Paradoxical Connection Research Articles

A descriptive and interpretive theory of ethical responsibility in public health nursing.

This article presents a descriptive, interpretive theory of ethical responsibility in public health nursing. The theory is based on qualitative empirical studies, a purposeful literature review and meta-ethnography of public health nurses' experiences of ethical responsibility, interpreted within a philosophical framework. Levianasian philosophy provides the main direction for the authors' interpretations. The path for theory development consists of three phases: an inspirational phase, an explorative phase and the third phase 'joining the dots'. The theory illustrates that ethical responsibility in public health nursing is related to the life existentials of temporality and human relationships. Due to blurred boundaries in these essential life structures, public health nurses can experience a sense of satisfaction but also worries, uncertainties and loneliness. The study reveals paradoxical connections between fear and courage, and between freedom, autonomy and a sense of entrapment in responsible relationships. The authors purport that the results of this study are relevant for education and practice and can provide direction for further studies on developing theories of ethical responsibility in other nursing specialities.

Polemologie als Theorie und kulturanalytische Methode

Abstract The essay outlines a future ›polemology‹ based on a novel model of polemics. Polemics are ideally understood as ubiquitous, constitutively public, argumentative modes of speech that, using a wide variety of means (especially aesthetic ones) pursue the dual purpose of object annihilation and audience differentiation as polarization. Polemics are characterized by epistemic, aesthetic, and politicalsocial productivity, by theatrical and imaginary features, by their non-dialogical character, by their great situational and historical variability, reflexivity, as well as pronounced morality. The methodological relevance of a general polemology derives from its potential to integrate approaches from the history of ideas as well as social and cultural history. The multiform and paradoxical connection between polemics and artistic autonomy, the medial binding of polemics, and their role in the production of the literary public sphere result in the possibility of a special polemology of literary studies.

Micromanagement and Poor Self-Control

According to a familiar and entrenched philosophical paradigm, poor self-control amounts to diminished control by the self. While some cases of poor self-control may fit this paradigm, many paradigmatic cases of poor self-control, including cases involving individually trivial effects, do not; they are better understood as cases in which the self controls behavior, but does so poorly. As such, philosophical research on poor self-control needs to go beyond research aimed at locating and empowering the self, and into research on what it takes for selves that are already in control to qualify as managerial successes rather than managerial failures. This article focuses on certain pitfalls associated with micromanagement and on the paradoxical connection between micromanagement and poor self-control in cases involving individually trivial effects. The article ends by advancing an approach to managerial success that provides a promising route to avoiding micromanagerial pitfalls while also promoting responsible resilient agency.

Paradoxical Connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone

The paper examines different types of paradoxical connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone with respect to contemporary characteristics of American theatre. It is so clear that the play has a smooth transformation or connection between paradoxical states or situations. The transformation happens due to spatial, and temporal conditions, and different humankind values. The play is full of different types of connections due to social ties, contradictive life situations, death and life, the whole and the parts, the spatial and the temporal transformation, truth and lies, happiness and misfortune, fancy and facts, and humanity with technology. The study is qualitative depending on the study of the cases within the play that are contradicting each other, yet they serve in deepening the meaning and the understanding of the cases. The paradoxical issues to be studied in a comparative way, these comparative situations serve higher thematic issues in a philosophical dimension in very carefully woven relations between the characters and situational environment as well. The common sense that the play made is to accept the philosophy of black and white as positive paradoxical relation, that the black helps to see the pure white and vice versa. Common unanswered questions are to be presented in a rhetorical and philosophical manner; targeting these questions is the way of being closer to a bunch of truths about the complicated fabric relationships which link the characters all together.

UKRAINIAN AVANGARD IN THE COVERS OF VASYL YERMILOV

Vasyl Yermilov played a significant role in Valerian Polishchuk’s literary and artistic group Avangard, which was part of the Ukrainian artistic avant-garde. A series of covers for publications of the Avangard group, designed by Yermilov in the second half of the 1920s, is highlighted as a turning point in the development of modernism in Ukraine. Yermilov’s design style is characterized by constructivism, a movement that emphasizes geometric forms and rationality, and at the same time is distinguished by unconventional polychromy. The article emphasizes the geometric dominant in Yermilov’s typography and highlights the iconographic triad: a red rectangle, a black circle, and an accented letter. Yermilov’s connection with futurism, felt in his typography, is considered: despite the rejection of serifs in constructivism, their traces can be seen in the unusual plume of the letter “a”. The symbolism of the color red in typography is studied, from the point of view of its association with Soviet ideology and claims to imperial power; the dynamic and abstract qualities of the symbols used by Yermilov are discussed. The typography of the publications of the Avangard group appears as a reflection of the dramatic events in Ukraine at the end of the 1920s, in particular the Red Terror and the attack on the Ukrainian elite. The article analyzes a number of Yermilov covers for the group’s publications from the point of view of composition and symbolism, where the evolution of individual elements is traced. The culmination and transformation takes place in the sketch for the cover of the second issue of the magazine Avangard, where the letter “a” attacks the red rectangle “on the stage” illuminated by the black disk of the eclipse, the inverted sun of the avant-garde, which appeals to the “black sails of time” from V. Khlebnikov’s Manifesto, signed by the Kharkiv bohemians in 1916. The final edition of the third issue of the Kharkiv group’s magazine is perceived as a victory over the red rectangle, but at the cost of the loss of the Logos. The analysis of this typography series represents the changing dynamics and symbolic power of the avant-garde movement in this period, emphasizing the specificity of Ukrainian constructivism in its paradoxical connections with suprematism, visualized in the creative legacy of Vasyl Yermilov.

The Yes and No of God’s Providence: James H. Cone’s Paradoxical Relationship to the Theology of Karl Barth

ABSTRACT This paper explores James H. Cone’s paradoxical relationship to the theology of Karl Barth through a case study on their respective accounts of providence. It suggests that Cone’s ambivalence about efforts to relate his theological project to that of Karl Barth resonates with Barth’s hopes for how future generations of Christian theologians would engage with his theology. Barth feared that the reception of his theology would devolve into an insular, scholastic conversation about his ideas, influence, and legacy, and Cone experienced his formal theological education as a realization of those fears. Their mutual disdain for questions of Barth’s theological legacy and influence and their shared conviction that theology ought to engage with its social and political contexts offer a framework for a new assessment of the relationship between their theological projects. An examination of their respective theologies of providence offers a suggestive case study of the paradoxical connection between them.

Trauma Theory, Trauma Story

Abstract This work offers an overview of trauma theory’s relations to biblical studies. In addition to summarizing the theoretical landscape(s), it provides exegetical forays into Ezekiel and, in part, Exodus and the Eucharist. The analysis will engage these materials’ traumatic ethoi, including their connections to trauma informed eating and queerings, so as to offer entryways into the wider critical conversation. While these exegetical foci may seem arbitrary, that is in part the point. As readers will see, trauma defies sense-making. Akin to postmodernist poststructuralist intertextualities, trauma cannot be flattened into neat narration. Trauma is capricious, leaving survivors to carry with them multivalent and even paradoxical connections to their experiences. This project thus attempts to perform trauma’s plurisignification as much as it tries to explain it, using a set of traditionally unexamined pairings to do so. While not an exhaustive survey on trauma theory and the Bible – such work could fill the space of multiple publications – the following work provides a representation of both the theory of trauma and its applications within the biblical field.

«Алгол. Трагедия власти» (1920) — футуристический пеплум и репетиция «Метрополиса»

The article is devoted to the recently found and restored film Algol. The Tragedy of Power (1920) by Hans Werckmeister, combining an adventurous beginning, fantasy, career history and family history. This is one of the earliest stories predicting the processes of globalization. The author examines the visual originality of the picture, which includes both expressionist scenes and out-of-style fragments, dwells in detail on some camera solutions. Analyzes the plot of the film, combining science and unscientific fiction with references to the series of novels (Rougon-Maccara by Zola, The Forsyte Saga by Galsworthy, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann) and the myth of Faust. Along with the development of the image of the modern urban environment and the civilization of the future, the images of nature play an important role: nature, included in the technogenic civilization, and self-sufficient nature, which helps the rural working people to survive. The image of the main character, Robert Hern, performed by the outstanding German actor Emil Jannings, is examined in detail. The author reflects on the paradoxical connection between the fantastic world of the film and some motives of Peplum.

The Procedural Logic of the Existential and Systemic Reorganization of the Personality’s «Picture of the World»

Purpose. The article highlights the functional aspect of the existential and systemic reorganizational action, with the definition of microgenetic (formation) and psychological and genetic (development) dynamics of the semantic architectonics of the personality’s consciousness. Methods. Genetic and modeling, systemic, structural and integrative and subject and activity methodological approaches are involved in the study. The results of the research. The internal procedural plan of the existential and systemic concept is revealed and the mechanism of dynamics of the personality’s «worldview» is substantiated. The formal and logical scheme of reorga nizational action as a system of constructs of its semantic description and corresponding actions is given. The internal logic of reorganization of the personality’s «worldview» is determined. A procedural model of the reorganizational action of the existential and systemic concept is constructed. This model reflects the analysis of the genetic relations of the constructs of the research on the semantic architectonics of the personality’s consciousness. It is determined that the focus and, at the same time, the main mechanism of the reorganization process is the structure and quality (consistency-inconsistency; anachronism-novelty; uniformity-variability; standard nature-originality) of connections between the found meanings of the previously formed semantic field and its mnemonic contexts. The operational model of practical action of a counseling psychologist is described. This model reproduces the process of reorganization on the multi-vector plane of the trans-theoretical existential and systemic concept, containing stages, levels, processes of transformation, aim, units of analysis, contact elements, operational techniques, basic skills and factors of influence. Conclusion. Explaining the principles of the functional perspective of the existential and systemic model is a consistent step in the methodological conceptualization of the trans-theoretical approach, the capabilities of which allow to cover all cognitive patterns of meaning formation, namely: sensory and perceptual (symptoms, sensations), imaginations (images of self, world, situation), thinking (typical cognitive schemes of interpretation of reality and its representation), affective (usual emotional patterns and states), reflexive (I am, this is me, this is my World). The analysis of genetic relations of constructs of dynamics research on semantic architectonics of the personality’s consciousness («worldview», «semantic field», «reorganizational action», «function of experience», «paradoxical connection») provides the development of procedural laws of reorganizational action of the concept. The combination of genetic and modeling and structural and integrative approaches allows us to trace the movement of the personality’s «worldview» reorganization, based on functional psychological analysis and to find answers to questions about the probability of set transformations and the limits of functional capabilities of the concept.

Chekhov’s Discourse of World Culture (To the 160th Anniversary of A.P. Chekhov’s Birth)

The purpose of this article is to prove that world culture, whether it is a picture of the world in its generalized quality or specific artistic practices in different types of art, still remains under the unabated influence of A.P. Chekhov’s personality and creativity. This applies not only to his characters, life conflicts, or individual artistic and aesthetic techniques, but also to the meaning-setting, qualitatively changed by A.P. Chekhov, which we define as “Chekhov’s discourse”. It is understood as a frame of reference in which intercultural communication takes place, and designated by a cultural matrix with its inherent codes and sometimes unexpected meanings, born of decades of Chekhov’s attention and understanding.The author believes that the main features of Chekhov’s discourse of world culture are: the creator’s penetration, unique by its depth and paradoxical nature, into the social and moral world of man (a kind of “diagnosis”); the conceptual integration of the intertext and context of individual creativity and world cultural experience; and the formation of aesthetic foundations for the art of absurdity as a characteristic cultural phenomenon of the Chekhov and post-Chekhov eras.The “diagnosis” was a product of Chekhov’s unique intellectual insight and intuitive talent. The property of Chekhov’s diagnosis, and the explanation that there were no recipes, is the presence of Chekhov’s figure and his picture of the world in the cultural continuum. The continuation of Chekhov’s thoughts and imaginative systems, with all their details and models, are several layers of creative “products” created in different types of art and in different periods that have passed in the life of mankind after Chekhov.Chekhov’s intertext is a dialogue between a Russian person and other epochs and authors; this dialogue is not without irony in relation to the “interlocutors”, to the subject of discussion, to life itself, a source of unexpected associations and ideas about the paradoxical connections of life and being. The author believes that Chekhov’s context as a semantic facet of Chekhov’s discourse has been manifested primarily in those connections and influences that were and continue to be of a personalistic nature: researchers from different countries, followers in his creativity.In the space of eternity, against the background of paradoxical cultural trends, a phenomenon has been formed that we previously designated as the concept of “Russian absurdity” first introduced into scientific circulation. On the one hand, Chekhov’s discourse of world culture, had unobtrusively introduced into artistic practice the principles of alogism, mutual misunderstanding, alienation, ironic discrepancies of everyday manifestations and details, on the other hand, it had marked the existence of ordinary people in the space of eternity, in an empty and dangerous, alien and incomprehensible world.

The Advance of Technoscience and the Problem of Death Determination

Death determination has long been a topic of intensive technoscientific and medical involvement. Due to advances in twentieth-century medical technology, the distinction between life and death has become less evident. Ambiguities appear when we start to use life-support technologies in order to save lives, bringing about “tragic artifacts” such as brain death and persistent vegetative state. In this paper we ask how this technoscientific and medical involvement shapes our understanding of death. We provide an overview of medical literature that has appeared on (brain) death determination, highlighting thereby the role that technologies played in its establishment. Subsequently, we develop three philosophical interpretations of technological death determination: With Agamben and Marcuse as the installation of political power; with Don Ihde as an existential choice for the inevitable; and with Jacques Derrida as an encounter with the ineradicable mystery of death. To conclude, we argue that technological death determination reveals an intrinsic, paradoxical connection between human’s technicity and its ignorance of death.

Dysregulation of Cell Death in Human Chronic Inflammation.

Inflammation is a fundamental biological process mediating host defense and wound healing during infections and tissue injury. Perpetuated and excessive inflammation may cause autoinflammation, autoimmunity, degenerative disorders, allergies, and malignancies. Multimodal signaling by tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1) plays a crucial role in determining the transition between inflammation, cell survival, and programmed cell death. Targeting TNF signaling has been proven as an effective therapeutic in several immune-related disorders. Mouse studies have provided critical mechanistic insights into TNFR1 signaling and its potential role in a broad spectrum of diseases. The characterization of patients with monogenic primary immunodeficiencies (PIDs) has highlighted the importance of TNFR1 signaling in human disease. In particular, patients with PIDs have revealed paradoxical connections between immunodeficiency, chronic inflammation, and dysregulated cell death. Importantly, studies on PIDs may help to predict beneficial effects and side-effects of therapeutic targeting of TNFR1 signaling.

Visibilité et témoignage dans le récit "La Métamorphose" de Franz Kafka

In this article, I examine whether the concept of testimony can be used in order to clarify the epistemological value of literary fiction. It seems that it cannot: a testimony can be wrong while it makes no sense to say that a literary fiction can be wrong. However, in the wake of a hermeneutic philosophy, the fictional story has often been qualified as a testimony of an experience, even in cases which are not merely autobiographical. I try to unravel this paradoxical connection between literary fiction and testimony. Starting from an examination of Kafka’s short story “Metamorphosis”, I intend to articulate the distinction between literary fiction and testimony, on the one hand and on the other, to understand the importance of the perspective of the witness in literary fiction. The main argument for both statements is given by an analysis of the visibility in literary fiction.

RASGAR EL ARCHIVO: NOSOTROS LOS SALVADOS DE JACQUELINE GOLDBERG

Nosso trabalho se pergunta sobre a relação entre poema, arquivo, testemunho e autoria em Nosotros los salvados de Jacqueline Goldberg, livro que recupera e apaga simultaneamente uma serie de depoimentos de sobreviventes da Shoa, destinados à Survivors of the Shoa Visual History Foundation de Steven Spielberg. Isto é, focamos na relação paradoxal que os poemas estabelecem com o arquivo que está na sua origem.

Being ‘religious and cultural rebels’ or being ‘cultural hybrids’? The role of identity capital in Muslim female university students’ self-construction

ABSTRACTResearch on university-educated Muslim women in different cultural contexts has displayed an intricate and paradoxical connection between experiences of higher education and identity mediation. A traditional model conceptualizes Muslim female university students as ‘rebels’ against their heritage religion and culture. Recent developments in the context of poststructural feminism highlight the configuration of a hybrid self-image embracing the target and heritage cultures in an additive and empowering manner. To enhance our understanding of the potential impact of higher education on identity negotiation, this study employs the notion of identity capital in an analysis of two South Asian Muslim female university students in Hong Kong over a two-year period. Participants’ life histories reveal that personal capacity to invest in identity capital (a contextually-dependent hybrid self) relies on an individual’s unique possession of various forms of capital. This study thus cautions against generalizations about Muslim women’s university experiences, and suggests that Muslim minorities as multicultural students and that their multilingual/multicultural skills, as forms of ‘intercultural capital,’ should be valued by all societal institutions.

Introduction: Bargaining on constitutions – Political settlements and constitutional state-building

Abstract:This article considers the relationship between constitutions and political settlements and locates the special issue articles within this wider discussion. The article points to the apparently paradoxical connection between disillusionment with internationalised state-building techniques on one hand, and increased international faith in constitution-making as a state-building tool on the other. Using understandings of the relationship of the constitution to political settlement which draws on conventional constitutional theory, it argues that the current context of negotiated transitions requires constitution-making to be approached with an eye to the distinctive dilemmas of statecraft that pertain in contemporary transitions. The most central dilemma concerns how power-balances between political/military elites can be broadened to ensure the constitution’s capacity to fulfil its normative role in restraining power and delivering broader social inclusion. The pieces which make up this special issue draw together development and legal discourses. This article suggests how constitutional theory provides a resource for those seeking to promote constitutionalism as a tool for reaching political settlements capable of resolving conflict. It also argues that those who seek to rely on constitutions for conflict resolution need to understand this enterprise as just as political and fraught as all other institution-building efforts.

Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission by Anne Toner (review)

TONER, ANNE. Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. x + 255 pp. $95.00 hardcover. Despite its brevity (170 pages of text, 85 pages of end matter), Ellipsis in English Literature is actually two books: first, history of as chronicled in grammar and rhetoric books from sixteenth through twentieth century; second, an application to literary works, exploring how writers have used available punctuations of hesitations, interruptions and omissions (1). The first book is perhaps most useful, because few readers know history she uncovers, whereas most will recognize that her study casts minimal new light on texts she writes about, usually just reinforcing what has long been thought. Still, some important observations on Richardson, Meredith, and Woolf make this book well worth author's effort and reader's attention. Toner early establishes several fundamental points around which her study will revolve: can be represented by dots (points), dashes, asterisks, hyphens; it can be used to imitate speech; because it is lack, it necessarily involves reader; and because it serves to indicate unfinished thoughts, may be thought of as a sign of linguistic failure...or artistry, of depth...or banality (6). In that novel evolves toward interiority, becomes more and more important as marker: the intrinsic difficulty of conveying non-verbalized internal state is expressed typographically by ellipsis... (13). The relationship to speech necessitates opening chapter's focus on printed drama: is here as important as drama because print engages problem that early authors often paid little attention to punctuation, task left to compositors. To this complication, Toner adds slow acceptance of by grammarians, questions of how it would be marked (e.g., dots or dashes), and when it would be justified, grammatically and stylistically. Her discussion of early folio and quarto printings of King Lear exhibits strengths and weaknesses of her approach. The scholarship is impeccable, an intricate tracking of texts and their variations. On other hand, play on ellipse and eclipse, obvious enough, seems insufficient to suggest that the typographical sign can very subtly bring reader imaginatively closer to experiencing, suffering human beings (43-44). One suspects Shakespeare did not need dash to make that possible. At heart of Toner's project, then, is her effort to weigh as equal to word in conveying meaning (or its lack). Some authors lend themselves readily to her thesis: Sterne, Gothic novelists, George Meredith. Precisely their self-conscious usage means that critics have already covered much of ground. Hence her discussion of Richardson offers good deal more than her comments on Sterne. To be sure, as printer Richardson was well-positioned to control appearance of his printed pages, as Janine Barchas and others have richly discussed. The paradoxical connection of to novelistic ideal of total inclusiveness (omissions that signal desire for completeness) is perceptively discussed by Toner in one of best sections of her book; her conclusion, that ellipsis characterizes form of Clarissa (68), is excessive, but her explanation certainly tends to justify her enthusiasm: these marks of are part of narrative trajectory in which we see disabling of heroine's verbal agency. …

“What remains of all that misery?” Time, habit and memory in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape

This article discusses how the flow of time in Krapp’s Last Tape constitutes an element of suspense to keep the audience’s attention and interest throughout. It also analyses the way Beckett’s play explores the paradoxical connection between time and meaning which, along with the corrosively comic potential it holds, offers the audience the opportunity to philosophize in concrete and existential terms. Keywords: Samuel Beckett; Krapp’s Last Tape; existentialism.

The Spirit of Austerity

Existing interpretations of the current resurgence of austerity discourses tend to attribute this to a failure to learn the lessons of the financial crisis. The picture of a return to neoliberal business-as-usual, however, sits uneasily with the popular discontent and democratic energies unleashed by the crisis. Indeed, in the USA it is precisely the mobilization of populist forces that has been a driving force behind the turn to austerity. The paper seeks to shed light on this paradoxical connection through a selective genealogy of economy that foregrounds its theological content. Economy is conceptualized as a paradoxical logic of governance, capable of organizing authority and belief in a secularized context that rejects the idolatrous worship of mundane signs. Austerity is not merely or primarily a ‘wrong policy’ but an article of faith, holding out a promise of purification that commands considerable ethical appeal and mobilizational capacity.

Optimal Differentiation of In Vitro Keratinocytes Requires Multifactorial External Control

For almost 30 years, keratinocyte differentiation has been studied in numerous cell models including keratinocyte primary culture with various supplemented culture media. In this respect, it has become quite difficult to draw comparisons between studies using such a variety of culture conditions. Serum-free condition with low calcium has been used to culture basal proliferating cells, though differentiation is induced by various procedures. These latter include the addition of calcium at mM concentration and a concomitant addition of serum and calcium. Lowering the incubation temperature of cells has also been reported to induce a premature differentiation of keratinocytes in organotypic skin culture. This effect of temperature on keratinocyte differentiation has been poorly depicted, although average human skin temperature has been shown to be about 32°C. However, studying differentiation and quantifying shifts in the differentiation rate of a cell population implies to precisely know i) the proportion of differentiated cells in the whole population, and ii) to which extent and to which level of expression, the induction of a gene or a protein might be considered as a marker of differentiation. This lack has rarely been taken into consideration and has surely led to over-interpretations of single protein induction and to consequent extrapolations to real differentiation processes. By means of paralleled analyses with immunocytofluorescence, flow cytometry, and with multiple differentiation markers quantify by qPCR and western-blot, we studied the paradoxical connection between calcium, serum, multilayer culture and incubation temperature on the differentiation of in vitro keratinocytes. Conversely to previous reports, we have shown that calcium switch is indeed a potent model for inducing calcium-dependent genes, but is not an efficient procedure when one wishes to assess the keratinocyte differentiation rate. Moreover, we have demonstrated that a synergic stimulation by calcium, serum, confluence and lower incubation temperature amplified the differentiation rate.