Multiple Discourses Research Articles

Ne/kritická reflexe minulosti a přeshraniční spolupráce v trojmezních Euroregionech Nisa a Šumava. Na cestě od nostalgického hledání kořenů k dialogickému vzpomínání?

The research article aims to contribute to the discussion on the process of Europeanization of collective memory. We examine the relationship between non/reflexive memory approaches and cross-border cooperation (CBC) in the triangle Euroregions Nisa and Šumava. We assume that key local agents of CBC defend dialogic remembering approach, therefore contribute to the process of horizontal Europeanization. To test this assumption, we conducted a questionnaire survey with 79 mayors and 52 semi-structured interviews with various agents in CBC in all sides of both Euroregions. Collected statistic data were analysed through the use of crosstabulation. In the interviews were identified multiple discourses on the historical conflicts and CBC. We interpreted both quantitative and qualitative data using the concept of the active border [Müller 2014, 2018] and four models of dealing with the traumatic past [Assman 2010]. We found evidence that traumatic past ceases to be perceived as a barrier and becomes to be seen as a catalyst for CBC. In this process, the following factors were identified as most crucial: structural perception of memory, cross-border socialisation, attachment towards EU project and, above all, generational gap. We prove that the leading supporters of dialogic remembering are representatives of the middle-aged generation of mayors, for whom the re/construction of cross-border relationships have become a lifelong challenge.

Iain Sinclair, William Blake and the Visionary Poetry of the 1960s

This article considers the use made of William Blake by a range of writers associated with the ‘countercultural’ milieu of the 1960s, particularly those linked to its London-based literary context. Iain Sinclair is offered as a writer who, in his appreciation of Blake, stands apart from the poets linked to the anthology, Children of Albion (1969). The article unpacks this distinction, analysing Sinclair’s ‘topographic’ take in comparison to the ‘visionary’ mode of his contemporaries. Having established this dualism, the argument then questions the nature of the visionary poetics assumed to apply to the likes of key poets from the era. The work of Michael Horovitz is brought into view, as is that of Harry Fainlight. In essence, these multiple discourses point to the plurality of Blake as a figure of influence and the variation underpinning his literary utility in post-1960s poetry.

International students’ mobility and lives in transnational spaces: pragmatic or dedicated cosmopolitans?

ABSTRACT Recently, an increasing number of students have been seeking international education to accumulate cosmopolitan cultural and social capital and realise upward social mobility. In addition to this pragmatic dimension, international education also enables international students to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, providing them opportunities to appreciate diverse cultures, values, and gain intercultural/translocal learning experiences. Guided by a theoretical discussion on pragmatic and dedicated cosmopolitanism, this study employed the case study method to explore how 19 international students who studied in Chinese universities navigated their transnational mobility, academic learning, and social lives, and how multiple discourses in their transnational spaces influenced their development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions. The findings revealed that international educational programme arrangements, social discourses regarding accruing capital and upward social mobility, and cultural and educational discourses in transnational spaces converged to influence students’ development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, affecting their emotions, practices, and choices. This study suggests that actors in international education provide students with more opportunities to connect with the host society and dialogical spaces. Not only international students, but all actors should engage in constant dialogue, and strive to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, and promote a socially and culturally inclusive educational environment to support international students’ learning and well-being.

A Comprehensive Approach of Transitional Justice to Address the Deliberate Destruction of Cultural Heritage

Given the fact that cultural heritage has been the subject of multi-dimensional crimes during or in the aftermath of armed conflicts, this article attempts to analyze why and how such crimes can be brought under transitional justice (hereinafter TJ) mechanisms. It starts with the challenge to ascertain the inbuilt relationship, importantly, how cultural heritage enters into the domain of TJ. To this end, it fragmentises the rights of heritage and laws associated with these rights and examines how multiple discourses (i.e. human rights, humanitarian law, and criminal law) come together to form the notion of heritage rights and how their recognition contributes to cultural heritage’s entrance into TJ project. Thereafter, it assesses the resonance of potential TJ mechanisms and elucidates how they can help reveal the truth concerning crimes against heritage, bring the perpetrators to justice, rehabilitate the destructed sites, redress the victims, and prevent future attacks. It reiterates the value of four measures widely accepted in the TJ discourse, namely, truth-seeking, prosecution, reparations, and the measures of guarantees of non-recurrence. Finally, it explains why a comprehensive approach in terms of implementing these measures is essential and how such approach facilitates taking into account all the factors associated with the crimes against heritage.

Australian policy on international students: pivoting towards discourses of diversity?

As the third-largest export industry, international education occupies an important place in the Australian economy and society. Employing Bacchi’s “What is the Problem Represented to be” (WPR) approach, this paper critically analyses four key policies pertaining to international students in Australia since the 1990s. Drawing upon theorising of the globalisation of international education policy, we uncover contestation and problem representation in discourses around the economisation of education and of international students’ experiences. The findings reveal multiple discourses of the problematisation of diversity at play, including a “pivot” towards protection of international students’ rights as consumers and as potential future citizens, and increased attention to the intrinsic value of international students as people, and not simply as economic agents. The findings have implications for other national contexts, in which international students contribute to the economic viability of education, and in which internationalisation of education in universities has the capacity to foster enhanced cross-cultural understanding.

Closet Dalithood: Traumatized Caste Performativity and the Making of an Urban Aesthetics of Caste in Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit (2019)

With the publication of Yashica Dutt’s (2019) Coming Out as Dalit, a clear shift in Dalit autobiographical writing tradition is becoming visible, and this article tries to capture that shift by locating it within a global discourse on marginality and discrimination. This shift enables Dutt to rebrand a certain understanding of caste from a birth-marked identity to a more free-floating and performative understanding of caste. The emphasis on the performative aspect of caste provides it the necessary synergetic value to attach with multiple global discourses around marginality, discrimination, sexuality, and race. The article highlights how Dutt’s text is trying to develop a new urban aesthetics of caste to capture the sensibilities of a dominantly urban and global audience, and at the same time, expanding and signifying the understanding of caste. The article argues that it is this attempt to develop a new aesthetic formulation of caste that can explain the use of what is primarily a queer symbol of expression ‘coming out’ to couch the expression of caste discrimination. The article further indicates how similar synergies are developed with racial discourses and, finally, argues how these attempts can be understood as part of a global response to inequalities and the right to the city, making and expanding Dalit literature’s participation in the category of protest literature.

Led Around by the Nose

Led Around by the Nose

Losing Freud

Losing Freud

Conjunctions of resilience and the Covid-19 crisis of the creative cultural industries.

This article compares the conjunctions of emergency resilience and ecological resilience that underpin the creative cultural industry (CCI) crisis. It first introduces three characteristics that socially construct the CCI crisis and its hegemonic practice of emergency resilience (time, disaster discourse, and the adaptation of aesthetic digitalization) and exposes multiple discourses – from the technologies of cultural statistics to corporate financial modelling – that construct an ideology of ‘resilience-as-deficit’. In contrast to this approach, the article develops three characteristics of ecological resilience: a focus on transition and the long term; resilience as a decentred strategy and networked resource; and aesthetic digitization as a radical praxis of adaptability. Examining arts impact and cultural policy reports, drawing on ecological, feminist and cultural resilience studies, and analysing a digital cultural event in Asia (the Singapore LGBT cultural festival, Pink Dot), the article argues that ecological resilience offers new capacities towards a cultural ecology that can nurture fair work, artistic innovation, economic growth and cultural vitality.

Themes of climate change agency: a qualitative study on how people construct agency in relation to climate change

This study analyzes how people discursively construct their (non)agency—how they display abilities and capacities to act, or the lack thereof—vis-à-vis climate change. The paper presents the results of a detailed discursive and thematic analysis of 28 interview transcripts: 12 broad agency themes representing different ways of constructing human (non)agency in relation to climate change. The most common agency theme was Collective, followed by Individual, Critical, and Threatened agency. Climate change skepticism was displayed mostly within Critical agency, where the speakers presented themselves as intellectual and critically thinking individuals, drawing from scientific rhetoric while criticizing and misrepresenting climate science. The constructions of Collective agency emerged as a form of agency that displays a sense of meaningfulness related to socially embedded actions. The construction of agency in relation to climate change is very detailed discursive work, as people draw from multiple societal discourses to craft varied discursive positions of experiencing, knowing, and doing in relation to it. The paper suggests ways for climate communications to take into account these multiple themes of agency.

Multiculturalism in media representation

AbstractThis study explores the issue of multiculturalism in China’s journalism practice through the analysis of news coverage on the Sino-US trade war inChina Daily(CD) and theSouth China Morning Post(SCMP). Following a corpus-based critical discourse analysis approach, the study compares thematic dimensions as well as recurring semantic patterns associated with them that denote two newspapers’ evaluative positioning. The findings reveal that CD’s reporting seems to be nationalistic-centric with overly positive representation of China’s practices and policies, while SCMP’s representation is multiculturalism-oriented with the representation of multiple discourses and articulation of competing and diversified viewpoints towards the evaluation of China’s market access and economic reform. The study concludes by recommending China’s official media practice continues to explore a multiculturalism approach to build dialogues with the international community in tandem with efforts made in promoting political, economic and cultural power.

The Letters of Paul de Foix: French Ambassador at the Court of Elizabeth I, 1562-1566

Scholarly editing of manuscript sources is vital to historical research, particularly when those sources are collated from disparate and distant locations. In his fourth contribution and third full volume for the Camden Series, David Potter has demonstrated the scholarly acumen for which he is known and his service to the profession for generations to come. The collection here includes correspondence to and from the French ambassador, Paul de Foix, as well as multiple discourses and memoranda by and for others during the mid-1560s; the volume is Potter’s latest instalment in a series of works examining Anglo-French political and diplomatic relations. As in the case of Potter’s edition of the correspondence of de Foix’s predecessor, Michel de Seure, the reader here can enjoy the fruits of impressive archival sleuthing. Potter has worked through the fragmentary remains of the French archives for this period, finding more than previous scholars and bringing into one volume materials that would take (did take?) a scholarly lifetime to locate across archives in France, the UK and the USA. Such work can be difficult, but, then again, as noted in the preface, ‘[p]art of the passion behind the present volume was fuelled by the thrill of the chase in pursuing items of the correspondence of de Foix which had “escaped” into other collections during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’. In short, Potter has attempted to reassemble the papers of the secretary for English affairs during the 1560s, Claude de L’Aubespine.

Managing higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses on Why Choose webpages for international students on Australian and British university websites

International education is impacted by multiple discourses, in particular the discourse of university as an educational institution responsible for producing and curating knowledge for the public good, pursuing truth and transforming student life, and the neoliberal marketing discourse which portrays the university as a business organization providing a service for international students as customers/consumers. Following a multimodal discourse analytic perspective, this study examines ‘ Why Choose’ webpages of one British and two Australian universities to identify how the apparently conflicting higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses are managed in the interdiscursive space using language, images and videos. The results reveal that ‘ Why Choose’ webpages are hybrid texts where the discourse of higher education is upheld in relation to the neoliberal marketing discourse through multimodal strategies of accentuation, infusion and progression. The study argues for the necessity of undertaking a multimodal discourse approach to understand how various positions are negotiated interdiscursively in online media.

Double tap, double trouble: Instagram, teachers, and profit

This qualitative study explores the performance of teacher agency amidst national financial and professional deficits in education and sheds light on the growing utilization of Instagram in elementary school contexts. To better understand teachers’ use of this social media platform, we examined the Instagram accounts of 12 highly popular and influential pre-K–6 teachers (i.e., teacher influencers). Data sources comprised over 600 visual and textual posts, which included images, captions, hashtags, and emojis, produced over 3 months in the spring of 2019. Using qualitative coding procedures that were recursive and emphasized the emergent nature of interpretation through a critical literacies framework, we documented the neoliberal teachers’ use of Instagram as a method of participation in a virtual community of practice and as a way to produce, commodify, and possibly profit from posts presented as curricula. Findings suggest that teacher influencers primarily used Instagram as a form of commodification and commerce, as educational content was promoted to users as well as methods of purchase via personal websites, Teachers Pay Teachers and other digital stores. Overall, the teacher influencers’ Instagram use revealed a convergence of complex and multiple discourses involving curriculum, racialized and/or gendered identities, and neoliberal production.

Tiger King and the Exegesis of COVID-19 Media Coverage of Nonhuman Animals

Beginning with the premise that the media participates in the manufacturing of the societal consent that enables and perpetuates the systematized exploitation of nonhuman animals, this article explores how media coverage of such nonhuman animals (and of wildlife in particular) during the COVID-19 crisis may influence our consumption of popular entertainment in a way that centralizes the discussion on the implications of established speciesist practices. I specifically focus on the impact of the first season of Netflix’s successful docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, directed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, which was released in March 2020, a key moment in the worldwide management of the pandemic. Tiger King has generated significant controversy because of its languid commitment to a solid conservationist message and to the paradigm of animal advocacy documentaries. However, understanding how and why nonhuman animals were considered newsworthy by COVID-19 media provides us with some interpretative keys through which to reapproach the significance of the show. Analyzing the series’ main themes and motifs in light of the media’s narratives on lockdown, wildlife, and human interference over nature allows us to continue exploring methodologies through which to question the multiple anthropocentric discourses that structure and order societal consent to the existence of zoos.

Education for collaboration: the influence of the third space on professional boundaries

The delivery of integrated care requires the establishment of effective professional relationships that foster collaborative working across health systems. Evidence for how to prepare practitioners to work in those settings is limited. By exploring an innovative postgraduate Programme for Integrated Child Health (PICH) this article highlights the conditions by which effective collaboration can be encouraged. Our qualitative evaluation of PICH involved one-to-one semi-structured interviews with 23 postgraduate general practice and paediatric trainees and their mentors. We analysed the data using the concept of the ‘third space’, where multiple discourses between individuals with diverse professional backgrounds occur, enabling creative exploration of tensions inherent in new ways of working in order to identify enablers and barriers to collaboration. Our analysis identified three themes that enabled collaboration: effective communication, boundary work and educational spaces; and four themes that were barriers: traditional hierarchical professional identities, curriculum design, financial systems and workplace spaces. PICH demonstrated the value of educational spaces and their role in enabling collaborative practice, as participants explored their professional identities and those of other disciplines. Structural factors in the workplace which inhibit collaborative practice were also evident. We conclude by proposing a model for collaborative learning in third spaces based upon the recognition that, while educational programmes alone will not lead to change, they have the potential to inform the development of productive workplace spaces that will be required if collaborative practice in healthcare is to become a reality.

Music and Art in Cyprus During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cyprus, music and artistic creation have significantly expanded their presence in mass media, the Internet and social media because of the social distancing measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. As cultural expressions, on the air and online, they have reinforced their strong popular and intercultural character during this period since cultural activity embodies an unprecedented but common experience in an interconnected world. At the same time, music and art serve values that reveal their connection with the social and political context and prompt us to re-examine their parallel or mutual definition. Various cultural agents and actors express themselves through original music, artistic and cultural spaces that present dialogue and bolder speeches often of a participatory nature. From this perspective, music and art in Cyprus during the pandemic present a case study of a critical polyphony that appears through the interaction of multiple spaces, discourses and values.

Intersections and Methods in Disability Theology: Bioethics and Critical Studies as Dialogue Partners

Disability theology has been a small but growing field over the past thirty years. This paper reviews the current methods used in the discipline and proposes ways to move the field forward. Two intersections between disability studies and Christian theological ethics are explored in particular: bioethics and critical theory. Bioethics helps to address the material health and wellbeing concerns of people with disabilities and the discriminatory attitudes about disability that stem from the medical field. Critical theory on the other hand, examines disability through cultural productions that shape our ableist imaginary. Critical theory offers resources for countering or “disciplining” our imaginations. Both bioethics and critical theory offer unique entry points into disability, but each also contains limitations that reveal why disability theology must continue to engage multiple methods and discourses.

Hysteric Subject between the Imaginary and Symbolic Orders: A Lacanian Critique of Curfewed Night

This research attempts to unearth the contrasting discourses that constitute the subjectivity in Basharat Peer’s memoir. By highlighting the circulation of these multiple discourses, the research further endeavours to trace the resistance in the subject's agency. These discourses, often resorting to violent modes of disciplining, relentlessly struggle to configure the subject. However, with its potential for resistance, the subject's agency subverts all these hegemonic configurations. Drawing upon Lacan's imagery and symbolic orders along with Lacanian discourses: master's discourse, university's discourse, analyst's discourse, and hysteric's discourse, this paper reads the incidents as symptomatic of a problem beyond their literal signification. This paper concludes that the Kashmiri subject becomes a battleground for these contradictory forces: the military and the militants. However, their modes of fashioning and disciplining the subject go awry with the agency's resistance.

Linking Scholarly Contents: The Design and Construction of an Argumentation Graph

In this study, we propose a way to link the scholarly contents of scientific papers by constructing a knowledge graph based on the semantic organization of argumentation units and relations in scientific papers. We carried out an argumentation graph data model aimed at linking multiple discourses, and also developed a semantic annotation platform for scientific papers and an argumentation graph visualization system. A construction experiment was performed using 12 articles. The final argumentation graph has 1,262 nodes and 1,628 edges, including 1,628 intra-article relations and 190 inter-article relations. Knowledge evolution representation, strategic reading, and automatic abstracting use cases are presented to demonstrate the application of the argumentation graph. In contrast to existing knowledge graphs used in academic fields, the argumentation graph better supports the organization and representation of scientific paper content and can be used as data infrastructure in scientific knowledge retrieval, reorganization, reasoning, and evolution. Moreover, it supports automatic abstract and strategic reading.