Singular Moment Research Articles

History and Catastrophe

Can we coherently conjugate high philosophy and slave insurgency under the heading of “universal history”? Is it possible to disentangle “universal history” from its roots in white supremacy and European imperial reason? Susan Buck-Morss' recent answer to that question, which was left somewhat unresolved in her seminal essay “Hegel and Haiti,” turns the Haitian Revolution and its half suppressed echo in Hegel's master-slave dialectic into an emblematic event. Universal ideas of liberty and liberation can only be glimpsed in singular moments of rupture, systemic break-down, and violence. The slave insurgency in Saint Domingue thus becomes a privileged moment in universal history. While I find Buck-Morss' reading of Hegel's master-slave dialectic in light of the Haitian Revolution more persuasive than many other recent attempts at thinking universality in relation to slave insurgency, I am troubled by the fact that Buck-Morss' anti-multiculturalist notion of universality is predicated on an epistemology of catastrophe and the violent stripping of the individual of cultural and social ties. If there is anything we can learn from the Western history of catastrophes, from Atlantic slavery to the Holocaust, it is that the nakedness and vulnerability of the victim is more likely to lead to fantastical cruelty than to the promotion of liberationist thought.

Increasing the Gender Diversity of High Courts: A Comparative View

The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor and the nomination of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court provides a timely opportunity for scholars, policymakers, and members of the legal community to consider why there are so few women on the world's highest courts. Although singular moments draw our attention to the importance of women on high courts, sadly, this attention is rarely sustained over long periods. While much was made of Ronald Reagan's historic nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to serve as the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, more than a decade and four nomination opportunities passed by before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed. On this point, Paula Monopoli aptly observes: “[T]he assumption that progress would steadily continue until gender parity was achieved has proven to be wrong” (2007, 43). Unfortunately, this same observation could be said of virtually all other high courts across the globe.

Espacios vitales de aprendizaje: su ecología en el sétimo año de la educación pública costarricense

Recibido 31 de julio de 2009 • Aceptado 02 de diciembre de 2009 • Corregido 27 de abril de 2010
 
 
 Este artículo es el resultado de una investigación del CIDE-UNA para construir el perfil de docentes deseables y posibles para el 7º año de la educación pública costarricense; en él se evidencia la trascendencia de la ecología de los espacios de aprendizaje, entendida como el ambiente, los actores involucrados y sus interrelaciones complejas. Se describen estos espacios, y su incidencia en la permanencia y la promoción del estudiantado, en el momento singular en que el sistema educativo les impone los primeros y bruscos cambios institucionales coincidentes con transformaciones físicas y en sus relaciones familiares y sociales.

NEITHER FISH NOR FLESH

ABSTRACTAgainst the notion of chance that Robin Kelsey proposes as the opening to a new conception of photography and its relationship to history, this response argues for attention to the apparatuses that strive to “cope with chance” and guarantee meaning—apparatuses whose effective purpose is precisely not to be undone by chance and not to be reminded of their contingent and arbitrary nature—in other words, of their historicity. This opens another kind of encounter with the historicity of the photographic image, as sliding from frame to frame, never quite fitting any of them, the photograph shows itself as an elusive opening, the ground of irreducibly heterogeneous and radically incommensurable stakes—never just one definitive and well‐flagged stake driven into the ground at some singular moment in the past.

DANCING YEARS, OR WRITING AS A WAY OUT

This essay is concerned with the random and arbitrary nature of the relation between taste, love, desire and knowledge as the basis for disciplinary formation. As an expanded oxymoron it thinks of the constitutive irrationality of the history of art as the space in which it can be shaped politically and theoretically through contingent and singular moments. It understands the Warburgian notion of nachleben not so much as a returning figure of older affective forms as the form of the return of the incomplete in the historically inexhaustible life of images and figures, taking together merging the visible forms in Gerard David, Goya and the photograph of a 1960s tennis star.

Admission: Madness and (Be)coming Out Within and Through Spaces of Confinement

This article examines, through a performative narrative, an installation artwork that I created in May 2008 titled Admission. This artwork and reflective writing embodies a form of creative inquiry into issues surrounding and the intersections of (be)coming out, nonvisible disabilities, and representations of mental illness. Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of becoming and the rhizome inform my investigation into (be)coming out, not as an event thought of as a singular moment defined through a fixed notion of the subject, but as an ongoing process of creating connections between subjects understood as multiplicities. In its conclusions, this article proposes that the kind of inquiry characteristic of artmaking can offer unique opportunities for understanding the complexities of the intersections of subjectivity and (be)coming out as a person with a mental illness

Anything Goes, Nothing Sticks: Radical Stillness and Archival Impulse

Anything Goes, Nothing Sticks: Radical Stillness and Archival Impulse

Exact and asymptotic tests for possibly non-regular hypotheses on stochastic volatility models

Abstract We study the problem of testing hypotheses on the parameters of one- and two-factor stochastic volatility models (SV), allowing for the possible presence of non-regularities such as singular moment conditions and unidentified parameters, which can lead to non-standard asymptotic distributions. We focus on the development of simulation-based exact procedures–whose level can be controlled in finite samples–as well as on large-sample procedures which remain valid under non-regular conditions. We consider Wald-type, score-type and likelihood-ratio-type tests based on a simple moment estimator, which can be easily simulated. We also propose a C ( α ) -type test which is very easy to implement and exhibits relatively good size and power properties. Besides usual linear restrictions on the SV model coefficients, the problems studied include testing homoskedasticity against a SV alternative (which involves singular moment conditions under the null hypothesis) and testing the null hypothesis of one factor driving the dynamics of the volatility process against two factors (which raises identification difficulties). Three ways of implementing the tests based on alternative statistics are compared: asymptotic critical values (when available), a local Monte Carlo (or parametric bootstrap) test procedure, and a maximized Monte Carlo (MMC) procedure. The size and power properties of the proposed tests are examined in a simulation experiment. The results indicate that the C ( α ) -based tests (built upon the simple moment estimator available in closed form) have good size and power properties for regular hypotheses, while Monte Carlo tests are much more reliable than those based on asymptotic critical values. Further, in cases where the parametric bootstrap appears to fail (for example, in the presence of identification problems), the MMC procedure easily controls the level of the tests. Moreover, MMC-based tests exhibit relatively good power performance despite the conservative feature of the procedure. Finally, we present an application to a time series of returns on the Standard and Poor’s Composite Price Index.

About Town: A Case Study from Research in Progress on Photographic Networks in Britain, 1952–1969

This article focuses on photography in Town magazine under art director Tom Wolsey. Magazines were pivotal to the dissemination of photography in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. There were no dedicated galleries and the major art institutions resolutely refused to show contemporary photography. In 1959 the new proprietors of Town, a glossy consumer magazine for the metropolitan man, followed the lead of women's fashion and society magazine Queen, and responded to the socio-economic and cultural changes that marked the shift from austerity to consumerism in the late 1950s. Town was relaunched in 1960 with a contemporary editorial voice and an audacious design. Photography was at the heart of the design thinking. It was a singular moment, between the demise of the illustrated magazines, and the launch of the newspaper color supplements. This research forms part of a broader inquiry into “Photographic Networks in Britain: 1952–1969.” Networks open up myriad connections but, as Christopher Booker notes, “Any process of social change takes place around certain focal points: around groups or individuals which … catch the infection of change before the majority, and from which the new mood and ideas fan out into society at large” (Booker 1969: 33). I set out to assess Town as such a focal point for the new generation of British photographers in the early 1960s.

Moving least‐squares approximation with discontinuous derivative basis functions for shell structures with slope discontinuities

AbstractMoving least‐squares approximation with discontinuous derivative basis functions (MLSA‐DBF) is introduced for analysis of shell structures with slope discontinuities. To deal with shells with arbitrary slope discontinuities, the Cartesian coordinate is introduced in the construction of MLSA on the shell surface. The possible causes of singularity in the moment matrix of MLSA on the shell surface with slope discontinuities are identified, and the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse is used to obtain the generalized inverse of the singular moment matrix resulting from linear dependency and insufficient influence nodes in the MLSA. Following the proposed formulations for shear deformable shell structures with slope discontinuities in the Cartesian coordinates, several numerical examples are analyzed to demonstrate the performance, validity, accuracy, and convergence properties of the proposed MLSA‐DBF approach. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance (review)

Reviewed by: Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance Harvey Young Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance. By Matthew Reason. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; pp. xii + 269. $80.00 cloth. In Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance, Matthew Reason inserts himself into the decades-long (and still ongoing) debate related to the (im)permanence of live performance. Published before the anticipated tenth-anniversary edition of Philip Auslander's Liveness and shortly after a series of journal special issues dedicated to documentary theatre and choreographic notation, Reason's book arrives at a moment of renewed and heightened interest in performance documentation. Is performance, by definition, an activity that disappears or vanishes in the very act of its unfolding? Although the timing of Documentation's release could not have been better, it is Reason's meticulous retracing of the evolution of the performance-as-ephemera debate, coupled with his fresh insights—especially his reading of "performance photography"—that makes his text not only worth reading, but also worthy of adoption within classrooms as a reader-friendly introduction to the anxieties associated with documentation in contemporary performance scholarship. Reason divides Documentation into four parts. The first exists as a literature review on the performanceas disappearance/vanishing/ephemera phenomenon. The second part looks at video recordings of live performances and engages with the formal differences of the two media. The third blurs the two together by examining production photos that were created before the live performance event began rehearsals and, yet, remain as archival documents of the expired event. In a final chapter, Reason offers suggestions on how to write performance reviews that can gesture toward the experience of witnessing a live enactment and relay a sense of the transience of live performance. He suggests that critics should resist the temptation to give an overview of the entire performance and, instead, focus on particular moments that they find meaningful. It is through these moments that the spirit—and the sense of transience—of the performance can be accessed by the reader. Although Reason's careful parsing and methodical representation of past scholarship on the ephemerality of live performance provides an intelligent overview of the disappearance debates and promises to be the part of the book most frequently read and assigned by performance scholars, this first section is the part in which the author's voice is the most muted. Reason chronicles how intimations that the [End Page 316] value of live performance may rest in its disappearing quality were reductively hardened into the equation "performance equals disappearance" without revealing his perspective of the appropriateness of either description. Through his analysis of newspaper reviews, publicity photographs, and video recordings in the second section of the book, Reason demonstrates that "live performance" does not entirely vanish. There are traces of its occurrence and, more importantly, these traces introduce the performance to considerably larger and differently situated audiences than the original event. Despite the presence of these recordings, Reason maintains that the experience of engaging with such documents differs from the experience of witnessing the original, live performance. What, according to Reason, constitutes live performance? After rehearsing a series of defining concepts invoked by previous theorists—from disappearance to vanishing to ephemerality to transience—he asserts that live performance occurs "here and now," and before assembled audiences who share the same here and now. It is not clear, however, whether here and now disappears, vanishes, or fades away. Reason's emphasis on a singular moment—the intersection of temporality and spatiality—within his definition of live performance suggests a kinship with these earlier descriptors, but does not appear to improve upon them. The most interesting and significant contribution that Reason makes to the study of theatre and performance within his book is his investigation into "performance photography." Excusing himself from the performance-as-ephemera debate, the author looks at images created in advance of a production (or rehearsals), usually for publicity purposes. For Reason, the appeal of such images anchors itself in the fact that they are created to represent an event that has yet to occur. The first items associated with a performance to be presented to the public, these...

Discrete time mean-variance analysis with singular second moment matrixes and an exogenous liability

We apply the dynamic programming methods to compute the analytical solution of the dynamic mean-variance optimization problem affected by an exogenous liability in a multi-periods market model with singular second moment matrixes of the return vector of assets. We use orthogonal transformations to overcome the difficulty produced by those singular matrixes, and the analytical form of the efficient frontier is obtained. As an application, the explicit form of the optimal mean-variance hedging strategy is also obtained for our model.

Reclaiming revolution: William Wells Brown's irreducible Haitian heroes

This article examines black abolitionist William Wells Brown's 1854 lecture St. Domingo: Its Revolutions and its Patriots, juxtaposing Brown's history of the Haitian Revolution against those printed in publications such as the American DeBow's Review and the British Anti-Slavery Reporter. The staggered, often contradictory nature of the multiple insurrections and uprisings occurring in Haiti complement Brown's own interest in fragmented narratives, and allow him to offer a model for black revolutionary activity contained not in a singular moment or figure, but instead spread across multiple revolutions and revolutionaries. Following Brown's logic opens up the possibility of developing an international revolutionary continuum deeply dependent upon black liberatory goals. A host of events could subsequently re-emerge as part of such a continuum, including but certainly not limited to the American Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and an internationally inflected American Civil War.

A diagonal offset algorithm for the polynomial point interpolation method

AbstractA diagonal offset algorithm is presented to overcome the singular moment matrix problem in the polynomial point interpolation method. The value of terms in the diagonal line of moment matrix is changed with different offsets. The effects of the offsets on the Kronecker delta function and partition of unity properties are investigated and an optimum offset range is proposed. The algorithm is validated solving some patch tests and various elasticity problems in 2‐D domain. Their results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is very easy to implement and completely solves the singular moment matrix problem. The accuracy of the method with proposed algorithm is investigated for regular and irregular local domains. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Affect of Selection in Digital Sound Art

The Affect of Selection in Digital Sound Art

Intervals of inner flight: Chantal Akerman's News From Home

In this paper, I reframe film theorist Stephen Heath's analysis of avant-garde filmmaker, Chantal Akerman's, News From Home (1976). In 1981 Heath claimed that Akerman's use of 'absence' in the static camera images and the voiceover, which features the filmmaker reading letters her mother sent her when she lived in New York, posited 'the impossible question of a woman's desire', i.e. that female desire is unrepresentable. In my paper, I reformulate this question of desire in terms of possibility. I particularly analysed the final sequences of the film where the voiceover disappears and the camera, mounted on the Staten Island ferry, pulls out from the city, shots of which comprise the film, and reframes the horizon. This links to my research interest in how a singular moment in a film might have a particular affect on a viewer. I used philosopher Gilles Deleuze's writing on subjectivity in his book Difference and Repetition in conjunction with his work on cinema in Cinema 2: The Time-Image to reconsider the movement and affectivity of water in this image, as continuous rather than fixated on 'absence.' Re-read in the twenty-first century, News From Home, viewed in the light of a Deleuzian approach rather than Heath's psychoanalytic one, can be read as liberating female subjectivity as a state of continuous affective movements. In terms of the scene of spectatorship, this state is coterminous with a form of narration closer to the inner movements of feelings as they pass through and are accumulated by the body, a state that Nathalie Sarraute writes about in the introduction to her novel, Tropisms. Key to my reading is the concept of duration as a qualitative movement of differentiation, which is found in the philosophy of Henri Bergson.

Invention and creativity in automated design by means of genetic programming

Some designs are sufficiently creative that they are considered to be inventions. The invention process is typically characterized by a singular moment when the prevailing thinking concerning a long-standing problem is, in a “flash of genius,” overthrown and replaced by a new approach that could not have been logically deduced from what was previously known. This paper discusses such logical discontinuities using an example based on the history of one of the most important inventions of the 20th century in electrical engineering, namely, the invention of negative feedback by AT&T's Harold S. Black. This 1927 invention overthrew the then prevailing idiom of positive feedback championed by Westinghouse's Edwin Howard Armstrong. The paper then shows how this historically important discovery can be readily replicated by an automated design and invention technique patterned after the evolutionary process in nature, namely, genetic programming. Genetic programming employs Darwinian natural selection along with analogs of recombination (crossover), mutation, gene duplication, gene deletion, and mechanisms of developmental biology to breed an ever improving population of structures. Genetic programming rediscovers negative feedback by conducting an evolutionary search for a structure that satisfies Black's stated high-level goal (i.e., reduction of distortion in amplifiers). Like evolution in nature, genetic programming conducts its search probabilistically without resort to logic using a process that is replete with logical discontinuities. The paper then shows that genetic programming can routinely produce many additional inventive and creative results. In this regard, the paper discusses the automated rediscovery of numerous 20th-century patented inventions involving analog electrical circuits and controllers, the Sallen–Key filter, and six 21st-century patented inventions. In addition, two patentable new inventions (controllers) have been created in the same automated way by means of genetic programming. The paper discusses the promising future of automated invention by means of genetic programming in light of the fact that, to date, increased computer power has yielded progressively more substantial results, including numerous human-competitive results, in synchrony with Moore's law. The paper argues that evolutionary search by means of genetic programming is a promising approach for achieving creative, human-competitive, automated design because illogic and creativity are inherent in the evolutionary process.

Firewater, Desire, and the Militiamen’s Christmas Eve in San Geroónimo, Baja Verapaz, 1892

Firewater, Desire, and the Militiamen’s Christmas Eve in San Geroónimo, Baja Verapaz, 1892

Conditions for stability of rotating elastic rods

An exact, nonlinear stability analysis for a large class of steadily rotating, flexible spatial rods is presented. The treatment is based on the methods of Movchan and Lyapunov. The rods are modelled using a Cosserat theory with the assumptions that cross–sections undergo rigid rotations and remain perpendicular to the centreline of the rod. In this context, an integral of motion is presented which accounts for the non–conservative forces associated with the sustained steady rotation. The nonlinear stability of this motion is concluded from the integral9s positive definiteness in an appropriate function space. It is shown that in many cases, (nonlinear) stability may be concluded from a linear stability analysis. Further, a tensorial formulation of the problem is developed which yields the most general results with a minimal amount of algebraic manipulation. Rigid bodies that are attached to the rod are accommodated using singular inertia, force and moment prescriptions. The rotation tensors associated with the rod9s cross–sections are advantageously and efficiently represented using exponential maps of skew–symmetric tensors.

The Other Proletarians: Native American Literature and Class Struggle

Proletarian literature has for the most part been studied within the narrow historical confines of the 1930s, as the fleeting aberration of a singular moment of intense political, social, and cultural ferment in U.S. history--the Great Depression. Yet when attempting to reconstruct a proletarian literary tradition, one finds a wealth of literary production since the "Red Decade" that can certainly be classified as proletarian. These texts go unnoticed as such either because they fall between the cracks of literary classification--due to the lack of the category known as "proletarianism" to organize and comprehend contemporary literature--or because they become understood exclusively in the context of other literary traditions, particularly racial and ethnic critical categorizations that have tended to de-emphasize issues of class and labor by autonomizing race and ethnicity rather than understanding them in a material context. Native American literature is just such an unnoticed literature, having been studied in isolation from proletarian or working-class literature despite the fact that much Native American literature develops an anticapitalist perspective and treats issues of work and alienation in its broader analysis of colonization and genocide. I want to begin to explore contemporary Native American literature as a proletarian [End Page 164] literature in order to facilitate a move beyond both the confining traditional periodization of proletarian literature as a 1930s phenomenon as well as the sociological and thematic boundaries that have defined the genre in conventional literary historical terms.