A Birkhoff connection between quantum circuits and linear classical reversible circuits

Birkhoff's theorem tells how any doubly stochastic matrix can be decomposed as a weighted sum of permutation matrices. Similar theorems on unitary matrices reveal a connection between quantum circuits and linear classical reversible circuits. It triggers the question whether a quantum computer can be regarded as a superposition of classical reversible computers

Hauntology or the return of the real man: edging the Žižek-Laclau controversy on populism

Looking at today’s academization of everyday life – academic knowledge having become central in mediating the presence of the human being with himself, the others and the world – it seems that academia has become the home-base of post-modern man. Academia is however no viable habitat, the (post)modern subject is pushed to the search to rejoin real life and be a real human being. In this paper it is argued that this is centrally related to the topic of ideology. The dispute between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek on populism is re-read in this light as it ultimately boils down to a dispute on what real man is. Laclau’s theory, missing the dimension of the uncanny and the truth shall thus be contrasted with Žižek’s recourse to the idea of hauntology as the latter is the basis for Žižek’s reasserting of what we could call the rock of class struggle. Class struggle furthermore turns out to be also the issue at stake in that other debate of Žižek with Yannis Stavrakakis. In the concluding part the viability of Žižekian hauntology is questioned given the impossible politization of psychoanalysis and its skandalons

Absolute spatial deixis and proto-toponyms in Kata Kolok

This paper presents an overview of spatial deictic structures in Kata Kolok, a sign language which is indigenous to a Balinese village community. Sociolinguistic surveys and lexicographic comparisons have indicated that Kata Kolok is unrelated to the signing varieties in other parts of Bali and should be considered a sign language isolate as such. Kata Kolok emerged five generations ago and has been in intimate contact with spoken Balinese from its incipience. The findings from this paper suggest that this cross-modal contact has led to an absolute construction of the signing space, which is radically different in comparison to spatial deixis in other sign languages. Furthermore, Kata Kolok does not seem to have a class of true toponyms, but rather deploys deictic proto-toponyms. The Kata Kolok system on the whole does not exhibit any related linguistic forms or direct calques from spoken Balinese, and this suggests that the conceptual overlap between these two languages may have been facilitated by shared cultural practices as well as gestural communication rather than direct borrowings. Ultimately, this analysis challenges the very notion of a sign language isolate and suggests that Kata Kolok and other emergent signing varieties should be considered in light of the broader semiotic context in which they have evolved

The A B C’s of Graphic Novels

I have highlighted twenty-five concerns that I address when talking about the graphic novel in the many recent presentations I have conducted on this topic

Beyond psychologisation: the non-psychology of the Flemish novelist Louis Paul Boon

Is not the most intriguing aspect of psychologisation seems to be that every critique threatens to bounce back in some kind of meta-psychologisation. Although in this day and age and age it seems highly unlikely to repeat the popular anti-psychiatry movement of some decades ago and to get an anti-psychology movement on the tracks, it would leave us immediately stranded in some kind of essentialization of the human being and its life-world. Are we thus lost in psychologisation? Is there no outside of psychology and psychologisation? In the following I will focus on the novel De Paradijsvogel (The Bird of Paradise) of the leftist Flemish novelist Louis Paul Boon. I will briefly juxtapose it with Christopher Lasch‘s seminal critique in his book The Culture of Narcissism and search for the germs of a non-psychology: which is, a critique on psychologisation which transcends the pitfalls of metapsychologisation and reopens the path of an ideology critique, the latter seemingly having become impossible too

The influence of land use and mobility policy on travel behavior : a comparative case study of Flanders and the Netherlands

Numerous transportation studies have indicated that the local built environment can have an important effect on travel behavior; people living in suburban neighborhoods travel more by car than people living in urban neighborhoods. In this paper, however, we will analyze whether the regional land use has an important influence on travel behavior by comparing two regions with a varying land-use pattern: Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands. The different land-use pattern seems to have influenced travel behavior in both regions. An active spatial planning policy in the Netherlands, clustering activities in urban surroundings, appears to have realized a sustainable travel behavior, as a substantial share of residents frequently walk, cycle or use public transportation. The rather passive spatial planning in Flanders, resulting in urban sprawl, seems to stimulate car use. The applied mobility policy also has an impact on the travel behavior and land use of the Flemings and the Dutch. Infrastructure is concentrated in Dutch urban environments, whereas Flanders has a more widespread network of infrastructure and cheap public transportation, resulting in a further increase of suburbanization

Psychologization or the discontents of psychoanalysis

This article explores the possibility of a debate between psychoanalysis and the human sciences and, in particular, between psychoanalysis and psychology. Psychoanalysis's particular view on subjectivity values fiction (truth having the structure of fiction) as a constitutive dimension of personal and social reality. In contrast, the mainstream psy-sciences threaten to remain caught in the attempt to unmask things as they really are (eg, hard neurobiological reality), thus risking losing the subjective dimension as such. Drawing on examples of phenomena of psychologization (in Reality TV and in contemporary discourses of parent and child education), the author spells out the different, but eventually and necessarily intertwined, responses of psychoanalysis and psychology to modernity and modern subjectivity