Electron-Beam-Induced Modifications in High-Density Polyethylene

Post-irradiation studies have been carried out to elucidate the effects of electron beam irradiation on the structural, optical, dielectric, and thermal properties of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) films. The experimental results showed that both the optical band gap and activation energy of HDPE films decreases with an increase in the doses of electron radiation. The electrical measurements showed that dielectric constant and the ac conductivity of HDPE increases with an increase in the dose of electron radiation. The thermal analysis carried out using DSC and TGA revealed that the melting temperature, degree of crystallinity, and thermal stability of the HDPE films increased, obviously, due to the predominant cross-linking reaction following high doses of electron irradiation.

Silenced women in Joan Rileys fiction

Esta dissertação busca analisar como Joan Riley, escritora jamaicana que vive na Inglaterra, expõe e denuncia em suas obras a submissão feminina diante da opressão e violência sexual sofridas por mulheres negras. Objetivamos apontar a crítica ao papel dos discursos patriarcal e pós-colonial, práticas de poder que tornam o contexto social das mulheres representadas em seus romances propício para o exercício do jugo masculino, através da exploração do silêncio de mulheres vítimas de abusos sexuais. O necessário recorte do objeto restringiu a análise às duas personagens centrais dos romances The Unbelonging (1985) e A Kindness to the Children (1992), mulheres cujas subjetividades foram anuladas pela objetificação de seus corpos e a desumanização de suas identidades

Michelle Cliffs Abeng and No telephone to heaven: a call to resistance

Escritores/as pós-coloniais têm se engajado em denunciar o doloroso legado da escravidão e do colonialismo, através da recuperação de histórias previamente apropriadas e distorcidas por narrativas mestras. A investigação e a narrativização do passado esquecido de ex-colônias têm sido uma estratégia empregada no sentido de se reconstruir identidades que foram fragmentadas devido às múltiplas opressões sofridas ou testemunhadas por autores. Michelle Cliff é uma romancista, poeta, e ensaísta diaspórica, nascida na Jamaica e que vive nos Estados Unidos. Ela é uma das muitas vozes pós-coloniais comprometidas com uma literatura de resistência que luta pela descolonização cultural e encoraja o sentimento de pertencimento. O objetivo dessa dissertação é analisar os romances de cunho autobiográfico de Cliff, Abeng (1984) e No Telephone to Heaven (1987), que lidam com questões relacionadas às práticas coloniais e pós-coloniais. Os dois romances retratam a saga da protagonista Clare Savage, através da qual Cliff revela o impacto da colonização no Caribe, denuncia as configurações de poder geradas a partir dos imbricamentos entre raça, gênero e classe, e critica a maneira deturpada como a história da Jamaica é transmitida e disseminada através da educação colonial à qual os Jamaicanos são submetidos. A autora também explora os efeitos que as diásporas exercem no processo de construção identitária e o movimento de resgate e recriação de uma história própria por parte dos sujeitos diaspóricos

Outros Atlânticos: reconfigurações identitárias de estudantes cabo-verdianos em trânsito entre Cabo Verde, Portugal e Brasil

Tendo como foco de reflexão a produção de novas identidades em situação de deslocamento, o presente trabalho compara as trajetórias de estudantes cabo-verdianos em trânsito no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) e em Portugal (Lisboa) em busca da elaboração de seus projetos de vida e formação superior. A partir da análise de suas narrativas, aborda como esses estudantes constroem suas identidades, em contexto pós-colonial e transnacional, em contato com diversas pessoas e grupos sociais (estudantes brasileiros, portugueses e de outras nacionalidades) e como vivenciam as tensões raciais nos distintos contextos de destino. Deixar Cabo Verde para emigrar para outros países é vivido por muitos jovens cabo-verdianos não só como um destino e um sonho de vida melhor, de ter uma formação superior no exterior, mas também de conhecer outras pessoas e lugares dos quais eles têm notícias de sucessos através de outros estudantes e imigrantes. Longe de casa, da família e dos amigos, as narrativas ressaltam a importância das escolhas na elaboração de seus projetos e das redes de relações construídas nos países de destino para minimizar a saudade, ajudar no acolhimento na universidade e integração na sociedade. Assim, com base nas estratégias de adaptação, vivenciando processos de inclusão e exclusão em diversas situações sociais, no Rio de Janeiro e em Lisboa, o trabalho discute o impacto do trânsito para a reconfiguração de identidades e pertencimentos dos estudantes.

O jogo de espelho das colonizações: nacionalismo e pós-colonialismo na obra de Edward W. Said

O objetivo desse trabalho é compreender a produção intelectual do autor palestino, Edward W. Said, cuja trajetória heterogênea representou em larga medida uma metáfora teórica dos seus maiores dilemas políticos e conceituais, alguns deles constitutivos do objeto dessa tese. Entendemos que Said define a Cultura como lócus privilegiado para compreender a dominação colonial e, posteriormente, incorpora um discurso político para a formação da chamada identidade nacional Palestina. Procuramos demarcar o paradoxo central da sua obra que diz respeito ao convívio teórico da abordagem pós-colonial com a busca da historicidade do ethos nacional palestino. Entendemos que o paradoxo do Nacionalismo, sua estreita vinculação com o debate pós-colonial e os percursos teóricos decorrentes do engajamento progressivo com a causa nacional Palestina subsidiam outras reflexões que possuem interrelação. São essas; a representação do intelectual na sociedade contemporânea, a relação entre texto e realidade histórica, entendida por meio do conceito de mundanidade, a categoria de exílio como condição ontológica e metáfora epistemológica e o problema da relação entre cultura e imperialismo. Esses percursos de análise orientam-se por um objetivo mais geral que é a análise da centralidade e respectiva atualidade da obra de Edward W. Said na Historiografia Pós-Colonial.

Female sexuality in Ireland 1920 to 1940: Construction and regulation

The central objective of this study is an examination of discourses of Irish female sexuality and of the apparatuses of control designed for its surveillance and regulation in the period nineteen-twenty to nineteen-forty. It is argued that during this period sexuality, and in particular female sexuality, became established as an icon of national identity. This thesis demonstrated that this identity was given symbolic embodiment in the discursive construction of an idealised, feminine subject, a subject who had purity and sexual morality as her defining characteristics. It is argued that female roles and in particular female sexuality, emerged as contested issues in post-colonial Ireland. This is not unusual given that women are frequently constructed in nationalist discourses as repositories of cultural heritage and symbols of national identity (Kandiyoti 1993). This thesis demonstrates that the Catholic Church played a central role in this process of establishing female sexuality as a national icon. Furthermore, it illustrates that through a process of identification and classification, women, whose behaviour contested the prescribed sexual norm, were categorized and labeled as 'wayward girls' 'unmarried mothers' or 'prostitutes'and mechanisms for their control were set in place. Finally, this thesis reveals that the development of these control apparatuses was mediated by class, with the sexuality of working class women being a primary target of surveillance, regulation and indeed reformation.

Discourse and soul: Jung, literature, science and tragedy as mythical writing

This paper will propose that literature and science, far from being discrete spheres of cultural activity, are, in fact, the cultural expressions of interlocking myths. They therefore overlap and even take each other’s places, as examination of the ‘science’ of C.G. Jung and the ‘art’ of a writer such as John Cowper Powys, will show. ‘Dis-course’, I argue, is the material aspect of the mythical structuring of psychic experience. In the work of Jung and Powys, discourse is the articulation of the soul in the world that spans personal, social, natural and cosmic space. [From the Author]

Get prepared for the future - über Graduiertenschulen als universitäre Ausbildungsstätten

Der Artikel ist eine Analyse der an deutschen Hochschulen zunehmenden Graduiertenschulen. Am Beispiel des Trainingsprogramms für DoktorandInnen und Post-Docs aller Disziplinen an der Goethe Universität in Frankfurt/M. wird gezeigt, wie sich die Ausbildung von ForscherInnen verändert. Als Ausbildungsstätte verstanden bieten die Universitäten Kurse und Workshops an, die für eine wissenschaftliche Karriere als notwendig angesehen werden. Dabei gerät die Krise der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis als Generierung des Neuen vermehrt aus dem Blick. (DIPF/Orig.)

English in Kenyan Education

This article places English language teaching in Kenya within a specific historical context. Any consideration of the use of English in Kenya must take into account the legacy of language policies adopted by both colonial and independent administrations in the country. Use is made in this respect of the growing body of research and theory that focuses on language policy in post-colonial and neo-colonial settings.

Confronting the Settler Legacy: Indigenisation and Transformation in South Africa and Zimbabwe

This article examines attempts to negotiate a perceived residual dominance of settler populations in South Africa and Zimbabwe by means of developmental and cultural policies deemed necessary to restore sovereignty to Africans. Indigenisation has become a preferred strategy for reconstructing post-colonial states in Africa: indigenisation of the economy as part of a Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe and Black Economic Empowerment in the socio-cultural context of Ubuntu in South Africa. These are issues arising from the regional legacy of contested and uneven transitions to majority rule. Identifying how governments frame the ‘settler problem’, and politicise space in doing so, is crucial for understanding post-colonial politics. Indigenisation in Zimbabwe allows the government to maintain a network of patronage and official rhetoric is highly divisive and exclusivist although couched in terms of reclaiming African values and sovereignty. Revival of Ubuntu as a cultural value system in South Africa facilitates a more positive approach to indigenisation, although Black Economic Empowerment displays elitist tendencies and cultural transformation remains controversial and elusive. The perceived need to anchor policy in socially acceptable (i.e., ostensibly indigenous/traditional) contexts has become a prominent feature of post-colonial politics and is indicative of an indigenous turn in Southern African politics.

"All Have to Live in Me...": A Study of the Use of English Alongside Other African Languages in a Kenyan School

The purpose of this paper, which builds on an earlier paper published in this Journal (Vol. 20, No. 6), is to develop the discussion around how English has been taught, used and perceived in Kenya, using data gathered from a small second-level English-medium school in Kenya. The complex relationships between language and identity are at work in the everyday routines of both staff and pupils within such a context. The paper seeks to set out a clear methodology for gathering data which could help describe these relationships with more clarity while also subjecting the data to analysis informed by the growing body of research and theory that focuses on language policy in post-colonial and neo-colonial settings. Finally, these pieces of data are used as the basis of a further exploration of the implications for classroom practice in teaching English in this environment.

Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016

At the formation of the new Republic of Ireland, the construction of new infrastructures was seen as an essential element in the building of the new nation, just as the adoption of international style modernism in architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. Accordingly, infrastructure became the physical manifestation, the concrete identity of these objectives and architecture formed an integral part of this narrative. Moving between scales and from artefact to context, Infrastructure and the Architectures of Modernity in Ireland 1916-2016 provides critical insights and narratives on what is a complex and hitherto overlooked landscape, one which is often as much international as it is Irish. In doing so, it explores the interaction between the universalising and globalising tendencies of modernisation on one hand and the textures of local architectures on the other.

The book shows how the nature of technology and infrastructure is inherently cosmopolitan. Beginning with the building of the heroic Shannon hydro-electric facility at Ardnacrusha by the German firm of Siemens-Schuckert in the first decade of independence, Ireland became a point of varying types of intersection between imported international expertise and local need. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, by the year 2000, Ireland had become one of the most globalized countries in the world, site of the European headquarters of multinationals such as Google and Microsoft. Climatically and economically expedient to the storing and harvesting of data, Ireland has subsequently become a repository of digital information farmed in large, single-storey sheds absorbed into anonymous suburbs. In 2013, it became the preferred site for Intel to design and develop its new microprocessor chip: the Galileo. The story of the decades in between, of shifts made manifest in architecture and infrastructure from the policies of economic protectionism, to the opening up of the country to direct foreign investment and the embracing of the EU, is one of the influx of technologies and cultural references into a small country on the edges of Europe as Ireland became both a launch-pad and testing ground for a series of aspects of designed modernity.

Dublin’s ephemeral and imaginary architectures

In 1989, the Irish architectural practice O’Donnell and Tuomey were commissioned to build a temporary pavilion to represent Ireland at the 11 Cities/11 Nations exhibition at Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. Citing Peter Smithson, John Tuomey suggested the pavilion, which drew inspirations from the forms and materials of the modern Irish barn, embodied an intention ‘not just to build but to communicate’. Its subsequent reassembly for the inauguration of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in the courtyard of the seventeenth-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin in 1991, drew comparisons between the urban sophistication of this colonial building, its svelte new refit, and the rural expression of O’Donnell + Tuomey’s barn. It was, one critic recently noted, as if ‘a wedding had been crashed by a country cousin who had forgotten to clean his boots’.
It has been argued that temporary or ephemeral pieces of architecture, unburdened by the traditional constraints of firmitas or utilitas, have the ability to offer a concise distillation of meaning and intention. Approaching the qualities of rhetoric, such architectures share similarities with the monument and yet differ in fundamental ways. Their rapid construction in lightweight materials can allow for an almost instantaneous negotiation of zeitgeist. And, unlike the monument, from the outset the space and form of these installations is designed to disappear.
This paper analyses the ephemeral architectures of Dublin in the modern period contextualising their qualities and intentions as they manifest themselves across colonial, post-colonial and contemporary epochs. It finds origins in the theatrical sets of the late eighteenth century and traces their movements into the semi-public sphere of the pleasure garden and finally into the theatre of the streets. It is here that temporary architecture in the city has been at its most potent, allowing the amplification or subversion of the meanings of much larger spaces. Historically, much of Dublin’s most conspicuous instances of ephemeral architecture have been realised as a means of articulating mass spectacle in political, religious or nationalistic events. And while much of this has sought to confirm dominant ideologies, it has also been possible to discern moments of opposition.
The contemporary period, however, has arguably witnessed a shift in ephemeral architectures from explicitly representing ‘positive ideologies’ towards something more oblique or nebulous. This turn towards abstraction in form and space has rendered an especially communicative form of architecture particularly elusive. By examining continuities within the apparent disjuncture between historical and contemporary examples, this paper begins to unpick the language of recent ephemeral architecture in Dublin and situate it within wider global trends where political and economic imperatives are often simultaneously obscured and expressed in public space by a vocabulary of universality. As Jurgen Habermas has suggested, the contemporary value given to the transitory and the ephemeral ‘discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present’.