The ‘woman‐in‐conflict’ at the UN Security Council: a subject of practice

Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the woman‐in‐conflict has emerged as a central figure in the discourse of the UNSC Women, Peace and Security policy community. She is an ever‐present referent in discussions, the person in whose name critique is launched or action demanded. This figure is a representation of the needs and interests of the uncountable, faceless and nameless women affected by and living through war; a representation that takes place through imbuing her with particular meaning or characteristics. These meanings shape how the figure is understood in Women, Peace and Security discourse, which, in turn, constructs the horizons of possibility for both current and future policy and its implementation. This article explores how this figure is produced as a subject through layers of representation and is deeply embedded in the practices and relationships of power in the policy community. It suggests that accounting for these will offer an opportunity for feminist advocates to engage in this institutional space in more considered and effective ways.     

Figures des passions: La pathognomonie de Charles Le Brun

King Louis XIV's official painter, Charles Le Brun, elaborated two models of “reading”; the body. The first one, inspired by the ancient physiognomists, surveys the analogies between human and animal features. The other, ushering in a modern pathognomy partly inspired by Descartes, codifies the signs of passion displayed on human faces: in such a perspective, the movements of the body (and more specifically those of the eyebrows) are supposed to express clearly and distinctly all the emotions of the soul by which they are produced. Thus, using the cartesian physiology as his starting point Le Brun built a semiology of gesture and a rhetoric of emotion that he systematized in the illustrated lectures held at the Royal Academy in 1668. They exemplify how classicism joined the picturesque and the discursive, the natural and the convention, the meaning of gesture and the meaning of words.     

Images of meditation,uncertainty and repentance in ancient art

Tracing back the history of a single gesture from a painting by Caravaggio to the portrait statue of Demosthenes by Polyeuktos, the problem of its meaning is first posed in terms of iconographical tradition. On the other side, the mutual relation between this gesture and its meaning is not a fixed one: one and the same gesture can cover some different (and even opposite) meanings, and conversely one and the same meaning can be conveyed by some different gestures. Some ways of describing and focusing this changing connection (seen as one of signifier and signified) are suggested.     

In the name of a distant king: representing royal authority in the county of Castile,c.900–1038

This article explores the representation of royal power in the tenth‐century county of Castile by contrasting the low degrees of effective royal agency within the county with a dominant charter‐writing tradition that coupled king and count in the synchronisms of the dating clauses. The components of the Castilian charter corpus are broken down and compared to other areas in northern Iberia, in order to suggest that, rather than a mere regional charter‐writing tradition, this practice reflects a widespread political culture that sought to legitimize the counts' unitary leadership of Castile by reference to a prestigious yet distant royal figure.     

Democratic ambivalence in post mortem

Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of films has broken new ground in Chilean cinema by offering a new perspective on realities of the Pinochet dictatorship, the outbreak of the coup, and the dissolution of Pinochet’s power. This article explores Larraín’s use of banality, which, I claim, realizes a democratic ambivalence that is latent in historical representation and History proper. Rather than accusing Larraín’s films of conservatism or apathy, I argue that these films seek to destabilize the known categories of identification: a radical gesture against any form of establishment. Paying particular attention to Larraín’s aesthetics, I claim that the radical gesture of Post mortem (2010) lies in its innovations at the level of mise-en-scène and editing. Drawing on philosophical insights in Jacques Rancière’s and Gilles Deleuze’s writings on historical representation and ambivalent representations, I argue that Larraín avoids conventional forms of historical fiction and Latin American political cinema.     

Maladies et pratiques therapeutiques des femmes dans le Sud‐Tunisien

This article gives an account of a study carried out between 1979 and 1984 in Kebili, an oasis in south Tunisia. The observation and analysis of concrete therapeutic practices and of the discourses on illness show a simultaneous recourse to traditional therapy and modern medicine. But these recourses are ordered and determined by a coherent representation of illness based on a tri‐dimensional system of causes: the “organic disorder”; itself, the magico‐religious cause and sorcery. The therapeutic system rests on a bipolarisation of roles: on the one hand, the strictly feminine therapeutic cell, and on the other, the collected body of healers of both sexes. The system of treatment appears to be a network of investigations into the nature of the illness of which women are the principal animators. The therapeutic system then defines the contours of a space of symbolic representations which imply but go beyond the representation of illness.     

Regional Coverage Maximization: Alternative Geographical Space Abstraction and Modeling

Analysis results are often found to vary with the way we abstract geographical space. When continuous geographic phenomena are abstracted, processed, and stored in a digital environment, some level of discretization is often employed. Information loss in a discretization process brings about uncertainty/error, and as a result research findings may be highly dependent on the particular discretization method used. This article examines one spatial problem concerning how to achieve the maximal regional coverage given a limited number of service facilities. Two widely used geographical space abstraction approaches are examined, the point‐based representation and the area‐based representation, and issues associated with each representation scheme are analyzed. To accommodate the limitations of the existing representation schemes, a mixed representation strategy is proposed along with a new maximal covering model. Experiments are conducted to site warning sirens in Dublin, Ohio. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the mixed representation scheme in finding high‐quality solutions when the regional coverage level is medium or high.     

A SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION ON THE PROVENANCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF A BLACK‐FIGURE AMPHORA ATTRIBUTED TO THE PRIAM GROUP*

The restoration of a Greek black‐figure amphora provided an opportunity to study the provenance and production technology of the vase. The composition of the ceramic body, determined by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP–OES), matches that of Attic products. Investigation by X‐ray diffraction and reflectance spectroscopy suggests a maximum firing temperature around 900°C and a body re‐oxidation temperature around 800°C, respectively. The morphology and composition of black, red and dark red surface areas were studied by scanning electron microscopy and X‐ray energy‐dispersive analysis; the black areas show the features of a typical well‐vitrified black gloss, while the red areas were most probably obtained by simple burnishing of the body; the dark red additions, on the other hand, are the likely result of a partial re‐oxidation of a clay–ochre mixture.     

REPRESENTATION AS A COGNITIVE INSTRUMENT

This essay discusses the role of the notions of reference, truth, and meaning in historical representation. Four major claims will be argued. First, conditional for all meaningful discussion of historical representation is that one radically discards from one's mind the paradigm of the true statement and all the epistemological and ontological problems occasioned by it. Second, representation is not a two‐place, but a three‐place operator: in representation a represented reality (1) is represented by a representation (2) focusing on certain aspects of represented reality (3). Third, applying the notions of reference, truth, and meaning to historical representations compels us to give them a content basically different from the ones they have in contemporary philosophy of language and science. Fourth, it will be shown that in (historical) representation, meaning precedes truth—and not the other way around as in most of contemporary philosophy of language.     

试论汉代画像墓葬的种类与表现手法

汉代画像基葬由于分布广泛,表现形式丰富多样,将它们加以综合审视,从中可以发现汉代画像墓葬从兴起、流行、昌盛到衰落的发展历程.对各地不同时期画像墓葬的种类与特色,本文也有一个整体上的比较和揭示.     

An Independent Confirmation of the 4 ka Antiquity of a Beeswax Figure in Western Arnhem Land,Northern Australia

Critical to any chronology is reliability in the determination of age for a distinctive artefact that is related to other components in a series. Therefore, the independent testing and verification of the antiquity of an apparent anomalous measurement for an old beeswax figure in northern Australia is of fundamental interest in rock art studies. Replication of the radiocarbon dating process has confirmed that one exceptional figure in early X‐ray style at the Gunbilngmurrung site in western Arnhem Land is indeed c. 4–4.5 ka. The result also confirms the great antiquity of paintings over which the beeswax was applied.     

青海都兰吐蕃唐墓包金银饰的科学分析

青海都兰位于古丝绸之路南道上,都兰吐蕃墓葬群出土了为数不少的隋唐时期金银器及饰物,其中一件"粟特银包金神袛人物连珠牌饰银丝腰带"牌饰上的人物具有典型的粟特特征,这对于研究中西方文化交流,有着极为重要的价值。但很多包金银饰片出土时腐蚀严重需要进行保护处理和相关的科学研究。为此,通过电子扫描电镜、X-射线衍射等分析方法,对工艺类似腰带牌饰的样品进行科学分析。结果表明,样品为包金银器饰物,包金层为金银合金,而银本体腐蚀严重,腐蚀产物主要是氯化银,这与环境的高含盐量有关,分析结果可为吐蕃墓出土文物的研究和保护提供理论依据。     

Representation and identity ‐ convergence of brain research and mind‐brain philosophy

Abstract

The localization or representation of mental abilities in the brain have always been considered as key questions for understanding the organization of the human nervous system. Particularly with the advent of modern electrophysiological and imaging techniques that provide maps of electromagnetic fields and metabolic processes on the living central nervous system, the representation theory is experiencing a scientific renaissance in neurology, but is only one theory, however, in the succession of a long philosophical tradition dealing with the possible identification of mental phenomena and brain processes. This dichotomy was formulated at the latest in the Cartesian dualism of res cogitans and res extensa of the mind‐body problem. Nowadays philosophical discussion, on the contrary, is dominated by monistic concepts that attempt to explain the mental realm on an organic foundation in order not to succumb to the problem of a psychophysical dualism. Of these, the identity theory offers a philosophically plausible concept postulating that the identity of brain conditions and mental phenomena is based on organic foundations. In this theory, the efforts of brain research converge on the representations of mental phenomena in the human nervous system. In a comprehensive approach, both concepts could complement each other.     

Which national group will I identify myself with? The role of preferred and perceived identity representations

Research shows that the more people identify with a national in‐group, the more their citizenship representation becomes in line with the citizenship discourse attached to this national‐identity. However, although national identification may lead to a preference for a specific citizenship representation, national identification might itself depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences. In line with this, a longitudinal study among Flemish‐Belgian high‐school students (N = 275) showed reciprocal relations between national identification and citizenship representation. A second study among Flemish‐Belgian high‐school students (N = 407) then showed that strength of national identification does not simply depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences but on the (mis)match between such preferences and the citizenship representation perceived to be attached to a national‐identity. In addition, results showed that the relation between national identification and out‐group attitudes depends on the national‐identity under consideration.     

汉画像石麒麟图像考略

汉画像石上的麒麟图像因其旁注榜题"騏驎"而成为比较可信的研究资料,其图像以鹿为原型、头部有"山"形角、个别身腹部刻饰羽翼等纹饰。这一图像拓展了鹿图像引魂升天的主题,在鹿的头部加上"山"形角,提升了鹿图像的神格地位,使之成为王者风范的象征。其身腹部刻饰羽翼则是中西文化交流成果的体现。     

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: Crisis,Chiliasm, and Transcendence in the Thought of Paul Nagel (†1624), a Lutheran Dissident during the Time of the Thirty Years’ War

Although now forgotten, Paul Nagel was one of the most notorious seventeenth‐century critics of orthodox Lutheranism. His Prognosticon Astrologo‐Cabalisticum (1618) and Stellae Prodigiosae (1619), in which he sketched a complex astrological‐prophetic system, were followed by numerous books and pamphlets over the next five years in which he predicted the arrival of the Last Judgement in 1666. Although the failure of his prophecies for 1624 led to a collapse of interest in his prognostications, he turns out to have been a key figure in early seventeenth‐century Protestantism. How he strayed from his original orthodox position is the subject of this essay.     

A discussion of magic and medicines in East African iron working: actors and artefacts in technology

Through an inquiry into locally constructed, pre‐industrial Tanzanian iron smelting practices this article looks beyond social representation of technologies and suggests a more nuanced perspective than the more familiar rituals of transformation and gendered procreative paradigm. It is demonstrated that among the Pangwa and Fipa peoples iron smelting symbolism was not merely a social representation of “something” else and of something of greater significance such as religion, economy and politics, rather there were no real distinctions between technology and other spheres of life; there was no (ontological) difference between humans and non humans. Drawing on inspiration from phenomenology and semantics, as well as Actor Network Theory, I will argue that among Fipa and Pangwa iron workers the use of magic and medicines, as well as an overall thermodynamic conception of the body, was transferred from personal and collective lived experience by metaphorical imagination to the iron smelting furnaces.     

From Head‐hunter to Organ‐thief: Verisimilitude,Doubt, and Plausible Worlds in Indonesia and Beyond

In the last few years, occult head‐hunters – elusive figures that have haunted communities and the public imagination in Indonesia since at least colonial times – appear to have adopted a novel and troubling tactic. Instead of decapitating their victims and using the heads in construction rituals as they are said to have conventionally done, head‐hunters are now allegedly harvesting their victims’ organs to sell them on the global market of body parts. Based on a comparison of ethnographic material from North Maluku, a province in the eastern part of Indonesia, and news reports in regional and national papers, I trace how accounts about headhunting have morphed with narratives about organ theft. I argue that this plasticity is not a merely a change in symbolic ideas of the occult that reflects changing political and economic realities. Rather, I propose that their turn to organ theft enrols head‐hunters in a contemporary and global ‘travelling package’ that includes and entangles organ trafficking practices, media accounts, political imaginaries, and social anxieties within the same field of reality and possibility, a field of verisimilitude in which fiction and fact, rumour and reality, are fundamentally blurred. The article proposes a ‘more‐than‐representational’ approach to the organ‐stealing head‐hunter that sees him not just as a representation of particular political and historical circumstances but as a co‐producer of these circumstances, of particular political worlds and their attendant scales of anxiety. This approach, I argue, challenges the epistemological distinction between symbolic representation and political reality that informed (but also incommoded) the analyses of headhunting rumours in the 1980s and 1990s – and that continues to inform anthropological analyses of ‘the occult’ more generally.