Introduction: Analytic, Continental and the question of a bridge

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Introduction: Analytic, Continental and the question of a bridge, which has been published in final form at 10.1177/1474885115582078. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with SAGE’s Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.In philosophy and political theory, divisions come and go, but some persist despite beingobviously problematic. The analytic and Continental divide is one such division. Inpolitical philosophy and political theory, the division has been particularly pronounced.Analytic and Continental thinkers are divided not only over substantial issues but also over the very nature of political theorising. In spite of this fundamental nature, theorists often seem to assume that, as a division, the analytic/Continental divide requires no explanation. We suggest that, as a central division within political theory, and despite being acknowledged as problematic for quite some time, it has persisted because it has not been adequately examined. Once examined, the division turns out to be operationally weaker than it once was. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in engaging thinkers from the other side. This has been accompanied by a corresponding tendency, among both analytic and Continental philosophers and political thinkers, to reflect on the nature of their own tradition and ‘philosophy’. Both traditions have entered a self-conscious period of meta-reflection. Such questioning indicates the possibility of transformation within both groups, in the absence of settled frameworks and divisions. However, it is also clear that such signs are the beginning of the possibility of a new relation rather than a sign of the eclipse of the division. The continued institutional separation and the space between their respective philosophical vocabularies suggest that, while the time is ripe for work here, there is still much to be done

From liminoid to limivoid: Understanding contemporary bungee jumping from a cross-cultural perspective

This article is about bungee jumping and how it reflects the world in which we live. During the 1980s bungee jumping became one of the most popular ways of seeking a ‘real experience’, when the practice was commercialised and introduced as a leisure activity all around the world. This happened in the same period as outdoor sport activities or ‘outdoor recreation’ exploded in kinds and numbers, clearly linked to the ‘experiential turn in tourism’ and the proliferation of ‘adventure tourism’. A key feature of these activities is the experience of danger: going to the limits, or indeed, standing on the limit. Hence, bungee jumping can be seen as an apt metaphor for understanding liminality in contemporary tourism and leisure. The bungee jumping adventure quite literally positions the subject standing on an edge, facing an abyss, jumping into a void. But what kind of limit experiences are these? This question can be addressed, we argue, by matching contemporary bungee jumping experiences against practices of jumping rituals in non-modern societies, which seem to contain some common features with the modern bungee jump. In contrast to more ‘classical’ ritual passages, contemporary bungee jumping is clearly an example of what Turner called the liminoid. Furthermore, it can be argued that insofar as these experiences involve no transformation of subjectivity or no passage to the ‘other world’, bungee jumping signifies a further shift from the liminoid to what we call the ‘limivoid’: the inciting of near-death experiences, a jump into nothingness, a desperate search for experience in a world of ontological excess

Two-Dimensional Bosonization from Variable Shifts in the Path Integral

A method to perform bosonization of a fermionic theory in (1+1) dimensions in a path integral framework is developed. The method relies exclusively on the path integral property of allowing variable shifts, and does not depend on the explicit form of Greens functions. Two examples, the Schwinger model and the massless Thirring model, are worked out.Comment: 4 page

Introduction to the Special Issue on Liminal Hotspots

This article introduces a special issue of Theory and Psychology on liminal hotspots. A liminal hotspot is an occasion during which people feel they are caught suspended in the circumstances of a transition that has become permanent. The liminal experiences of ambiguity and uncertainty that are typically at play in transitional circumstances acquire an enduring quality that can be described as a “hotspot”. Liminal hotspots are characterized by dynamics of paradox, paralysis, and polarization, but they also intensify the potential for pattern shift. The origins of the concept are described followed by an overview of the contributions to this special issue

Box representations of embedded graphs

A $d$-box is the cartesian product of $d$ intervals of $\mathbb{R}$ and a $d$-box representation of a graph $G$ is a representation of $G$ as the intersection graph of a set of $d$-boxes in $\mathbb{R}^d$. It was proved by Thomassen in 1986 that every planar graph has a 3-box representation. In this paper we prove that every graph embedded in a fixed orientable surface, without short non-contractible cycles, has a 5-box representation. This directly implies that there is a function $f$, such that in every graph of genus $g$, a set of at most $f(g)$ vertices can be removed so that the resulting graph has a 5-box representation. We show that such a function $f$ can be made linear in $g$. Finally, we prove that for any proper minor-closed class $\mathcal{F}$, there is a constant $c(\mathcal{F})$ such that every graph of $\mathcal{F}$ without cycles of length less than $c(\mathcal{F})$ has a 3-box representation, which is best possible.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures - revised versio

Hamiltonicity of 3-arc graphs

An arc of a graph is an oriented edge and a 3-arc is a 4-tuple $(v,u,x,y)$ of vertices such that both $(v,u,x)$ and $(u,x,y)$ are paths of length two. The 3-arc graph of a graph $G$ is defined to have vertices the arcs of $G$ such that two arcs $uv, xy$ are adjacent if and only if $(v,u,x,y)$ is a 3-arc of $G$. In this paper we prove that any connected 3-arc graph is Hamiltonian, and all iterative 3-arc graphs of any connected graph of minimum degree at least three are Hamiltonian. As a consequence we obtain that if a vertex-transitive graph is isomorphic to the 3-arc graph of a connected arc-transitive graph of degree at least three, then it is Hamiltonian. This confirms the well known conjecture, that all vertex-transitive graphs with finitely many exceptions are Hamiltonian, for a large family of vertex-transitive graphs. We also prove that if a graph with at least four vertices is Hamilton-connected, then so are its iterative 3-arc graphs.Comment: in press Graphs and Combinatorics, 201