Samuel Beckett's trilogy and the revolution of the body in Vichy France

This essay explores the depiction of the degenerating male form in Samuel Beckett’s post-World War II trilogy of novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable) in the context of Vichy France’s ideology of the body—specifically the male body—and the propaganda of the regime’s Révolution nationale, which Beckett would have encountered in wartime France. Read with this historical situation in mind, this essay argues that Beckett’s move from the limping Molloy to the bed-bound Malone and finally to the physically limbless figure of The Unnamable gives expression to a reality of physical deterioration that is unique to the degenerating body, a reality that also inverts the ideal of physical perfection that regimes such as Vichy produced. Analyzed in this way, Beckett’s work can be seen to aggravate and challenge both Vichy’s idolization of the strong, athletic male form and the ways in which Vichy and other midcentury ideologies produced narratives of the body steeped in a narrow and ultimately violent essentialism

Strengthening the ties that exist: Reexploring charted territory

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Family migration and mobility sequences in the United States

Significant changes in family composition in the past quarter-century raise important questions about life-course outcomes embedded in these family changes, especially in relation to the migratory and mobility patterns of individuals and families. The classic distinction between long-distance/employment and short-distance/housing-related moves may be eroding. Patterns of movement appear much less dichotomous and more diverse as family structures become more diverse. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics this study shows that the previous research, which suggested relatively simple links between long-distance and short-distance moves, is an over-simplification. Moreover, there is much more unintended movement at both migratory and mobility scales suggesting the economic models of employment migration may be missing important family dynamics in the migration mobility process.children, family migration, households, life course, moving intentions, residential mobility, sequences

LSE RB feature essay: populism and the limits of neoliberalism by William Davies

Coinciding with the release of a revised edition of The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition, previously reviewed on LSE RB in 2015, William Davies argues that the recent surge in ‘populism’ must be understood in relation to the structures of political, cultural and moral economy, in particular the inability of neoliberalism to sustain the myth of a level playing field or a sense of shared reality between those who constantly ‘win’ and those who are set up to repeatedly ‘lose’

Coordination polymers and isomerism; a study using silver(I) and a ∏-stacked ligand

The ligand 2,5-bis(2-pyridylmethylsulfanylmethyl)pyrazine (L) was prepared by the base coupling of 2-(sulfanylmethyl)pyridine and 2,5-bis(chloromethyl)pyrazine. This new ligand was treated with AgClO₄ in a 1 1 metal-to-ligand ratio and with AgNO₃in a 2 1 metal-to-ligand ratio to give coordination polymers. The crystal structures of {[Ag(L)]ClO₄}∞ ( 1) and {[Ag₂(L)](NO₃)₂}∞ ( 2) were determined. The Ag(I) ions in the one-dimensional polymeric chains of 1 adopted square-pyramidal geometries with the pyridine and pyrazine N donors coordinated in an extremely bent fashion. The structure of 2 revealed two isomeric polymer chains in the one crystal forming a single supramolecular array. The isomeric polymers differed in the donor atoms about the Ag(I) ions and in the arrangement of adjacent ligands along the chain. A feature of both structures was that L adopted a three-layer ∏-stacked arrangement

“Occasional extinction or more likely occultation”: form and source in “Long Observation of the Ray”

This article analyses Samuel Beckett’s unpublished prose piece “Long Observation of the Ray” (UoR MS 2909; 1975–1976) and considers the formal, thematic, and intertextual aspects of the text in order to reflect on its ‘abandoned’ status. By drawing attention to possible sources for the linguistic and descriptive choices that Beckett makes throughout the manuscript, the article argues that the text represents a partial return to the author’s abiding interest in calculations of light and distance first prompted by his study of astronomy, a return which he uses to further his experimentation with form and structure in “Long Observation of the Ray” and beyond

Functional Themes from Psychiatric Genome-Wide Screens

Technological advances and a greater degree of inter-laboratory co-operation mean that genome-wide analyses can now be used to identify genetic variants that are robustly associated with the risk of developing psychiatric and neurological disorders. In contrast to the candidate gene approach, such screens may identify variants within genes which have a hitherto unappreciated role in disorder pathogenesis, and whose brain function is obscure. In this Perspective, I discuss how the behavioral functions of such genes may be investigated using model systems, drawing attention to the potential caveats and limitations with such approaches. The power of focused cross-species studies needs to be effectively exploited to enable useful insights into the molecular pathogenesis of common and disabling disorders, and ultimately to provide better clinical outcomes for patients

The Lived Experience of K-12 Educators Who Practice Within An Acute Care Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital

Human service professionals serve roles in society in which they are responsible for the well-being of countless numbers of people. These professionals span important fields including nursing, social work, law enforcement, medicine, and education. This study focused on a specific subgroup of human service professionals: special education teachers who practice within an acute care inpatient psychiatric facility. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the lived experiences of educators in order to identify emergent themes that best describe their experiences. The psychiatric hospital in this study is a large hospital located within an urban area of the Northeastern United States. The hospital is part of a large, not-for-profit medical system that serves both clients with private health insurance as well as clients on a variety of government sponsored health plans. Within this setting, the turnover rate for the special education teachers was approximately 72% between 2005-2010. Using a sample of 6 volunteer teachers, qualitative data related to their lived experiences were collected through the use of semi-structured interviews. The hermeneutic phenomenological approach was utilized to explore emergent themes in the lived human world, as we may find it at any particular moment. Within the literature review, five themes were formulated from the experience of personal narratives and from research findings related to this topic in regards to other mental health professionals. The five themes were utilized as a guide and a lens with the understanding that there were going to be more existing themes within the setting that become exposed during the investigation. The five themes were: effort/reward imbalance, workplace bullying/horizontal violence, sleep disturbance, burnout and efficacy. The results of this study led to 4 global emergent themes and 17 emergent subthemes. The four global themes that describe the lived experience of educators are relationships, safety, whole body reactions, and system reactions. The findings lend important data to the relative dearth of information related to the lived experiences of professional educators who practice within large acute care inpatient psychiatric facilities