The case of pre-natal diagnosis

This chapter reconsiders critiques of pre-natal diagnosis in Disability Studies. Underlying assumptions about reproductive technologies are analysed to demonstrate that while many critiques of pre-natal diagnosis by Disability activists and theorists are concerned about children being the product of 'choice' through the selective effects of pre-natal diagnosis, the issue that reproductive technologies (such as IVF) themselves necessarily always already rely on 'choice' -- namely the choice for a 'biological' or 'own' child (different terms are used) -- is nowhere considered. The chapter considers several consequences of thinking through this issue and its implications.

'he perceives himself as a caterpillar […]' constructions of the disabled subject in the critical response to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window'

This chapter focuses on critical responses to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, especially their construction of disability. The suggestion is that such criticism takes the disabled body to be both necessary and superfluous to the meaning of the film, a difficulty that, I argue, can be read more widely within film theory. Ever since Christian Metz’s ‘the Imaginary Signifier’, the condition of being ‘bound to a wheelchair’ is understood to have a resonance for theories of film spectatorship, but only ever in a sense that does away with the wheelchair as a mark of difference.

Nonhuman empires

The themed section “Nonhuman Empires” contributes to a critique of anthropocentrism in the field of imperial history. It reveals the variety of ways in which the historical trajectories of nonhuman animals and empires both intersected and informed one another. Beyond merely rehabilitating nonhuman themes in conversations about imperial history, it provides a platform for rethinking both nonhumans and empires as they are envisioned conventionally in the historiography. This introductory article begins by situating this special section as a conversation between science studies and animal studies, on the one hand, and the historiography of empires, on the other. It then suggests ways to reconceptualize agency, subjects, nonhumans, and empire by combining certain shared concerns of subaltern studies and actor-network theory. Finally, it emphasizes the need to integrate postcolonial critiques with emerging scholarship about the posthuman.

The recuperated materiality of disability and animal studies

This chapter considers a perhaps unexpected connection between disability and animal studies, given disability studies' understandable reluctance to be associated with animal liberation/rights struggles. It finds that both fields remain rooted in ideas of experience and feeling, or the notion of an essential embodied experience, even while they offer up critiques of the way essentialism operates more broadly to disenfranchise or disadvantage the groups they represent. The chapter goes on to analyse what the implications are of this notion of 'embodiment' and the materialism that accompanies it, it foregrounds the contradictions that ensue, and then discusses what this means for the way political action is (and can be) conceived of.

Limit sets and the Poincare-Bendixson Theorem in impulsive semidynamical systems

We consider semidynamical systems with impulse effects at variable times and we discuss some properties of the limit sets of orbits of these systems such as invariancy, compactness and connectedness. As a consequence we obtain a version of the Poincare-Bendixson Theorem for impulsive semidynamical systems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Förklaringar till Förintelsen? : En historiedidaktisk studie som undersöker de olika förklaringar till Förintelsen som man kan eventuellt kan finna i ...om detta må ni berätta...

Studien behandlar, den av myndigheten Forum för levande historia utgivna boken …om detta må ni berätta…, av Stéphane Bruchfeld och Paul A. Levine. I studien analyseras olika förklaringar till Förintelsen, som mer explicit eller implicit kan skönjas i texten. Det hela relateras till vad några andra författare och förintelseforskare, beskriver, och kommit till för slutsatser angående de olika förklaringarna dessa representerar, i den av mig utvalda litteraturen. Dessa författare är Zygmunt Bauman och hans bok Auschwitz och det moderna samhället (1989). Yehuda Bauer i boken rethinking the holocaust (2001), Harald Welzer, och hans bok Gärningsmän (2007), slutligen Saul Friedländer och hans bokverk, Förföljelsens år 1933-1939, Utrotningens år 1939-1945. Analysens verktyg består av en indelning i sju, olika förklaringsmodeller, som förekommer och som dessa författare också, representerar eller lyfter fram. Resultatet är slutligen att jag fann den ideologiska förklaringsmodellen framträdande i boken …om detta må ni berätta…, men också beskrivningen av en antisemitism, med rötter långt bak i tiden, är framträdande i denna text. Studien utvisar också att det finns inslag även från andra förklaringsmodeller.