Individual and collective identity: Dorothy Allison's literary contribution to demystifying the poor whites/"white trash" stigma

In this day and age, when uncertainty for minority groups seems to have resurfaced in the political arena of the USA, it is worth noting the work that writers such as Dorothy Allison have been performing during the past forty years. Determined to take down the barriers that outcast the poor whites from the mainstream, Allison‟s work feels as contemporary now as it did in the nineteen eighties. Adamant on telling things how they are, Allison‟s life and work represent a relentless effort to draw the reader closer to the people she grew up with, the poor whites, also known as „white trash.‟ This article serves as an introduction to Dorothy Allison‟s literary commitment to revealing the truth behind the stigma of being poor and white. In doing so, Allison‟s literary contribution to building poor whites‟ true identity will be examined through the analysis of the objectives behind her writing, her own identity seeking mechanisms as well as her honest attempt to show the humanness in being white and poor. A look into her work in which her contribution to collective and individual identity seeking can be clearly identified is being offered to conclude this article.En la era actual, cuando la incertidumbre para los grupos minoritarios parece haber resurgido en el ámbito político de los EEUU, merece la pena reseñar el trabajo que autores como Dorothy Allison han venido realizando durante los últimos cuarenta años. Decidida a derribar las barreras que separan a los blancos pobres de la mayoría, la obra de Allison parece ahora tan actual como lo fue en los años ochenta. Firme en que las cosas se cuenten como son, la vida y la obra de Allison representan un esfuerzo incansable por acercar al lector a aquéllos con los que creció, los blancos pobres, también conocidos como „basura blanca‟. Este artículo sirve de introducción al compromiso literario de Dorothy Allison de revelar la verdad escondida detrás del estigma de ser blanco y pobre. Para ello, se examina la contribución literaria de Allison a construir la verdadera identidad de los blancos pobres desde un análisis de sus objetivos literarios, de los mecanismos de búsqueda de su propia identidad así como su sincero intento de mostrar el aspecto humano en ser blanco y pobre. Una visión de su obra en la que se identifica claramente la búsqueda de una identidad individual y colectiva concluye este artículo

Illusion of Control in a Brownian Game

Both single-player Parrondo games (SPPG) and multi-player Parrondo games (MPPG) display the Parrondo Effect (PE) wherein two or more individually fair (or Llosing) games yield a net winning outcome if alternated periodically or randomly. (There is a more formal, less restrictive definition of the PE.) We illustrate that, when subject to an elementary optimization rule, the PG displays degraded rather than enhanced returns. Optimization provides only the illusion of control, when low-entropy strategies (i.e. which use more information) under-perform random strategies (with maximal entropy). This illusion is unfortuntately widespread in many human attempts to manage or predict complex systems. For the PG, the illusion is especially striking in that the optimization rule reverses an already paradoxical-seeming positive gain - the Parrondo effect proper - and turns it negative. While this phenomenon has been previously demonstrated using somewhat artificial conditions in the MPPG (L. Dinios and J.M.R. Parrondo. Europhysics Letters 63, 319 (2003); J.M.R. Parrondo et al. Advances in Condensed Matter and Statistical Mechanics, eds. E. Korutcheva and R. Cuerno, Nova Science Publishers, 2003), we demonstrate it in the natural setting of a history-dependent SPPG.Comment: 8 page with 1 tabl

Stochastic thermodynamics of hidden pumps

We show that a reversible pumping mechanism operating between two states of a kinetic network can give rise to Poisson transitions between these two states. An external observer, for whom the pumping mechanism is not accessible, will observe a Markov chain satisfying local detailed balance with an emerging effective force induced by the hidden pump. Due to the reversibility of the pump, the actual entropy production turns out to be lower than the coarse grained entropy production estimated from the flows and affinities of the resulting Markov chain. Moreover, in presence of a large time scale separation between the fast pumping dynamics and the slow network dynamics, a finite current with zero dissipation may be produced. We make use of these general results to build a synthetase-like kinetic scheme able to reversibly produce high free energy molecules at a finite rate and a rotatory motor achieving 100\% efficiency at finite speed.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, v1: First version, v2: Major changes, new applications and new results (pumping can always be performed reversibly), v3 version accepted in Phys. Rev.

Thermodynamic energy exchange in a moving plate capacitor

In this paper we describe an apparent paradox concerning a moving plate capacitor driven by thermal noise from a resistor. The plates are attracted together, but a demon restores the plates of the capacitor to their original position when the voltage across the capacitor is small-hence only small forces are present for the demon to work against. The demon has to work harder than this to avoid the situation of perpetual motion, but the open question is how? This is unsolved, however we explore the concept of a moving plate capacitor by examining the case where it is still excited by thermal noise, but where the restoring force on the capacitor plates is provided by a simple spring rather than some unknown demon. We display simulation results with interesting behavior, particularly where the capacitor plates collide with each other. (c) 2001 American Institute of Physics.B. R. Davis, D. Abbott, and J. M. R. Parrond

Maxwell demons in phase space

Although there is not a complete "proof" of the second law of thermo- dynamics based on microscopic dynamics, two properties of Hamiltonian systems have been used to prove the impossibility of work extraction from a single thermal reservoir: Liouville's theorem and the adiabatic invariance of the volume enclosed by an energy shell. In this paper we analyze these two properties in the Szilard engine and other systems related with the Maxwell demon. In particular, we recall that the enclosed volume is no longer an adiabatic invariant in non ergodic systems and explore the consequences of this on the second law.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in EPJS

Thermodynamic Reversibility in Feedback Processes

The sum of the average work dissipated plus the information gained during a thermodynamic process with discrete feedback must exceed zero. We demonstrate that the minimum value of zero is attained only by feedback-reversible processes that are indistinguishable from their time-reversal, thereby extending the notion of thermodynamic reversibility to feedback processes. In addition, we prove that in every realization of a feedback-reversible process the sum of the work dissipated and change in uncertainty is zero.Comment: 6 pages, 4, figures, accepted in EPL, expanded discussion of thermodynamic reversibilit