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The Immune System, Immunity and Immune Logics: Troubling Fixed Boundaries and (Re)conceptualizing Relations
No full textSpecial issue \u27The Immune System, Immunity and Immune Logics: Troubling Fixed Boundaries and (Re)conceptualizing Relations\u27, guest edited by Andrea Ford and Julia Swallow
Scoring the invisible: Biomaterial and computational processes for [re]capturing atmospheric pollution
Get PDFThis article discusses the computational and material interplays embedded in the making of [re]capture, a research–creation project combining a bio-inspired installation that materialises particulate matter, together with outdoor sensing instruments that collect atmospheric data in at-risk neighbourhoods (Montreal, Canada). With impacts on health and the environment, habitual and slow forms of exposure to atmospheric pollution (Hsu 2016) outline the relationality of air and the porosity of bodies, both human and more-than-human (Nieuwenhuis 2016; Albano 2022). What kind of technical objects, and material-esthetics can “negotiate a rapprochement” (Gissen 2009, 22) with the invisible materiality of air? At the intersection of critical and bio-design, mechanical engineering, and computer science, [re]capture delves into this question through the lens of ‘filtration,’ simultaneously envisioned as a physical process for attending to atmospheric pollution, and as a generative concept for interpolating technology, materiality, and the city. While the artwork iterates a virtual testing model (Blender and ossia score) with physical prototyping, the article examines how to compose with air through digital simulation and scoring to create new alliances between porous meshes, bioindicators, data, particulate matter, light, wind, and electronics. It also asks How to design installations that embody and materialise the affective properties of air? Attending the speculative trajectory of this process, the article draws on feedback from computer-aided simulation techniques and collaborative experiments in residency spaces to investigate the ‘scoring’ of [im]materiality and explore the spatio-temporality of air
‘Dance of Agency’: Conceptualising Architecture as Posthuman Through an Assessment of La Sagrada Família
Get PDFRather than diminishing design to a mechanical process governed by utility, efficiency and economy, this paper conceptualises the architecture of the Basilica of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona as posthuman. The Cathedral’s social, cultural and psychological implications will be considered in this paper. La Sagrada Família is an “unfinished cathedral” in Catalonia built by the architect Antoni Gaudí in 1882. It receives over 3 million visitors a year. Considering La Sagrada Família under the posthumanist lens enables it to be intertwined with the environment and technology. Posthumanism involves delegating particular acts of human agency into technological devices. Using Kenneth Frampton’s concept of architecture dealing with the tension between its ‘representational’ and its ‘ontological’ dimensions, this article highlights how posthumanism can enable new design methods to be integrated with the Cathedral’s original ideas, casting a reassessment of existing theories of design. This article also considers other theories of design and architecture. These are Andrew Pickering’s concept of the ‘mangle,’ Jonathan Hale’s rematerialisation theory, Steve Tomasula’s concept of human scale in architecture, and Francesca Ferrando’s theory of philosophical posthumanism. The paper explores the process of bringing the original architectural idea of La Sagrada Família to expression in material reality. It analyses how the construction of increasingly sophisticated technological devices is a kind of collision and interaction between human goals, material resistance and future sustainability. Finally, the article demonstrates how the ‘dance of agency’—an ongoing, open-ended and temporally structured operation involving a dialectic of resistance and accommodation—can be carried out using the posthumanist theory of future sustainability in order to transform La Sagrada Família into a shared, plural, hopeful architecture that is embodied and entangled
“Couldst thou not watch with me?”: Queer Orientation and Unresponse in Swinburne’s ‘A Wasted Vigil’
Get PDFIn his 1866 review of A.C. Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, John Morley expresses anxieties regarding the poet’s capacity for queer reorientation – his ability to bring transgressive erotic desires within his reader’s field of vision. The following year Swinburne published ‘A Wasted Vigil’, a lyric address to a beloved incapable of “watching with” the poem’s speaker. How does Swinburne address queer reorientation and the affective community between himself and his reader in his poetry? Using a phenomenological approach, this essay brings Swinburne into dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s work on affect studies and queer theory in order to examine the way in which ‘A Wasted Vigil’ articulates compulsory heterosexuality and queer possibility
Hope and Haunting Images: The Imaginary in Danish Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation
No full textMuch in life is imagined: hoped for, dreamed about, or dreaded, as we engage with potential futures. Parkinson’s disease is a progressive and neuro-degenerative disease, currently incurable. During long-term fieldwork among Danish rehabilitees with Parkinson’s disease, rehabilitees’ mentioning of hope and images of the future gradually inspired attention to an imaginary dimension in rehabilitation. We explore haunting images and hope among rehabilitees as examples of the imaginary in rehabilitation, but also as windows into how rehabilitees orientate themselves towards an uncertain future. We show how rehabilitees’ imaginations of the future resemble hauntings instigating an urge to ‘do something’ to avoid their actualisation; to insist on living in the now, keeping up training, and partaking in clinical trials. This urge translates into rehabilitation practices, where rehabilitees and professionals work with both hope and rehabilitation goals to maximise the present and postpone the future. We emphasise that hope is a complex phenomenon; it is multiple and has a certain elasticity. A person can carry multiple hopes at once; hope can be agentic, co-created and worked with, located, or be an existential stance
Pandemic and Politicisation in Argentina: Nursing Professional Trajectories in the Conurbano Bonaerense Region
No full textThe article analyses the politicisation of nursing personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, focusing on the trajectories of nurses trained in the public universities of the so-called ‘conurbano bonaerense’, especially in the young universities of the ‘Bicentenario’, rooted in a territory with strong traditions of popular political participation. The pandemic context accelerated the struggles for professional recognition among nurses. Analysing this process constitutes a significant contribution to the social studies of health and illness in Latin America, particularly regarding the role of gender. The pandemic has highlighted the necessity of making the history and demands of the nursing profession visible. Against this background, this article emphasises the challenging working conditions and lack of recognition faced by the nursing profession in Argentina, both materially and symbolically. Based on the analysis of narratives provided by nurses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the article analyses three politicisation trajectories of nursing graduates of Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche, on the conurbano bonaerense, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. We demonstrate the importance of the institutional context of the universities in this territory and underline its significance for the politicisation process we have observed
Monk Picnic
Get PDFOn his first day in Bhutan, the author remembers witnessing a sunrise and meeting monk Tenzin. They embark on a journey to a monk picnic, welcomed warmly by Buddhist nuns into a van. The author’s clumsy attempt to offer khadar causes laughter, but the accomplished master kindly corrects him. They enjoy a colorful feast, share laughter, and forget their ride home. Tenzin expresses gratitude, and the author reciprocates, walking back, shoes muddy but heart aglow. The author considers the sunset\u27s promise of many more suns and moons to come in the Kingdom. A tale of friendship, laughter, humility and cultural exchange
The Shepherd Who Did Not Lead
Get PDFThis is an ethnographic snapshot of an encounter with a Gaddi shepherd in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. The Gaddis are a semi-nomadic pastoral people who live across the Himalayan belt of Northern India. In this piece, I recount how this lone shepherd, with just a slight gesture and in unspoken words, shows me how a journey can be lived unbounded by tim
Seeing the Mother’s Face
Get PDFAn anthropologist describes a journey to visit a friend’s mother in Nepal. As she crosses over mountains and valleys with her friends from the village, she considers the meanings of maiti, the maternal home, and what it means to see a mother’s face