Eloquent fragments: French fiction film and globalization

French (and Franco-Belgian) cinema has witnessed a return to the real since the middle of the 1990s and should thus successfully have pinned down the impact of the globalizing economy on the sociopolitical sphere. Yet neoliberal globalization is deeply resistant to representation within the frame of conventional fictions. Condemned to be a cinema of fragments by the shattering of the old leftist imaginary, has French cinema merely tracked globalization's local consequences, always letting systemic causes escape its grasp? Or has it identified successful strategies with which to restore eloquence to social struggle and suffering that otherwise seemed condemned to silence? Engaging with important films by the Dardenne brothers, Robert Guédiguian, Bertrand Tavernier, Manuel Poirier, Matthieu Kassovitz and others, this paper argues the latter. French film, it suggests, has found ways to make the fragments speak to the totality, to short-circuit neoliberal triumphalism and to interpellate a nation that no longer plays its erstwhile integrational role. While none of these strategies can provide totalizing systemic critique, they do show that cinema is playing an active role in the rebuilding of a radical oppositional imaginary

The Parisian popular as reactionary modernisation

Noting the centrality of the Parisian popular in French cinema of the 1930s, this paper looks behind its apparent nostalgia to the disavowed work of modernization that it carried out. Drawing on recent work on the transnational, it shows how representations of popular rootedness and of the cosmopolitan modern were linked responses to the new. Helping to embed cultural consumption in collective memory and identity, cinematic populism engaged with and simultaneously rejected the experiences of displacement and mixity. In some ways it can be considered to have carried out a process of democratization, shifting the common people to centre stage and inviting them to look upon their own image. Broadly speaking, however, its disavowed modernization was deeply regressive. The reflexivity it granted was counterweighted by its idealization of rooted community and folkloric cultural forms in a way that could only view the cosmopolitan new as threat and loss and which immobilised and ethnicized the popular even as it partially undid its exclusion

Suffering in silence: bodily politics in post-1995 French cinema

Developing earlier research by the author that had sought to trace the specificity of the current wave of socio-politically engaged film, this article focuses in on the body, suggesting that it has become a core vector of ‘raw’ expressivity in recent French cinema due to the withdrawal of the discourse of the organised left as mediating instance. Brooks’ celebrated analysis of melodrama and the political philosophy of Rancière and Laclau and Mouffe are drawn upon to examine the political work done by Cabrera’s Retiens la nuit and Devers’ La Voleuse de St Lubin. Engaging with the objectified, embodied and isolated social suffering that runs through current cinema, the two films’ significance lies in their exploration of the possibilities of and obstacles to its articulation within an oppositional politics

Interfacial Reaction Kinetics

We study irreversible A-B reaction kinetics at a fixed interface separating two immiscible bulk phases, A and B. We consider general dynamical exponent $z$, where $x_t\sim t^{1/z}$ is the rms diffusion distance after time $t$. At short times the number of reactions per unit area, $R_t$, is {\em 2nd order} in the far-field reactant densities $n_A^{\infty},n_B^{\infty}$. For spatial dimensions $d$ above a critical value $d_c=z-1$, simple mean field (MF) kinetics pertain, $R_t\sim Q_b t n_A^{\infty} n_B^{\infty}$ where $Q_b$ is the local reactivity. For low dimensions $d<d_c$, this MF regime is followed by 2nd order diffusion controlled (DC) kinetics, $R_t \approx x_t^{d+1} n_A^{\infty} n_B^{\infty}$, provided $Q_b > Q_b^* \sim (n_B^{\infty})^{[z-(d+1)]/d}$. Logarithmic corrections arise in marginal cases. At long times, a cross-over to {\em 1st order} DC kinetics occurs: $R_t \approx x_t n_A^{\infty}$. A density depletion hole grows on the more dilute A side. In the symmetric case ($n_A^{\infty}=n_B^{\infty}$), when $d<d_c$ the long time decay of the interfacial reactant density, $n_A^s$, is determined by fluctuations in the initial reactant distribution, giving $n_A^s \sim t^{-d/(2z)}$. Correspondingly, A-rich and B-rich regions develop at the interface analogously to the segregation effects established by other authors for the bulk reaction $A+B\to\emptyset$. For $d>d_c$ fluctuations are unimportant: local mean field theory applies at the interface (joint density distribution approximating the product of A and B densities) and $n_A^s \sim t^{(1-z)/(2z)}$. We apply our results to simple molecules (Fickian diffusion, $z=2$) and to several models of short-time polymer diffusion ($z>2$).Comment: 39 pages, 7 figures, uses fund2.sty, submitted to Eur. Phys. J. B, 1 figure added, for short version see cond-mat/980409

Reaction Kinetics in Polymer Melts

We study the reaction kinetics of end-functionalized polymer chains dispersed in an unreactive polymer melt. Starting from an infinite hierarchy of coupled equations for many-chain correlation functions, a closed equation is derived for the 2nd order rate constant $k$ after postulating simple physical bounds. Our results generalize previous 2-chain treatments (valid in dilute reactants limit) by Doi, de Gennes, and Friedman and O'Shaughnessy, to arbitrary initial reactive group density $n_0$ and local chemical reactivity $Q$. Simple mean field (MF) kinetics apply at short times, $k \sim Q$. For high $Q$, a transition occurs to diffusion-controlled (DC) kinetics with $k \approx x_t^3/t$ (where $x_t$ is rms monomer displacement in time $t$) leading to a density decay $n_t \approx n_0 - n_0^2 x_t^3$. If $n_0$ exceeds the chain overlap threshold, this behavior is followed by a regime where $n_t \approx 1/x_t^3$ during which $k$ has the same power law dependence in time, $k \approx x_t^3/t$, but possibly different numerical coefficient. For unentangled melts this gives $n_t \sim t^{-3/4}$ while for entangled cases one or more of the successive regimes $n_t \sim t^{-3/4}$, $t^{-3/8}$ and $t^{-3/4}$ may be realized depending on the magnitudes of $Q$ and $n_0$. Kinetics at times longer than the longest polymer relaxation time $\tau$ are always MF. If a DC regime has developed before $\tau$ then the long time rate constant is $k \approx R^3/\tau$ where $R$ is the coil radius. We propose measuring the above kinetics in a model experiment where radical end groups are generated by photolysis.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, uses bulk.sty, submitted to Eur.Phys.J.B discussion section expande

Dynamics of Living Polymers

We study theoretically the dynamics of living polymers which can add and subtract monomer units at their live chain ends. The classic example is ionic living polymerization. In equilibrium, a delicate balance is maintained in which each initiated chain has a very small negative average growth rate (``velocity'') just sufficient to negate the effect of growth rate fluctuations. This leads to an exponential molecular weight distribution (MWD) with mean Nbar. After a small perturbation of relative amplitude epsilon, e.g. a small temperature jump, this balance is destroyed: the velocity acquires a boost greatly exceeding its tiny equilibrium value. For epsilon > epsilon_c = 1/Nbar^{1/2} the response has 3 stages: (1) Coherent chain growth or shrinkage, leaving a highly non-linear hole or peak in the MWD at small chain lengths. During this episode, lasting time taufast ~ Nbar, the MWD's first moment and monomer concentration m relax very close to equilibrium. (2) Hole-filling (or peak decay) after taufill ~ epsilon^2 Nbar^2. The absence or surfeit of small chains is erased. (3) Global MWD shape relaxation after tauslow ~ Nbar^2. By this time second and higher MWD moments have relaxed. During episodes (2) and (3) the fast variables (Nbar,m) are enslaved to the slowly varying number of free initiators (chains of zero length). Thus fast variables are quasi-statically fine-tuned to equilibrium. The outstanding feature of these dynamics is their ultrasensitivity: despite the perturbation's linearity, the response is non-linear until the late episode (3). For very small perturbations, epsilon < epsilon_c, response remains non-linear but with a less dramatic peak or hole during episode (1). Our predictions are in agreement with viscosity measurements on the most widely studied system, alpha-methylstyrene.Comment: 16 pages, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

Strongly Charged Polymer Brushes

Charged polymer brushes are layers of surface-tethered chains. Experimental systems are frequently strongly charged. Here we calculate phase diagrams for such brushes in terms of salt concentration n_s, grafting density and polymer backbone charge density. Electrostatic stiffening and counterion condensation effects arise which are absent from weakly charged brushes. In various phases chains are locally or globally fully stretched and brush height H has unique scaling forms; at higher salt concentrations we find H ~ n_s^(-1/3), in good agreement with experiment.Comment: 5 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Aspects of UGT2B15 in the human

No abstract available