91福利

This article proposes the methodological and conceptual tool of 鈥榬ecursion鈥� as a means of understanding the production of historical continuity and discontinuity between different forms of nationalism in Bulgaria. The recent case of the demolition of the socialist-modernist monument 鈥�1300 Years of Bulgaria鈥� and its replacement with an earlier memorial from the authoritarian period of the 1930s forms the point of departure for this examination. Adopting a media and cultural studies perspective, the text focuses on the symbolic function of lions in both monuments and how they are engaged in the production of nationalist rhetoric and imagery. In line with Ann Laura Stoler鈥檚 (2016) proposition that the method of 鈥榬ecursive analytics鈥� can allow us to overcome the impasse formed by attempts to postulate either continuity or rupture between present and past, I first account for the histories of the erection of both monuments before proposing to read the 鈥楤ulgarian lions鈥�, featuring in both of them, as recursive figures.

Zofia鈥檚 presentation was delivered during the 4^th ERSA Winter School. The event is aimed at young researchers, where they work together with top experts in the field of spatial methods. The 5-day training focused on applied spatial quantitative methods such as spatial econometrics, spatial statistics and spatial machine learning. These are used in regional sciences, economic geography and urban studies.

Zofia鈥檚 study aims to look for spatial dependence between regional inequalities and cycling inequity. Her ERSA presentation focused on the spatial model that shows spatial disparities in cycling among London boroughs. The research results will be presented in the upcoming journal publication.

Check out the collection Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice, co-edited by CIM member Maria Puig de la Bellacasa with colleagues Dimitris Papadopoulos and Natasha Myers, and published with Duke University Press, 2022

The contributors to Reactivating Elements examine chemicals as they mix with soil, air, water, and fire to shape Earth's troubled ecologies today. They invoke the elements with all their ambivalences as chemical categories, material substances, social forms, forces and energies, cosmological entities, and epistemic objects. Engaging with the nonlinear historical significance of elemental thought across fields—chemistry, the biosciences, engineering, physics, science and technology studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and cultural studies—the contributors examine the relationship between chemistry and ecology, probe the logics that render wind as energy, excavate affective histories of ubiquitous substances such as plastics and radioactive elements, and chart the damage wrought by petrochemical industrialization. Throughout, the volume illuminates how elements become entangled with power and control, coloniality, racism, and extractive productivism while exploring alternative paths to environmental destruction. In so doing, it rethinks the relationship between the elements and the elemental, human and more-than-human worlds, today鈥檚 damaged ecosystems and other ecologies to come

As part of the international App Studies Initiative, Michael Dieter and Nate Tkacz have published the findings of their study of Covid apps, funded by the ESRC. Here is the abstract, published in the :

This article provides an exploratory systematic mapping of the global ecosystem of COVID-19 pandemic response apps. After considering policy updates by Google Play鈥檚 and Apple鈥檚 App Store, we analyse all the available response apps in July 2020; their different response types; the apps鈥� developers and geographical distribution; the ecosystem鈥檚 鈥榞enerativity鈥� and developers鈥� responsiveness during the unfolding pandemic; the apps鈥� discursive positioning; and material conditions of their development. Google and Apple are gatekeepers of these app ecosystems and exercise control on different layers, shaping the pandemic app response as well as the relationships between governments, citizens, and other actors. We suggest that this global ecosystem of pandemic responses reflects an exceptional mode of what we call 鈥榩andemic platform governance鈥�, where platforms have negotiated their commercial interests and the public interest in exceptional circumstances.

Towards the end of Wes Anderson鈥檚 film Fantastic Mr. Fox is a much-discussed scene in which the eponymous protagonist, admitting to his phobia of wolves, attempts in vain to herald in various languages a lone wolf, whose lack of clothing marks him as 鈥渨ild.鈥� The scene brings into focus the cunning that appears to make the fox 鈥渕ore human鈥� and less 产锚迟别 than other creatures, including the lion whose brute strength must be combined in Machiavelli鈥檚 prince with foxy know-how in order to frighten off the terroristic and voraciously savage wolves. I interrogate the 鈥渃unning of cunning鈥� signified by the fox—the second-order feigning of the feint and sovereign capacity to efface one鈥檚 tracks supposedly proper to the human and by which Agamben he gets people to believe, if only for a while, that he is the first to know who will have been first. I track—脿 pas de loup—Derrida鈥檚 readings of Machiavelli, Agamben, and Lacan in the third, fourth, and twelfth sessions of the first year of La 产锚迟别 et le souverain in order develop and set out the political stakes of his indictment of Agamben鈥檚 strategic feint—an indictment that extends not only to his theory of biopolitics and of life but to his ontologization of power, potency, and (im)potentiality more generally.

We are pleased to announce a new job opportunity. We are recruiting for an Assistant Professor. Deadline for applications: 21 Feb For details of the position please follow this link:

Women in Theory has published a book forum on Naomi Waltham-Smith鈥檚 Shattering Biopolitics: Militant Listening and the Sound of Life (Fordham UP, 2021) with contributions from Erin Graff Zivin, Michael Gallope, Daniele Lorenzini, and Julie Beth Napolin, as well as a response from Naomi.

Link to forum:

Here's an short piece by the European Research Council about a recent publication, "Racial Attention Deficit." Available in seven languages.

Link to the article:

This was not actually a TED talk, but otherwise it was genre conforming. It was one of 10 "Breakthrough Presentations" at the Falling Walls | Science Summit 2022 in Berlin in November. Recently posted on YouTube.

Link to the YouTube video:

This autumn has seen the publication of two chapters on sound in literary and philosophical thought by Naomi Waltham-Smith: 鈥淯nexceptional Events; Or, Cixous鈥檚 Scarcely Audible Literature,鈥� in Literature and Event: Twenty-First Century Reformulations, ed. Manta Mukim and Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 2022) and 鈥淒econstruction and Timbre,鈥� in The Oxford Handbook of Timbre, ed. Emily I. Dolan and Alexander Rehding (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).