268 research outputs found
Centralized and decentralized control of structural vibration and sound radiation
No full textThis paper examines the performance of centralized and decentralized feedback controllers on a plate with multiple colocated velocity sensors and force actuators. The performance is measured by the reduction in either kinetic energy or sound radiation, when the plate is excited with a randomly distributed, white pressure field or colored noise. The trade-off between performance and control effort is examined for each case. The controllers examined are decentralized absolute velocity feedback, centralized absolute velocity feedback control and linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control. It is seen that, despite the fact that LQG control is a centralized, dynamic controller, there is little overall performance improvement in comparison to decentralized direct velocity feedback control if both are limited to the same control effort
The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS)
No full textThis paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and practitioners of library and information science (LIS). This concept emerged as part of the theoretical framework employed by the author in his doctoral thesis (Muela-Meza, 2010): An Application of Community Profiling to Analyse Community Information Needs, and Providers: Perceptions from the People of the Broomhall Neighbourhood of Sheffield, UK. This concept is complemented from philosophy (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1976a), and the natural sciences (Hauser, 2006; Sagan and Druyan, 1992), and it served the author to understand better the bigger dimensions of the underlying issues behind social classes and human conflicts. It also served to understand better the contradictions between people (e.g. LIS users with contradictory and mutually exclusive information needs to be provided by libraries and other institutions of information recorded in documents), and how these intensify when these are interrelated with the social class they belong to (Muela-Meza, 2007). This paper also criticises some competing views whose proponents by pretending fallaciously and deceitfully to deny the presence of social class divides in society, such as those rhetorical ploys of post-modernism that propose capitalist-class-driven ideologues of “community cohesion” based on “social capital” (Putnam, 1999). It shows evidence of how those followers (e.g. Pateman, 2006; Contreras Contreras, 2004; Bryson, Usherwood and Proctor, 2003) of capitalist-class ideologues, by doing so they aligned their discourse to that of dominance hierarchies and hegemony against working class people, in LIS and other sciences, and the humanities. It also criticises the postmodern pseudoscience because it pretends to undermine the logical rationality fundamental in LIS and all other sciences. It recommends that LIS theorists and practitioners employ the social class struggles concept as configured here in order to understand better contradictions, conflicts, and struggles within LIS theory and practice, and also to search for broader epistemological aims such as justice and wisdom (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1998), concealed by the capitalist or bourgeois and middle classes for their benefit against working class
Cola di Rienzo: mito e rivoluzione nei drammi di Engels, Gaillard, Mosen e Wagner: 1837-1846: con la ristampa del testo di Friedrich Engels 'Cola di Rienzi' (1841)
No full textSollecitati dal romanzo Rienzi. The Last of the Roman Tribunes (1835) dell’inglese Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, quattro giovani autori tedeschi elaborano in forme teatrali la figura del tribuno Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354) e la sua rivoluzione a Roma durante l’assenza dei Papi, in cattività ad Avignone dal 1304 al 1377, mentre la città è vittima della tirannia della nobiltà. Questi drammi – Cola Rienzi (1837) di Julius Mosen; Cola di Rienzi (1841) di Friedrich Engels; Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (1842) di Richard Wagner; Cola Rienzi (1846) di Carl Gaillard – riportano all’attenzione la libertà e l’uguaglianza come ideali della rivoluzione, la legalità e la giustizia sociale come fondamenti del nuovo ordine sociale in una cornice costituzionale, il pericolo del ritorno della restaurazione e quello della trasformazione del tribuno in tiranno. Rivelando originalità nella costruzione drammatica, nell’elaborazione della concettualità politica e nella scelta metaforica, questi quattro autori tedeschi scrivono un capitolo importante di storia civile europea, attraverso un esempio italiano. Essi contribuiscono così in maniera decisiva alla creazione di una mitologia popolare ancora oggi molto produttiva: Cola di Rienzo, figura eroica della letteratura tedesca, è il visionario propugnatore di una nuova Roma repubblicana, fondata su libertà e giustizia, protagonista carismatico della Rivoluzione, vittima, infine, di meschine rivalità e del conflitto che si sviluppa tra affetti privati e interesse pubblico, dopo la conquista del potere. "Mi paiono notevoli gli spunti di riflessione che l’autore suggerisce sul rapporto tra storiografia e letteratura, ovvero tra la ricostruzione storica e l’elaborazione immaginifica di un accadimento o di un personaggio. […] Osserva giustamente Battafarano: “Se, pertanto, è senza dubbio vero che Engels, Wagner, Mosen e Gaillard con le loro opere drammatiche non offrono nulla che possa servire agli storici odierni del medioevo, è però altrettanto vero che essi dicono molto allo storico che si accinga a studiare la Germania dell’Ottocento” (p. 23), e chiude il capitolo con una notevole sentenza: “La letteratura è la rappresentazione della storia dell’umanità rivisitata continuamente nel mito” (p. 25). Il rapporto tra storia e letteratura si presenta dunque come uno dei temi profondi del libro." Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, "il 996: rivista del Centro Studi Giuseppe Gioachino Belli"
The Labour Theory of Culture : A Re-examination of Engels' Theory of Human Origins
No full textDespite its importance in understanding the social relations of labour little attention has been paid by Western Marxists to evolutionary theory. Taking as a starting point an unfinished essay by Engels, the author argues that the human species must be seen as discontinuous with its nearest biological ancestors – that a qualitative distinction was brought about by social labour. It is argued that the most likely forms of human organization were co-operative and field studies are discussed which apparently provide evidence for tool use and linguistic ability among the higher primates. The relationship between hand and brain in terms of Marxist psychology is also elaborated.</p
Reading acts of narrative appropriation: four instances of fraudulent memoir
No full textPhDThis thesis examines acts of narrative appropriation, the telling of purportedly‘authentic’ life stories by those for whom the stories are not theirs to tell. This
misuse or subversion of genre - the discipline of historical writing and the category
of autobiography - becomes a means for cultural, social and political dissimulation,
and the analysis focuses both on the act: the event, trespass, or ‘theft’ of another’s
life story, and on the cultural meaning that this event reveals. These narrative acts
are approached theoretically through discussions of what it means to be an author, a
reader, and through the consideration of literary and social genre, category and form.
In exploring identities at particular risk of appropriation, this thesis shows how
fraudulent appropriated narratives affect our reading of the world, and in turn
influence our perception of already marginalized social groups. My primary
examples include prostitution ‘narratives’, Native North American ‘memoir,’ and
fraudulent Holocaust survivor ‘testimony,’ with each text providing decoded
evidence of ‘genre-bending’ exhibiting a social and political intent. These works
seek to be read as authentic personal narratives, as autobiography, and that is how
they have been presented to the reader. However, they are imposters – fictional tales
desiring the elevated status of historical authenticity and willing to bend the rules
and contracts of genre to achieve their end. Here the appearance of authenticity is
achieved through the use of cultural and social ‘myth,’ or perceptions of cultural
identity, and as such its fraudulent construction is first and foremost a social act,
with a social and economic motivation. As this thesis concludes, these texts are
most successful when their own political and social ideologies echo and confirm that
of the readership; when their subjects, the fraudulent ‘I’ at the center of the text is
also a performative elaboration of cultural belief
Bakhtinian Dialogic and Vygotskian Dialectic: Compatabilities and contradictions in the classroom?
No full textThis article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky (drawing on philosophers such as Hegel, Spinoza, Engels and Marx) and Bakhtin (drawing on members of the Bakhtin Circle and writers such as Dostoevsky and Rabelais) respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian society. It is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky. The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration pose for educational practice today
Marxismo, historia y nación
No full textRepaso historiográfico a los conceptos de Nación e Historia desde el paradigma del materialismo histórico y la obra de Marx, Engels y Stalin, entre otros autores e historiadores. Dado el componente ideológico del nacionalismo del siglo XXI, el autor reivindica la actualidad de esta perspectiva marxista.Historiographical review of the concepts of Nation and History from the paradigm of historical materialism and the work of Marx, Engels, and Stalin , among other political authors and historians. Given the ideological component of nationalism of the 21st century, the author claims the actuality of this Marxist perspective
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