Learning from history?

Hochschulen sind geschichtsbewusste Institutionen. Doch anders als noch im 19. Jahrhundert kann die akademische Erinnerungskultur heute keine ungebrochene Feier von Kontinuität, des Stolzes auf große Wissenschaftler oder der Idee einer selbstbewussten Korporation mehr sein. Diese Form der Erinnerung setzte primär auf Traditionspflege. Sie ist unter Druck geraten, zum einen durch die Desaster des 20. Jahrhunderts und die Verstrickung der Hochschulen darin, zum anderen durch eine erhebliche Professionalisierung der Hochschulgeschichtsschreibung. Infolgedessen ist die deutsche Hochschulgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts oft in besonders geringer Weise dazu geeignet, hochschulische Institutionengeschichte als Erzählung eines fortwährenden Aufstiegs der jeweiligen Einrichtung zu konstruieren. Damit müssen Hochschulen heute umgehen können, was ihnen jedoch recht uneinheitlich gelingt – erkennbar z.B. an der unterschiedlich ausgeprägten Souveränität, mit der auf zeitgeschichtsbezogene Skandalisierungen hochschulgeschichtlicher Tatbestände reagiert wird. Zugrunde liegt dem eine eher erratische Beschäftigung mit der je eigenen Zeitgeschichte. Für diese gibt es Gründe: • Hochschulen lassen zwar organisationspolitisch eine intensive Befassung mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte erwarten: Auf diesem Wege ist Legitimation zu gewinnen, können Jubiläen aufgewertet werden und kann Havarien in der Kommunikation mit der Öffentlichkeit vorgebeugt werden. • Doch organisationspraktisch überwiegen die Gründe dafür, dass intensivere Befassungen mit der eigenen Zeitgeschichte eher unerwartbar sinWissenschaftsfreiheit, individuelle Autonomie, mangelnde Durchgriffsmöglichkeiten von Hochschulleitungen, Konflikte um Ressourcen, Planungsresistenz und unsystematisches Entscheidungsverhalten – all das steht dem entgegen. Dies lässt sich auf Basis einer empirischen Untersuchung aller 54 ostdeutschen Hochschulen – eben jenen Hochschulen, die aufgrund ihrer DDR-Geschichte unter besonderer Beobachtung des Umgangs mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte stehen – nachvollziehbar machen. Dabei erfolgt hier eine Konzentration auf die Hochschulanlagen, also die Gebäude und Campusensembles, da in und auf diesen im alltäglichen Vollzug von Forschung und Lehre die Geschichte im wörtlichen Sinne präsent ist. Das betrifft zum einen die architektonischen Zeugnisse der DDR in Gestalt von Hochschulgebäuden und -anlagen, die zum großen Teil auch als Repräsentationsobjekte angelegt waren, sowie deren überkommene künstlerische Beschriftungen durch Wandbilder und -mosaike, Plastiken und Installationen. Zum anderen betrifft es nach 1989 errichtete oder angebrachte Denkmale und Gedenkzeichen als Zeugnisse der oder/und Aufforderungen zur historischen Reflexion. In der pflegenden Erhaltung überkommener Zeugnisse, der Abwahl von als unwürdig Bewertetem und der Errichtung neuer zeichenhafter Artefakte konstruieren die Hochschulen ihr Gedächtnis, indem sie aus den objektiven Abläufen der Vergangenheit Gedächtniswürdiges auswählen. Die vorzustellende Bestandsaufnahme zeigt, wie sich die ostdeutschen Hochschulen mit ihrer DDR-Geschichte im Raum auseinandersetzen, illustriert dies an diesbezüglichen exemplarischen Konflikten und setzt dies ins Verhältnis zum Umgang mit Zeugnissen aus der NS-Periode. Die empirischen Grundlagen ermöglichen hierbei sowohl quantitativ gestützte Begründungen als auch qualitative Deutungen. Sie führen zur Identifikation von drei Zugangsweisen, die Hochschulen im Umgang mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte wählen: • Geschichtsabstinenz • Geschichte als Tradition und Geschichtspolitik als Hochschulmarketing • Geschichte als Aufarbeitung und Selbstaufklärung Anhand dessen lassen sich zum einen die spezifische Vorstellung von der Institution Hochschule, die – gegen überwältigende empirische Befunde – spezifische demokratische Widerstandspotenziale in der akademischen Kultur und Organisation vermutet, und zum anderen der Topos vom „Lernen aus der Geschichte“ prüfen

An ideology of erasure : Interphobia in right-wing extremism: A call for intersex-affirmative therapy

The discrimination faced by intersex people plays a major role in their life, including therapeutic and psychological settings. Thus, the range and expression of interphobia is crucial for therapists and practitioners to understand as part of an inter-affirmative therapeutic approach. The article examines the writings of key proponents the German-speaking extreme right, with the understanding that many of these interphobic ideas hold true for society at large. By analysing seven interphobic strategies used by the extreme right, we understand how their narratives about intersex people continue to propagate a two-sex hegemony. The seven strategies are: ignore, deny, pathologise, employ paternalism, conjure up the polarity of man and woman, make direct attacks, and functionalise completely different issues to further their political agenda. The article explores the intrinsic entanglement of interphobia with racism, antisemitism, nationalism, social Darwinism, two-sex ideology, heterosexism, cissexism, and sexism and it is also a reconstruction of relevant discourses in sexology, psychology, and gender studies. I advocate for an understanding of human development that is non-hierarchical and therefore does not value any particular expression of human bodies over any other. Pathologisation and ‘fixing’ is contraindicated to healing and resilience, and if therapy is to be inter-affirmative, it needs to accurately reflect the interphobic lived realities of clients’ lives

The energy metabolic footprint of predictive processing in the human brain

To maximize our chances of survival and procreation, we need to process our environment in a highly sophisticated and accurate manner. In their limit, these two demands are mutually exclusive: While better sound localization, quicker reflexes or more accurate vision could improve survivability, the necessary energy consumption might not be sustainable. Luckily, our sensory systems strike an impressive balance between performance and energetic cost. In a both active and passive process, we learn about the rules that determine our experience and use them to form expectations. Efficient brain activity is then achieved by limiting the forward transmission of signals to deviations from what we predicted. In the visual domain, this means that our perception is dominated by our expectations when we are in a familiar environment. Research in cognitive neuroscience has shown that expected input elicits weaker brain activity than surprising input, without any behavioral disadvantages. However, knowledge about associated energetic efficiency is limited by three gaps in the current literature. First, conventional imaging techniques do not provide direct measurements of energy metabolism. Second, previous research has focused on localizing areas of maximal effect, potentially missing weaker, but more widespread patterns. Third, our knowledge about the world is imperfect, leading to uncertain expectations. This has rarely been accounted for. Neuronal activity is fueled by ATP, most of which is produced with chemical reactions that need oxygen. In the present work, I assessed energy metabolism with a novel imaging method that measures the rate of oxygen consumption across all parts of the brain. I used an experimental design during which participants saw visual object sequences that were either predictable, random, or surprising. Behavioral tests indicated that predictable sequences were learned without any feedback which resulted in anticipation of upcoming objects. I further found that participants varied in the confidence of their expectations. This had a major impact on oxygen consumption when viewing predictable sequences: The lowest energy usage was found for high levels of confidence. This effect was not limited to sensory regions but extended across large parts of the brain. Interestingly, my results suggest that confidence led to energy savings even when the visual input was objectively random. In conclusion, this work provides the first evidence that our expectations are a major promoter of efficient processing, which is crucial for any organism with limited energy availability

On some weakly compact spaces and their products

AbstractWe consider independence results concerning two topological problems. First, a space is defined to be weakly Lindelöf iff every open cover admits a subcover of cardinality less than c. We introduce a topological hypothesis H and show that it implies that every weakly-Lindelöf regular separable T1 space is countably compact iff it is compact. We then show that H follows from Martin's axiom and is, therefore, consistent with the negation of the continuum hypothesis. We also note that it is consistent with the negation of the continuum hypothesis that there exist a separable normal countably-compact T1 space of cardinality ℵ1 (and thus weakly Lindelöf) which is not compact.In another direction, we define uncountable cardinals Kt⩽Kc⩽c, and we prove that every product of fewer than Kt (sequentially compact) strongly ℵ0-compact spaces is itself (sequentially compact) strongly ℵ0-compact and that any product of no more than Kt such spaces is countably compact. On the other hand, we show that no product of Kc or more non-ℵ0-bounded spaces can be strongly ℵ0-compact. We then show that it is consistent with the negation of the continuum hypothesis both that Kt = Kc = ℵ1 and that Kt = Kc = c.We conclude with some open questions

Cooperation\u27s Cost

This Article explores the costs and benefits of criminal cooperation, the widespread practice by which prosecutors offer criminal defendants the opportunity to receive reduced sentences in exchange for their assistance in apprehending other criminals. On one hand, cooperation increases the likelihood that criminals will be detected and prosecuted successfully. This is the “Detection Effect” of cooperation, and it has long been cited as the policy’s primary justification. On the other hand, cooperation also reduces the expected sanction for offenders who believe they can cooperate if caught. This is the “Sanction Effect” of cooperation, and it may grow substantially if the government enlists too many cooperators, enables them to be sentenced too generously, or causes them to become overly optimistic about their chances of receiving a cooperation agreement. When the government allows the Sanction Effect to grow too large, it undermines one of its key tools for improving deterrence. Indeed, when the Sanction Effect outweighs the Detection Effect, cooperation reduces deterrence, and the government unwittingly encourages more crime. Since cooperation is itself administratively costly, the policy perversely causes society to pay for additional crime. This Article reorients the cooperation debate around the fundamental question of whether cooperation deters wrongdoing. Drawing on economics and behavioral psychology, it provides a framework for better understanding how and when cooperation works. Government actors who laud and rely on cooperation must address the fundamental question of whether it actually deters wrongdoing. To do otherwise is to leave society vulnerable to cooperation’s greatest cost

Hay and Pasture Seedings

Forage crops need much more attention In Iowa than they have been receiving. Larger acreages of hay and pasture can be grown to advantage thruout the state, but the best yields are necessary to make high priced land produce the largest returns. The most profitable systems of livestock management demand increased crops of grasses and legumes, and grain farming likewise requires that forage crops be grown to maintain the yielding power of the soil

Volume 28: Affect

The 2018-19 Editorial Collective is pleased to present the 28th volume of disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Our inspiration for this odd bundle of pages is rooted in the aesthetic of the self-printed zine. While we regret that we couldn\u27t sneak into Miller Hall in the middle of the night to guerrilla-copy the entire issue on a late-80s black-and-white Xerox, we are proud to say that each page of this volume was assembled entirely by hand. Every page is bordered or backgrounded by collages: these are pages that peel and flake, assembled from bits and pieces cut up and rearranged- not dissimilar, we believe, from how knowledge itself is made. The articles were printed off a wheezing home office Canon, cut on a crooked paper cutter, positioned and re-positioned on desks and bedroom floors, glued and taped, and (often, indeed, under the cover of night) finally scanned into the openly available and infinitely replicable digital artifact you find here