Magical realism is the language of the emergent Post-Truth world

Drawing on a number of new readings of ‘Post-Truth’, defined as ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’, our essay interrogates the extent to which magical realism may be understood as the paradigmatic and quintessential discourse of the Post-Truth era. We paraphrase Homi Bhabha’s famous statement, made in the 1990s, that ‘magical realism is the language of the emergent postcolonial world’, and propose that, in the twenty-first century, magical realism is the language of the emergent Post-Truth world. In this essay we analyze and compare the Post-Truth techniques used in novels such as García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips and Murakami’s 1Q84. We combine Matthew d’Ancona’s robust call that we should fight against the follies of political Post-Truth with Anne Hegerfeldt’s argument that magical realism is designed to teach the general public how to read between the lines of politicians’ speeches in order to become a mature defender of truth, and therefore propose that the magical-realist novelist, in effect, ends up telling ‘lies that tell the truth’

The Event of Nationalism

This essay focuses on the role played by a series of events and how they were interpreted to have a foundational meaning for the creation of Mexican identity, nationhood and statehood. It compares the creation of Mexican statehood with the portrayal of Cuban nationhood, via the use of the supernatural signification and resonance associated with saints and/or apparitions of the divine. The three test cases used in this study are, for Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and for Cuba, the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and the Virgen de Regla. In each case the events on which a sense of nationhood were pinned operate in a dual sense in that their meaning was constructed retroactively. The work of the French philosopher, Alain Badiou, particularly his study, L’Être et l‘événement (1988), is brought to bear in an attempt to argue through how the originary events achieved political meaning over time and did so via a process of nomination

Hispanism's digital turn

This essay focuses on the interface between praxis and theory in Hispanism in the twenty-first century. The author describes the ways in which his experience making documentary films at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba led him to re-evaluate the way in which he taught theoretical and historical film courses at University College London. This led him, for example, to introduce a filmmaking exercise based on the Kuleshov Effect which provides the students with a better understanding of the mechanics of editing, or montage, within a given film. The essay turns to a discussion of difference between analogue and digital film and concludes with a comparison between Carl Dreyer's Ordet (1955) Carlos Reygadas' Stellet licht (2007)

The biographical fashioning of the Americas' first Saint: Santa Rosa de Lima (1586-1617)

This article studies the disjunctions between the narratives created around the first saint of the Americas, Santa Rosa de Lima (1586–1617). According to the Peruvian popular version, Rosa could speak to mosquitoes, whereas the Vatican version eschews mention of the insects. The fact that the first official biography, Vita mirabilis et mors pretiosa (1664), was written not by a German Dominican called Leonardus Hansen but by an elusive English Dominican, Vincent Torre, suggests that this text was part of the Popish Plot and constitutes a coded attempt to bring England back to the True Faith

Safe use of perampanel in a carrier of variegate porphyria

Objectives. Treatment of chronic epilepsy in acute porphyrias may be difficult because many antiepileptic drugs can cause activation of clinically-latent conditions. Methods. A 44 year-old lady with drug-resistant chronic epilepsy and a previous genetic diagnosis of variegate porphyria was referred to our epilepsy centre. We started her on perampanel, a structurally novel selective non-competitive AMPA receptor antagonist recently approved for the treatment of partial and secondarily generalized seizures in humans. There are no previous reports about the outcome of exposure to perampanel of carriers of acute porphyria. Results. Perampanel was assessed in silico to be probably not porphyrogenic. Administration of the drug up to 4 mg/day did not lead to elevation of urinary porphobilinogen excretion, nor to any symptoms of acute porphyria after more than 23 months of treatment. Conclusions. Perampanel up to 4 mg/day was tolerated in long-term therapy in this carrier of protoporphyrinogen oxidase deficiency. However, since perampanel is a weak inducer of cytochrome P450 enzymes, vigilance should be maintained for clinical and biochemical signs of activation of acute porphyria when used in a carrier of acute porphyria

El cadáver exquisito de César Vallejo [The exquisite corpse of Cesar Vallejo]

This paper intends to provide a fresh understanding of Vallejo’s poems through an interpretation of the poem «¡Oh botella sin vino! ¡Oh vino que enviudó de esta botella!...» (‘Oh bottle without wine! Oh wine the widower of this bottle!...’). The first part is focused on the troubled relationship between Vallejo and the surrealism, and particularly in his famous line «cadáver exquisito» (‘exquisite corpse’). The facet of the compositional technique of Vallejo found in four of his ‘autograph’ early drafts of Poemas humanos (‘Human Poems’, 1938) and published in the 2003 by Edition Flo-Hart is also analyzed. It is proposed that, in «¡Oh botella sin vino! ¡Oh vino que enviudó de esta botella!...» Vallejo recognizes that the avant-garde - including surrealism - was part of his artistic training, but finally he rejects the «vino muerto» (‘the dead wine’) of surrealism. The second part of the paper evaluates Vallejo’s projection, specifically in ‘Human Poems’, of his own ‘exquisite corpse’

Transoral laser surgery for laryngeal carcinoma: has Steiner achieved a genuine paradigm shift in oncological surgery?

Transoral laser microsurgery applies to the piecemeal removal of malignant tumours of the upper aerodigestive tract using the CO2 laser under the operating microscope. This method of surgery is being increasingly popularised as a single modality treatment of choice in early laryngeal cancers (T1 and T2) and occasionally in the more advanced forms of the disease (T3 and T4), predomi- nantly within the supraglottis. Thomas Kuhn, the American physicist turned philosopher and historian of science, coined the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ in his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that the arrival of the new and often incompatible idea forms the core of a new paradigm, the birth of an entirely new way of thinking. This article discusses whether Steiner and col- leagues truly brought about a paradigm shift in oncological surgery. By rejecting the principle of en block resection and by replacing it with the belief that not only is it oncologically safe to cut through the substance of the tumour but in doing so one can actually achieve better results, Steiner was able to truly revolutionise the man- agement of laryngeal cancer. Even though within this article the repercussions of his insight are limited to the upper aerodigestive tract oncological surgery, his willingness to question other peoples’ dogma makes his contribution truly a genuine paradigm shift

Prospective study of immunological factors in non-inflammatory bowel disease enterocutaneous fistulas

© 2011 The Authors. Published by BMC, part of Springer Nature. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2482-11-12Background: Enterocutaneous fistulas (ECF) are debilitating and usually result following complex abdominal surgery. While there is an association with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a large number of fistulas occur after surgery not related to IBD. The consequences of ECF include short bowel syndrome and the need for long term parenteral nutrition. ECF can heal spontaneously and in the case of IBD can be cured by medical therapy in some instances. Those that do not resolve spontaneously have to be cured by surgery which is complex and associated with a high morbidity. It is not considered traditional treatment to use the same medical therapy as in IBD to cure ECF caused by other conditions. A small case series has reported three patients with persistent ECF not related to IBD to have healed following use of Infliximab which is the treatment commonly used for ECF caused by IBD. Infliximab acts by inhibiting the activity of the inflammatory cytokine TNF- alpha. It is not known if this cytokine is present in ECF tissue in the absence of IBD. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the presence of inflammatory markers in tissue surrounding non-IBD ECF and in particular to quantify the presence of the cytokine TNF- alpha. We hypothesise that TNF - alpha levels are raised in non-IBD ECF. Methods/Design. Tissue and serum from ECF of IBD and non-IBD patients will be prospectively collected at St. Mark's Hospital Intestinal Failure Unit. The control group will consist of patients undergoing colonoscopy for bowel cancer screening, with normal findings. Biopsies of the terminal ileum will be obtained from this group during colonoscopy. The fistula tract and serum cytokine profiles of interleukins (IL)-1a, IL-1b, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF- alpha, IFN-y, MCP-1, EGF and VEGF will be assessed. Discussion. This study aims to assess the presence or absence of TNF- alpha expression in the ECF tissue in non-IBD origin. If our hypothesis is correct we would then be able to study the use of the TNF- alpha inhibitor Infliximab as a therapeutic option in the treatment of non-IBD ECF. Secondary aims include assessing the spectrum of inflammatory cytokines and markers present in tissue and serum of non-IBD ECF when compared with IBD ECF and normal controls. © 2011 Rahbour et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.The study has secured funding from Bowel Disease Research Foundation (BDRF).Published versio