The Invention of Truth. Salman Rushdie between Truth and Make-believe

[Italiano]: In questo libro, il mondo letterario di Salman Rushdie viene attentamente analizzato con un approccio critico ‘metalettico’. Intrecciando nei suoi romanzi realtà e immaginazione, l’opera dell’autore anglo-indiano testimonia una sensibilità ‘metamoderna’, poiché intreccia senza soluzione di continuità l’esperienza del mondo reale con gli intricati schemi del linguaggio e dell’arte. Partendo dalle contraddizioni e dagli errori presenti nella narrazione del primo capolavoro di Rushdie, I figli della mezzanotte, passando per la fusione di sacro e profano ne I versetti satanici, fino al movimento palindromo o di reciproca convergenza tra vita e scrittura in Quichotte, il volume accompagna chi legge in un viaggio alla scoperta del potere creativo del linguaggio e di come esso plasmi e venga plasmato dalla storia. L’opera di Salman Rushdie offre, infatti, l’opportunità di misurarsi con il rapporto instabile tra realtà storica ed espressione artistica, aspirazioni individuali e bisogni collettivi, identità e disfacimento, verità e finzione./[English]: In this book, the literary world of Salman Rushdie is carefully scrutinised using a ‘metaleptical’ critical approach. Weaving together truth and fiction, reality and fantasy in his novels, the Anglo-Indian author’s work exudes a ‘metamodern’ sensibility as it seamlessly weaves the fabric of real-world experience with the intricate patterns of language and art. Beginning with the contradictions and errors in the narrative of Rushdie’s first masterpiece Midnight’s Children, through the blending of the sacred and the secular in The Satanic Verses, to the palindromic movement of the mutual convergence of life and writing in Quichotte, the volume takes the reader on a journey of discovery of the creative power of language and how it shapes and is shaped by history. Salman Rushdie’s work offers, in fact, the opportunity to engage in a nuanced examination of the balance between historical reality and artistic expression, individual aspirations and collective needs, continuity and decay, truth and make-believe

When Narration is Made Flesh: An Affective Reading of Geetanjali Shree's The Empty Space

This paper examines Geetanjali Shree’s The Empty Space (2011) as an exemplary novel exploring the performative power of language in order to re-create an episode of violence somewhere in the Indian sub-continent. Describing the explosion of a bomb in a university cafe, the narration makes events emerge as the product of a field of forces relying on the bodily perception and sensorial participation of the reader. The essay focuses on the ways through which Shree’s novel shuns hermeneutic or representational readings of violence in favour of a skin or ‘haptic’ writing whose performative power relocates a story of violence from its geographical location to the body of the reader. In acknowledging the human body as the shared ground of any possible communication, the author attempts to overcome the divisive binarisms and cultural juxtapositions brought about by the ocularcentric understandings of knowledge and culture

Intervista a Derrick de Kerckhove

Questa che presentiamo è la trascrizione e rielaborazione di un’intervista che è cominciata il 19 novembre 2014 presso l’Università di Napoli Federico II ed è continuata ‘virtualmente’ tramite lo scambio di e-­‐‑mail. La conversazione iniziale, già di per sé stimolante e ricca di spunti, si è quindi ampliata ulteriormente grazie alle risposte e agli approfondimenti che Derrick De Kerckhove ci ha ancora gentilmente offerto. Emblematiche della sua generosità intellettuale ci sembrano le parole con cui ha voluto chiudere l’intervista e che ci piace riportare qui in apertura: «Ritengo l’intervista uno dei modi di fare ricerca tra i più intelligenti e interessanti che esistano. Mi fa pensare a cose nuove. È davvero una forma di ‘intelligenza connettiva’, e permette di fare ottime riflessioni. È una bella sfida»

Sarcopenic Dysphagia, Malnutrition, and Oral Frailty in Elderly: A Comprehensive Review.

Frailty is a highly prevalent condition in the elderly that has been increasingly considered as a crucial public health issue, due to the strict correlation with a higher risk of fragility fractures, hospitalization, and mortality. Among the age-related diseases, sarcopenia and dysphagia are two common pathological conditions in frail older people and could coexist leading to dehydration and malnutrition in these subjects. "Sarcopenic dysphagia" is a complex condition characterized by deglutition impairment due to the loss of mass and strength of swallowing muscles and might be also related to poor oral health status. Moreover, the aging process is strictly related to poor oral health status due to direct impairment of the immune system and wound healing and physical and cognitive impairment might indirectly influence older people's ability to carry out adequate oral hygiene. Therefore, poor oral health might affect nutrient intake, leading to malnutrition and, consequently, to frailty. In this scenario, sarcopenia, dysphagia, and oral health are closely linked sharing common pathophysiological pathways, disabling sequelae, and frailty. Thus, the aim of the present comprehensive review is to describe the correlation among sarcopenic dysphagia, malnutrition, and oral frailty, characterizing their phenotypically overlapping features, to propose a comprehensive and effective management of elderly frail subjects

Genetic and epigenetic mutations affect the DNA binding capability of human ZFP57 in transient neonatal diabetes type 1

AbstractIn the mouse, ZFP57 contains three classical Cys2His2 zinc finger domains (ZF) and recognizes the methylated TGCmetCGC target sequence using the first and the second ZFs. In this study, we demonstrate that the human ZFP57 (hZFP57) containing six Cys2His2 ZFs, binds the same methylated sequence through the third and the fourth ZFs, and identify the aminoacids critical for DNA interaction. In addition, we present evidences indicating that hZFP57 mutations and hypomethylation of the TNDM1 ICR both associated with Transient Neonatal Diabetes Mellitus type 1 result in loss of hZFP57 binding to the TNDM1 locus, likely causing PLAGL1 activation

“Memory and Negotiations of Identity in Train to Pakistan”

This article focuses on Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan to analyse the negotiations of identity among different ethnic communities at the time of the Partition between India and Pakistan which occurred in August 1947. In particular, this paper will try to show the impact, in the economy of social relationships and violence in Singh’s novel, of uncertainties put forward through the circulation of “rumours” along and across the then still uncertain borders dividing the two budding nations

“Time out of Time: Transworld Identity and the Collapse of Ontological Boundaries in The Accidental by Ali Smith”

This article looks at Ali Smith’s The Accidental as a novel in which pastiche and mashups of content create a kind of cross media storytelling that pushes the ontological boundaries of narrative. At the centre of the novel is Amber, a mysterious visitor introduced here as a transworld identity who weaves the novel’s plot by using contents and knowledge belonging to extradiegetic worlds and their timelines. Thus, she is in a position to interact with the other characters as if they were metareferential elements of the story and change their fate. By using Amber as a literary device which oscillates between different temporalities, Smith also explores how language mediates contemporary subjectivity, which is divided into a variety of fictional realities

Gaming Gender. Virtual Embodiment as a Synaesthetic Experience.

Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies have long identified ocularcentrism, or the privilege of vision in culture and thought, as one of the prime causes behind the tendency to manipulate and categorize matter, bodies and meanings. This paper examines the power of computer-generated images to produce a kind of digital interaction which upsets gendered visual and listening conventions, such as those traditionally experienced in cinema. The article will take into consideration Valve’s Portal (2007), a first person videogame which proposes a ‘topological’ way of seeing relying on the synaesthetic working of the human sensorium. Images do not simply represent objects and places, but allow for countless configurations of space. The visual effort to confront with images of pure potential brings about an affective intensification of sensory faculties, especially of the senses of touch and hearing. As a consequence, images are endowed with tactile qualities which make possible the absorption and propagation of sound stimuli. In the game, the ‘haptic’ quality of images works together with acousmatic resonances of female voice in order to recreate a hybrid embodied condition which dissolves the male-female binarism and, in so doing, challenges gendered cultural assumptions and established spectatorial positions