Female Flesh Research Articles

On the Verge of Damnation and Buddhahood: Motherhood, Female Corporeality, and Koan Exegesis

Buddhist scriptures depict the female body according to two contrasting models. On the one hand, female flesh is the epitome of defilement that hinders proper salvation. Yet, on the other hand, the gestational body is employed as a metaphor and a model to depict the highest spiritual perfection of the Buddhist clergy. By investigating these two seemingly incompatible approaches, this article shows how these contrasting models coexisted within the same doctrinal framework in early modern Sōtō Zen secret sources. In particular, it explores a Sōtō Zen secret document from the early modern period entitled <em>Ise niji kirigami</em>, which provides the doctrinal foundation for salvific rituals directed to women who died during parturition. The peculiarity of this document is the combination of conceptualizations typically associated with female pollution with a wide range of theorizations mainly derived from esoteric discourse on the kami, the <em>Lotus Sūtra</em>, and Zen koan interpretations. Therefore, through the investigation of the affinities with koan exegesis, Buddhist scriptures, and kami-related theories, this article aims to broaden our understanding of the tools used by early modern Zen monks to theorize the female body and contribute to the ongoing debate on the representation of the female spiritual and corporeal condition in Buddhist sources.

Couwenbergh’s The Rape of the Negress

Abstract This essay analyzes Christiaen van Couwenbergh’s The Rape of the Negress (1632). The author argues the image as theological artifact, capturing the emergence of a white colonial gaze and the Dutch state concern of Christian piety as an emerging colonial power. The article reviews the context of the image and the art reception history that resisted naming it an image of rape. The author juxtaposes the painting with a Marian statue hidden and thus saved from the Dutch iconoclasm—now one of the most famous Black Madonnas in Europe—to locate theologically the process of colonial unseeing and the refusal to name Black female flesh as sacred. She rereads these visual artifacts through the question of iconicity, and claim these images as sites of Black feminist fugitivity and resistance.

Wing measurements are a possible tool for the identification of European forensically important Sarcophagidae

The flesh flies are a group of insects well known for their forensic importance. Reliable identification of these flies relies on the use of either molecular markers or the morphology of the male genital apparatus. Identification of female flesh flies is more time consuming and less reliable than their male counterparts. This is particularly problematic for forensic entomology practitioners, because female flesh flies are more abundant than males in carrion arthropod assemblages. As such, it is critical that alternative methods for flesh fly identification are established that are equally effective for both sexes. One promising technique is the use of wing measurements, which have been shown to be reliable for the identification of some groups of necrophagous Diptera from several geographical regions. We applied this method to the European Sarcophagidae for the first time, using a dataset of 881 specimens representing 29 species and 5 genera. Species identifications were based on 15 landmarks located at wing vein junctions. We also combined our results with data from previous studies of Calliphoridae and Muscidae which utilised the same methodology, enabling the testing of family level identification using wing morphometrics. Species identifications using wing measurements had varied success. While some species were successfully identified without error, others, particularly from the genus Sarcophaga, were often misclassified. Notably, in several species wing measurements successfully identified both males and females. The results presented here suggest that wing measurements are a promising complementary method to other methods for the identification of necrophagous Sarcophagidae especially in material unsorted at the family level. It can also be used to double check identification performed by a taxonomist using traditional methods.

Estimation of genetic variance of some line generation S3 cantaloupensis melon hydroponically based on smart farming system

Abstract This research aims to examine the genetic variance, heritability value, and the expected genetic progress of the S3 generation melon lines tested so as to determine the potential lines to be used as sources of genetic material in breeding programs. This research was conducted from January to May 2021 in greenhouse CV. Agroniaga. The experimental design used was a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with a single treatment in the form of a line consisting of 6 levels, namely GR-1-3-7, GR-1-3-8, GR-1-3-20, GR-1-3-22, GR-1-2-2, and GR-1-1-3. Quantitative character observation data were analyzed using ANOVA or F test at 5% significance level. If the F test has a significant effect, then the average value is further tested with the Scott-Knott test. The results showed that the morphology of the S3 generation melon lines showed differences in fruit characters based on net distribution, net intensity, net pattern, fruit aroma, and fruit texture. The value of broad genetic variance was found in the parameters of plant height, male flowering age, harvest age, and fruit weight. High heritability values for male flowering age, female flowering age, harvest age, and fruit flesh thickness. The GR-1-1-3, GR-1-3-22, GR-1-3-7, and GR-1-3-8 lines are lines that have greater potential than other lines in terms of the effectiveness of selection on fruit weight parameters, so it is good to use for the next selection process.

FEMALE PAIN IN PRUDENTIUS’PERISTEPHANON

AbstractWithin Prudentius’Peristephanonthere are three main episodes which focus upon the torture and/or death of women: the torture and death of Eulalia inPerist. 3, that of Encratis inPerist. 4 and the death of Agnes inPerist. 14. This article compares the variety and types of pain that these women are depicted as undergoing during their martyrdoms, analysing the extent to which gender and sexuality play a role in their responses to pain or to the threat of it. The article first examines the martyrdoms of Agnes and Eulalia and uses these as a basis for analysing the torture of Encratis who is depicted as suffering the most pain and who, even more than the other two, is represented as a liminal figure, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of her status as a living being. A comparison and contrast between Prudentius’ representation of Encratis and his depiction of Loth's wife in hisHamartigeniawill give further insight into the significance of Encratis’ suffering and the way in which the slow and painful decay of her flesh links her with the city she protects. It will be shown how the vulnerability of these martyrs’ female flesh and the threatened or actualized violation of their virginal bodies are rendered at once shocking and their source of triumph over traumatic pain.

‘Hell You Talmbout’: Janelle Monáe’s Black Cyberfeminist Sonic Aesthetics

This article explores the ways in which Janelle Monáe’s audiovisual performances leverage black female flesh to trouble historically constituted imaginings of ‘the human’. Tracking Monáe’s audiovisual aesthetics across ‘Many moons’ and Dirty Computer, I interrogate acoustic and imagistic resonances that recall the repeating horrors of bondage, and which also constitute performative ‘fabulations’ whereby freedoms that are engendered specifically by and within black female flesh might be imagined. Monáe ‘enfleshes’ the cyborg to critique cyberfeminist and posthumanist theories that advocate for material dissolution as a framework for liberation, as well as to trouble black women’s historical relationships to the category ‘human’. Rather than understand Dirty Computer as a (re)turn to the human Monáe, I contend that the project extends the artist’s longstanding critical engagement with the black female cyborg and black sonic cyberfeminist liberatory potentialities.

Traveling in Black Female Flesh: The Poetics of Relation in Black Femme Ethnographies

Traveling in Black Female Flesh: The Poetics of Relation in Black Femme Ethnographies

The supposed shame of aging female bodies and the saving grace of transience

AbstractWhere does the supposed shame of older women's bodies come from? In this essay, I suggest that such shame is not a natural response to aging; rather, it is a culturally conditioned reaction to the patriarchal fantasy of female physical perfection. While certain norms and narratives within Christianity tacitly encourage women to pursue this fantasy, there are also resources within this tradition that can help us challenge the stigma assigned to older female flesh and affirm the goodness of bodies that have lived a long time. Simultaneously, aging itself can provide a lens for fruitfully rethinking some central Christian ideas.

How (Not) to Translate the Female Body

How (Not) to Translate the Female Body Stephanie McCarter (bio) Not long ago, my three-year-old daughter drew all over herself with magic markers, as young children are wont to do. After we cleaned her up, she looked down and said, “There’s still some on my chest.” Her use of “chest” arrested me because, while it was exactly the right word for her to use, it’s one fraught with meaning. How long will she be allowed to simply have a chest? How long will she and her five-year-old brother run shirtless through the house, unaware of how much the world will soon differentiate their bodies? A woman’s body is burdened by language, marked as something other than the male body. There is nothing necessarily intrinsic about this—her body’s assigned otherness extends far beyond any sex characteristics that make the biological female body function in ways the biological male body does not. A woman’s body is largely a cultural invention, given expression through words that mandate what that body must signify, even what parts it must possess. The language we use chisels and molds the female form, like sculpture. [End Page 581] “The chest,” as Iris Young writes, “is an important center of a person’s being. . . . It is to my chest, not my face, that I point when I signify myself.” And yet too commonly we allow only men to have chests, whereas a woman can have a bust or, even more invitingly, a bosom, a place to rest one’s head. She has breasts, and these have a thousand names. English is particularly rife with words for a woman’s body that set it apart from that of her brothers, that make it more enticing and more strange, less a material that contains her—that is her—and more a thing that another can act upon, for someone else’s use and pleasure. The degree to which this binary is enforced varies from one language to another. A challenge translators face, or ought to face, is how to avoid imposing their own culture’s construction of gender and the gendered body onto the work they are translating, while simultaneously preserving how the source text constructs these, especially when it does so differently. Yet this is not often done. Because translation almost inescapably reflects its own place and time, it can illuminate what we modern Anglophones have too often and unnecessarily imposed upon female flesh. ________ Latin, now ancient but hardly dead, can, to be sure, demarcate differences between the male and female body, and does so both for praise and abuse. In his Epodes (30 BCE), for example, the Roman poet Horace explains why a woman cannot sexually arouse him. The problem, he claims, is her repulsive body. She is a catalogue of ugly parts. In my translation (all unattributed translations are my own): Yes, I am turned on by your chest with breasts that sag like udders of a mare [End Page 582] and by your flabby gut and skinny thighs fastened on top of swollen calves. (Epodes 1.8.7–10) There is really only one word here that marks this repulsive body as that of a woman: her breasts (mammae), which look like a mare’s udders. The part that makes her female also makes her an animal, not just different from a man but different from humanity. These breasts, however, are located on, and yet are distinct from, her pectus, “chest,” a part that everyone has. How should we translate that word? That is the real test for the translator. Those who have taken up the challenge of translating the Epodes have often declined (particularly before the modern era) to render this poem. It’s too crude—her body is too crude—for English. The 1914 Loeb edition of C. E. Bennett, for example, simply omits it. But those who do translate this poem refuse to grant Horace’s woman a chest. In Niall Rudd’s 2004 Loeb edition, she has a “bosom,” as she does in the translation of W. G. Shepherd (Penguin 1983). This word doubles her body’s alterity. David Mulroy (Michigan...

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s by Elena Gorfinkel

Reviewed by: Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s by Elena Gorfinkel Laura Horak (bio) Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s by Elena Gorfinkel. University of Minnesota Press. 2017. $112.00 hardcover; $28.00 paperback; also available in e-book. 320 pages. For all the attention to gender and sexuality in American film history over the past forty years or so, sexploitation—the hundreds of rapidly produced films promising ever more scintillating exposés of female flesh, suburban sin, and urban perversion between 1959 and 1972—have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Although popular with a devoted set of enthusiasts, collectors, and filmmakers, sexploitation films are either written out of or receive a modest paragraph in most American film histories. Even Eric Schaefer's magisterial work on classical American exploitation films ends with the rise of sexploitation, and Linda Williams's foundational Hard Core slides directly from the stag film to the pornographic feature.1 In Williams's later Screening Sex, sexploitation takes its place among the many modes of screening sex in the 1960s but receives only three and a half pages, jostling alongside Hollywood adult films, blaxploitation, and avant-garde.2 When scholars have investigated sexploitation, they have mostly looked to the industry's "auteurs," Radley Metzger (the "Ophuls of Orgasm," according to one critic), Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman, and Bunny Yeager.3 Lewd Looks is the first academic [End Page 194] monograph to turn its full attention to the large, diverse, and curious body of work that makes up sexploitation. Having viewed hundreds of hard-to-find sexploitation films and combed through some surprisingly fertile print archives, Gorfinkel brings a new perspective to sexploitation cinema. She offers a wide-ranging and fine-grained cultural history, from the legal wrangling through which sexploitation producers negotiated with local regulators to the films' shifting aesthetic strategies and modes of address, and also the ways the films and their audiences were written about by film critics, sociologists, and lawmakers. Sexploitation films, she points out, were "at the precipice between different regimes of sexual representation."4 Although they promised new spectatorial access to naked female bodies, sex acts, and increasingly varied and taboo kinds of sex, the films nevertheless "remained suspicious of sexual liberation's value or social effects."5 In contrast to the euphoric "pornotopia" of 1970s hard-core feature films, sexploitation films were characterized by a "pessimistic, frequently shame-drenched imaging and imagining of the changing conception of social relations, sexual identities, and gender roles in the 1960s."6 Gorfinkel explores this key tension between sexual promise and sexual shame as it runs through the films' narratives and formal aspects, their legal regulation, and audience responses. She argues that "sexploitation films . . . foreground the conditions of looking at erotic spectacle, making the subject and object of sexual looking the crux of their drives."7 Central to these films is "the anxious status of autonomous female labor and desire, unhinged from the reproductive certitude of family and marriage."8 The book's introduction outlines sexploitation's distinctive mode of address, what Gorfinkel (borrowing from Andrew Sarris) calls its "coy leericism," arising in response to its status on the precipice between repression and license.9 It also helpfully thinks through the "cult afterlives" of sexploitation enabled by VHS distributors like Something Weird Video. The first chapter explores the legal battles over obscene content waged by sexploitation producers, as well as attempts at self-regulation. The second and third chapters examine the content and form of sexploitation films, particularly the ways they "thematized their own conditions of reception" and the "'problem' of [End Page 195] consuming sex" more broadly.10 Chapter 2 spans the period 1960–1965, from the tongue-in-cheek, comedic "nudie cuties" of the early 1960s to the more violent and melodramatic "roughies" of the mid-1960s. It explores the figure of the "gawker in the text" and the films' inventive formal strategies whereby the sexual act is "systematically deferred, while [also] connotatively summoned forth."11 Chapter 3 investigates the emergence of "girls with hungry eyes" between 1965 and 1970, when sexploitation films expanded their focus from the frustrations of male gawkers to women voyeurs, narrators, and adventurers...

Sprookjes in/en initiatierituelen

All over the world stories are told in which girls become women. Young heroines survive outside and inside, lightning and thunder, earthquakes and floods … In spite of bodily harms, jealous mothers, incestuous fathers, animal suitors … changing women emerge, bleeding instead of sleeping, alive and kicking, rooted in firm female flesh after their second birth. The author collected oral stories about growing up from girl to woman among the Sepedi and Griqua in South Africa. In this article she deals with questions about writing these stories for young readers from other cultural contexts. She attempts to answer the question: How much is lost in translation?

Rich’s Essential Essays

Rich’s <i>Essential Essays</i>

Effects of gender, age, and nutrition on circadian locomotor activity rhythms in the flesh fly Sarcophaga crassipalpis

In many animal species, circadian rhythms of behavior are not constant throughout the lifetime of the individual but rather exhibit at least some degree of plasticity. In the present study, we have examined the potential influences of gender, age, and nutrition (presence or absence of liver) on the expression of circadian locomotor activity rhythms in the flesh fly Sarcophaga crassipalpis. We found no significant differences in endogenous circadian period under constant dark conditions with respect to gender, nutrition, or age for the duration of our experiments. On the other hand, both male and female flesh flies, as expected, were predominantly diurnal under light-dark cycles, but the pattern of entrainment differed between the sexes. Females also displayed higher activity levels than males. Also, in contrast with males, female activity levels increased with age. Moreover, females exhibited an extraordinary, but transient (one to three days), departure from diurnality which we characterize as “extended dark activity” (EDA). This phenomenon appeared as a continuous bout of locomotor activity that extended at least three hours into the early half of the dark phase at levels at least twice the median of the overall locomotor activity for the individual fly. EDA occurred as an age-dependent response to liver consumption, never appearing prior to day 4 post-eclosion but, thereafter, transpiring within one or two days after a 48-h exposure to liver. These results suggest a linkage between physiological events associated with egg provisioning and locomotor activity in the anautogenous flesh fly. Furthermore, our findings identify the existence of multiple influences on the expression of circadian clock-regulated behavior.

Parodies of Female Flesh in the Fabric Sculptures of Tamara Kostianovsky

Tamara Kostianovsky creates three-dimensional sculptural forms with repurposed clothing, fabric and needlework. It is argued that these sculpted textiles become meditations on flesh. Her works that depict carcasses and body parts, in particular, explore the paradoxes of embodiment in order to speak to issues of gender, trauma, and migration. In this article, the author describes a number of ways in which Kostianovsky has parodied canonical works of fine art by Manet, Goya, and Botticelli as well as the eroticized anatomical illustrations of Gautier. The five works on which she focuses here metabolize their diverse quotations such that they engage with restrictive tropes and conventions that operate in representations of female bodies and subjectivities. Sculpted clothing reads as flesh, flesh as meat, and meat as a symbol for conscious embodiment and a vulnerable and violated mortality. They thus become a parody of the dualistic moralism of the memento mori, as well as the phallocentric hypocrisy of the idealized Venus. The author also explores how Kostianovsky’s controlled and ferocious stitching makes visible the suturing of identity, the cartography of violence, and the conscious and unconscious scarring that writes bodies into the landscapes that produce them.

Amino Acid Profiles of the Flesh of the Heterosexual Pairs of &lt;i&gt;Neopetrolisthes maculatus&lt;/i&gt;

This paper reports on amino acid profiles of the flesh of heterosexuals of porcellanids collected from the Atlantic Ocean at Orimedu beach in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria. Results showed that high values of amino acids were observed in the heterosexual flesh of Neopetrolisthes maculatus (g 100g-1 protein): 17.7 – 17.8 (Glu), 9.90 – 10.0 (Asp), 8.70 – 9.07 (Arg), 7.23 – 7.94 (Leu) and 5.81 – 6.06 (Gly). Total essential amino acid values ranged from 45.2 – 46.2 g 100-1g. Predicted protein efficiency ratio was 3.82 – 4.14, the range of essential amino acid index was 86.9 – 89.9, the biological values ranged from 83.0 – 86.3. The Lys/Trp was 3.31-4.27. Serine was limiting amino acid (0.513 – 0.516) in the egg score comparison; under the essential amino acids scores, Lys (0.840) was limiting in female but Val (0.823) was limiting in the male; Lys (0.796 – 0.905) was limiting in both samples in the pre-school child amino acid requirements. It was observed that out of the twenty parameters determined, male flesh was more concentrated in 60% values than the female flesh and 40% better in female than male. Correlation coefficient result showed that significant differences existed in the amino acids composition at r = 0.01 of the N. maculatus samples.

Amino Acid Profiles of the Flesh of the Heterosexual Pairs of &lt;i&gt;Neopetrolisthes maculatus&lt;/i&gt;

This paper reports on amino acid profiles of the flesh of heterosexuals of porcellanids collected from the Atlantic Ocean at Orimedu beach in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria. Results showed that high values of amino acids were observed in the heterosexual flesh of Neopetrolisthes maculatus (g 100g-1 protein): 17.7 – 17.8 (Glu), 9.90 – 10.0 (Asp), 8.70 – 9.07 (Arg), 7.23 – 7.94 (Leu) and 5.81 – 6.06 (Gly). Total essential amino acid values ranged from 45.2 – 46.2 g 100-1g. Predicted protein efficiency ratio was 3.82 – 4.14, the range of essential amino acid index was 86.9 – 89.9, the biological values ranged from 83.0 – 86.3. The Lys/Trp was 3.31-4.27. Serine was limiting amino acid (0.513 – 0.516) in the egg score comparison; under the essential amino acids scores, Lys (0.840) was limiting in female but Val (0.823) was limiting in the male; Lys (0.796 – 0.905) was limiting in both samples in the pre-school child amino acid requirements. It was observed that out of the twenty parameters determined, male flesh was more concentrated in 60% values than the female flesh and 40% better in female than male. Correlation coefficient result showed that significant differences existed in the amino acids composition at r = 0.01 of the N. maculatus samples.

Recent Articles

Recent Articles* Mona Narain, Lisa Hopkins, Stephen Hequembourg, Maximillian Novak, Christopher F. Loar, Dave Alff, Shaun Regan, Takeshi Sakamoto, Ryan J. Stark, Elizabeth W. Harries, John A. Dussinger, Amit Yahav, Elizabeth Wanning, M-C. Newbould, Sarah B. Stein, Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock, Karen Swallow Prior, Christopher F. Loar, Madeleine Forell Marshall, and Christopher D. Johnson ADDISON Miller, Stephen. "The Strange Career of Joseph Addison," SR, 122.4 (2014), 650–660. Intended for general readers, this essay offers a range of positive comments from eighteenth-century admirers to show Addison's high reputation as a moralist, stylist, and thinker. Why, then, has Addison more recently received mostly faint or grudging praises? What changed his reputation so radically? Mr. Miller points an accusing finger at influential twentieth-century critics, particularly T. S. Eliot, who saw Addison as facile and smug, complacent and comfortably middle-class. He goes on to argue recuperatively that Addison deserves to be read and appreciated in the context of his highly politicized and contentious times. He was ahead of his contemporaries in many of his interests, particularly in his understanding of the marketplace economy, and his various writings, especially his Spectator essays, reflected his important role as a polite, reasonable, and calming presence amidst an unsettling and dangerous cacophony of voices. Credit where credit is due, then. BEHN Adcock, Rachel. "'Jack Presbyter in His Proper Habit': Subverting Whig Rhetoric in Aphra Behn's Roundheads (1682)," WoWr, 22 (2015), 34–55. In late 1681 or early 1682, during the political chaos of the Exclusion crisis and the Titus Oates debacle, The Roundheads was part of "a propaganda battle between Whig and Tory sympathizers," with Behn adapting John Tatham's The Rump (1660) to make her points. She uses the ghost of Hewson, for example, to introduce the play, mocking the "Presbittery" that he had so strongly supported in the revolt that led to the execution of the king and the founding of the Commonwealth. Behn focuses on the last days of the Commonwealth, as did Tatham, using satire and farce to reveal its leaders as clinging to the wealth extracted from the Tories, along with the lasciviousness with which they sought Tory women—or any women. What may appear to be a contemporizing of an old play is not so simple, as Ms. Adcock illustrates. It is rare to encounter a study of any of Behn's plays that covers as much ground so quickly, an intense and concise study of text, context, and subtext. Ms. Adcock [End Page 1] clarifies the chaotic political scene that provoked the writing of the play, providing illustrations that serve her argument well, such as Stephen College's infamous "Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinalls, Jesuits … November ye 17th, 1679." Ms. Adcock contextualizes both Hewson's prologue and Behn's dedication to illuminate Behn's appeal to the dedicatee, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton (one of the King's sons by Barbara Villiers Palmer, Lady Castlemaine) for his protection against the "Legions" that have been "drawn down … upon its head, for its Loyalty." Turning to the play itself, Ms. Adcock focuses especially on Ananias Gogle, the hypocritical Puritan preacher, who grasps gold and female flesh with equal rapacity. However, establishing that Behn believed the "Whig non-conformists" presented a greater threat to the social fabric than did the Jesuits, Ms. Adcock reads the end of the play as less than a celebration of Tory victory. With chilling ambiguity, Lady Lambert bids farewell to her "dear Mansion" and all "hopes of Royalty," but she nonetheless accepts Loveless and his newly restored fortunes, whereas Lady Desbro' accepts only the "Protection" of Freeman. The suggestion that Tory victors are little better than Whig losers, that Tory greed and sexual aggressiveness match that of the Whigs, ends a play that has in its fifth act a parliament of women who, alas, had clearly hoped for a different world. The clarity of Ms. Adcock's thesis, the cogency of her argument, and the precision of her supporting evidence combine into not just a first-rate study of Behn's Roundheads but also model scholarship and presentation. ________ Ballaster, Ros...

Genetic Divergence among Inbred Lines of Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch Ex Poir)

Genetic divergence among nineteen inbred lines of pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch Ex Poir) was estimated through principal component analysis and Mohalanobis’s D2 analysis. Inbred lines were grouped into five clusters. Cluster I, II, III, IV and V were composed of five, three, four, six and one inbred lines respectively. Maximum inter cluster distance was observed between the cluster III and V (72.69) followed by the cluster I and V (63.33). Minimum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster II and IV (10.64). The mean value of cluster III indicated the importance of days to first male and female flower open, node order to 1st female flower open and TSS. Cluster IV showed the importance of days to first female flower open, fruit diameter, cavity diameter, flesh thickness and average fruit weight. Similarly, cluster V indicated the importance of yield per plant, fruits per plant and fruit length. Days to first male and female flower open, fruit length and cavity length had the highest contribution towards divergence among the inbred lines. Considering the magnitude of cluster distance, cluster means for different characters and contribution of characters towards divergence, the inbred lines from clusters I, III and IV could be selected as parent for hybridization program.

The Mattering of Black Lives: Octavia Butler’s Hyperempathy and the Promise of the New Materialisms

This article argues that the ethical potential of “the nonhuman turn” advanced by the new materialisms is structured by disavowed social fantasies about black female flesh. The most recent new materialist publications draw upon the techno-scientific developments of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch defined by the cumulative effects of species-level human activity, to demonstrate the supposed inadequacy of poststructuralist “identity politics” for meeting the intellectual challenges of our time. But as a close reading of Octavia Butler’s Parable duology reveals, any model of ethics that dismisses considerations of race as such, and attention to the history of racial slavery in particular, will fail to address the most fundamental questions, ethical and otherwise, of the modern world.

Selected Poems of Zheng Xiaoqiong

97 Translation translated by Zhou Xiaojing Selected Poems of Zheng Xiaoqiong 6 Age of Industry Japanese machines in American-invested factories carry iron produced in Brazilian mines; lathe tools from Germany reshape the coastal lines of France; store shelves in South Korea are filled with Italian labels Belgium is waiting in the corner to be sold; Spain and Singapore are being inspected; Russia has been put into the warehouse by transporters; Africa is standing in the open-air square as natural resources; orders from Chile are narrow & long like its territory; my Sichuan dialect is pretty old-fashioned; Xiangxi dialect is harder to understand; Minnan dialect from Fujian is chattingwith Taiwanese Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong is only a half-way station; if I’m willing I could arrange India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the vicinity of Australia, put Iraq and USA side by side move Israel to the middle of the Caribbean make England and Argentina shake hands, Japan and Mexico... In this industrial age, I am keeping busy every day for the sake of peacefully arranging the world in a factory. 98 Translation 6 A Female Migrant Worker: Youth Confined in a Seat on the Assembly Line Time opens its gigantic mouth, the moon rusting on the machine is haggard, hazy, opaque. The ominous danger in her heart surges like a turbulent river, the cliffs of her body collapse, dirt and gravel— tattered pieces of time—fill up the ferocious river of the female body. Confused tides no longer fluctuate according to season. She sits in her seat on the assembly line as moving products interweave with time, devouring her. So fast has she aged, ten years flown by like running water...immense fatigue drifts in her mind....For so many years she’s been keeping company these screws: one two turn left right, fixing her dreams and youth on a product, as she watches her pale girlhood running from an inland village to a coastal factory, all the way to a store shelf in the USA. Exhaustion and industrial disease accumulate in her lungs, stuck in her throat, her menstruation no longer regular, her coughing convulsive. In the development zone not far from the factory green lychee trees are felled, the machines by her side tremble....She rubs her red swollen eyes and places herself between the moving products on the assembly line. 6 Midnight, Rain At midnight rain falls along insomniac iron cages, like a flock of egrets with fluffy feathers, showering down moans on one hundred machines. Rain at midnight is sleepless, it pitter-patters by the machines, falling like nails, lumps, and strings stamped with labels—yellow ones from the USA, green ones from France gray from Japan, light blue from Italy...intertwined, overlapping with me, a migrant worker from Sichuan, gazing outside in reminiscence. Rain at midnight has a name like mine: wanderer, its water lines up with equal distance, whispering blueprints, computers, spare parts, iron nails Translation 99 silent like a youthful mute. Midnight rain falls on hands, legs, faces homesickness, sleepiness...falling, sharp like the teeth of the time-card clock with an iron stomach, devouring countless love, youth, and hours. Its rainbow color is a noun, looking for a home. Rainwater is moving in my blood, it’s a stranger-lodger, flown over from a dreamland in the deep night. I must stretch out my hands to hold it, hold it and my vulnerability sleep talk, faraway gaze; our late night in a strange country has the same moist blossoming childhood, the same silence like dark iron. Midnight rain and I stare at each other with deep feelings, our conversation, only I can hear. 6 Screaming Earthworms The fictitious world displays another layer of background to us, I move deep into dirt My smooth body, like a mirror of the world, lithe and fragile, pushing toward The depth of the city to put down roots. Buildings of the masculine metropolis glitter in my face Their glass walls covered with ads of female flesh. Erotic desire’s winter nursery is shockingly green The mask of the city cultivates in occluded arteries of me, a dormant earthworm at the bottom of society It has...