Our stories, our selves: Fictional representations of self-harm

Self-harm is often understood, experienced, or culturally positioned as an object which is particularly difficult to represent or narrativise. These difficulties encompass both the widespread fear that depictions of self-harm lead to imitative behaviour, and the difficulty of finding appropriate narrative forms or language for an experience which is often complex and contradictory. This thesis explores this difficulty, and in so doing centres the experiences and perspectives of people who have self-harmed in analysing fictional depictions of the practice. This is accomplished both through the study’s advisory group, and through conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with people who have self-harmed. These interviews are then brought together with close readings of fictional texts, including novels, plays, films, and television. Thus the study is an innovative, interdisciplinary attempt to bring both Literary Studies and Social Science methods to bear on the question of narratives of self-harm. Through this method the thesis suggests, first, that modes of subjectivity and identification through and in relation to fictional depictions of self-harm are bound up with knowledge and agency. I then argue that the meaning, affect, and significance of self-harm within fictional texts is intertwined with fraught questions of authenticity, with the negotiation of textual pleasure, and with the stereotypical figure of the self-harmer as a young, white, middle class woman. Finally, I explore endings and chronicity, noting that through compression and certainty the self-harming subject is presented with stark futures of recovery or death, leaving little space for self-harm’s own temporalities. Throughout, I note that the specific construction of self-harm in fictional narratives often (although not always) functions to locate the self-harming subject as beyond or not deserving of care. This occurs, in part, because self-harm is (or has been understood and constructed as) both signifying and signalling a failure of rational, contained, self-controlled neoliberal selfhood

Unique Lactobacillus Produced Metabolites Modulate T-Cell Response through the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor: Implications for CNS Autoimmunity

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS). The causes of MS are extremely complex; however, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that disease risk is highly associated with environmental factors and consequent gene-environmental interactions. As such, this study focuses on the connection between the gut microbiome and CNS as an arising risk factor and potential mediator of CNS autoimmune disease. The present research examines the capacity of a gut commensal species, Lactobacillus reuteri (L. reuteri), to modulate effector function of immune cells in the peripheral immune system and along the GI tract, before these cells go on to invade the CNS and initiate breakdown of the blood brain barrier (BBB). One proposed mechanism by which L. reuteri impacts immune cells is through the production of tryptophan-derived indole metabolites. We hypothesize that these metabolites act as agonists for the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), and through modulating the AhR, enhance pathogenic immune responses by means of cytokine production to mediate and sustain an inflammatory autoimmune phenotype across the BBB. To test specifically if L. reuteri can modulate the immune system through the production of unique metabolites, we treated cultured cell lines and primary T cells with bacterial-produced tryptophan metabolites and monitored the levels of AhR activity directly through a luciferase reporter system or resulting cytokine production through flow cytometry and ELISA. Through these methods, we found that L. reuteri-derived metabolites activate the AhR in a ligand-specific manner, with some acting as agonists while others could function as antagonists of the receptor. We also found that an increase in AhR activity correlated with an increase in pro-inflammatory interleukin-17 (IL-17) and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) cytokines produced by T cells, hinting at a potential mechanistic pathway of enhanced autoimmunity through microbiota-induced AhR activity

Rascals, Triflers, and Pragmatists: Developing a Peircean Account of Assertion

While the topic of assertion has recently received a fresh wave of interest from Peirce scholars, to this point no systematic account of Peirce’s view of assertion has been attempted. We think that this is a lacuna that ought to be filled. Doing so will help make better sense of Peirce’s pragmatism; further, what is hidden amongst various fragments is a robust pragmatist theory of assertion with unique characteristics that may have significant contemporary value. Here we aim to uncover this theory, and to show that assertion for Peirce is not a mere corollary of pragmatic conceptions of truth, judgement, and belief, but is rather a central aspect of his philosophy

On belief : a peircean account

This paper presents and assesses Charles Sanders Peirce's pragmatic theory of belief, with special attention to his account of the role of belief in science. My aim is to present a chronological assessment of Peirce's main epistemological works, to consider two contemporary treatments of those works, and to ultimately determine whether or not Peirce's view of belief is internally coherent and consistent with his larger system of philosophy