Nachbilder des Orients – Hugo von Hofmannsthals Märchen der 672. Nacht

Germanic Languages and Literature

“Amerika gibt es nicht” – On the Semiotics of Literary America in the Twentieth Century

From Alexis de Tocqueville's arrival in Manhattan and his amazement at the artificial façades of houses on the East River, we can observe a specific semiotic model in depictions of America: America does not exist, which is to say, the referent often becomes questionable in these texts. All the more frequently descriptions of America hew to a metonymic mode of writing; they deal with signs which refer to other signs, with accounts reporting mostly what has been read elsewhere. With Franz Kafka and Wolfgang Koeppen this essay shows how America has become the setting of poetological self-determination; America is a textual construct in which the significatory nature of language is itself negotiated. Under these conditions, how can another America novel be written at the end of the 20th-century? In the concluding passages, this essay discusses how contemporary authors Thomas Meinecke and Michael Roes succeed in resurrecting America's narrative possibilities.Germanic Languages and Literature

Theater of Revolution and the Law of Genre--Bertolt Brecht’s The Measures Taken (Die Maßnahme)

It has been emphasized frequently that Bertolt Brecht’s political theater, Die Maßnahme in particular, has been influenced by Carl Schmitt’s theory of the sovereign and the state of exception. While it is indeed remarkable that his learning play seems to record some of the concepts which in Schmitt belong to the categories of political theory, this essay will return to the role and discourse of the theater in Brecht. The drama of revolution is a political text through and through, but it cannot separate the political from the theater; the drama of revolution is in search of a form, a meta-theater, in which the overcoming of an order is thus first and foremost the attempt to suspend the law of genre. Strikingly, Brecht’s learning play brings to the stage all the characteristics which have, since Aristotle, marked tragedy: the pity, the error of a hero, the hero’s comprehension of the error, the guilt of an innocent man, the hero’s death, the sacrifice, and catharsis. Brecht reproduces the law of the genre he wishes to supersede and entangles his figures in inescapable aporias which have dominated the meta-discourse on drama in revolutionary theater from Büchner’s Danton’s Tod to Heiner Müller’s Mauser.Germanic Languages and Literature

Against the Compositional View of Facts

It is commonly assumed that facts would be complex entities made out of particulars and universals. This thesis, which I call Compositionalism, holds that parthood may be construed broadly enough so that the relation that holds between a fact and the entities it ‘ties’ together counts as a kind of parthood. I argue firstly that Compositionalism is incompatible with the possibility of certain kinds of fact and universal, and, secondly, that such facts and universals are possible. I conclude that Compositionalism is false. What all these kinds of fact and universal have in common is a violation of supplementation principles governing any relation that may be intelligibly regarded as a kind of parthood. Although my arguments apply to Compositionalism generally, I focus on recent work by David Armstrong, who is a prominent and explicit Compositionalist

“It’s my dream to work with Olympic athletes”: Neophyte sport psychologists’ expectations and initial experiences regarding service delivery

We examined trainee practitioners' initial experiences of applied sport psychology practice. Semi-structured interviews (4) were conducted over 6 months with 7 full-time MSc students before, during, and after the applied sport psychology module, when they were working with clients. Participants also kept reflective diaries over an 8-week period whilst working with clients. Findings included: (a) motivations and expectations of an ASP practice career, (b) perceptions of service delivery, (c) emotional demands, and (d) pivotal experiences. Findings extend previous literature on the initial stages of practitioner development, providing micro-level detail on aspects of the intense development process during this pivotal perio

Making a home, finding a job: investigating early housing and employment outcomes for young people leaving care

This paper presents findings from a new study of outcomes for young people leaving care funded by the Department for Education and Skills. It reports findings for a sample of 106 young people in relation to progress made in housing and employment some 12-15 months after leaving care. The generally poor employment outcomes of care leavers are acknowledged, but ingredients that make for success are also highlighted, including the value of settled care and post-care careers, sound career planning and, significantly, the value of delaying young people's transitions from care. Early career paths also interconnect with how young people fare in housing, in developing life skills and with other problems in their lives after leaving care. Housing outcomes were more encouraging and predominantly shaped by events after leaving care, and faring well in housing was the factor most closely associated with positive mental well-being in young people. Some groups that are at risk of faring badly are identified, including young people with mental-health problems, young people with persistent offending or substance misuse problems and, in some respects, young disabled people. The implications of these findings for leaving care services are considered

Inconsistent boundaries

Research on this paper was supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund, Royal Society of New Zealand.Mereotopology is a theory of connected parts. The existence of boundaries, as parts of everyday objects, is basic to any such theory; but in classical mereotopology, there is a problem: if boundaries exist, then either distinct entities cannot be in contact, or else space is not topologically connected (Varzi in Noûs 31:26–58, 1997). In this paper we urge that this problem can be met with a paraconsistent mereotopology, and sketch the details of one such approach. The resulting theory focuses attention on the role of empty parts, in delivering a balanced and bounded metaphysics of naive space.PostprintPeer reviewe

Proteome profiling in cerebrospinal fluid reveals novel biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease

Neurodegenerative diseases are a growing burden, and there is an urgent need for better biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment efficacy. Structural and functional brain alterations are reflected in the protein composition of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients have higher CSF levels of tau, but we lack knowledge of systems-wide changes of CSF protein levels that accompany AD. Here, we present a highly reproducible mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics workflow for the in-depth analysis of CSF from minimal sample amounts. From three independent studies (197 individuals), we characterize differences in proteins by AD status (> 1,000 proteins, CV < 20%). Proteins with previous links to neurodegeneration such as tau, SOD1, and PARK7 differed most strongly by AD status, providing strong positive controls for our approach. CSF proteome changes in Alzheimer's disease prove to be widespread and often correlated with tau concentrations. Our unbiased screen also reveals a consistent glycolytic signature across our cohorts and a recent study. Machine learning suggests clinical utility of this proteomic signature