932 research outputs found
Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness & the Politics of Desire
Do opposites attract? Is desire lack? These assumptions have become so much a part of the ways in which we conceive desire that they are rarely questioned. Yet, what do they say about how homosexuality — a desire for the same — is viewed in our culture? This book takes as its starting point the absence of a suitable theory of homosexual desire, a theory not predicated on such heterological assumptions. It is an investigation into how such assumptions acquired meaning within homosexual discourse, and as such is offered as an interruption within the hegemony of desire. As such, homosexual desire constitutes the biggest challenge to Western binaric thinking in that it dissolves the sacred distinctions between Same/Other, Desire/Identification, subject/object, male/female. Homotopia? (composed in 1997 but not published until now) investigates the development of a homosexual discourse at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, and reveals how that discourse worked within heterosexualized models of desire. Andre Gide’s Corydon, Edward Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex, and John Addington Symond’s A Problem in Modern Ethics are all pseudo-scientific texts written by non-medical men of letters, and were, in their time, highly influential on the emerging homosexual discourse. The fourth text, the twenty-odd pages of Marcel Proust’s novel A la recherché de temps perdu usually referred to as ‘La Race maudite,’ is the most problematic, in that it appeared under the guise of fiction. But Proust originally planned this ‘essay-within-a-novel’ to be published separately. In it, he offers a pseudo-scientific theory of male-male love. These four texts were published between the years 1891 and 1924, an historical moment when the concept of a distinct homosexual identity took shape within a medicalized discourse centered on essential identity traits and characteristics, and they all work within the rubric of science, contributing to a discourse which saw the human race divided into two distinct categories: heterosexuals and homosexuals. How did this division come about, and what were its effects? How was this discourse sustained, and how were the meanings it produced received? For men whose erotic interest was exclusively in other men, what did it mean to see oneself and one’s desires as the outcome of biology rather than moral lapse
The physics of unwound and wound strings on the electric guitar applied to the pitch intervals produced by tremolo/vibrato arm systems
The physics of wound and unwound strings on the electric guitar are presented here, and the pitch intervals produced by the movements of a Fender Stratocaster tremolo unit are explained. Predicted changes in pitch sensitivity of different strings are given, and experimentally verified, for changes in saddle height, the distance of string free to move behind the nut and ratio of diameters/masses of the core and windings of wound strings. Also, it is shown that changes to the gauge of strings (assuming the string tension is sufficient for linear behaviour and in absence of changes to other construction details) don’t alter the pitch intervals produced by a given angle of tremolo arm use assuming the instrument is set up with the same sounding pitches and starting bridge angle. It is demonstrated that it not possible to equalise the relative sensitivity of unwound steel stings on a Fender Stratocaster type tremolo unit through string construction techniques. The ratio of core to winding mass in the string, on the other hand, was found to be a very powerful design parameter for choosing the sensitivity of the string to tremolo arm use and standard pitch bends. For instance, the pitch intervals produced by operation of tremolo arm for wound strings may be made to approximately match that for one of the unwound strings if they share very similar core gauges (assuming the winding masses are chosen to give approximately the same tension at their sounding pitches). Such a design, only available currently by custom order, also delivers the optimum equalisation in sensitivity of strings for standard string bends (due to these also being produced by altering the length of the string to generate changes in tension and therefore pitch).Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
On inharmonicity in bass guitar strings with application to tapered and lumped constructions
In this study, the inharmonicity of bass guitar strings with and without areas of lowered and raised mass near the saddle is studied. Using a very high sample rate of over 900 kHz enabled finite difference time domain simulation to be applied for strings that simultaneously have nonzero stiffness and linear density which varies along the length of the string. Results are compared to experiments on specially constructed strings. Perturbation theory is demonstrated to be sufficiently accurate (and much more computationally efficient) for practical design purposes in reducing inharmonicity. The subject of inharmonicity is well known in pianos but has not been studied extensively in bass guitar strings. Here, the inharmonicity is found to be low in the lowest (open string) pitch on the five string bass guitar (B0) given typical standard construction. Conversely, the inharmonicity is high (around 100 cents at the 10th partial) when that string is sounded when stopped at the 12th fret and very high (around 100 cents at the 6th partial) when that string is stopped at the 21st fret. Bass guitar strings were constructed with three different constructions (standard, tapered and lumped) in order to demonstrate how incorporating a lump of raised mass near the saddle can achieve close to zero inharmonicity for the lower frequency partials. This also has potential in terms of improving the use of higher fret numbers for musical harmony (reducing beating) and also in controlling pitch glide that has, with some exceptions, often been attributed solely to nonlinear behaviour.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
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Writing the behind: Schreber, Genet, Joyce, and the poetics of the penetrated male body
This thesis argues that representation is the embodiment of erotic thought. It does this by focusing on literary representations of the penetrated male body and challenging the standard approaches to masculine embodiment as a form of denial or absence: the male body - in its always already penetrated state - as a presence, though one which lurks behind representation. It argues that the (penetrated) male body is often characterised as a taboo the breaching of which is traditionally named 'feminine' or 'psychotic'. The dominant representation of this body links it with a chain of equivalences that binds it to a culturally abjected 'feminine paradigm'. Works by Huysmans, Baudelaire, Wilde, will demonstrate how the limits of the male body are mapped within a boundary that both excludes and necessitates an act of penetratioa But it also demonstrates the ways in which this taboo has been challenged. Schreber, Genet and Joyce play with that boundary, push those limits, suggesting that penetrability becomes a condition of the emergence of modern male subjectivity within the rubric of its own logic. For as much as the penetrated male body is marked by 'femininity' and 'psychosis', it in turn marks a discursive 'blind spot' which the thesis terms the 'behind', in order to highlight its links to the anus - a site of anxiety for masculinity. This articulation of a discursive aporia and corporeal liminality is shown to generate a specifically modern 'poetics'. This poetics will help to re-state a logic of the neither/nor as expressed by Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault and Kristeva, in particular. One major consequence of such conditionality is that thought must be seen as in a very real sense 'embodied', and that this process of embodying thought is predicated upon an eroticism that is subsequently denied. The 'behind' names that denial
The acoustical behavior of a bass guitar bridge with no saddles
The acoustics of a bass guitar bridge without saddles was tested experimentally and the results contextualised. Conclusions were obtained demonstrating that the bridge without saddles (where knot around the ball end of the string forms part of the sounding length) produced no measurable reduction in sustain and may increase the sustain for lower pitched strings, in comparison to a conventional bridge featuring saddles. The bridge without saddles showed a reduction in string inharmonicity, and produced a splitting of the frequency peaks associated within the resonances of the string. This peak splitting is explained as being due to differences in the frequency of vibrations parallel to and perpendicular to the body. Since the loop of core wire strongly resists vibration perpendicular to the body but vibrates freely as part of the sounding length for vibration parallel to the body, the relative length of the loop of core wire with respect to the sounding length of the string determines the fractional difference in frequency. The perceptual quality of the sound is similar to the beating due to multiple strings per note (as in piano) and to electronic chorus effects.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
The great highland bagpipe scale and sensory dissonance
This article aims to illustrate some of the features of the tuning of the highland bagpipe scale in terms of the consonance and dissonance of the chanter against the drones. It presents a theoretical plot which estimates how the sensory dissonance varies for every possible tuning of the chanter. This is achieved by charting a steady glissando from low G to high A, using different colours for the different numbers of harmonics present in chanter, tenor drone and bass drone spectra. Such a visual representation may be of practical assistance to players, reed makers and bagpipe makers who are seeking to achieve a better sound. It also offers a new understanding and clearer explanation of why the bagpipe scale is non-standardised.Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe
The Penetrated Male
Through nuanced readings of a handful of modernist texts (Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde, Genet, Joyce, and Schreber’s Memoirs), this book explores and interrogates the figure of the penetrated male body, developing the concept of the behind as a site of both fascination and fear. Deconstructing the penetrated male body and the genderisation of its representation, The Penetrated Male offers new understandings of passivity, suggesting that the modern masculine subject is predicated on a penetrability it must always disavow. Arguing that representation is the embodiment of erotic thought, it is an important contribution to queer theory and our understandings of gendered bodies
Practical Ethics v2.0
Chapter 6 of eds Alison Richmond and Alison Lee Bracker, Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas and Uncomfortable Truths (Oxford: Routledge, 2009) ISBN0750682019, 9780750682015
Introduction
The title of this chapter alludes to Peter Singer’s 1979 book, Practical Ethics.
Singer’s version of applied ethics (in his case, preferential ethics) has antecedents
in Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, roughly defined as being that an action is good
if it creates the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Bentham conceives
of an algorithmically based calculus for judging whether an action is good or not.
However, the calculus can only work in a commensurable and closed system, that
is, in a state of being self-defined and isolated from environmental influence (as in,
for example, a dictionary, which is a closed system in that it defines each word in
terms of other words, all of which can also be found in the same dictionary). Thus
environmental influences, vis à vis incommensurability, present challenges to any
ethical theory that contends that the right thing to do is the action that promotes
the most overall good. Any disagreement about the commensurability of values, as,
for example, in contemporary notions of ‘ stakeholder consensus ’ or ‘ interpretative
community, ’ means that any Bentham-like utilitarian calculus is not even theoretically possible.
Thus , as codes of ethics can only be successfully applied in a closed system
and, as with many human agencies, conservation generally operates to a lesser or
greater degree in open-ended systems, then all conservation actions are bound
to fail when measured against any one version of the ethical codes of conservation. This chapter considers the execution of ethical behaviour in both present and future setting
How the UK Soft Drinks Levy reduced the population’s calorie intake
Concerns about the health burden of obesity have prompted governments across the world to introduce sugar taxes. In March 2016, the UK Government announced a national Soft Drinks Industry Levy which was enacted in April 2018. Alex Dickson, Markus Gehrsitz, and Jonathan Kemp assess the effects of the levy by analysing data on the universe of soft drink sales in UK grocery and convenience stores. They find that product reformulation was the key driver behind large levy-induced calorie reductions
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