Transnational Subjectivities: Roy Miki’s Surrender and Global Displacements

The conceptualization of subjectivity in Roy Miki's poetry collection Surrender (2001) challenges the political structures of capitalist imperialism. In so doing, Surrender suggests that the anti-imperial politics of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's books Empire and Multitude, which are founded upon open, rhizomatic, and immanent modes of being, may not account for the disciplinary mechanisms of the contemporary state, what Michel Foucault calls its "biopower." Miki's position suggests that a radical disruption of static modes of being might prove liberatory, and hence usefully dangerous, in the contemporary world

Interrogating the Language of Diversity in Academe: Mothering and Parenting in View

In this article, we are interested in the ways in which one of the major obstacles to maternal empowerment and gender equity in academe - hetero-patriarchal sexism - is manifested through language. The official language of an institution holds within it the underlying logic of that same organization, and the official language and rhetoric of academe tend to be very revealing. In much of North America, the ideological blueprint underlying academic discourse on curriculum, hiring, and promotion, has been Eurocentric, male-centred, and heterosexist. Given the origins and genealogies of universities, none of these things should come as a surprise; it is their persistence, however, that we seek to trouble in this article. How do such structures of normativity continue to manifest themselves today? How have attempts to reroute, rewrite, and undermine normativity been contained or subsumed by academic institutions? By reading questions of racialization and gendering to inquire into hiring practices, spousal appointment policies, and teaching evaluation policies, we look to the broad politics of academic institutions in order to suggest that there remains much work to be done to dismantle hetero-patriarchal sexism in academe

Men Without Fingers, Men Without Toes

What happens once the rogue rides off into the sunset? This cross-genre essay considers the figure of the rogue’s decline and gradual dismemberment in the face of the pressures of the world. Beginning with the “rogue” digits and other body parts lost by the men who surrounded him in his youth—especially his grandfather—Dobson considers the costs of labour and poverty in rural environments. For him, the rogue is one who falls somehow outside of cultural, social, and political norms— the one who has decided to step outside of the establishment, outside of the corrupt élites and their highfalutin ways. To do so comes at a cost. Turning to the life of writer George Ryga and to the poetry and fiction of Patrick Lane, this essay examines the real, physical, material, and social costs of transgression across multiple works linked to rural environments in Alberta and British Columbia. The essay shows the ways in which very real forms of violence discipline the rogue, pushing the rogue back into submission or out of mind, back into the shadowy past from whence the rogue first came. Resisting nostalgia while evincing sympathy, this essay delves into what is at stake for one who would become a rogue

Más o menos humano: resiliencia, vulnerabilidad y amor en tiempos neoliberales

Este artículo intenta responder la pregunta de qué significa ser humano en un contexto posthumano. Al examinar el dilema de si podría haber algo como el amor poshumano, el artículo trata más ampliamente el pensamiento reciente sobre la teoría del afecto y el pensamiento crítico para comprender lo que está en juego en el desarrollo de una interpretación teórica del amor en sí mismo. Estos problemas, a su vez, se analizan por medio de la novela Love Enough de Dionne Brand, publicada en 2014. Este análisis refuerza el argumento del artículo de que las ficciones de globalidad producidas en Canadá juegan un papel en el desafío a la reconsolidación actual de los modos normativos de representación humana aplicados bajo las formas neoliberales de gobierno.This article examines the question of what it means to be human in a post-human context. Tackling the quandary of whether there might be such a thing as post-human love, the article turns to recent trends in affect theory and critical approaches more broadly in order to understand what is at stake in developing a theoretical understanding of love itself. These issues are, in turn, analyzed through Dionne Brand’s 2014 novel Love Enough. This analysis strengthens the article’s argument that fictions of globality produced in Canada play a role in challenging the ongoing reconsolidation of the normative modes of human embodiment enforced under neoliberal forms of governance

Metastable structural transformations and pressure-induced amorphization in natural (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 olivine under static compression: A Raman spectroscopic study

[EN] Raman spectroscopic data were obtained for (Mg,Fe)(2)SiO4 samples during compression to 57 GPa. Single crystals of San Carlos olivine compressed hydrostatically above 41 GPa showed appearance of a new "defect" peak in the 820-840 cm(-1) region associated with SiOSi linkages appearing between adjacent SiO44- tetrahedra to result in five- or sixfold-coordinated silicate species. Appearance of this feature is accompanied by a broad amorphous background. The changes occur at lower pressure than metastable crystalline transitions of end-member Mg2SiO4 forsterite (Fo-I) into Fo-II and Fo-III phases described recently. We complemented our experimental study using density functional theory (DFT) calculations and anisotropic ion molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations to study the Raman spectra and vibrational density of states (VDOS) of metastably compressed Mg2SiO4 olivine, Fo-II and Fo-III, and quenched melts at high and low pressures. By 54 GPa all sharp crystalline peaks disappeared from observed Raman spectra indicating complete pressure-induced amorphization (PIA). The amorphous (Mg,Fe)(2)SiO4 spectrum contains Si-O stretching bands at lower wavenumber than expected for SiO44- indicating high coordination of the silicate units. The amorphous spectrum persisted on decompression to ambient conditions but with evidence for reappearance of tetrahedrally coordinated units. Non hydrostatic compression of polycrystalline olivine samples showed similar appearance of the defect feature and broad amorphous features between 43-44 GPa. Both increased in intensity as the sample was left at pressure overnight but they disappeared during decompression below 17 GPa with recovery of the starting olivine Raman signature. A hydrated San Carlos olivine sample containing 75-150 ppm OH was also studied. Significant broadening of the SiO44- stretching peaks was observed above 43 GPa but without immediate appearance of the defect or broad amorphous features. However, both of these characteristics emerged after leaving the sample at 47 GPa overnight followed by complete amorphization that occurred upon subsequent pressurization to 54 GPa. During decompression the high-density amorphous spectrum was retained to 3 GPa but on final pressure release a spectrum similar to thermally quenched low-pressure olivine glass containing isolated SiO44- groups was obtained. Leaving this sample overnight resulted in recrystallization of olivine. Our experimental data provide new insights into the metastable structural transformations and relaxation behavior of olivine samples including material recovered from meteorites and laboratory shock experiments.Our work was supported by the U.K. NERC via Grant NE/K002902/1 and Spanish MINECO under projects MAT2014-46649-C4-1/2-P.Santamaría Pérez, D.; Thomson, A.; Segura, A.; Pellicer Torres, J.; Manjón, F.; Cora, F.; Mccoll, K.... (2016). Metastable structural transformations and pressure-induced amorphization in natural (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 olivine under static compression: A Raman spectroscopic study. American Mineralogist. 101(7):1642-1650. https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2016-5389CCBYS16421650101

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

"Struggle Work": Global and Urban Citizenship in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For

Dionne Brand's 2005 novel What We All Long For represents a generational shift in the politics of being in Canadian space. In it, young, poor, and racialized characters navigate their lives and loves within the urban space of the Greater Toronto Area. Instead of pledging allegiance to the nation-state or longing for a lost home, drifting between or beyond such positions makes possible a new and liberating politics. Brand pursues a rhizomatic form of political resistance in her writing, in which one point can connect to any other to form communities. Old notions of grounded selfhood and belonging are necessarily disrupted in order to uncover a site for being that is open, neither nostalgic nor caught within the politics of inclusion/exclusion or an inside/outside dichotomy. Brand's deterritorializing project is importantly focused upon urban modes of being that constantly elude the dominant. The novel demonstrates this point in focusing upon protagonists who work actively to construct a new Toronto from below, but whose relatives and friends are caught within a racist system that seeks to limit how their bodies and beings might function