New Forms Of Resistance Research Articles

Convergencias modernistas/postmodernistas en la obra de Hélène Cixous y en la crítica postcolonial

The aim of this article is to analyze the points of contact between Helene Cixous's feminist theories and the postcolonial postulates by prominent voices such as Franzt Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and Stuart Hall, among others. In particular, I will demonstrate how this French feminist is confronted by a similar dilemma to the one experienced by these postcolonial theorists, what I have called the modernist/postmodernist debate. On the one hand, Cixous's emancipatory force is grounded precisely in the very modernist category woman with essentialist implications; on the other hand, she tries to avoid the perpetuation of oppressive structures by envisaging new forms of resistance that overcome the Western patriarchal binary thought. Like Said, Bhabha, and Spivak, this French feminist critic is deeply influenced by postmodernism and poststructuralism. Although she will find problems when ultimately undermining the very oppositional polarity between masculinity and femininity, her critique of the paradigm of binary thought links their theories with the deconstructive moves of postcolonial theory. I will show how this feminist theorist coincides with Bhabha, Said and Spivak when advocating hybridity, boundary crossing, and fluidity as the best option to adopt for the (postcolonial) gendered subject.

The Emergence of Pan-Mayan Ethnicity in the Guatemalan Transnational Community Linking Santa Eulalia and Los Angeles

This article explores how the migratory process shapes ethnicity in transnational communities through an examination of the Guatemalan Mayan (Kanjobal) migrant circuit that links Santa Eulalia and Los Angeles. Relying on extensive qualitative fieldwork in both locales and a household census carried out in Santa Eulalia, this study concludes that transnational migration exacerbates class and social stratification in the sending community as immigrants in the host society confront adverse conditions that include racial/ethnic discrimination, restrictive US immigration policies, and an increasingly competitive secondary sector labor market. These conditions generate new forms of resistance reflected in the emergence of Pan-Mayan community organizations at both ends of the migrant circuit. The case study demonstrates how ethnicity becomes the cohesive force that empowers dislocated indigenous workers on both sides of the US-Mexican border, enabling them to feel a sense of common purpose in the face of challenging economic and social conditions.

On Marx, Islam, Christianity & revolution

Note by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson: In 1978, as the protests against the shah were becoming a mass movement, Michel Foucault made his first visit to Iran. During the next eight months, Foucault wrote a number of articles on the Iranian Revolution for “Corriere della Sera,” “Le Monde,” and other publications. These articles constitute the most sustained treatment anywhere in his writings of a non-Western society. Foucault's support for Iran's Islamist movement touched off a controversy that continues to this day. This conversation, conducted in Iran in September of 1978 with the noted writer Baqir Parham, includes Foucault's first reflections on the Iranian Revolution. In addition, it connects his concern with Iran to his larger critique of Western modernity. It shows how his search for new forms of resistance to modernity had led him to look at religious revolts. This dialogue was published in “Nameh-yi Kanun-i Nevisandegan” (Publication of the Center of Iranian Writers), No. 1, Spring 1979, pages 9–17. It has been translated from the Persian by Janet Afary. We thank Baqir Parham and the University of Chicago Press for permission to publish this material in “Dædalus.”

The Battle of Los Angeles: The Cultural Politics of Chicana/o Music in the Greater Eastside

East Los Angeles is the center of a flourishing musical cultural scene with a renewed "Chicana/o" sensibility. This scene is being led by a collective of socially conscious and politically active Latin-fusion bands that emerged in the 1990s, including Aztlán Underground, Blues Experiment, Lysa Flores, Ozomatli, Ollin, Quetzal, Quinto Sol, Slowrider, and Yeska. Along with visual artists, activists, and audiences, the musicians of the Eastside scene comprise an emergent cultural movement that is grounded in the new spatial and social relations generated in Los Angeles in the transnational era. The East L.A. scene's history of formation, the multiplicity of its sounds, and its commitment to political activism and coalition building all illuminate the relations between culture and politics at the present moment. The musical practices of the East L.A. scene echo the dislocations and displacements endemic to global cities in the transnational era, but they also reflect the emergence of new forms of resistance that find counter-hegemonic possibilities within contradictions. In culture and in politics, groups in the Eastside scene proceed through immanent critiques and creative reworkings of already existing social relations, rather than through transcendant teleologies aimed at the establishment of utopian sites and subjects. Rather than a politics of "either/or" that asks people to choose between culture and politics, between class and race, or between distinct national identities, this cultural movement embraces a politics of "both/and" that encourages dynamic, fluid, and flexible stances and identity categories.

Targeting oestrogen to kill the cancer but not the patient.

The link between sex steroids and the development and growth of breast cancer has proved to be an invaluable clue for advances in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. The identification of the oestrogen receptor (ER) not only allowed advances in the molecular endocrinology of oestrogen action, but also provided a target for antioestrogenic therapeutic agents. However, the application of long-term or indefinite treatment regimens has consequences for the breast cancer. New forms of resistance, based upon enhanced cellular survival networks independent of ER and the suppression of apoptotic mechanisms, develop and then evolve. Remarkably, low concentrations of oestrogen collapse survival pathways and induce apoptosis in completely antihormonally refractory breast cancer. However, recurrent oestrogen-stimulated disease is again sensitive to antihormonal therapy. The novel reapplication of the ER as a therapeutic target for apoptosis is emerging as a new strategy for the long-term targeted maintenance treatment of breast cancer, and in formulating a targeted strategy for endocrine independent cancer.

Governmentality, subject‐building, and the discourses and practices of devolution in the UK

This paper uses a Foucauldian governmentality framework to analyse and interrogate the discourses and strategies adopted by the state and sections of the business community in their attempts to shape and influence emerging agendas of governance in post‐devolution Scotland. Much of the work on governmentality has examined the ways in which governments have developed particular techniques, rationales and mechanisms to enable the functioning of governance programmes. This paper expands upon such analyses by also looking at the ways in which particular interests may use similar procedures, discourses and practices to promote their own agendas and develop new forms of resistance, contestation and challenge to emerging policy frameworks. Using the example of business interest mobilization in post‐devolution Scotland, it is argued that governments may seek to mobilize defined forms of expertise and knowledge, linking them to wider political debates. This, however, creates new opportunities for interests to shape and contest the discourses and practices of government. The governmentalization of politics can, therefore, be seen as more of a dialectical process of definition and contestation than is often apparent in existing Foucault‐inspired writing.

“Common–Sense” Neoliberalism: Progressive Conservative Urbanism in Toronto, Canada

This paper argues that urban neoliberalism can best be understood as a contradictory re–regulation of urban everyday life. Based on an analysis of neoliberalism as a new political economy and as a new set of technologies of power, the paper argues that the urban everyday is the site and product of the neoliberal transformation. Governments and corporations play a key role in redefining the conditions of everyday life through neoliberal policies and business practices. Part of this reorientation of everydayness, however, involves new forms of resistance and opposition, which include the kernel of a possible alternative urbanism. The epochal shift from a Keynesian–Fordist–welfarist to a post–Fordist–workfarist society is reflected in a marked restructuring of everyday life. The shift changes the socioeconomic conditions in cities. It also includes a reorientation of identities, social conflicts, and ideologies towards a more explicitly culturalist differentiation. Social difference does not disappear, but actually becomes more pronounced; however, it gets articulated in or obscured by cultural terms of reference.The paper looks specifically at Toronto, Ontario, as a case study. An analysis of the explicitly neoliberal politics of the province’s Progressive Conservative (Tory) government under Mike Harris, first elected in 1995, demonstrates the pervasive re–regulation of everyday life affecting a wide variety of people in Toronto and elsewhere. Much of this process is directly attributable to provincial policies, a consequence of Canada’s constitutional system, which does not give municipalities autonomy but makes them “creatures of provinces.” However, the paper also argues that Toronto’s elites have aided and abetted the provincial “Common–Sense” Revolution through neoliberal policies and actions on their own. The paper concludes by outlining the emergence of new instances of resistance to the politics of hegemony and catastrophe of urban neoliberalism.

Genetic variability of nematodes: a threat to the durability of plant resistance genes?

Plant resistance is currently the most effective and environmentally safe method to control plant parasitic nematodes (PPNs). Resistance genes generally act against sedentary PPNs by inducing a hypersensitive reaction that prevents the parasite installation and/or reproduction. However, the recent emergence of virulent biotypes able to overcome the plant resistance genes may constitute a severe limitation to this control strategy. In selection experiments conducted under controled environment, the genetic variation, specificity and inheritance of nematode virulence have been demonstrated. Moreover, the occurrence of gene-for-gene interactions has been shown in a few cases. Moleculars markers have been extensively used to investigate the genetic variability of PPNs, but so far, the genomic polymorphisms observed are largely independent of virulence. Such data suggest that, within a species, virulent isolates do not share a common origin, but are probably the result of independent mutational events. To understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for virulence in PPNs, several strategies have been developed, in relation with their mode of reproduction (parthenogenesis versus amphimixis). As an example, recent results obtained in our laboratory on the root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne spp. are presented. On a more general point of view, factors that may induce stable genome variability in PPNs, e.g. Transposition of mobile elements and chromosomal rearrangements (leading to polyploidy, aneuploidy, etc) will also be considered. Advances in knowledge in these areas should have important consequences for the management and durability of natural resistance genes, and for the engineering of new forms of resistance.

Continental transnational activism and women workers' networks within NAFTA

In this article, I present some experiences of transnational networking among women workers, women's groups, and feminist organizations at both the transcontinental and transborder level in the FTAA and NAFTA areas. These transnational efforts are analyzed as forms of resistance to the encroachments of global capital. The record of these networks is both encouraging and problematic. Encouraging because certain issues have received greater attention from both the state and multinational companies, and Mexican organizations have received strategic support to empower themselves and even, in some cases, develop a feminist workers' perspective. The record is also problematic as cooperation is not always free from conflict, or asymmetric relations, among the organizations. Asymmetries often reflect unequal access to power and financial resources. In spite of this, it seems undeniable that transnational networks among women's organizations are modeling new forms of resistance to the processes of global restructuring.

The rapid emergence of genetic modification in world agriculture: contested risks and benefits

There has been a rapid expansion in the commercial cultivation of genetically modified crops, rising from the first plantings in 1995 to 44.5 million hectares worldwide in 2000, most of which have grown in North America. Though there are sharp divisions in opinions on benefits and risk, genetic modification (GM) does not represent a single, homogenous technology. Each application brings different potential benefits and risks for different stakeholders. This paper reviews recent scientific progress and future applications using a new typology of three generations of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) ranged against five types of scientific application. Agricultural GMOs pose a range of potential environmental and health risks. An analysis of recent independent field and scientific evidence from industrialized countries summarizes the current state of knowledge on seven types of risk that apply to all agricultural systems: (1) horizontal gene flow; (2) new forms of resistance and pest problems; (3) recombination to produce new pathogens; (4) direct and indirect effects of novel toxins; (5) loss of biodiversity from changes to farm practices; (6) allergenic and immune system reactions; and (7) antibiotic resistance marker genes. There remain highly contrasting positions taken by different stakeholders over GMOs. A review of three debates explains claims and counter-claims for (1) genetic modification as technological fix or contributor to sustainability; (2) genetic modification as driver of corporate power or friend of farmer; and (3) genetic modification as feeder of the world or eliminator of alternatives.

Crystal Structure of the IMP-1 Metallo β-Lactamase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Its Complex with a Mercaptocarboxylate Inhibitor: Binding Determinants of a Potent, Broad-Spectrum Inhibitor,

Metallo beta-lactamase enzymes confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria by catalyzing the hydrolysis of beta-lactam antibiotics. This relatively new form of resistance is spreading unchallenged as there is a current lack of potent and selective inhibitors of metallo beta-lactamases. Reported here are the crystal structures of the native IMP-1 metallo beta-lactamase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its complex with a mercaptocarboxylate inhibitor, 2-[5-(1-tetrazolylmethyl)thien-3-yl]-N-[2-(mercaptomethyl)-4 -(phenylb utyrylglycine)]. The structures were determined by molecular replacement, and refined to 3.1 A (native) and 2.0 A (complex) resolution. Binding of the inhibitor in the active site induces a conformational change that results in closing of the flap and transforms the active site groove into a tunnel-shaped cavity enclosing 83% of the solvent accessible surface area of the inhibitor. The inhibitor binds in the active site through interactions with residues that are conserved among metallo beta-lactamases; the inhibitor's carboxylate group interacts with Lys161, and the main chain amide nitrogen of Asn167. In the "oxyanion hole", the amide carbonyl oxygen of the inhibitor interacts through a water molecule with the side chain of Asn167, the inhibitor's thiolate bridges the two Zn(II) ions in the active site displacing the bridging water, and the phenylbutyryl side chain binds in a hydrophobic pocket (S1) at the base of the flap. The flap is displaced 2.9 A compared to the unbound structure, allowing Trp28 to interact edge-to-face with the inhibitor's thiophene ring. The similarities between this inhibitor and the beta-lactam substrates suggest a mode of substrate binding and the role of the conserved residues in the active site. It appears that the metallo beta-lactamases bind their substrates by establishing a subset of binding interactions near the catalytic center with conserved characteristic chemical groups of the beta-lactam substrates. These interactions are complemented by additional nonspecific binding between the more variable groups in the substrates and the flexible flap. This unique mode of binding of the mercaptocarboxylate inhibitor in the enzyme active site provides a binding model for metallo beta-lactamase inhibition with utility for future drug design.

Popular Culture and the Aesthetization of Politics: Hegemonic Struggle and Postcolonial Nationalism in Trinidad Carnival

This paper has twin objectives: one, to interrogate the conjuncture of culture and power within the Trinidad carnival; and two, to explore the relationship between the carnival and the project of postcolonial nation‐building in Trinidad and Tobago. It accomplishes this by historicizing the trinity of the modern carnival: mas, calypso, and pan. Addressing the role of popular culture in the construction of hegemony, it traces the long, serpentine process of struggle over control of the festival. Elite balls gave way to the carnival of the underclass, after the abolition of slavery in 1838. As Trinidad's population became more culturally diverse, class conflict over the carnival escalated. This paved the way for the gradual appropriation of carnival by the Creole middle class. Middle‐class hegemony was further consolidated during World War II by "American Occupation," which facilitated its commodification and commercialization. Although calypso has retained its character as protest music, it too, has been commoditized since the turn of the century, enhanced by the American presence. New forms of resistance in song have emerged, such as Rapso. The steelband movement (pan) emerged in the pre‐war years as a revolution both in the soundscape and social landscape of Trinidad, but acquired legitimacy through political patronage. In the post‐independence era, carnival has been constructed as official "national culture," a performance of solidarity powerful enough to constitute a sense of brotherhood in a population fractured by competing racial, ethnic, and class loyalties. But, as a symbol, carnival cannot be "owned," and remains the stage on which conflicting ideas and values are contested.

Visuality and gender in modern Japanese theater: looking at Salome

As part of a collective project to map the changes in the sense of vision and visuality in modern Japan, this paper focuses on theater and the environment around it, and asks what gender, sexuality and performance had to do with vision and visuality, as physical operation and as social fact. Examining the circulating images of women as performers and performers as women, this paper argues that a significant change occurred in Meiji Japan which aligned in new ways the categories of gender, sexuality, performance, visuality and the body. That alignment opened up possibilities for new forms of disciplinary control as well as for new forms of resistance and pleasure. These possibilities can be illustrated by the various versions of Oscar Wilde's Salome that came into view in Japan at the turn of the century, especially the competing performances of Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako in 1914. Matsui Sumako's triumphant performance was paradigmatic of the modern formations of visuality and gender, and Salome's ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ can be understood as a synecdoche for that formation.

Expression and Functional Characterization of a Single Chain FV Antibody Directed against Secretions Involved in Plant Nematode Infection Process

Expression in plants of antibodies directed against proteins essential for pathogenesis could provide an alternative approach to engineer new resistance traits into crops. Salivary secretions of the root-knot nematodeMeloidogyne incognitaare known to play a key role during this nematode infection process. From a hybridoma cell line producing an IgM monoclonal antibody specific to these secretions, we have constructed a synthetic gene that encodes an antigen-binding single-chain Fv protein (scFv). The scFv gene was created by polymerase chain reaction amplification of variable domain encoding regions from the IgM antibody. The cloned scFv was initially expressed inEscherichia colias a 33-kDa protein which could be purified to near homogeneity by immobilized metal affinity chromatography. The produced scFv is fully functional since it shows the same specificity towards a crude extract ofM. incognitainfective larvae as the corresponding parental IgM. Transient expression assays with tobacco leaf protoplasts using different targeting signals resulted in a high intracellular accumulation of scFv, especially when fused to the tetrapeptide KDEL retention signal. Activity analysis and stability characterization of this scFv in tobacco protoplast represent the first step before plant transformation in order to test a new form of resistance to root-knot nematode in plants.

L'individualité contemporaine entre repli et résistance

Eustache Kouvelakis, Contemporary Individuality : Between Resistance and Withdrawal Contemporary individuality is conditioned by the tendency towards « abstract individualization » produced by capitalist social relations and an historic defeat which has terminated a period of struggle against prevailing systems. The present moment is therefore one of a breakdown of individuality and, concurrently, the emergence of new forms of resistance to the disintegrating forces. These new forms of resistance, indissociably individual and social in character, have realigned the boundaries between political practice, aesthetics and ethics. emergence of new forms of resistance to the disintegrating forces. These new forms of resistance, indissociably individual and social in character, have realigned the boundaries between political practice, aesthetics and ethics.

Expression of an mdr gene is associated with a new form of resistance to dexamethasone-induced apoptosis.

A variant, MS23, of murine thymoma W7 cells, previously selected for its resistance to low concentrations of dexamethasone, is cross-resistant to unrelated drugs such as puromycin and colchicine. We report here that transcription of the mouse mdr1 gene is activated and P-glycoprotein is expressed in MS23 cells. Moreover, additional variants with increased resistance to dexamethasone and other drugs can be isolated from MS23 by stepwise selections in dexamethasone and colchicine. In one such variant (S7CD-5), the mdr1 gene is amplified and the mdr protein overexpressed. These variants have classical mdr characteristics: they accumulate reduced concentrations of drugs (including dexamethasone), and both drug sensitivity and intracellular accumulation can be restored by verapamil. The variants are most resistant to glucocorticoids with both 11- and 17-hydroxyl groups. The results indicate that we have identified a new form of glucocorticoid resistance, one associated with expression of the mouse mdr1 P-glycoprotein.

Expression of an mdr gene is associated with a new form of resistance to dexamethasone-induced apoptosis

Expression of an mdr gene is associated with a new form of resistance to dexamethasone-induced apoptosis

Culture and power in urban anthropology

ion. And we have to do this not only critically, in the necessary history of rural and urban capitalism, but substantially, by affirming the experience which in many millions of lives are discovered and rediscovered, very often under pressure: experiences of directness, connection, mutuality, sharing, which alone can define, in the end, what the real deformation may be. [39] If urban anthropologists are to take seriously these spaces in which images, social processes and economic structures come into play the spaces of everyday life in cities a more productive conception of power and culture is called for: one in which the individual and the state are not construed as analytic poles, requir? ing on the one hand a discourse on alienation, and on the other a discourse on planning, but as terms related and mutually constituted within a whole series of paradigms, practices and strategies. As Michel Foucault has persuasively argued, power may be best understood not negatively, by focusing on repressive institutions and powerful individuals, but positively, by tracing the pervasive mechanism by which it inserts itself into actions, attitudes, discourses and everyday lives. What is needed, he suggests, is "a study of power in its external visage, at the point where it is in direct and immediate relationship with that which we can provisionally call its object, its target, its field of application, ... where it installs itself and produces its real effects [40]". So, too, might culture be understood in terms of a productive deployment in terms of the strategic inven? tories it installs, the interpretations it enables, the practices it gives meaning to, the pos? sibilities it circumscribes. The avenues by which this double deployment proceeds in neither case adequately described as an imposition from top to bottom, or as a structural determination from bottom to top are fertile territory for an urban anthropology limited neither to holism nor to community studies. The city, from this perspective, can be approached indirectly and by way of such mediating technologies and institutions as industrial discipline, social housing and the family, where strategies of government, production and individual practice intersect. The city can be understood on the one hand as requiring or making possible new relations between culture and power, new penetrations of the latter into everyday lives, and new forms of resistance to that penetration. The City can be understood on the other hand as partially constituted by these new relations: transformed by the new collectivities, reproductive strategies, and ways of seeing that grow from, or in response to, subjectification, bureaucratic interventions and the waning of dependency relations. The attempt made by Jacques Donzelot to trace the origins and implications of a "policing of families" is instructive in this regard [41]. Donzelot isolates a shift from "government of the family," where relations between state and family mirror those between father and son, to "government through the family." The latter was accomplished, he argued, by means of a two? fold strategy: medical intervention in the bourgeois family, and a philanthropic interven? tion in the working-class family. In the first case, it was a question of enacting "protective" measures; in the second, it was a question of establishing a direct surveillance. Concerning This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:34:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Territorio comunal en la costa de Ecuador: buscando caminos de entendimiento entre el buen vivir y el principio de bien común

Parte de la población nativa de la costa ecuatoriana mantiene en propiedad común extensos territorios y recursos que usa y gestiona de forma colectiva desde la época colonial. Lo común se construye alrededor de un modo de vida que se sostiene en conductas participativas, deliberativas, y consensuadas, como principio político de relación social. La Constitución del Ecuador (2008) orientada por la filosofía del “Sumak Kawsay” o Buen Vivir (BV) identifica a las Comunas como una organización ancestral, incluidas en el nuevo marco de redistribución de recursos y reconocimiento cultural. Paradójicamente aunque se respeta la cosmovisión indígena y su bien común, en la práctica se legalizan planes de crecimiento económico y privatización de tierras que ignoran los derechos comunales. En esta tensión el bien común para el buen vivir debe adoptar nuevas formas de resistencia para mantener su articulación al mercado sin perder su capacidad de decisión colectiva.