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Agreement or Contrariety? A Dialogue
No full textIn one of his blog posts, Martin Lenz refers to Wittgenstein’s Rabbit-duck; a picture puzzle that can interpretated as depicting a rabbit or a duck. The point of this analogy is that what we are perceiving corresponds to our personal experiences which can be shaped in discussions with others even though we remain incapable to grasp both pictures at once. The starting point of the following dialogue is exactly such a Rabbit-duck-illusion. Reading Lenz’ chapter on Spinoza again and again, I remained unsure whether contrariety or agreement is the fundamental relation which warrants his claim that minds are intrinsically social. The aim of this text is to enter into dialogue on this subject and examine the problems and advantages of both readings. Must it necessarily be the case that contrariety and agreement are mutually exclusive like the two parts of the Rabbit-duck
Waarderen van vrouwen. Twee zijden van dezelfde medaille
No full textMarian Mourits beschrijft haar loopbaan in de medische wetenschap en de obstakels die vrouwen moeten overwinnen. Een duidelijk voorbeeld is hoe tijdens haar zwangerschap haar promotieonderzoek, zonder verder overleg, van haar werd afgepakt. Zij pleit in haar artikel voor meer sponsorship voor vrouwen
Een vergeten stem. Vrouwelijke slachtoffers van seksueel geweld en het forensisch medisch onderzoek (Antwerpen, 1895-1925).
No full textAan het begin van de twintigste eeuw hielden rechtszaken rond seksueel geweld een groot risico in voor vrouwelijke slachtoffers. Bij medische onderzoeken en tijdens het proces moest het slachtoffer de eigen morele reputatie verdedigen, wat binnen de dominante culturele denkbeelden over vrouwelijke seksualiteit geen gemakkelijke opdracht was. In dit artikel wordt aan de hand van verschillende Antwerpse assisenzaken onderzocht hoe de juridische behandeling van zedenfeiten getekend werd door deze gegenderde opvattingen. Hierbij worden in het bijzonder de rol van de gerechtsarts en de stem van het vrouwelijke slachtoffer bestudeerd
Migrants, COVID-19, and Italy: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the Construction of and Resistance to Nationalist Discourses
No full textMigration has historically been a controversial issue around the world and one that has often been harnessed by people in power (or people hoping to gain power) for their own political agendas. In times of a global pandemic, the scapegoating of migrants has only increased, often rooted in nationalist ideologies which lead to policies and practices that harm migrants and the larger society. The present paper employs multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore how nationalist ideologies supported by right-wing populism are constructed visually and verbally during COVID-19 on Italian social media in regard to migration. We analyze Giorgia Meloni’s (leader of the nationalist party “Fratelli D’Italia”) Twitter thread discussing the arrival and detention of migrants in Italy in July-August 2020 as a representative sample of the discourse. Findings show one example of how nationalist discourses scapegoat migrants visually and verbally, but also how this discourse can be countered by the public via social media. Additionally, subtle details revealed in the visual analysis show the importance of multimodal research in un-packing ideologies that are easy to deny and hence more dangerous because of social media’s capacity to spread (mis)information.
 
Macro-Structural Change in Relation to Micro-Discursive Storytelling: Qatari Nationality as a Resource for the Construction of Professional Identity
No full textCombining insights from the sociology of education and from discourse-based work on identities within contexts of organizational change, we aim to tease out how topdown structural changes can be related to micro-discursive identity work. Selecting the case of the Qatari university context – which currently takes up a pivotal position in a nation-wide transformative agenda that targets both society and economy – we engage in an empirical investigation of a corpus of interviews with Qatari junior academics. We draw on ‘positioning analysis’ (Bamberg, 1997) to scrutinize the linguistic specificities of the interviewees’ individual stories and their construction of professional identities. In the analyses, we show an emergent pattern of similar identity work in some of the interviewsin our dataset. In particular, these interviewees explicitly draw on their nationality when discussing their career journeys, thus constructing a very specific version of their professional identity. We argue that this can be considered as emblematic of the academic profession as it is being shaped in current-day Qatar, and we claim that this type of analysis can reflexively capture some of the complexities of the dynamic change processes in higher education institutions as well as in organizational contexts in general
National Narration and Organisational Crisis: A Discourse-Mythological Analysis of the Imperial War Museum During the Second World War
No full textThe Imperial War Museum (IWM) first opened in London, United Kingdom, on 9 July 1920. Until the Second World War (1939-1945), this museum conducted itself as an institution thatcommemorated heroism and sacrifice in the First World War (1914-1918). But when the United Kingdom declared war against Germany on 3 September 1939, that framing lost its relevance; major developments in British wartime mythology were occurring and a change to national narration was required. Thus, the IWM anticipated the prospect of cultural irrelevance. An organisational crisis ensued. This study captures two key factors in this case of the IWM. Firstly, we consider the cultural mythology which the museum knew it was embedded within and needed to represent accordingly to remain relevant after the Second World War. Secondly, we consider the ensuing legal contradictions that it perceived and unnecessarily feared for itself – both internally and through its dialogue with relevant authorities. The museum’s mythological entanglement with wider cultural and political factors made its sense of crisis simultaneously justified and unjustified. Our discoursemythological analysis shows how such a paradoxical phenomenon played out and what lessons can be learnt from it
The Construction of Lebanon’s Concurrent Crises in Opinion Articles
No full textThe construction of crisis is realized through the language of those expressing their individual or group perspectives. In 2020, many nations faced multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which raised questions about how concurrent crises are interpreted and managed. Lebanon is an example of a country that experienced three concurrent crises in 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic crisis, and the Beirut Port explosion. This study focuses on Lebanon’s crises by analyzing ten English-language opinion articles written by authors who view the crises from their own professional, social, or cultural lens. The articles were qualitatively analyzed for instances of attitudinal meaning as presented in the appraisal framework. Four constructions of the crises emerged from the analysis, showing that the effects of the crises are unequal but interconnected, crisis management emphasizes certain stakeholders’ interests but not others, and a crisis has the potential to instigate change. Thus, analyzing diverse constructions of crises in the articles shows that they have been simultaneously constructed as victimizing and empowering, thus highlighting the role of power in shaping the effects and management of crises
From Exile to Resistance: An Intimate Portrait of Edward Said
No full textReview of Timothy Brennan (2021) Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said. London: Bloomsbury
Pedagogical mentoring in virtual exchange: Developing students’ videoconferencing skills
No full textIn the context of foreign language education (FLE), virtual exchanges (VE) involving videoconferencing are becoming an increasingly widespread practice. It is to be expected that students face challenges as they may not have developed the skills necessary to successfully carry out these types of online intercultural interactions naturally. In order for them to get the most out of the collaborative learning experience, teachers must engage in the process of teaching students how to do so. With this in mind, this case study analyses the impact that VE teachers’ mentoring had on the development of students’ videoconferencing skills by conducting a qualitative content analysis of pre- and post-intervention videoconference recordings, as well as students’ reflections in their personal portfolios. Despite the limitations identified, the results of this study point to the importance of providing adequate videoconferencing mentoring to improve the VE learning experience and its learning outcomes
Sepulchral Intermediality in Paula Markovitch’s "Armando y Genoveva" (2013)
No full textThis article explores Paula Markovitch’s intermedial reconstruction of her parents’ public (in)visibility in Armando y Genoveva (2013). Markovitch’s intermedial choices—particularly those moments in the documentary when recorded voices are superimposed on the scenes that brim with her parents’ artwork—contain a focused political significance related to her parents’ artistic conviviality and existential fragility. As the recorded audio footage and the filmed artwork further intersect with the filmmaker’s provocative touch and retrospective voice-over, the parents’ key identity traits as well as their uncertain sense of social belonging take center stage. Such intermedial interactions also begin a process of immortalizing the parents’ unbroken commitment to artistic expression despite their life-long isolation in response to Argentina’s political violence (1976–1983)