Suicides of the Marginalised: Cultural Approaches to Suicide, Minorities and Relationality

Suicides among marginalised groups are one of the few occasions in which self-harm and suicide are framed as having cultural, social, environental, historical or structural causes. Suicidology, psychology and public discourse typically understand suicide causality to be grounded in individualised psychic pain and pathology, disavowing the social, cultural, environmental and linguistic contexts. However, public discourse on suicides of ‘marginalised’ groups such as asylum seekers, Indigenous persons and queer/LGBT youth are ‘authorised’ to be discussed from social perspectives, informing opportunities to re-think suicidality, identity and liveability. Building on recent critical challenges to dominant theories, this article examines some of the ways in which the suicides of marginalised groups are described in social terms, demonstrating how cultural approaches to relationality, aspiration, performativity and mobility can expand current thinking on suicide cause and prevention

Suicide and Disciplinarity

A review of  Marzio Barbagli, Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide, trans. Lucinda Byatt, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2015

Making Space: Identity and Place in Western Australian 'Lesbian/Gay' Writing

The paper speculates about a W.A. gay canon that would include writing by Seaforth Mackenzie, Shelley Garner, G. M. Glaskin, Randolph Stow, Elizabeth Jolley and others, but concludes that queer theory questions the nature of canons

The Spectre of Populist Leadership: QAnon, Emergent Formations, and Digital Community

QAnon is an online conspiracy movement centred on cryptic posts published by an unknown figure referred to as "Q." Its anti-hierarchical framework and deployment of an unknown leader can be understood as a substantial departure from other 21st-century populisms that are sustained by the celebrity relationship between a leader (often aspiring to or gaining political office) and its followers (constituted in community through consumption of the leaders’ social media posts). Reflecting on contemporary debates and insights within cultural studies and digital communication literature, this article investigates some of the ways in which the spectral leadership of Q presents challenges for understanding and apprehending populist movements. In light of QAnon, there is an emerging need to make sense of populisms that are built on mythical or anonymous characters rather than on identifiable human actors in leadership roles. We begin by discussing the role of key practices of contemporary populist leadership and contrast these with justice-based populisms that are community-led without the figure of an identifiable leader. We argue that, as a populist movement, QAnon fits neither of these frameworks and, instead, has drawn on the affordances of digital media and its intersections with postmodern hyperreality to produce a new formation of populist movement today. Arguing that Q is the simulacra of a leader, we theorise the ways in which QAnon fosters affiliation and action from its adherents who, themselves, take on the role of saviour-leader

Quantum Communication

Quantum communication, and indeed quantum information in general, has changed the way we think about quantum physics. In 1984 and 1991, the first protocol for quantum cryptography and the first application of quantum non-locality, respectively, attracted a diverse field of researchers in theoretical and experimental physics, mathematics and computer science. Since then we have seen a fundamental shift in how we understand information when it is encoded in quantum systems. We review the current state of research and future directions in this new field of science with special emphasis on quantum key distribution and quantum networks.Comment: Submitted version, 8 pg (2 cols) 5 fig

Identity in the disrupted time of COVID-19: Performativity, crisis, mobility and ethics

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global cultural crisis, experienced through various losses of everydayness, including particularly restrictions on mobility and the sudden emergence of new fears and anxieties over infection. This paper theorises some of the ways in which that crisis can be understood in cultural and discursive terms, as a rupture in normativity, a disturbance in social relationality and as a state of exception. Drawing on Judith Butler's theories of performativity, the paper investigates how such a cultural rupture can be understood to affect performative subjectivity, identity and selfhood, whereby a breach in normative everydayness prompts the re-constitution of subjectivity itself. The paper explores how the reconfiguration of identity is experienced as corporeal and as a site of anxiety and lost dignity. The final section of the paper draws some initial conclusions about the potency of cultural and identity transformation for new ethics of non-violence, arguing that the obligation to resist norms of mobility and contact is an ethical obligation of necessary cohabitation

Emergence

http://headworx.eyesis.co.nz/jaam

Pęknięcie i przepaść: teoria queer a społeczne uwarunkowania samobójstw wśród młodzieży o nienormatywnej seksualności

Poniższy artykuł używa teorii queer, aby dowieść, że istnieją konkurujące ze sobą socjalizacje, dyskursy oraz "platformy" seksualności, przy czym dominujące dyskursy seksualności, dla których warunkiem społecznej przynależności i uczestnictwa jest podmiotowość oparta na heteronormatywnej lub homonormatywnej socjalizacji, stanowią czynnik ryzyka w odniesieniu do samobójstw notowanych wśród młodzieży o nienormatywnej seksualności. Dokonując analizy raportu opisującego przypadek samobójstwa młodej osoby, artykuł korzysta z queerowych teorii podmiotowości, butlerowskiej performatywności oraz derridiańskiego odczytania „chory”, aby pokazać, jak odczuwana seksualność, której jednostka nie jest w stanie zintegrować z dominującymi dyskursami seksualności (co uniemożliwia podmiotowi wypracowanie spójności, czytelności i rozpoznawalności, będących podstawą poczucia społecznej przynależności), otwiera przepaść między współzawodniczącymi logikami seksualności, co z kolei może stanowić czynnik ryzyka prowadzący do samobójstw wśród queerowej młodzieży. Zdaniem autora, ryzyko samobójstwa spowodowanego (problemami z) seksualnością wśród młodzieży może zostać zredukowane poprzez artykulację queerowych, płynnych i polimorficznych pozytywności seksualnych oraz poszerzenie dostępnych dyskursów, platform, tożsamości oraz form socjalizacji ekspresji seksualnej