2,812 research outputs found

    The death of William Golding: authorship and creativity in darkness visible and the paper men

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    In the seventies and eighties William Golding was deeply responsive to the critical, anti-authorial ethos that followed the publication of Roland Barthes's "La mort de I'auteur" (1968). In Darkness Visible (1979) and The Paper Men (1984) he investigates means by which to reaffirm authorial presence. Working through paradox, he performs the authorial death in these novels, and establishes language’s inadequacy as a means of conveying absolute meaning, authorial "vision," truth or revelation. Having done so he nonetheless gestures towards the divine, towards the possibility of a vatic communication. In this manner the novels work upon principles of contradiction and collapse. What remains is a discourse of hope, promise, desire, without means of substantiating such optimism. Thus Golding might be said to have practiced a form of negative theology, and to have anticipated in this respect some recent trends in literary theory

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    The visceral screen: Between the cinemas of John Cassavetes and David Cronenberg, a Barthesian perspective

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    The thesis discusses two directors who are never considered together in academic discourse. Cassavetes’ perceived focus on events led by the dynamics of performance and his looseness of technique opposes the calculated compositions of the Cronenberg film, with its aesthetic of horrific images and its gallery of emotionally detached protagonists. Yet it is between such opposing methods of cinematic expression that the ineffable qualities of film aesthetics can be discovered. Cassavetes’ cinema achieves this by revelling in a surplus of activity that exceeds narrative, while the indescribable characteristics of the Cronenberg oeuvre is achieved through a systematic emptying of the image’s meaning through a simultaneous commitment to paring back emotion and portraying of images that are controversial and inconceivable. Taken together, the thesis identifies these aspects of film as ‘the visceral,’ a facet of the moving image that most certainly exists, but is resolutely, and disturbingly resistant to interpretation. Roland Barthes’ writings are integral to a theory of the visceral. His re-evaluation of Saussurean semiology as a method of analyzing and undoing ideologically-imposed meanings informs readings of sequences from Cassavetes and Cronenberg’s films. Following Barthes, the thesis suggests that the existence of the visceral is realized as a resistance to ideological interpretations of the image, and so cannot be described. Ultimately, the inability of semiology to fully grasp certain aspects of the filmed image is put forward as a rejoinder to theories of the fiction film as principally a narrative medium

    Niche Strategies to Introduce Kite-Based Airborne Wind Energy

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    Kite-based airborne wind energy systems are new high-tech systems that provide sustainable wind energy. Instead of using a wind turbine, these systems use a kite to generate energy. Commercializing such new high-tech systems is a risky strategy, the failure rate is high. This chapter identifies barriers that block large-scale diffusion of kite-based airborne wind energy systems and specific niche strategies to deal with these barriers. The results are based upon literature research and interviews with six academic and industry experts active in the field of airborne wind energy. We identified the most important barriers to large-scale implementation of airborne wind energy. We show how particular barriers, such as the lack of knowledge of the technology and the lack of support and investment opportunities, interact and together block large-scale production and diffusion. The second result is that several niche strategies can be identified to tackle the barriers in this field. The “geographic niche strategy”, the “demo, experiment and develop niche strategy” and the “educate niche strategy” are identified as good strategies to introduce the kite-based systems. The chapter ends with a discussion of these niche strategies and how they relate to previous research into introduction of sustainable energy technologies.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Energy and IndustryEconomics of Technology and Innovatio

    On Growth and Income Distribution in a Globalizing World

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    The basic idea explaining the relationship between economic growth and income distribution is the “U- shaped hypothesis” postulated by Simon Kuznets. This can be shown in a dual-economy model with technical progress. Initially, inequality is low, but as labour participation in the modern sector increases, higher wages in this sector tend to increase inequality. However, if enough labour is incorporated in the modern sector, wage inequality begins to diminish. Income inequality continues to worsen between the two sectors, if a new modern economy (e.g. IT-based technical change) is introduced and potential GDP shifts to a new trajectory before the turning point is reached. In a globalised word, the substantial unskilled-labour-saving technical progress puts pressure on wages of unskilled workers (in industrialized countries). Also, globalization may be blamed for leaving many nations and millions of people out from reaping the benefits of globalization. This problem can only be overcome by appropriate reforms of the international economic system.Economic Growth, Income Distribution, Globalization

    Optimal Flight Path for Fly-Gen Airborne Wind Energy Systems

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    Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Wind Energ

    De nouveau sur le texte du Roland d’Oxford: lecture

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    While working on his Édition électronique du Roland d’Oxford, the author examined many questionable readings proposed in other editions. This paper is a report on this examination. In the first section, several slight errors committed by most of the editors (for v. 3526, by all editors) are enumerated. In the second section, the author deals with the exceeding «rigorisme» of reading: some editors believe that the copyist wrote carelessly «leuus», «darbe», «quifse» ... in place of «leuns», «barbe», «quisse», etc. But is it possible to distinguish every time «u» from «n», «b» from «d», «f» from «s» ... in a manuscript, which is far from being in a good condition? The close examination of this problem leads the author to agree with the opinion of Philippe Ménard: «[il faut] éviter de croire naïvement à tout ce que l’on voit». In the final section, it is proved that for vv. 43 and 131, some editors of the 19th century read the text more appropriately than those of the 20th, and that for v. 811 the reading of all preceding editions is not correct.journal articl

    Transforming the energy system - the evolution of the German technological system for solar cells

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    To improve our understanding of processes involved in the formation and growth of new technological systems in the energy sector and to identify the associated key challenges for policy makers managing the transformation process, we examine the development of the German technological system for solar cells over the past twenty-five years. We use a 'technological system' approach in which we will trace the evolution of actors, networks and institutions that have a bearing on the generation and diffusion of solar cells. An initial preparatory stage lasted until about 1989 and was mainly characterised by knowledge build up induced by a Federal RDD programme. This was followed by a second stage characterised by political struggle over the regulatory framework and subsequently the beginning of a virtuous circle for solar cells. In the concluding discussion, we emphasise four key features of the evolution of the technological system: (1) the role of a coalition of system builders which successfully influenced the regulatory framework so that markets could be formed: (2) the considerable length of the learning period and the large number of actors which need to learn; (3) the importance of policies which form early markets (not only early niche markets, but beyond those) as only markets may induce firms to enter and learn, and (4) the need to run market formation policies simultaneous to policies which maintain technological variety.new technology, growth and formation, solar cells, Germany
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