Rewording/Rewarding Culture: (Post)Cultural Studies and the Shame of Being 'Different'

In his Keywords, Raymond Williams states that \u201cCulture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language\u201d (Williams 1977: 76). This paper engages with the complex ways in which a methodological approach born in the UK as part of the culture of the New Left, and conceived as a hybrid tendency across disciplines rather than a discipline in itself, is reshaped in the Italian academic context. I will see how English Cultural Studies in Italy tends to be perceived as a Janus-faced approach, inheriting Hoggart\u2019s and Williams\u2019s attempt at adapting techniques of literary analysis for the study of a variety of cultural formations and Stuart Hall\u2019s emphasis on language as the practice grounding signification and producing cultural representations (Hall and Open University 1997: 4-6). While recognising Eagleton\u2019s position that \u201cLiterature [\u2026] inherits the weighty ethical, ideological and even political tasks which were once entrusted to rather more technical and practical discourses\u201d (Eagleton 2000: 40), I will consider how this position should include Hall\u2019s notion that \u201cculture is about shared meanings and meanings can only be shared through our common access to language\u201d (Hall and Open University 1997: 1-2). In a postcolonial and globalised perspective, and with an eye to the current European contingency concerning migration, I will focus on how the Italian approach to Cultural Studies can help us to tackle the ambiguity recently pointed out by Simon Gikandi, who claimed that English literature is simultaneously \u201cone of the most universal phenomena\u201d and \u201cone of the most parochial disciplines\u201d (Gikandi 2001: 650). This requires English Cultural Studies to strongly engage with Postcolonial and Migration Studies, and again raises the question of what we call \u2018Cultural Studies\u2019 and how this theory is located in the Italian context

Democracy on the rocks : outlawing law in touristic dystopias, from Vonnegut's Carribean Islands to Self's Holiday Resorts

The essay develops an analysys of two contemporary novels- one by K.Vonnegut Jr (Cat's Cradle) and one by Will Self (The Butt) in the light of postcolonial theorie

In the Year of the Rat : from infection to poisoning in David Peace's Occupied City

Occupied City (2008) is the second part of a projected novel trilogy that David Peace set in the Tokyo in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing. While Tokyo Year Zero develops soon after the bombing, in 1946, this new novel is based on the notorious true-life poisoning of bank workers that took place in 1948 and whose reasons have never been cleared up. A conspiracy theory that Peace exploits in his reconstruction connects the poisoning \u2013 that goes under the name of Teigin incident \u2013 to the work of Unit 73, a Japanese covert division allegedly studying wartime chemical and biological weapons, and secretly experimenting them on war prisoners, both civilians and soldiers, basically in the Province of Manchuria, well before the Japanese surrender. What is suggested is also that the American forces were involved in covering the operations of Unit 731. While trying to recapitulate the facts that brought to the sudden awareness of the Manchurian experiments, Peace works very much on the notion of infection as both a medical process and a metaphoric representation of the Japanese reality in that particular period. The military-industrial conspiracy supported by the police cover-up is also represented highlighting also the role of the US secret service in hiding the true responsibilities of the poisoning. In terms of style, Peace tells the story paying homage to a very famous Japanese novelist and artist, Akutagawa, and borrowing from his short story \u201cIn the Grove\u201d (then adapted as a film in Rashomon) the device of several conflicting narratives, reporting on the same facts. In a sort of literary forensic, twelve voices contribute to the portrayal, at the same time choral and intensely fragmented, of two highly different cultures facing each other

Sidelong Thinking : Disobedient Geographies and Subaltern Cultures

My work here develops along a twofold path. On the one hand, and as a researcher committed to postcolonial issues, I share what many theorists say about the need for a more or less stable framework allowing to approach the issue of empire and post-empire in the light of some relatively stable critical categories. On the other, I also feel the gap between theories and some increasingly complex realities that do need a more direct appraisal of the facts implied in a globalized world in the way this need is voiced by Simon Gikandi in his \u201cGlobalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality\u201d (2001). To the purpose of imagining a more effective critical frame, I\u2019m borrowing Kara Walker\u2019s notion of sidelong glance to develop a reflection on theories and their usefulness in terms of the actual approach to issues whose profile and complexity are to be intended as not only in progress, but also undergoing a very quick definition and redefinition through time. Starting from Hall\u2019s statement that the postcolonial may be intended as \u201csign of desire or signifier of danger\u201d (1996) and also exploiting the notions of rhizoma (Deleuze & Guattari 1980), subalternity (Spivak 1988) and \u201cThinking plural\u201d (Said 1993), I\u2019m approaching a number of written, visual and performative texts, from Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness to tightly contemporary artistic experiences, to show how both the postcolonial and the decolonial paradigms eventually prove inadequate to the reading of our present condition in terms of the ability to go beyond the traditional Western attitude to the post-colonies

Biased attention to threat and anxiety: on taking a developmental approach

Several researchers have proposed a causal relation between biased attention to threat and the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in both children and adults. However, despite the widely-documented correlation between attention bias to threat and anxiety, developmental research in this domain is limited. In this review, we highlight the importance of taking a developmental approach to studying attention biases to threat and anxiety. First, we discuss how recent developmental work on attention to threat fits into existing theoretical frameworks for the development of anxiety, and how attention biases might interact with other risk factors across development. Then we review the developmental literature on attention bias to threat and anxiety, and describe how classic methodologies can be modified to study attention biases in even the youngest infants. Finally, we discuss limitations and future directions in this domain, emphasizing the need for future longitudinal research beginning in early infancy that tracks concurrent developments in both biased attention and anxiety. Altogether, we hope that by highlighting the importance of development in the study of attention bias to threat and anxiety, we can provide a roadmap for how researchers might implement developmental approaches to studying a potential core mechanism in anxiety

Chemical composition and evaluation of protein quality by amino acid score method of edible brown marine algae arame (Eisenia bicyclis) and hijiki (Hijikia fusiforme)

Crude proteins and their amino acid composition, fats, carbohydrates, cellulose, ashes, nucleic acids and minerals were determined in two edible and commercially available brown marine algae (Phaeophyceae), Arame (Eisenia bicyclis) and Hijiki (Hijikia fusiforme). The essential amino acid ratios for five key essential amino acids as well as the amino acid score based on the first limiting amino acid, Lys-Met-Cys score, Lys-Met-Cys-Trp score and Lys-Met-Cys-Trp-Thr score were calculated. The results have shown:– rather high contents of proteins, containing all essential amino acids– high amino acid ratios which are nearly as high as the value suggested by FAO/WHO/UNU pattern or higher– the first limiting amino acid in both analysed algae is tryptophane– very low contents of fats and nucleic acids– high contents of cellulose and other carbohydrates– large quantities of minerals and very low amounts of heavy metals

Transmission Potential of Chikungunya Virus and Control Measures: The Case of Italy

During summer 2007 Italy has experienced an epidemic caused by Chikungunya virus – the first large outbreak documented in a temperate climate country – with approximately 161 laboratory confirmed cases concentrated in two bordering villages in North–Eastern Italy comprising 3,968 inhabitants. The seroprevalence was recently estimated to be 10.2%. In this work we provide estimates of the transmission potential of the virus and we assess the efficacy of the measures undertaken by public health authorities to control the epidemic spread. To such aim, we developed a model describing the temporal dynamics of the competent vector, known as Aedes albopictus, explicitly depending on climatic factors, coupled to an epidemic transmission model describing the spread of the epidemic in both humans and mosquitoes. The cumulative number of notified cases predicted by the model was 185 on average (95% CI 117–278), in good agreement with observed data. The probability of observing a major outbreak after the introduction of an infective human case was estimated to be in the range of 32%–76%. We found that the basic reproduction number was in the range of 1.8–6 but it could have been even larger, depending on the density of mosquitoes, which in turn depends on seasonal meteorological effects, besides other local abiotic factors. These results confirm the increasing risk of tropical vector–borne diseases in temperate climate countries, as a consequence of globalization. However, our results show that an epidemic can be controlled by performing a timely intervention, even if the transmission potential of Chikungunya virus is sensibly high

Gli occhi e la voce : J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness: dal romanzo allo schermo

Abbozzo di voce fuori campo e involontario protonarratore cinematografico, Marlow di Heart of Darkness \ue8 forse il personaggio letterario pi\uf9 corteggiato dal cinema, ma anche quello pi\uf9 difficile da gestire dal punto di vista delle soluzioni narrative: il suo sguardo e la sua voce resistono alla trasposizione filmica, si dimostrano poco solidali, rifiutano di spiegarsi a vicenda. Per comprendere questa resistenza, \ue8 possibile seguire un percorso duplice: da una parte, tentare di individuarne le radici nel testo narrativo, dall'altra ricostruirne i percorsi specifici attraverso gli svariati tentativi pi\uf9 o meno riusciti di riscrittura cinematografica da Orson Welles a Francis F. Coppola

Voids of Meaning: Images and War Memories

My work here is concerned with images of war and their impact on the idea of a city. My point is that in a society geared to the free home delivery of sensible reality, the visible images tend to be gradually drained of their invisible essence. They are consequently deployed in the total visibility of the represented objects, that are existing here and now, but they evoke no memory and they pass in the blink of an eye. This appears particularly evident when referring to the contemporary metropolis in the neverending contingency of war. We negotiate the reality of the cities \u2013 writes Donald - imagining \u2018the city\u2019 (Donald 1999: 18). However negotiation is made unfeasible when multiple representations of cities at war are made into one: a place which is everywhere and nowhere, an archetype, a global myth, soon to be memorized \u2013 and forgotten - as such. This atopical place (Hillis Miller 1995) neutralizes history, erases singular and unique stories and may produce an urban landscape which is entirely fabulous and therefore failing to be dangerous: a place of ruins where any sense of cause and effects is often glaringly omitted. When trying to recover a representation where the hidden human geography of power is made visible, therefore, we are obliged to focus on marginal points of view, dissonant and disturbing versions of the city at war. This is the ratio underlying my selection of texts. Two of them, Winterbottom\u2019s Welcome to Serajevo (1997) and Sacco\u2019s Safe Area Goradze (2000) are closely related: they describe the same war, they refer to roughly the same geographic area, they are set more or less in the same period. Jarman\u2019s The Last of England, instead, does not refer to any real at war, but it symbolically enacts the final extinction of the British Empire, five years after the Falklands war and it seems to anticipate the extremely real \u201cFallujah London\u201d of I.Sinclair (2006).\u2019 Introducing the concept of he city as an idea to think politics\u201d (Donald 1999)