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<i>Res Ipsa</i>: Ostension in Semiotics and Folkloristics
No full textThis article attempts to reconcile the semiotic model of ostension with the markedly different folkloristic use of the term. In semiotics, as well as linguistics and philosophy, ostension may be glossed as showing, rather than telling. Yet in the field of folkloristics, most invocations of ostension have regarded it as a kind of interaction with traditional narratives. Despite the significant differences between these types of ostension, we suggest that both have at their heart a concern with res ipsa, the thing itself. We first discuss the historical breadth of the concept of ostension, before presenting a simple set of ostensive types, and one “ostensive context,” building on existing scholarship on ostension. The categorical reorientation we propose here is important for several reasons. The concept of ostension in all its inflected forms pushes scholars to consider communication beyond the limits of language and into an ontological consideration of how communication and meaning can operate in the network of “things” and “objects” (rather than signs). For this reason, it also stretches the limits of semiotics, which generally deals with signs and semiosis (the action of signs). Reimagining the relationship of semiotic and folkloric ostension along these lines refocuses our attention on the communicative process that is at the heart of the earliest formulations of ostension itself. More broadly, ostension impacts cultural norms surrounding appropriate modes of communication (e.g., speaking aloud versus silently gesturing); verbal storytelling and its relationship to embodied experience; and perhaps most significantly in the 21st century, belief formation and the notion of evidentiary weight
Para-s/cite, Part II. The Paracite
No full textPart II of this two-part essay continues part I’s discussion of the parasite and the citation. This essay explores the paracite, that act alongside and beyond citation, a citational act which splits and doubles itself, as citational and yet not-quite citational. Paracitations perforate and exceed the semiotic enclosure of the citation, its play on sameness and difference, identity and alterity. To explore the semiotics of the paracite I discuss Tamil youth’s engagements with (“counterfeit”) global brand garments. In conclusion I suggest that ethnography affords avenues of exploration of these paracites and the performativities they make possible in ways that other methodologies may foreclose
A self-driving physical vapor deposition system making sample-specific decisions on the fly
No full textWe present an autonomous physical vapor deposition system that integrates hardware automation, in-situ optical spectroscopy, and Bayesian machine learning into a complete self-driving laboratory framework making decisions on the fly. Using silver thin films as a model material, our platform efficiently navigates a complex parameter space through active learning. By introducing a thin physical layer denoted as calibration layer, the machine learning models adapt to sample-specific conditions on the fly and reliably predict the deposition conditions to achieve user-specified optical properties. Moreover, from the high-throughput experimental data, the algorithm systematically captures the complex parameter-property relationships that are challenging to deduce by conventional trial-and-error methods. This study demonstrates the potential of self-driving laboratories for both reducing human labor and gaining new understanding of materials, providing a streamlined approach to enable self-driving physical vapor deposition systems
Shifting power asymmetries in scientific teams reveal China’s rising leadership in global science
No full textChina’s emergence as one of the world’s top producers of high-quality science raises critical questions about its trajectory toward achieving scientific leadership. Traditional methods for evaluating the power of national scientific ecosystems, however, often overlook the nuances of a country’s global influence. In this perspective, we introduce a framework that highlights shifting power dynamics in international scientific collaborations, focusing on whether leadership positions in international scientific teams are moving from one country to another. Using rich sociological data from nearly 6 million scientific publications, we document a marked shift in team leadership from Western countries to China. In particular, the share of team leaders involved in U.S-China scientific collaborations that were affiliated with Chinese institutions grew from 30% of the total in 2010 to 45% in 2023. We further explore the implications of China’s rise by forecasting when Chinese scientists are projected to achieve parity in leadership vis-à-vis the United States, including in 11 critical technology areas that are focal points of technological development, and by analyzing how a potential decoupling of U.S.-Chinese science might affect Chinese scientific leadership. We conclude by considering the impacts of China’s growing investments in the training of young scientists in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative
Semiotic Ideology: A Dialogue across Semiotic Traditions
No full textThis dialogue between Webb Keane and Massimo Leone, moderated and with a preface by Constantine V. Nakassis, explores convergences and divergences between continental semiotics and North American linguistic anthropology on the topic of “semiotic ideology.” The discussion ranges over questions of intellectual genealogy, the status of interpretation, the epistemology of analysis, and methodology. It is an edited transcription of the opening session of the “Summer Symposium 2025: Ideologies of Conservation and Transformation,” organized by Massimo Leone at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Trento, Italy, 23 June 2025)
Pigs, Herring, and Bornholm on a Table: A High-end Restaurant’s Construction of Authenticity
No full textThis paper focuses on constructions of authenticity in a high-end restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. The restaurant self-identifies as ‘Bornholmian’ and thereby it creates a link to the island of Bornholm, some 160 km from Copenhagen. Bornholm is introduced discursively as an interpretive universe and as an essential part of the restaurant’s claim to value. We show how authenticity is performed, created, and treated reflexively. We concentrate on servers’ authenticating discursive moves and their crucial role in guiding guests’ attention to relevant elements, and we point out that authenticity is a potential that does not always materialize fully. We also discuss guests’ role in the creative processes. The restaurant’s construction of a comprehensive semiotic experience includes food, décor, photos, tableware, and narratives; dialect features are used to heighten the intensity of the guests’ experience. We build on Coupland’s (2003, 2014) semantic dimensions of authenticity, that lay out the meaning dimensions contributing to an understanding of authenticity, and on Coupland & Coupland’s (2014) frames of authenticity. Here (constructed) authenticity emerges through interactional frames that participants can orient to and draw upon in their creation of value. Frames of cultural, recreational and material authenticity are continuously made relevant, and tradition, or historicity, and place of production, or ontology, are important semantic dimensions. The data set consists of interviews with staff, recordings of servers at work, visits to the restaurant webpage, and ethnographic field-notes and photos
Decoupling and Coordination: The Keys to Making AI Datacenters Constructive Loads in Renewable-dominated Grids
No full textAI and cloud datacenters (DCs) are rapidly growing constant loads that conflict with variable wind and solar generation, challenging both grid reliability and decarbonization. Flexible grid load to match the variable power supply is the key to solving these grid problems, but hardly any commercial datacenters act as flexible grid loads today because it reduces resource/capital efficiency. We explore decoupling datacenter power capacity and grid load using energy resources (e.g. storage, generator) to create datacenter grid load flexibility. Further, we explore the use of decoupling more broadly to ease reliability constraints (datacenter growth) and accelerate decarbonization. First, we propose "power Middlebox", a new system architecture that realizes decoupling. We define the Middlebox system architecture, frame its objectives, and explore designs (energy resources, extent of decoupling, management) in varied power grid settings. Evaluation shows that Middlebox unlocks 460% or 170% datacenter growth with grid reliability or decarbonization constraints in a wind-dominated grid. Decoupling reconciles the conflict between grid and datacenter needs, enabling constant DC power capacity on 99.9% of days, for a cost equal to 3--5% increase in datacenter TCO. Future technologies are expected to reduce Middlebox cost. Furthermore, workload flexibility studied extensively by others can be exploited to further reduce cost. These results are robust across grid types. Overall, the results show that Middlebox can be deployed in small to large datacenters economically with today's technology. Second, addressing that the grid is weak in cooperation, we study how to distribute decoupling across datacenters and cooperatively manage that distributed capability to maximize carbon reduction benefits for all. Evaluation shows that optimized distribution must consider site variation. It can deliver >98% of the benefits enabled by maximum local decoupling needs with 30% less total decoupling need. For management, grid control of DC grid load achieves the highest benefits (10--17% grid carbon reduction vs. no decoupling). If the goal is to maintain some datacenter autonomy, PS-GridScale employing 2-way information sharing and control can achieve 84--87% of the grid carbon reduction with decoupling cost reduced by 7--16% vs. grid control. PS-GridScale also outperforms 1-way information sharing (PlanShare) and traditional selfish online control approaches in both benefit and cost. Decoupling may be economically viable, as on average datacenters gain power cost and carbon reduction benefits that are greater than their local costs of decoupling. Skew in cost across datacenter sites suggests public policy will be required to achieve the most efficient decoupling distributions. To conclude, employing the ideas of decoupling and DC-grid coordination, this dissertation presents a clear pathway to making datacenters constructive loads in renewable-dominated grids, enabling sustainable growth of AI.</p
“Fight the Power” or Fear the Power? Perceived Levels of Political Agency via Musically Driven Emotional Intervention
Get PDFWhile much of the focus on international relations understanding of hegemony sticks to physical, hard power manifestations of it, hegemony often is reinforced via more subtle and culturally salient means. Through culture, the hegemonic class is able to produce consent and approval of the governed by disseminating ideas and feelings through more subdued means of popular culture, such as popular music. I argue that emotions evoked by popular music affect an individual's level of political agency, paving the way for manipulation by the hegemon. By using U2 and Rage Against the Machine as case studies, this paper demonstrates that creating different emotional responses in the listener effects how they will interact with political stimuli in the wake of such emotional manipulation. The findings suggest that popular culture, and in this case music, is an area of hegemonic control that is less obvious in nature, and more difficult for the individual to resist against
Freedom Through Shared Purpose: Hegel on Self-Consciousness, Recognition, and the Teleological Structure of Agency
Get PDFMy dissertation is about Hegel’s account of the connection between self-consciousness, freedom, and human sociality in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. That account has long attracted readers for its claim that the freedom of self-conscious subjects can only be realized through social relationships. But scholars have struggled to give a clear and convincing account of that claim. The standard view takes Hegel to combine a Kantian notion of rational autonomy with a conception of reason and norms of rationality as socially constituted. I argue that this view is mistaken, both as a reading of this chapter of the Phenomenology and as an interpretation of the broader social theory of freedom that Hegel introduces in it. The central theme of Hegel’s account of recognition is not that of overcoming natural heteronomy through universal normative principles—regardless of whether or not such norms are socially constituted. In fact, this very conception of freedom holds only a secondary, subordinate status for Hegel. Instead, I argue, Hegel’s account of recognition marks a decisive turn away from Kantian conceptions of freedom toward more Aristotelian conceptions of subjectivity and the collective self-sufficiency of a community. Specifically, Hegel’s account focuses on the internal teleological structure of self-conscious life and action and its implications for human freedom. The central notion of freedom here thus concerns a kind of self-sufficiency or Selbständigkeit — successfully existing for oneself without constraint to one’s inner purposes. Accordingly, I argue that the central claim in Hegel’s account of recognition is that the subject’s individual freedom and self-fulfillment can only be truly realized through relations of reciprocal action and shared internal purposiveness with other subjects. For Hegel, the higher practical freedom achieved through social life is not primarily founded upon shared rights or shared norms but, rather, a shared life. It concerns the “Zusammenleben des Menschen” (Encyclopaedia ❡433) in the strict sense of the term: a unified internal purpose sustained through the reciprocal action of its members, where each is, for the others, both a necessary means and an end in itself. For Hegel, this shared life is the true ground and inner purpose of all rights, norms, and mores
Glitter and Resistance: Music, Identity, and Power in Drag Performance
No full textThis dissertation is an ethnographic study of live, local drag performance. Drag artists typically lip-sync or sing to recorded popular music, while using gender impersonation or an exaggerated gender presentation for the entertainment of an audience. While the majority of drag queens are male-identified entertainers performing in female personas, and likewise the majority of drag kings female-identified entertainers performing in male personas, the art form is not limited to these combinations of identities. Drag performance encompasses acting, dance, gendered movement, comedy, precision timing, and stage presence. Music is a fundamental, though under-examined, element of drag performance. Whether the performers are lip-synching or singing live, choices about music are central to their acts, guiding all other aspects such as costumes, wigs, style of makeup, props, and choreography. I investigate the ways in which these artists make decisions about music, both for development of the stage persona and for connection with an audience. Much of the scholarly work on drag focuses on the aspect of cross-gender performance. In this project I am not theorizing drag, identity construction, gender, or embodiment. As I set out to describe and understand the meanings that drag performance holds for its practitioners, I found that for the artists, drag is not necessarily about gender; gender presentation is merely one aspect of the medium. In the midst of the diversity across the art form, I have identified three core elements that are common to nearly all styles of drag: music, identity, and power. Storytelling through music is at the heart of the genre. However, there is still significant prejudice and stigma associated with gender boundary-crossing, particularly when those assigned male at birth adopt a feminine persona. Despite personal risk, many practitioners find it empowering to do drag. In a case study, I present a community that finds power in and because of their marginalized identities, even using drag to accomplish social justice work