On similarity solutions for boundary layer flows with prescribed heat flux

This paper is concerned with existence, uniqueness and behavior of the solutions of the autonomous third order nonlinear differential equation $f'''+(m+2)ff''-(2m+1)f'^2=0$ on $\mathbb{R}^+$ with the boundary conditions $f(0)=-\gamma$, $f'(\infty)=0$ and $f''(0)=-1$. This problem arises when looking for similarity solutions for boundary layer flows with prescribed heat flux. To study solutions we use some direct approach as well as blowing-up coordinates to obtain a plane dynamical system.Comment: v2: new page-settin

An Extension Theorem for Non-transitive Preferences

The paper shows that any sigma-transitive preference can be extended to a complete preference preserving sigma-transitivity. The result has potential applications to the theory of choice and specifically to revealed preference theory.Non-transitive preferences; Revealed preference theory

‘Charlie Hebdo’ and the two sides of imitation

In a 2009 paper, one of the neuroscientists instrumental to the discovery of ‘mirror neurons’, Vittorio Gallese, argued that there are always ‘two sides’ to mimesis – in and of itself mimesis is ‘neither good nor bad’, argued Gallese, as it can be declined in terms of both conflictual or social behavior. While the great majority of work on imitation, contagion and suggestion (ICS) have emphasized imitation as either a vector of the social or as the building block of our social ontology, René Girard’s mimetic theory stands out as perhaps the approach most preoccupied with the ill effects of mimesis. Why is this so? Is Girard’s position an excessively one-sided and negative take on imitation? Drawing on the example of the 2015 ‘Charlie Hebdo’ terror attacks, in this chapter I argue, firstly, that imitation was central to both the violence perpetrated by attackers and the political and affective order that emerged around of the attacks. Thus, there is a fundamental ambivalence about the social and political workings of imitation. Secondly, I argue that behind Girard’s negative view of imitation lies an unacknowledged concern about the power of suggestion, and in particular affective suggestion. In fact, behind Girard’s growing concern about today’s escalating mimetic crisis there is a specific concern about the global and mimetic escalation of affects

The global politics of ugly feelings: pessimism and resentment in a mimetic world

Negative emotions are not what they used to be. As the world edges closer and closer to the brink of a dark political dystopia, sentiments of disenchantment such as pessimism and resentment stand out as dominant moods of our age. Despite being once endowed with a critical and creative potential, today these ‘ugly feelings’ sustain forms of politics that are ambivalent and equivocal. Against the background of a highly mimetic social ontology, where affects mutate into memes at dazzling speed, these sentiments of disenchantments are appropriated by the political right as well as the left, hanging dangerously between reaction and emancipation. The chapter provides a diagnosis of their re-emergence, highlighting their common phenomenological matrix, their shared dysphoric and non-cathartic nature, and their ambivalent political work

The Globalisation of Resentment: Failure, Denial, and Violence in World Politics

Through the lenses of contemporary terrorism, this article charts the rise of global resentment against the background of the multiplication and denial of failure. The article examines resentment and ressentiment as emotional responses to different kinds of failure: failure of justice and failure of recognition, respectively. It then investigates their place in the affective and moral economy of the global age, teasing out the key distinctions between the two emotions and assessing the strengths of the claim concerning an ever expanding diffusion of ressentiment in late modern times. Through inroads into classical and contemporary political theory, the article seeks to rescue resentment from the relative hegemony of ressentiment. The article closes with a reading of the Paris terror attacks of 7 January 2015 and 13 November 2015, that seeks to disentangle the different forms of resentment mobilised in these acts. By raising the issue of the moral value of resentment, the article ultimately seeks to address the question of how to cope with failure while holding on to emancipatory, counter-hegemonic, and self-affirming political practices