Militarised violence in the service of state-imposed emergencies over Palestine and Kenya

States of Emergency are declared against the disorder-ing of state sovereign power by acts of resistance, rebellion and revolt and are characterised by the technologies of control, containment and punishment. Through spatial, archival and visual encounters with emergency landscapes and the geographies of resistance, the essay considers the historic and contemporary operations, provisions, regulations and practices authorised under state-imposed emergencies. It does so in order firstly, to bring attention to the practices authorised through state-imposed emergencies and the currency and saliency of their ongoing effects, and secondly to re-frame the militarised violence of settlement/occupation as an integral part of state-imposed emergencies in which all that is necessary will be done to protect the sovereign state from the resistance of the colonised/occupied and to effect a return to ‘order’.   Through encounters with the archival record, and the architectures, remnants and territorial arrangements found in post-colonial Kenya and across the multiple geographies of Palestine, the essay draws out seven clusters of state imposed emergency practices and effects. The work grapples with a number of questions: what is it that a declared state of emergency performs for the state? Does a state of emergency enable particular forms of militarised violence? Are there common practices to be found across different modes of state-imposed emergencies? What is the genealogy to the states of emergency across Palestine and Kenya? Does our excavation of the practices of state-imposed emergency shed light on the ways we apprehend state violence in colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial geographies?

The Presence of Palestinian Absence in Narrating the Zionist Nation into Being

In 2005, the 38th year of the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and the year that saw the construction of an eight metre high concrete Wall of Separation through the Occupied West Bank, an exhibition, 'The New Hebrews: A Century of Israeli Art', was held at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.  The exhibition can be read as the narration of the Zionist nation coming into being – a narration in which the Palestinian people do not figure, though the reconfiguration of the land does. Only in the room on Conflict are Palestinian refugees, the Occupation and the Wall represented by Israeli photographers and media artists, making a slight dent into a historiography and landscape devoid of Palestinian agency and presence. From a Jewish feminist engagement with the discourses on Palestinian Right of Return, the essay addresses a set of questions about the field of vision posed by Ariella Azoulay in Death’s Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy (2001) when she asks: Who sees? Who is capable of seeing, what, and from where? Who is authorised to look? How is this authorization given or acquired? In whose name does one look? What can be seen outside the narrative of redemption and the frame set by the Temple Scroll and the Jug of Tears? Are the photographs of the Intifada and the portraits from the refugee camps in effect inserting the presence of the spectral other, as described by Judith Butler? This essay will consider the ways in which we might read these Israeli photographic insertions in the circumstance where representation and representational space is such a contested feature of the conflict

Creating an Equitable Future in Washington State

Creating an Equitable Future in Washington State: Black Well-Being & Beyond is the first in a series of reports assessing barriers to success for Black Washingtonians—including access to and quality of education, housing, jobs and health care.Published in 2015 in collaboration with the Washington Commission on African American Affairs and the African American Leadership Forum–Seattle, the report represents an ongoing effort to elevate and amplify the voices of Black Washingtonians in the decision-making processes that influence their everyday lives.The report seeks to:Identify and evaluate obstacles to economic security, to education opportunities, and to equity in the criminal justice system, in health and in civic engagement.Support a public dialogue on race generally, but be specific about the unique experiences of Black people in Washington state.Contribute to a movement that builds an equitable future for Black Washingtonians and supports community-driven public policy solutions

Comparisons of psychophysical and neurophysiological studies of cochlear implants

This paper compares psychophysical and neural studies of electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve with the goal of evaluating the relevance of single-unit animal models for the development of cochlear prostheses for profoundly deaf humans. Comparative psychophysical studies with implanted deaf subjects indicate that animal models, at least nonhuman primates, provide a close match to humans, though this is not always true for acoustic stimulation of normal-hearing subjects. However, the human-animal comparisons, especially those involving electrical stimuli, need further study using more carefully matched conditions. Comparisons of psychophysical and neurophysiological thresholds for electrical stimulation in animals reveal consistently higher thresholds in the neural studies. A number of factors which may account for these differences are discussed. A partial resolution of the problem could result from conducting neurophysiological and behavioral studies in the same animal. Finally, comparison of psychophysical and neurophysiological studies of temporal encoding suggest that there may be more information encoded in the auditory nerve than is used by the system, at least for nonspectral frequency discrimination. This points to a need for further analysis of the processing of this information at higher levels in the auditory pathway.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27195/1/0000198.pd

Across-Site Variation in Detection Thresholds and Maximum Comfortable Loudness Levels for Cochlear Implants

In cochlear implants, variation across stimulation sites in psychophysical detection thresholds (T levels) and maximum comfortable loudness levels (C levels) can be large when narrow-bipolar (BP) stimulation is used. This across-site variation is typically smaller when monopolar (MP) stimulation is used. At least two models can account for across-site variation and the effects of electrode configuration on the magnitude of the variation. According to one model, across-site variation reflects site-to-site differences in the distances between the stimulating electrodes and the sites of action-potential initiation. Under this model, the lower across-site variation with MP stimulation is due to shallower current versus distance gradients. An alternative model assumes that T and C levels depend on integration of activity across the whole population of neurons and that MP stimulation activates neurons over a larger spatial extent than does BP stimulation. If T and C levels are determined by integration of activity across large overlapping populations of neurons, then their values at adjacent sites should be more similar than if these levels result from integration across smaller, more independent populations. We tested the models by examining the effects on across-site variation of three variables believed to affect the spatial extent of activation: electrode configuration, stimulus level within the dynamic range, and electrode-array design. T levels and C levels were measured in 13 subjects with Nucleus ® CI24M (straight array) and 9 subjects with Nucleus ® CI24R(CS) (Contour) cochlear implants using bipolar (BP) and monopolar (MP) electrode configurations. Site-to-site variation in T and C levels for BP stimulation was 2.1–3.3 times larger than that for MP stimulation. Contrary to the across-neuron integration hypothesis, no significant differences were found between across-site variation for T levels and that for C levels for the BP configuration. There was considerable overlap in site-to-site variation values for the two types of implants but mean site-to-site variation in C levels for CI24M implants was significantly lower than that for CI24R(CS) implants. Control studies suggested that these results were not an artifact of the scale, and not due to differences in inherent variability of the psychophysical measures, or to the method of quantifying across-site variation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41381/1/10162_2003_Article_3051.pd

Inner ear implants for experimental electrical stimulation of auditory nerve arrays

Electrode arrays chronically implanted in the inner ear are gaining increased use for experimental studies of the auditory nervous system, as well as for studies related to development of improved auditory prostheses. Commercially available electrode arrays are designed for human use and thus may be unsuitable for experimental studies, particularly in small animals. This paper describes a simple, inexpensive method for making custom electrode arrays in a variety of configurations, suitable for animals ranging from small rodents to non-human primates.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27909/1/0000330.pd

Effects of Electrode Configuration and Stimulus Level on Rate and Level Discrimination with Cochlear Implants

Recent studies have demonstrated that speech perception with cochlear implants can be significantly affected by electrode configuration. Contrary to expectations, broader configurations (monopolar or broad bipolar) produced equal or better speech recognition compared with narrower configurations (narrow bipolar or common ground). One hypothesis that would account for these results is that broader configurations excite larger populations of neurons providing a more robust representation of information on each channel of the prosthesis. It is known that the number of neurons excited by an electrical stimulus increases considerably as the stimulus level increases. Furthermore, many types of discrimination improve as a function of stimulus level. If the discrimination improvements seen with increasing stimulus level are due to increasing the size of the neural population carrying the signal, and if broadening the electrode configuration also increases the size of the activated neural population, then one would expect level and electrode configuration to affect discrimination in similar ways. To test this hypothesis, we studied several types of discrimination as a function of level and electrode configuration in four nonhuman primates with cochlear implants. We tested electrode configurations that produced current fields ranging from very restricted (tripolar) to broad (parallel monopolar). For each configuration, pulse-rate discrimination, amplitude-modulation-frequency discrimination, and level discrimination were tested at current levels spanning much of the psychophysical dynamic range. Results showed large effects of current level on discrimination in many cases. However, effects of electrode configuration at comparable levels within the dynamic range were smaller or absent. Furthermore, the effect of level on discrimination was independent of electrode configuration in most cases even though the rate of spread of neural activation with level is expected to depend on electrode configuration. Possible interpretations of these results are that (1) the current level adjustments necessary to achieve comparable loudness for the various configurations significantly countered any effects of electrode configuration on the size of the activated neural population, or (2) the effects of level on discrimination do not result from its effects on the spatial extent of neural activation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41377/1/10162_2000_Article_22.pd