Signs Of Closure Research Articles

THE METAMODERN CONTEXT OF NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN M. ZUZAK'S NOVEL "THE BOOK THIEF"

The article examines the narrative strategies of Markus Zuzak's novel "The Book Thief" from the perspective of metamodern aesthetics and the concept of metaxis. The article outlines the modern trends in the development of literary studies, which actualizes the problems of narratology at all functioning levels in the image of the human world, which draws special attention to the question of implementation forms and living of the narrative within the limits of the artistic work as a functional system that has signs of closure and openness. By narrative strategy, we mean a way of representing the artistic world of the text, characters, and the author, which is unique for a certain work of art, which is carried out through the mediation of the narrator. The narrative strategy in the paradigmatic (narrative as a variant of the narrative strategy of the text in the body of culture) and syntagmatic (narrative as a way of interaction between the narrative and the plot) dimensions of the work is also considered. The following aspects (or separate strategies) are distinguished in the novel's narrative strategy: the communicative one, which captures the peculiarities of communication as an interaction of the structural elements of the narrative and narrative instances; the event, which records the event as external or internal to the plot, the movement of the characters and their interaction, the visual and phenomenological aspect of the event, signs of heterogeneity, chronotypicality, intelligibility, factuality are also outlined; temporal, which examines the narrative from the point of view of its temporal regime; fictional, which considers the relationship between the reality of the text system and the environment (reality, culture) in which it is located; aesthetic, which captures the peculiarities of the aesthetic reception of the work in combination with its substantive and formal components; metanarrative, which considers the narrative as the subject of the next narrative, and performative, which interprets the forms of correlation and identification of speech and action in the narrative.

The sidewalk ballet in the age of social distancing: interactive geospatial mapping to study NYC’s pandemic urbanism

ABSTRACT This article explores and characterizes the pandemic urbanism of NYC during the first year of COVID-19. It analyzes changes to the sidewalk and the urban lifestyle using a novel method of remote ethnography: the integrated use of Zoom video conferencing and GPS smartphone tracking to interview participants as they walked and filmed the city. The dataset, composed of transcripts, videos, and routes, was analyzed to reveal recurring themes and visualized through individual Scrollytelling maps combined into one Supermap. The findings are broken down into: 1) changes to the sidewalk, including fewer people, more outdoor sports activity, signs of social distancing, signs of closure, more bikes, and construction; and 2) lifestyle changes, including longings for the urban lifestyle, new-formed solidarity, a renewed appreciation for the local neighborhood, an undercurrent of “moving out” of the city or “moving up” to a better neighborhood, and a difference between Manhattan and the boroughs.

Lesbiche, gay, famiglia

"Family" has been a contested institution for the first Italian gay movement in the Seventies, sharing the feminist rebellion against patriarchy. It was Arci Gay that started using the word famiglie (in the plural) in the 90s during the political campaigns for a legal recognition of same-sex couples, while more radical groups still contested the term. In the mainstream political debate, the use of the singular family vs the plural families became a sign of closure or opening towards the GLBT movement's requests. National polls and Eurobarometers have tested the level of social acceptance for same-sex unions and adoptions overtime, and are a good source to describe the changing social situation for families with lesbian and gay parents. In 2000s political groups formed specifically around the issue of GLBT parenting. The word omogenitorialitÀ was coined after the french example, and used in the political debate. Notwithstanding the long debate and the diffusion in many countries all over the world of the recognition of same-sex partnerships and parenthood, in Italy no law has been approved yet, and opposition is still strong.

Postmodern Wastelands: <i>Underworld</i> and the Productive Failures of Periodization

Don Delillo's Underworld is a postmodern novel that thematizes its own situation by showing, in its tropes and forms, stakes and impossibilities of periodization. The new novel is a grand gesture in an age when high art and realism are waning forms of representation and social forms that gave birth to novel have decayed, are etherealized and in flux. The dominant tropes in Underworld point to this condition offertile decay. Elegiac in its tone and themes, novel's world is one of ruin and resurrection. Underworld, like other novels in this genre such as Against Day and The Corrections, negotiate their own possible obsolescence, their contradictory terms and premises, and their liberal and by doing so become relevant once again.1 Here I want to look at this genre as a new moment in a long trajectory of debates on aesthetics and politics that are generally discussed in terms of early twentieth-century modernism and proletarianized cultural front political forms.2 At this earlier moment, existence of a Communist Party, strong unions, and a self-aware proletariat supported hope for engaged literature and aesthetics. Today, idea of an engaged literature that can map modes of alienation, class antagonism, and exploitation in light of mode of production may seem like a retrograde positioning. But here I will look at how idea of engaged literature, of politicized culture, haunts text and navigates historically variant understandings of politicization and depoliticization. My analysis will be informed by Fredric Jameson's periodization of postmodern culture as embodying logic of late capitalism and his notion of utopia as a form of negation. My argument also owes much to Christopher Connery's periodization of politicization and depoliticization as they relate to Cold War and 1960s' temporalities. Finally, I will be in dialog with Phillip Wegner's periodizing reading of Underworld that focuses on 1990s. I will argue that a late capitalist periodization that emphasizes consequences and later fate of 1960s' politicization is a necessary complement to Wegner's decadal periodization in order to better develop a position that neither participates in depoliticizing tendency nor denies continued relevance and importance of radical critique. The high postmodernist realist aesthetic, elliptical in structure and attuned to logic of fragment, itself suggests simultaneous impossibility and necessity of a periodization-based apprehension of totality, and movement of my own argument will reflect these structural characteristics.My argument may at first seem paradoxical in that while I insist upon a Utopian future-oriented reading of Underworld, I focus on themes of failure, closure, and nostalgia. Here, following Fredric Jameson's description in Archaeologies of Future, I see utopia as a critical negativity.3 In postmodern moment crisis of utopia is related to crisis of representation, one that is no longer solvable through modernist tactics of aesthetic formal innovation. Even avant-garde culture is now absorbed into late capitalist dynamics, thus rendering representation of an outside to capitalism virtually unfigurable. This unrepresentability leads to a discourse that figures present system as eternal. The appropriate response to this rhetoric of unchangeability, argues Jameson, is disruption. This is politics of the total formal break and discontinuity.4 He argues that this radical closure is itself a new kind of content, a utopian that insists that radical difference is possible and that a break is necessary. Political representation is thus representation of rupture rather than of content of a positive utopia that would come after break. The present depoliticized condition leads to a greater need for an appeal to utopia in this negative form. Here, I want to read Underworld's themes of closure, residual, and waste and trash as signs of closure that nevertheless contain a Utopian moment. …

The Farm, the River and the Picnic Spot: Topographies of Terror1

In the mid-1980s, around ten unidentified persons were found dismembered in rural areas in and around Bophuthatswana. This article tracks the journey of these corpses, from their deaths, through amnesty hearings of their killers, to their recovery and reburial. Through this journey, the biographical life of these corpses has shifted from ‘terrorists’, to victims of state terror, to their current position as heroes of liberation. The imaginaries of violence that underlay these murders sprang not from the unknown, but from the familiarity of childhood, family and friends. Disposal of the ‘difficult’ corpse produced an economy of death where the body through display was employed to do productive work. Following the TRC, these bodies have entered memorialisation practices of the post-apartheid state. Although these murders represent the numeric margins of state violence and its limits, memorialisation initiatives have ignored this marginality, preferring a representation of state terror that provides a perfect counter-foil to the heroism of guerrillas as the principal bearers of freedom. While this heroic representation is welcomed by families of the men, their embrace serves to remind the new state of the unfulfilled promise of the post-apartheid state, rather than as a sign of closure.

Mechanosensitive channels in bacteria: signs of closure?

Bacterial mechanosensitive channels are activated by increases in tension in the lipid bilayer of the cytoplasmic membrane, where they transiently create large pores in a controlled manner. Mechanosensitive channel research has benefited from advances in electrophysiology, genomics and molecular genetics as well as from the application of biophysical techniques. Most recently, new analytical methods have been used to complement existing knowledge and generate insights into the molecular interactions that take place between mechanosensitive channel proteins and the surrounding membrane lipids. This article reviews the latest developments.

The pursuit of happiness: A study of Alice Munro’s fiction

The theme of happiness in the short fiction of Alice Munro evokes four contexts of signification. Contemporary North American popular culture holds happiness as a realizable but elusive ideal. In the generic conventions of fiction, happiness functions as a goal and as a sign of closure; stories end when the characters get married and live happily ever after. Thomas Jefferson (1776/1962) declared the pursuit of happiness, together with life and liberty, to be unalienable, God-given rights; modern commentators hold that the difference between “peace, order, and good government” and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” encapsulates a key distinction between the cultures of Canada and the United States. Religious and philosophical traditions identify happiness with faith and the highest good. This essay considers how these four contexts of happiness operate within Alice Munro’s fiction, using her story “White Dump” from the collection The Progress of Love as an example.

Craniosynostosis 1998: concepts and controversies.

The diagnosis of craniosynostosis requires attention to radiologic technique, familiarity with the signs of closure at each suture, and correlation with the clinical setting. Misdiagnosis may result in unwarranted calvarial or craniofacial surgery or a delay of surgery, necessitating a more extensive procedure.

A histological study on polyactive� for the prevention of peridural adhesions after spinal surgery: an experimental study in dogs with a 3 months follow-up

In the present study the potential of Polyactive® bilayer sheets in the prevention of scar tissue formation after spinal surgery was investigated. Eight adult beagle dogs underwent 3 laminectomies at three levels (L2, L4 and L6). According to a randomized implantation schedule a Polyactive® sheet or autogenous fat graft was placed in the defect. The third site served as a control without implant. After 4 or 12 weeks (4 dogs per period) the dogs were sacrificed and histological sections were prepared. The Polyactive® treated defects showed partial closure by newly formed bone. The Polyactive® was encapsuled by a thin fibrous tissue layer. Ventral to the defect, dense fibrous tissue was present which was separated from the dura by the Polyactive® sheet in all cases. In some cases fibrous tissue was present between the implant capsule and the dura. In the fat graft group there were no signs of closure of the defect but most sites showed fibrous tissue at the edges of the graft, which was in 4 sites continous with the dura mater. Fibrosis and degeneration of the fat grafts were seen. All control defects showed partial closure by newly formed bone, and ventral to the defect extensive fibrous tissue, which was in 50% continous with the dura mater. Other sections showed loose connective tissue in contact with the dura mater. It is concluded that Polyactive® has a potential as a mechanical barrier in the prevention of adhesions between the dorsal spinal muscles and the dura mater.