Literary Routes: Migration, Islands, and the Creative Economy

Exploring the links among accelerating patterns of migration, homogenizing forces of globalization, and transnational sites of creativity, this essay highlights the contributions that francophone voices from islands of the global South have made to the diversification of the knowledge economy. We discuss the critical effectiveness of literature as an agent of cultural change, focusing on minor writers who reach wide audiences by negotiating new pathways into the literary marketplace. The Comoran Soeuf Elbadawi, the Malagasy Jean-Luc Raharimanana, the Mauritians Ananda Devi and Shenaz Patel, and the Tahitian Chantal Spitz instigate literary dialogues that underscore ways of reimagining our world and redefining world literature. The issues they raise reveal the enduring relevance of literary studies and its interpretive approaches to a full appreciation of human diversity, which cannot be captured by purely quantitative methods.Romance Languages and Literature

Autobiographical Tongues: (self-)reading And (self-)writing In Augustine, Nietzsche, Maya Angelou, Marie Cardinal, And Marie-therese Humbert (friedrich Nietzsche, Saint Augustine, Algeria).

This study analyses the cross-cultural linguistic mechanisms which tend to colonize a writer's access to his/her mother tongue and his/her other culture. It thus attempts to uncover the patterns of self-dissimulation characterizing the textual production of writers who draw on many traditions while remaining unsure about the relative value of those diverse heritages. I have highlighted in particular those intertextual references which illuminate the polysemic nature of the linguistic self, thus favoring a rich and complex process of biological, cultural and textual metissage. Gender differences, in particular, tended to show variations in a certain perception of the maternal as well as in the writing of the (pro)creative body. My method borrows from current research in narratology in order to show that it is possible to read a work according to certain embedded paradigms which the critic takes as models or antimodels. Starting with Augustine, I was led to read otherwise, that is, to discover under the apparent structures of the text a different system of organization: in the Confessions, I establish the presence of a form of coherence that belies the initial impression of discontinuity. In Humbert's A l'autre bout de moi, I show how the autobiographical novel, which seems to foreclose interpretation if we remain in the realm of linguistic coherence and read it as a French text, is inhabited by another tongue which turns it into a palimpsest--a verbal rather than a visual one. When a verbal sign hides another, the most useful procedure for finding the underlying structure of a given work is not to look for it, but rather to listen for it, since speech-acts are a matter of parole and not of static visual signs. Augustine and Nietzsche both offer clues following which I develop the art of hearing. In my approaches to Angelou and Cardinal, I analyse the painful process of creativity for women writers who are also mothers and seem to have with words as complicated a relationship as they do with their real children, thus reproducing their initial ambivalent relationships to their own parents and to the literary tradition which shapes their access to language.Ph.D.Comparative literatureGerman literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsRomance literatureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127974/2/8702779.pd

Steady State Sickle Cell Anemia Is Associated with Increased Formation of Erythrocyte-Derived Microparticles and Acceleration of Thrombin Generation.

Abstract Abstract 4001 Poster Board III-937 Introduction Patients with Sickle Cell Anemia (SCA) are at risk of thrombosis, but this clinical manifestation is variable and it is probably not associated with the frequency of vaso-occlusive crisis. Increased plasma levels of platelet- and erythrocyte-derived microparticles and hypercoagulability markers have been reported in steady state SCA patients. However, the link between hypercoagulability and SCA is not completelty understood. Aim of the study We determined erythrocyte-derived (Ed-MP) and platelet-derived microparticles (Pd-MP) levels in patients with steady state SCA. We studied their relationship with hemolysis markers and their impact on thrombin generation process. Materials and methods Consecutive out-patients with steady state SCA (n=78) and 20 healthy age and sex-matched controls were included. They were free of any acute episode of SCA for at least one month prior inclusion. Microparticles were assessed with standardized whole blood flow cytometry assay. Ed-MP and Pd-MP were identified using respectively anti-CD235a and anti-CD41 monoclonal antibody and annexine V. Thrombin generation (TG) in citrated platelet poor plasma was assessed with Calibrated Automated Thrombogram® (Stago, France) using PPP-reagent 5pM® (Thrombinoscope BV, Nederlands). The following TG parameters were analyzed: lag-time (LT), time to peak of thrombin (ttpeak), peak of thrombin (peak), mean velocity rate index of the TG (MRI) and endogenous thrombin potential (ETP). Results Mean patient age was 25±8 (range 17-58 ys). In the patients group, Ed-MP and Pd-MP, expressing or not phosphatidyl-serine (PS), were significantly increased compared to the control group. Thrombogram parameters were not significantly different in both groups (Table 1). There was a slight though significant inverse correlation between Ed-MP and both LT and ttpeak (r=-0.235, r=-0.315 respectively; p&lt;0.05). Ed-MP levels were correlated with MRI increase (r=0.241; p&lt;0.05). Ed-MP values were inversely correlated with Hb levels and well correlated with reticulocytes count (r=-0.427, r=0.520 respectively; p&lt;0.05). No relationship was found between Ed-MP and ETP values. The sub-population of Ed-MP/PS+ (expressing PS) showed also an inverse correlation with both ttPeak (r=-0.315, p&lt;0.05) and ETP (r=-0.236; p&lt;0.05), and a positive correlation with MRI (r=0.306 ; p&lt;0.05). Pd-MP concentration was inversely correlated with Hb levels (r=-0.273 ; p&lt;0.05). Only Pd-MP/PS+ plasma concentration was slightly by significantly correlated with ETP (r=0.225; p=0,049). Conclusion Patients with steady state SCA presented a significant increase of Ed-MP and Pd-MP plasma levels which seems to be linked to haemolysis degree. Each type of microparticles had different impact on TG process. Ed-MP induced acceleration of TG kinetics without increase of ETP whereas Pd-MP/PS+ affected mainly ETP. However the increase of Ed-MP and Pd-MP plasma concentration does not appear to be by itself a sufficient condition to induce a significant increase of TG. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare. </jats:sec

‘There is no heritage in Qatar’: Orientalism, colonialism and other problematic histories

This article discusses the construction of Qatari heritage in the context of pre-conceived ideas of ‘cultural heritage’ predominant in the global and regional spheres that operate in this country. It considers the location of Qatar within Middle Eastern heritage discourses and debates, and identifies productive similarities as well as unique avenues for further discussion. The authors identify the challenge of formulating methodologies that are able to recognize, accommodate, encompass and reflect local heritage dialogues and practices that exist in Qatar, which may aid in further researching the wider Arabian Peninsula, its histories and heritages