A labial art-politics

In this article we focus on the potential for an alignment of certain feminist artistic practices and poststructuralist conceptions of critique that may enable ways of theorising practices of resistance and engender ways of practicing resistance in theory, without the lurch back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. It will be claimed that an ontological conception of art, considered as that which makes a difference in the world, can not only challenge the primacy of the dogmatic and masculine ‘subject who judges’, but also instil ways of thinking about, and ways of enacting, feminist artistic encounters with the capacity to resist dogmatism. The theoretical stakes of this claim are elaborated through complimentary readings of Deleuze and Guattari’s constructivist account of philosophy and Irigaray’s feminist explorations of what it means to think from within the 'labial', rather than from the position of the dominant phallic symbolic order. We argue that this creative conjunction between Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari provides the resources for a conceptualisation of both feminist artistic practice and the critical practice of poststructuralist philosophy as forms of resistance to the dominant patriarchal order, in ways that can avoid the collapse back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. Revel’s discussion of the role of constituent rather than constituted forms of resistance is employed to draw out the implications of this position for contentious politics. It is concluded that constituent practices of resistance can be understood as a challenge to the phallogocentric symbolic order to the extent that they are practices of a labial art-politic

Magnetic behaviour of SO(5) superconductors

The distinction between type I and type II superconductivity is re-examined in the context of the SO(5) model recently put forth by Zhang. Whereas in conventional superconductivity only one parameter (the Ginzburg-Landau parameter $\kappa$) characterizes the model, in the SO(5) model there are two essential parameters. These can be chosen to be $\kappa$ and another parameter, $\beta$, related to the doping. There is a more complicated relation between $\kappa$ and the behaviour of a superconductor in a magnetic field. In particular, one can find type I superconductivity even when $\kappa$ is large, for appropriate values of $\beta$.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Talk given at MRST Conference on High Energy Physics (2002), Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontari

Native Americans and Athletic Scholarships

This research examines the potential effects of collegiate athletic scholarships on Native American athlete’s lives and the lives of the people in their communities. The main focus of this study is to investigate whether it is more likely that Native American students on athletic scholarships will graduate from college and how it affects their reservation communities. Furthermore, it seeks to discover if Native communities look more favorably on their students pursuing higher education when achieved through athletic talent and why this might be the case. This research is important because there is a cycle of alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, and poor family dynamics, prevalent among Native American reservations. If athletic scholarships can produce a ripple effect that leads to restoring these communities, it is crucial that school administrators, coaches, educators, and parents prioritize the accessibility and awareness of these scholarships. This research could have a large effect on Native American communities by spreading awareness of the opportunity and change collegiate athletic scholarships can bring to Native Americans

Regulating Reprogenetics: Strategic Sacralisation and Semantic Message

This paper forms part of the feminist critique of the regulatory consequences of biomedicine's systematic exclusion of the role of women's bodies in the development ofreprogenetic technologies. I suggest that strategic use of notions of the sacred to decontextualise and delimit disagreement fosters this marginalisation. Here conceptions of the sacred a sacralisation afford a means by which pragmatic consensus over regulation may be achieved, through the deployment of a bricolage of dense images associated with cultural loyalties to solidify support or to exclude contradictory elements. Hence an explicit renegoation of the symbolic order structuring salient debates is necessary to disrupt and enrich the entrenched and exclusionary dominant discourse over reprogenetic regulation of infertility treatment and embryo research in the UNited Kingdom, the cultural anthropology of biomedicine and feminist ethnographies of reprogenetics to illustrate these claims

Global Warming: Why is There Debate?

Previous studies have produced conflicting results for the determining factors of acceptance or rejection of the science behind the global warming phenomenon; some cite religion as a hindrance to the acceptance of this scientific theory [Kilburn 2008], some conclude lack of education is the driving force [Brechin 2003], and some deduce that party affiliation plays the most significant role in determining belief in global warming. In this study, the National Election Survey of 2012 dataset, consisting of 5,916 individual data points from the United States of America, is analyzed to determine the effects of party affiliation on one’s belief in global warming, along with variables for education, religion, and age. The study was conducted using a logit model. The results conclude that religiosity and democratic affiliation had a significantly positive effect on one’s belief in global warming, while education had a significantly negative effect (p\u3c0.01). Age did not have a significant effect. These unexpected results are worth continued consideration, with the inclusion of research into the characteristics of those labeled democrats versus republicans in this dataset, as these distinctions could point to a shift in the generally accepted definitions of the political parties