Right ventricular function in acute pulmonary embolism: a three-dimensional strain study

International audienc

Deflationary tactics with the archive of life: contemporary Jewish art and popular culture

This paper discusses art works by Suzanne Treister, Deborah Kass and Doug Fishbone. It considers the importance of their work for contemporary Jewish identity within the terms of wider conceptual questions that preoccupy contemporary art. These concerns are challenging the perceived structures of power, the “performance” of subjectivity and the questioning of authenticity. A deflationary aesthetic is central to the critique of these structures of thinking fuelled by an interest in the relationship between Jewish subjectivity and popular culture that underpins all of these art works. I argue that popular culture plays a key role as a constituting factor in the production of contemporary Anglophone subjectivity. I use the case studies to develop the argument in the three artists’ specificities and the way they all question the idea of authenticity as a stable source of self-understanding. Suzanne Treister questions history and our relationship with historical events, specifically the Holocaust. She also explores questions of the relationship between structures of power and narratives of history. Debora Kass considers the representation of Jewish women, power and iconicity. Doug Fishbone, a younger artist, takes on self-hate as a transformative tool and as a motif that destabilizes Jewishness as a category, especially in an age of the accelerated post-internet-derived subjectivity

‘The smell of death and the smell of life’: authenticity, anxiety and perceptions of death at Varanasi’s cremation grounds

This paper contributes to an understanding of existential authenticity and existential anxiety in tourism studies through an investigation of tourists' perceptions of death, the Self, and "others" at the Hindu cremation grounds in Varanasi, India. Encounters with death at dark tourism sites serve as reminders of one's own mortality affecting one's attitude towards death, perception of self, and even challenging one's personal values. Existentialists assert that anxiety is a condition of existential authenticity, and therefore moments of the existentially authentic experience are not always pleasurable. This paper argues that confrontation with death, as exemplified by the Aghori rituals and the cremation grounds in Varanasi, offers tourists an opportunity to examine the inevitability that life will end and to engage with this existential predicament and anxiety in an embodied sense, thereby pushing some of them towards life changes in the pursuit of existential authenticity

Paul Nizan: conspiracy and the contemplation of crime

Paul Nizan (1905-1940) is also known in France as the ‘impossible communist’, for his long-term allegiance to the Party and the abrupt cancellation of his membership, in the late 1930s, following the Nazi-Soviet pact. This paper discusses a number of his writings, focusing particularly on his best known novel, The Conspiracy, where a revolutionary cell plans illegal political action. Conflict, nihilism, suicide and betrayal are among the topics stemming from the novel, which will be examined from a criminological perspective. The analysis will primarily address ‘cultural’ aspects of crime and refer to notions such as ‘thrill’ and ‘seductions of crime’ among others. These notions, it will be argued, require some revision in the face of the imagined or actual criminality described in the novel

Future Imaginings: Organizing in Response to Climate Change

Climate change has rapidly emerged as a major threat to our future. Indeed the increasingly dire projections of increasing global average temperatures and escalating extreme weather events highlight the existential challenge that climate change presents for humanity. In this editorial article we outline how climate change not only presents real, physical threats but also challenges the way we conceive of the broader economic, political and social order. We asked ourselves (and the contributors to this special issue) how we can imagine alternatives to our current path of ever escalating greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. Through reference to the contributions that make up this special issue, we suggest that critically engaging with the concept of social, economic and political imaginaries can assist in tackling the conceptual and organizational challenges climate change poses. Only by questioning current sanitised and market-oriented interpretations of the environment, and embracing the catharsis and loss that climate change will bring, can we open up space for new future imaginings

Fairy tale tourism: the architectural projection mapping of magically real and irreal festival lightscapes

This paper explores how established light festivals such as the Fête des Lumières in Lyon and Lumiere in Durham were first conceived by Robert-Houdin as illusory illuminations in the Loire in the 1950s. The research investigates the concept of spectacles as inversions of reality; re-situating light works within authenticity theory by exploring their manipulation of magical reality and irreality. The research uses the authors’ experience of event design to assess different interactions of light with the tri-dimensional architectural canvas, suggesting three classifications of animated projection mapping events: architecturally passive, architecturally physically active and architecturally metaphysically active. Each category has implications for how spectators perceive these installations. Architecturally passive events may use fairy tale content, evoking atavistic and affective responses, the ‘skinning’ of buildings with magical reality is designed to evoke perceptual duality, and the wobbling unfolding of irreality may ultimately create a state of ‘illuminated flow.

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

Class dynamics of development: a methodological note

This article argues that class relations are constitutive of developmental processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. In doing so it illustrates and explains the diversity of the actually existing forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations such as gender and ethnicity. This is part of a wider project to re- vitalise class analysis in the study of development problems and experiences

Loss, Bereavement and Creativity: Meanings and Uses

Within the field of death and bereavement studies, the assumption that loss and bereavement provide the spur to creativity has become so widespread as to assume the status of a conventional wisdom. With this in mind, this article surveys the literature on the topic, extant, and contemporary, revealing its diffuseness as well as the multidisciplinary synergies produced by those working in disparate academic and clinical fields of practice. In so doing, the article explores what it means to be creative in the context of loss and bereavement, the potential for self-development and personal growth offered by creativity and loss, the theoretical premises linking creativity and loss, and the application and challenges for creative therapies in the institutional context of hospice and palliative car