link between logic and computers is perhaps the common interest in algorithms. Although Charles Babbage conceived of and started to build in the 1830's the Analytical Engine which possessed most of the basic characteristics of modern computers, it was only in the 1940's that automatic computers began to appear through the efforts of Howard Aiken, John von Neumann, and others. The logicians had, on the other hand, made not only a highly successful abstract study of algorithms but even clarified the relation between machines and algorithms, largely through A. M. Turing's theory of idealized machines, all in the 1930's. Traditionally the study of algorithms falls outside the domain of logic. The deepest source of the affinity of logic and computers is the preoccupation of logicians with formalization. The long evolution of attempts to formalize mathematical proofs, from Euclid to Principia, finally led to mechanizability as the ultimate criterion of complete success. This desire to make arguments formally precise and exact is concerned more with the product rather than with the theory of formalization. Only in the 1920's, D. Hilbert, P. Bernays and others began to study metamathematics: the theory of proofs, the theory of formal systems. The distinction may be illustrated by the method of discarding 9's for checking multiplications. It is a metamathematical result on the usual technique of multiplying particular integers that a number is divisible by 9 if the sum of its digits is. This example also brings out the fact that the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics is not sharp. For we can easily state and prove the above result as a simple theorem in number theory by the easy relation 10n=1 (mod 9). It was the concern with a theory of proofs which at first led J. Herbrand to an abstract definition of calculation processes, as a particularly simple type of proofs. Although Turing was said to have had formulated his theory of machines before he was familiar with much of the achievements in logic, he certainly did