Diasporic experience and the archival process: reflections upon the initial phase of the Black Dance Archives project (UK)

State of Trust has been funded to archive ‘collections from eminent individuals and organisations from the British Black dance sector’ (http://blackdancearchives.co.uk/). The Black Dance Archive may be considered as a ‘contingent, dynamic and transformative site’ (Heathfield 2012, 238) whose presence facilitates an historical ‘re-remembering’ (Bindas 2010). It stands as the site of negotiation between ‘Black British’ dance artists and the ‘archontic principle’ (Derrida, 1995) through which the archive retains the traces of a power that consigns documents to their place within a (dominant) signifying system.   Through a diaologic, reflective and trans-disciplinary process, we consider the role of the performance archive within the context of decolonisation. For those artists whose work is included, the transition of artefacts from private to public space marks a legitimization that nevertheless is fraught with the risk of appropriation. The archival process repeats previous tensions between hegemonic dance discourses and the artists’ aims to respond authentically to their lived diasporic experiences. The archive also marks a coming to terms with, even a mourning of, a past that for many of the artists was already shaped by a sense of loss. If, ‘the theory of psychoanalysis… becomes a theory of the archive and not only a theory of memory’ (Derrida 1995, p.18 ), can this archive be conceptualised and experienced in ways that allow for recognition of the lived trauma of diasporic experience while also celebrating how such experiences engendered new danced identities?

Differences in Gastric Carcinoma Microenvironment Stratify According to EBV Infection Intensity: Implications for Possible Immune Adjuvant Therapy

<div><p>Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is associated with roughly 10% of gastric carcinomas worldwide (EBVaGC). Although previous investigations provide a strong link between EBV and gastric carcinomas, these studies were performed using selected EBV gene probes. Using a cohort of gastric carcinoma RNA-seq data sets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we performed a quantitative and global assessment of EBV gene expression in gastric carcinomas and assessed EBV associated cellular pathway alterations. EBV transcripts were detected in 17% of samples but these samples varied significantly in EBV coverage depth. In four samples with the highest EBV coverage (hiEBVaGC – high EBV associated gastric carcinoma), transcripts from the BamHI A region comprised the majority of EBV reads. Expression of LMP2, and to a lesser extent, LMP1 were also observed as was evidence of abortive lytic replication. Analysis of cellular gene expression indicated significant immune cell infiltration and a predominant IFNG response in samples expressing high levels of EBV transcripts relative to samples expressing low or no EBV transcripts. Despite the apparent immune cell infiltration, high levels of the cytotoxic T-cell (CTL) and natural killer (NK) cell inhibitor, IDO1, was observed in the hiEBVaGCs samples suggesting an active tolerance inducing pathway in this subgroup. These results were confirmed in a separate cohort of 21 Vietnamese gastric carcinoma samples using qRT-PCR and on tissue samples using in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Lastly, a panel of tumor suppressors and candidate oncogenes were expressed at lower levels in hiEBVaGC versus EBV-low and EBV-negative gastric cancers suggesting the direct regulation of tumor pathways by EBV.</p> </div