7,171 research outputs found

    La construction d’une identitĂ© cosmopolite depuis le cƓur de la Chine : les « sanwen » de Yan Lianke

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    Notre article rĂ©flĂ©chit sur la maniĂšre dont l’auteur chinois contemporain Yan Lianke, connu surtout pour ses Ɠuvres de fiction, a utilisĂ© l’essai littĂ©raire pour dĂ©finir son identitĂ© publique. À travers l’analyse de trois recueils en particulier (Wo yu fubei, Faxian xiaoshuo, Chenmo yu chuanxi), nous montrerons comment ses proses non fictionnelles rĂ©sument, ou anticipent, les thĂ©matiques placĂ©es au centre de ses romans et de ses nouvelles, en contribuant en mĂȘme temps Ă  construire de lui l’image d’un intellectuel engagĂ©, en particulier contre la censure, et cosmopolite, bien que profondĂ©ment ancrĂ© dans le terroir chinois.The paper shows how contemporary Chinese author Yan Lianke, whose fictional writing is well known by the critics, has used the literary essay to define his public identity. Through the analysis of three non-fictional collections (Wo yu fubei, Faxian xiaoshuo, Chenmo yu chuanxi), we will show how Yan’s non-fictional proses sum up or anticipate the central topics of his fictional writing, while, at the same time, contributing to depict him as an engaged writer, especially against censorship, and a cosmopolitan intellectual, although deeply rooted in rural China

    Emotional complexity of fan-controlled comments: Affective labor of fans of high-popularity Chinese stars

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    In China, fan participation in media production is becoming more mainstream and diverse, and fan groups themselves are developing perceptible emotional attributes; thus, studies on affective labor involving fans are gradually increasing in number. Fan-controlled comments are a feature of fan culture that has received much attention due to their rapid growth and influence. This study uses sentiment analysis and keyword analysis to examine the main types of “emotions” felt by today's fans of highly popular stars and classifies them into four categories: idols, fan communities, the self, and the outside world. Both positive and negative emotions coexist. The study found that fans engage in this kind of obligatory affective labor, creating second-hand exchanges for personal spiritual enrichment, and focusing more on building and expressing emotions. In addition, as affective laborers, they gain a sense of belonging to a fan community and form group symbols because of their shared emotions and concerns. Throughout the process of controlling comments, the time and energy of the fan groups are consumed, their emotions are controlled, and their behavior is restrained; however, the immediate purpose they want to achieve is not achieved. What seems to be an active choice is a trap of alienated labor, bound, and controlled by forces

    Users volatility on Reddit and Voat

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    Social media platforms are like giant arenas where users can rely on different content and express their opinions through likes, comments, and shares. However, do users welcome different perspectives or only listen to their preferred narratives? This paper examines how users explore the digital space and allocate their attention among communities on two social networks, Voat and Reddit. By analysing a massive dataset of about 215 million comments posted by about 16 million users on Voat and Reddit in 2019 we find that most users tend to explore new communities at a decreasing rate, meaning they have a limited set of preferred groups they visit regularly. Moreover, we provide evidence that preferred communities of users tend to cover similar topics throughout the year. We also find that communities have a high turnover of users, meaning that users come and go frequently showing a high volatility that strongly departs from a null model simulating users' behaviour

    Supernatural crossing in Republican Chinese fiction, 1920s–1940s

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    This dissertation studies supernatural narratives in Chinese fiction from the mid-1920s to the 1940s. The literary works present phenomena or elements that are or appear to be supernatural, many of which remain marginal or overlooked in Sinophone and Anglophone academia. These sources are situated in the May Fourth/New Culture ideological context, where supernatural narratives had to make way for the progressive intellectuals’ literary realism and their allegorical application of supernatural motifs. In the face of realism, supernatural narratives paled, dismissed as impractical fantasies that distract one from facing and tackling real life. Nevertheless, I argue that the supernatural narratives do not probe into another mystical dimension that might co-exist alongside the empirical world. Rather, they imagine various cases of the characters’ crossing to voice their discontent with contemporary society or to reflect on the notion of reality. “Crossing” relates to characters’ acts or processes of trespassing the boundary that separates the supernatural from the conventional natural world, thus entailing encounters and interaction between the natural and the supernatural. The dissertation examines how crossing, as a narrative device, disturbs accustomed and mundane situations, releases hidden tensions, and discloses repressed truths in Republican fiction. There are five types of crossing in the supernatural narratives. Type 1 is the crossing into “haunted” houses. This includes (intangible) human agency crossing into domestic spaces and revealing secrets and truths concealed by the scary, feigned ‘haunting’, thus exposing the hidden evil and the other house occupiers’ silenced, suffocated state. Type 2 is men crossing into female ghosts’ apparitional residences. The female ghosts allude to heart-breaking, traumatic experiences in socio-historical reality, evoking sympathetic concern for suffering individuals who are caught in social upheavals. Type 3 is the crossing from reality into the characters’ delusional/hallucinatory realities. While they physically remain in the empirical world, the characters’ abnormal perceptions lead them to exclusive, delirious, and quasi-supernatural experiences of reality. Their crossings blur the concrete boundaries between the real and the unreal on the mental level: their abnormal perceptions construct a significant, meaningful reality for them, which may be as real as the commonly regarded objective reality. Type 4 is the crossing into the netherworld modelled on the real world in the authors’ observation and bears a spectrum of satirised objects of the Republican society. The last type is immortal visitors crossing into the human world. This type satirises humanity’s vices and destructive potential. The primary sources demonstrate their writers’ witty passion to play with super--natural notions and imagery (such as ghosts, demons, and immortals) and stitch them into vivid, engaging scenes using techniques such as the gothic, the grotesque, and the satirical, in order to evoke sentiments such as terror, horror, disgust, dis--orientation, or awe, all in service of their insights into realist issues. The works also creatively tailor traditional Chinese modes and motifs, which exemplifies the revival of Republican interest in traditional cultural heritage. The supernatural narratives may amaze or disturb the reader at first, but what is more shocking, unpleasantly nudging, or thought-provoking is the problematic society and people’s lives that the supernatural (misunderstandings) eventually reveals. They present a more compre--hensive treatment of reality than Republican literature with its revolutionary consciousness surrounding class struggle. The critical perspectives of the supernatural narratives include domestic space, unacknowledged history and marginal individuals, abnormal mentality, and pervasive weaknesses in humanity. The crossing and supernatural narratives function as a means of better understanding the lived reality. This study gathers diverse primary sources written by Republican writers from various educational and political backgrounds and interprets them from a rare perspective, thus filling a research gap. It promotes a fuller view of supernatural narratives in twentieth-century Chinese literature. In terms of reflecting the social and personal reality of the Republican era, the supernatural narratives supplement the realist fiction of the time

    Post-Millennial Queer Sensibility: Collaborative Authorship as Disidentification in Queer Intertextual Commodities

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    This dissertation is examining LGBTQ+ audiences and creatives collaborating in the creation of new media texts like web shows, podcasts, and video games. The study focuses on three main objects or media texts: Carmilla (web series), Welcome to Night Vale (podcast), and Undertale (video game). These texts are transmedia objects or intertextual commodities. I argue that by using queer gestures of collaborative authorship that reaches out to the audience for canonical contribution create an emerging queer production culture that disidentifies with capitalism even as it negotiates capitalistic structures. The post-millennial queer sensibility is a constellation of aesthetics, self-representation, alternative financing, and interactivity that prioritizes community, trust, and authenticity using new technologies for co-creation. Within my study, there are four key tactics or queer gestures being explored: remediation, radical ambiguity and multi-forms as queer aesthetics, audience self-representation, alternative financing like micropatronage & licensed fan-made merchandise, and interactivity as performance. The goal of this project is to better understand the changing conceptions of authorship/ownership, canon/fanon (official text/fan created extensions), and community/capitalism in queer subcultures as an indicator of the potential change in more mainstream cultural attitudes. The project takes into consideration a variety of intersecting identities including gender, race, class, and of course sexual orientation in its analysis. By examining the legal discourse around collaborative authorship, the real-life production practices, and audience-creator interactions and attitudes, this study provides insight into how media creatives work with audiences to co-create self-representative media, the motivations, and rewards for creative, audiences, and owners. This study aims to contribute towards a fuller understanding of queer production cultures and audience reception of these media texts, of which there is relatively little academic information. Specifically, the study mines for insights into the changing attitudes towards authorship, ownership, and collaboration within queer indie media projects, especially as these objects are relying on the self-representation of both audiences and creatives in the formation of the text

    Hallway

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    HALLWAY is a 12-minute 360 video that is an investigation into the filmmakers anxiety through episodic depictions of childhood trauma. It draws upon semi-autobiographical elements surrounding childhood trauma and neglect, and the collateral anxieties manifested in adulthood. With the use of life-sized child mannequins, 12-inch action figures, and a computer-generated virtual background, this project explores early childhood experiences of proximate separation that occur when attuned contact between parent and child is lacking or interrupted

    Investigation of a Histidine-Based Probe for the Exploration of Proteomes

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    Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease which affects 0.7-1 million people per year. Current chemotherapies for leishmaniasis are toxic with long treatment times and reports of increasing resistance, which stresses the importance of this research area. Inositol phosphorylceramide synthase is a membrane bound enzyme that has no direct human homologue, which converts ceramide to inositol phosphorylceramide through the action of a highly conserved HHD catalytic triad. An ideal method to study this enzyme further would be through activity-based protein profiling, however, there are currently no activity-based probes reported that reacts with this type of active site. Therefore, an activity-based probe was designed based on the structure of diethyl pyrocarbonate, a compound known to bind covalently to active site histidine residues. The synthesised activity-based probe was shown to inhibit Leishmania major inositol phosphorylceramide synthase in a simple assay. In addition, the probe was shown to selectively bind to the active site histidine residue in two pure enzyme models; one of which has the same catalytic triad as inositol phosphorylceramide synthase, and the other was an acid base active site histidine residue. Further, this activity-based probe was able to isolate an overexpressed enzyme in the lysate of Escherichia coli as well as bind to intrinsic proteins. Following the function validation of the activity-based probe, preliminary work was started in Leishmania to isolate proteins identify expressed enzymes

    De la sinophilie à la sinophobie ? : les femmes chinoises sous le regard des voyageurs européens aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siÚcles

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    Ce mĂ©moire cherche Ă  dĂ©montrer les liens qui existent entre la reprĂ©sentation des femmes chinoises et celle de la Chine en gĂ©nĂ©ral aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siĂšcles. L’historiographie soutient qu’il y a une transition dans la maniĂšre de percevoir la Chine qui fait passer celle-ci de gĂ©nĂ©ralement positive Ă  nĂ©gative vers la fin du XVIIIe siĂšcle. RenĂ© Étiemble qualifie cette Ă©volution de sinophilie/sinophobie et se base principalement sur les Ă©changes philosophiques, scientifiques et thĂ©ologiques entre la Chine et l’Europe. Ces concepts ont cependant Ă©tĂ© peu analysĂ©s sous l’angle du genre. M’appuyant sur les rĂ©cits de voyages des diplomates et marchands de cette pĂ©riode, je dĂ©fends que les reprĂ©sentations des Chinoises Ă©voluent dans plusieurs directions : certaines d’entre elles s’inscrivent dans la mouvance de la sinophilie/sinophobie, alors que d’autres s’écartent de ce cadre thĂ©orique. Dans certains cas, la Chinoise devient un truchement par lequel on s’invente l’Empire du Milieu. Dans d’autres situations, la reprĂ©sentation des Chinoises se fait indĂ©pendamment de l’image de la Chine, et il convient donc de la concevoir autrement. En observant le corps des Chinoises, les rapports de genre dans le quotidien et la marginalitĂ© fĂ©minine, ce mĂ©moire a la modeste prĂ©tention de vĂ©rifier la pertinence du modĂšle thĂ©orique d’Étiemble du point de vue des reprĂ©sentations de genre

    AIUCD 2022 - Proceedings

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    L’undicesima edizione del Convegno Nazionale dell’AIUCD-Associazione di Informatica Umanistica ha per titolo Culture digitali. Intersezioni: filosofia, arti, media. Nel titolo ù presente, in maniera esplicita, la richiesta di una riflessione, metodologica e teorica, sull’interrelazione tra tecnologie digitali, scienze dell’informazione, discipline filosofiche, mondo delle arti e cultural studies

    Editor's Introduction

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