Horizon Of Possibilities Research Articles

Caught in the Crossfire: Unravelling the complex interplay of exploitation and agency in children associated with Boko Haram

This paper investigates the experiences of children associated with Boko Haram in Northeast Nigeria. The central argument posits that, within highly coercive environments, exploitation and agency are mutually constitutive. While acknowledging the prevalent exploitation of these children, it is crucial to recognise how such exploitation is intimately connected to their agency. As economic, social, and political pressures mount, children may perceive participation in Boko Haram (and self-exploitation) as the only viable means to achieve various goals—from protecting their families and communities to seeking self-significance. Consequently, exploitation—whether orchestrated by group leaders or members—may be consciously embraced by children as a means to create new horizons of possibilities. Simultaneously, by engaging in Boko Haram’s activities, children reproduce a system aimed to their own exploitation and vilification. Neglecting the complexities inherent in children’s associations with Boko Haram has potential implications for their reintegration and community healing processes.

Editors' Introduction

Responding to Palestinian organizers' calls to use our voice, continue to engage in conversations, and to speak out, this statement articulates what we see as the abolitionist and anti-colonial way forward—the only way we can commit to a free Palestine. Imagining and building alternatives is the future, the horizon of possibility, that Lateral, as part of the intellectual and activist project of cultural studies, is imperfectly but consistently striving toward. Here, we highlight work in this issue, including the Towards Third Worlding forum, articles, book reviews, and the second installment of the Positions podcast. We continue to welcome authors to join in this work of pushing the field of cultural studies further, towards its promise of critical inquiry matched by political engagement.

What time does the bell ring? Problems and potentialities in experiences of temporality in school

This paper problematizes the experience of temporality in school education and explores its potentialities, examining the implications for educational justice in and for qualitative research. In a first stage, we develop a pars destruens of how the experience of temporality takes place as a transversal dimension of school activities. Using phenomenological perspective as theoretical and critical lens, we show that the objective of this approach is to organize time and experience in a standardized, contradictory, and tense manner; at the same time, we describe a pars construens of the experience of temporality, endowed with a horizon of possibilities: the school as free time that contributes to questioning certain aspects in relation to temporality as a project of progress in education, without failures, without different rhythms. These approaches propose a link between experience of temporality and educational justice that we discuss in the conclusion.

Literature and Artificial Intelligence

The essay proposes a ‘literary’ perspective on the history of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, this means a literary-historical retrospective of the decades since the Second World War, but it also emphasizes the basic probabilistic trait of artificial intelligence, which becomes recognizable especially against the background of current technological developments. The space of literature is the horizon of possibility that accompanies what is real for man in early modern times and to which his activity is directed. When ‘intelligent machines’ today turn to their environment in the mode of mathematical conjecture, this marks not only an epistemic, but also an anthropological caesura.

Storying Sensuous Atmospheres of Peaches and Wheat

Policy initiatives, research, and professional advice concerned with sustainable food systems remain largely stuck conceptualising individual consumers as rational subjects in need of technocratic interventions to induce behaviour change. While critical approaches do account for the relevance of socio-ecological, political, and economic circumstances, the affective, sensuous, and im/material relations — sensuous atmospheres — that are indissoluble from everyday life are either left out, or effectively conceptualised as the inert, given background on which life plays out. Taking the imagination as a key political participant in the struggle for a more just and sustainable world, this article aims to ‘story’ the sensuous atmospheres of everyday life in agricultural practice, making sensuous atmospheres visible as the sensory-material substance that socio-ecological, political, and economic formations take. Drawing from sensuous (auto)ethnographic encounters on a farm in northern Italy, I ask: what kinds of stories are the sensuous atmospheres of techno-industrial and alternative agricultural practices made of, what kinds of stories do they tell, and how might they help to imagine new horizons of possibility in the making of more sustainable food systems? I begin the article with a discussion problematising food systems and the inadequate approaches often used to render them sustainable. I then conceptualise the notion of ‘storying sensuous atmospheres’, presenting the sensory ethnographic material in the style of ‘sensuous scholarship’ in which the fieldwork is simultaneously analysed and evocatively storied. I conclude the article by suggesting that the storying of sensuous atmospheres is one strategy to precipitate new horizons of imagining — in food systems and beyond — a more sustainable world.

From hegemony-reinforcing to hegemony-transcending transformations: horizons of possibility and strategies of escape

In the face of ever escalating global socioecological crises, the necessity of radical systemic transformations has gained increasing political and academic traction over the last decade, among others in the context of ‘green’ and bio-based economies. We draw on the works of political philosophers Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Judith Butler to develop a typology of transformational dynamics. In this typology, the word transformation implies political agendas, processes and outcomes that involve the total structural reordering of a social field, which we juxtapose with ‘inclusion’, which implies cases in which pre-existing logics are further entrenched or extended. Drawing on the theoretical framework of hegemony, inclusions and transformations, we develop an analytical lens that focuses on the relations between hegemony and transformative dynamics. This analytical lens is developed and exemplified by discussing the transformative potentials of multiple socioecological and political agendas, including those associated with eco-modernism, Marxism, decoloniality, eco-feminism, degrowth and eco-anarchism. Depending on the transformative dynamics in relation to hegemony and the dominant political logics, we distinguish between hegemony-reinforcing, hegemony-replacing, and hegemony-transcending transformations. The provided lens and the typologies of transformations should be useful to those seeking to conceptualize, differentiate, analyse, and tactically strategize the realization of an array of socio-ecological agendas.

Liminality, Representation, Silence: The Poetics and Politics of Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019)

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the value of silence, located within liminal spaces in Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019). Structured as an informal graphic essay, Doab Dil proffers ironic commentaries on nature, culture, cities, the countryside, history, fiction, work, sleep, insomnia, popular culture, and the quest for meaning in life. In the process, Doab Dil combines text and drawing to construct a postmodernist intertextual mural of juxtaposed quotations, descriptions, and metaphysical reflection on the values of contemporary culture. At the points of these juxtapositions, liminal spaces are created that are characterised by a dense silence. The centrality of the liminal in the creative imagination of Doab Dil is evident in the title that signposts the fertile tract of land found at the confluence of two rivers. Recollecting Homi Bhabha on the liminal as a horizon of possibilities, this paper explores the ways in which the poetic representation of liminality constructs political spaces of critique, which draw on the silence between confluent thoughts on diverse themes for critical reflection. Through literary criticism, the paper investigates the poetics and politics of possibilities in Doab Dil positioned within liminal spaces, and the role of silence as a representational strategy for a metaphysical commentary on reality.

Art in small circles

As a researcher in the fields of Political Science and Intercultural Communication, my purpose here is linked with the current state of art in Albania, but only through the narratives, fables and symbolic structures that condition it. Even though art as it is now mainly composed of rigid shapes and colors thrown/scattered without much thought in it, I argue that for art to think (or work) outside this quasimainstream mindset, it has first to see how the latter dictates its horizons of possibility. I conclude that these are ready-made fables and concepts taken for granted in the mainstream and which very quickly create a “discursive tension” where our very space of not only artistic freedom is at stake, and for which a “discursive struggle” may be delineated.

Genome editing for vegetatively propagated crops improvement: a new horizon of possibilities

Genome editing for vegetatively propagated crops improvement: a new horizon of possibilities

Youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of Lephalale: The struggle for employment and climate justice in a coal-rich region of South Africa


 
 
 
 
 
 Southern Africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. The region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. Despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decision- making spaces – especially those living in global and urban peripheries. In this article, I speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. I do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of Lephalale in Limpopo, South Africa – not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. Lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in South Africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. The complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the Lephalale Unemployment Forum and the Waterberg Environmental Justice Forum. With climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, I argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development.
 
 
 
 Through the methodology I employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, I aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in context-specific power-laden social relations. While it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationship-building before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. This way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction to “Queer Healing and Transformative Justice”: A Special Issue of QED

Introduction to “Queer Healing and Transformative Justice”: A Special Issue of <i>QED</i>

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in mHealth: Theoretical and practical aspects for practitioners' use.

The extensive use of smart technology (smartphones and wearables) and the vast amount of information they contain have positioned remote devices and technology as a massive database resource. Harnessing these big data into the clinical and research fields has introduced a new horizon of possibilities along with significant privacy issues. A significant evolution in this respect has been the introduction of the new European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR acknowledges that information related to individuals (i.e. personal data), as well as data flow, and thus databases, are of high political, clinical, and economic value. Hence, the Regulation aims to protect personal data and, consequentially, privacy. Nevertheless, the GDPR is a legal document with legal language. The purpose of this paper is to serve as a - practical guidance as well as a theoretical framework - for clinicians (and non-clinicians) who integrates digital tools in their clinical and research work.

Reversing Type 1 Diabetes: The Magnifying Potential of Stem Cell Encapsulation

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common chronic autoimmune diseases characterized by islet autoimmunity. This is followed by immune destruction of the β-cells as T cells attack and destroy insulin-secreting pancreatic β cells, leading to insulin deficiency. Currently, life-long insulin therapy is the primary treatment option for the condition with research being centered around islet transplantation to restore glycemic stability. However, this procedure is limited by risks and supply shortages, highlighting the need for a safer, more effective therapy for the approximately 9 million people across the world with Type 1 Diabetes. This literature review serves to assess stem cells and their potential as a vast β-cell supply towards the treatment of Type 1 diabetes. Stem cells may differentiate to become a self-renewing β-cell line that may reverse Type 1 Diabetes; however, further studies expanding on encapsulation techniques, methods whereby living cells are entrapped in semi-permeable membranes for the purpose of disease treatment, are required. With this new horizon of possibilities, targeted efforts towards stem cell manipulation in expressing β-cell phenotype can pave the way for a highly efficacious treatment for Type 1 Diabetes.

The Unhappy Marriage of ‘Queerness’ and ‘Culture’: The Present Implications of Fixating on the Past

ABSTRACT In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India in Navtej Johar v Union of India, decriminalised consensual same-sex sexual activities by reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. A significant aspect of the Court’s reasoning was that Section 377 was an embodiment of ‘Judeo-Christian’ morality and a colonial imposition. In providing that reasoning, the judgment does not stand alone. For a long time now, various revisionist accounts of religious texts and scriptures have been presented to argue that ancient ‘Indian culture’ had been tolerant towards non-normative sex and gender, and ‘homophobia’ was simply a British imposition. Such revisionist arguments had initially been put forth by Indian queer rights groups to nullify the orthodox homophobic attitudes which rested on the claim that homosexuality is alien to ‘our culture’. However, this article argues that there has been an increasing cooptation of such accounts by dominant Hindu Right groups for their political ends. This article also shows that this reliance on the past (through scriptures or otherwise) to confer legitimacy on the present can have the effect of constraining the radical potentialities of that past. At the end, this article argues for a turn towards the future, which, creating new solidarities, can become a horizon of possibilities.

Reading Contemporary French Literature

This book focuses upon a dozen French writers who have helped to set the terms for contemporary French literature and its horizon of possibility. Though they have pursued significantly different paths, each one of them is committed to the principle of literary innovation, to making French literature new. They work in full cognizance of literary history and of the tradition that they inherit, even as they reshape that tradition in each of their books. They invite their readers to take a critical stance with regard to those books, and to participate actively in the construction of literary meaning. Both bold and mobile in their own practice, they encourage us to be just as agile in our own readerly practice, offering us a rare degree of franchise in a literary dynamic founded on the notion of articulation. Writers discussed include Raymond Queneau, Edmond Jabès, Georges Perec, Marcel Bénabou, Jacques Jouet, Marie NDiaye, Marie Cosnay, Bernard Noël, Jean Rolin, Jacques Serena, Julia Deck, and Christine Montalbetti.

Breakers of glass ceilings: the professional careers of women in Finland and the graduates of three girls’ upper secondary schools (1890s–1910s)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the occupational emancipation of women in Finland and examines the professional careers of women who graduated with a matriculation examination from three upper secondary girls’ schools during the period of the 1890s to the 1910s. One of the schools was for Finnish-speaking girls, and two of the schools were for Swedish-speaking girls. This article asks what kinds of educational paths and professional careers these upper secondary girls’ school graduates had during their lives after graduation. Attention is paid to both the typical professional careers and to those careers that could be characterised as exceptional and atypical. The source material consists of student registers that offered an opportunity to create a prosopography (i.e. set biography). In this article, the prosopography and individual biographies of women with exceptional careers shed light on the horizon of possibilities for Finnish women at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, specifically, their horizon of possibilities to gain education and degrees, as well as posts in the labour market.

Психотерапія зажитого простору: феноменологічний та екологічний концепт

Using phenomenological and ecological psychology as a base, the author develops the concept of lived space as the totality of an individual's spatial and social relationships, including his ”horizon of possibilities”. The lived space may also be regarded as the individual's ecological niche, which is continuously shaped by his exchange with the environment. Mental illness may then be conceived as a limitation or deformation of the patient's lived space, inhibiting his responsivity and exchange with the environment. Unconscious dysfunctional patterns of feeling and behaving act as "blind spots" or "curvatures" in lived space and lead to typical distortions, thereby further restricting the patient's potentialities and development. Accordingly, the task of psychotherapy is to explore and understand the patient's lived space in order to reopen his horizon of possibilities. The main agent for this purpose is the interactive field of psychotherapy, which may be regarded as a "fusion of horizons" of the patient's and the therapist's worlds.

Beyond the modern shapes of the equality principle. Notes for a transition

Equality as an historic process of human emancipation, transcends the strictly legal/formal plane. Furthermore, it is enhanced by the “historic” willingness to democratise society and improve people’s lives. This is the materialistic dimension of the principle of equality, this ethical and historical “willingness” based on the production and development of social justice as a criterion and principle for action. Human rights and democracy, with their fighting practices and traditions, cannot be understood today without the idea of equality as a necessary principle. Human rights have always been linked to processes of reaction against inequalities. They have been and remain a reaction to any kind of oppression and/or domination, because human rights, which are rights and are human, are always actions that refer to human beings in need. The fact that they were formally conceived under the umbrella of normative reasoning does not presuppose that they should be conceived exclusively as individual rights, which demand fulfilment in the future, or even as horizons of possibility (idealistic vision), but as ways of life that make human existence – dignified existence – feasible for all people. The idea of equality is, therefore, not possible without this material judgement of existence.

Enabling the Industrial Internet of Things to Cloud Continuum in a Real City Environment.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is one of the most demanding IoT applications. The insertion of industries in the context of smart cities and other smart environments, allied with new communication technologies such as 5G, brings a new horizon of possibilities and new requirements. These requirements include low latency, the support of a massive quantity of devices and data, and the need to support horizontal communications between devices at the edge level. To make this feasible, it is necessary to establish an IIoT-to-cloud continuum distributing federated brokers across the infrastructure and providing scalability and interoperability. To attend this type of application, we present the Helix Multi-layered IoT platform and its operating modes. We report and discuss its real-world deployment in the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab in Aveiro, Portugal with functional and performance tests. We tested device-to-device communication across edge and core layers and also interconnected the infrastructure with one in São Paulo, Brazil, replicating the use of a global industry. The successful deployment validates the use of a Helix Multi-layered IoT platform as a suitable backend platform for IIoT applications capable of establishing the IIoT-to-cloud continuum. It also helps for the deployment of other applications in such a domain.

A Review on the Production Methods and Applications of Graphene-Based Materials.

Graphene-based materials in the form of fibres, fabrics, films, and composite materials are the most widely investigated research domains because of their remarkable physicochemical and thermomechanical properties. In this era of scientific advancement, graphene has built the foundation of a new horizon of possibilities and received tremendous research focus in several application areas such as aerospace, energy, transportation, healthcare, agriculture, wastewater management, and wearable technology. Although graphene has been found to provide exceptional results in every application field, a massive proportion of research is still underway to configure required parameters to ensure the best possible outcomes from graphene-based materials. Until now, several review articles have been published to summarise the excellence of graphene and its derivatives, which focused mainly on a single application area of graphene. However, no single review is found to comprehensively study most used fabrication processes of graphene-based materials including their diversified and potential application areas. To address this genuine gap and ensure wider support for the upcoming research and investigations of this excellent material, this review aims to provide a snapshot of most used fabrication methods of graphene-based materials in the form of pure and composite fibres, graphene-based composite materials conjugated with polymers, and fibres. This study also provides a clear perspective of large-scale production feasibility and application areas of graphene-based materials in all forms.