Hospital Drama: Visual Theatres of the Medical Rendezvous from Asylum to Hospital with Reference to Specific Works by Anna Furse

Abstract

This paper is informed by Furse’s practice as a theatre maker in two fields of output that are connected by two factors: first, the presence of the woman patient — hysteric/subfertile respectively — within the clinical gaze; second, the significance of the womb to each pathology. In the treatment of each (explored in Furse’s theatre), lens based technologies play their part, whilst the cultural and medical can be seen to have overlapped to produce specific meaning with regard to Her body and its spectacularity. The article presents an overview of some of the key issues in precisely how the woman’s body becomes spectacular within this prosthetic medical gaze and how the medical — and theatrically designed spaces to represent these — become meaningful and potent proxemics that in turn inform medical/ theatrical spectatorship. Overarching nineteenth-century protocols at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (where Furse’s Augustine (Big Hysteria) is set) to contemporary imaging technologies used in the treatment of subfertility with Assisted Reproduction Technologies (the topic of her Art of A.R.T. projects), it examines the way in which photography develops through cinema to X-Ray, ultrasound and then 3D/4D ultrasound to ‘capture’ the woman’s body in ways by which she becomes muted and exposed. These occular technologies that extend the gaze, first to an exterior subject and then, eventually, traversing the flesh without knife, lend specific performativity to the ‘patient’ women, within the context of hysterias and reproductive impairments respectively. Finally, issues of suspension of disbelief are addressed. The spectator’s faith in the screen-based image of Her spectacular body is interrupted in Furse’s work, which is also keenly interested in the effect of such imagery on the woman’s sense of Self. The historical and cultural leaps in this article argue that there is indeed a trajectory through the history of medical imaging since the first application of photography to anatomy to the more advanced scoping technologies of medical imaging today, and that in each era, the production of these images remain fraught with cultural implications.     

Houses,Objects, and the Politics of Inheritance in Josep Maria de Sagarra's Vida privada

Josep Maria de Sagarra's novel Vida privada (1932) portrays an upper-class Catalan family, the Lloberolas, as unable to adapt to the new economic and political situation taking place in the city of Barcelona at the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and at the beginning of the Second Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through a close reading of this family's houses, furniture, and personal belongings, I argue that material elements in this novel are central to the narrator's ethical critique and moral judgment of Barcelona's elite. The Lloberolas treat humans as objects and objects as humans, and I contend that, in an ironic emulation, the narrator also objectifies the Lloberolas and equates them with their objects. This comparison elucidates the family's superficiality and corrupted morals. Objects are also essential in destabilizing public and private boundaries because they often transcend the private domain and expose—to the readers and to the other inhabitants of Barcelona—the protagonists’ personality. Moreover, in Vida privada, houses, furniture, and surnames are understood as an inheritance that transfers very specific ideals of social status from parents to children. By presenting this material heritage with the exemplifying case of the Lloberola family, Sagarra offers a sharp critique of the Catalan upper classes and their superficial values. Their necessity to cling to an inherited world centered on material possessions finally results in their loss of power and evidences their economic and moral decline.     

Paying Attention to Politics: Public Responsiveness and Welfare Policy Change

In order for the democratic process to work properly, it is vital that the public pays attention to politics and signals its opinions and preferences back to its representatives; if this is not the case, representatives have less incentive to represent. This article deals with the question of whether and how the public responds to welfare policy change. The thermostatic model departs from the assumption that the public responds to policy change with negative feedback, in relation to its preferred level of policy. The empirical analysis tests this model on public responses following the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care. Did the reform trigger a thermostatic response from the public, and how should this be interpreted? A contribution in relation to previous research is the inclusion of ideological orientation and proximity, variables which, I argue, condition the nature and direction of public responsiveness. The study was designed as a natural experiment in which preferences of privatization of health care were measured before and after the health care reform of 2009/2010. The results provide partial support for the thermostatic model: preferences for further privatization decrease after the reform, but primarily within one subgroup. Additionally, public responses are demonstrated to vary according to ideological orientation, where the right‐oriented react thermostatically and the left‐oriented do not. The article contributes to a further understanding of the relation between policymaking and public opinion and to the expansion of thermostatic theory.     

Interpartner Legitimacy Effects on Cluster Initiative Formation and Development Processes

In spite of the growing interest in cluster initiatives (CIs) as a means of regional development, there are still few studies of CIs that offer an inside perspective. This article takes such an inside perspective, focusing on the internal legitimacy aspects of the formation and evolving processes of CIs. We propose the inclusion of interpartner legitimacy effects in order to better understand the formation and development of CIs. A case study method is applied on a Swedish CI in the tourism industry. Faced with the situation that their region was lagging behind other Swedish regions in the development of tourism, the actors were spurred to promote a CI. Its central purposes were to consolidate the regional tourism industry, strengthen the regional brand and to establish the entire region as a single coherent destination. This paper contributes to the research body of regional development and CIs by showing how different types of interpartner legitimacies hinder and facilitate the CI process.     

Soft power and dark heritage: multiple potentialities

Abstract

While positively connoted tangible cultural heritage is widely recognized as an asset to states in their exercise of soft power, the value of sites of ‘dark heritage’ in the context of soft power strategies has not yet been fully explored. This article offers a theoretical framework for the analysis of the multiple soft power potentialities inherent in the management and presentation of sites of past violence and atrocity, demonstrating how the value of these sites can be developed in terms of place branding, cultural diplomacy and state-level diplomacy. The relationship between dark heritage, soft power and the search for ‘ontological security’ is also explored, highlighting how difficult pasts can be mobilized in order to frame positive contemporary roles for states in the international system. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the article offers an analysis of the case of the So?a valley in Slovenia and the presentation of the site of the First World War battle of Kobarid in a dedicated museum. Through this case study, the article underlines the particular role of dark heritage for the national self-projection of a new and small state in the context of European integration.     

Boundary spanning regimes and public policy change: the convergence of welfare and immigration policies

The concept of boundary spanning regimes has emerged to describe activity across policy subsystems that seek to manage ‘wicked’ public policy problems. This paper examines two existing public policy theories, namely those of exogenous shocks and the Advocacy Coalition Framework theories and assesses their capacity to explain why boundary spanning regimes emerge. It argues that broad structural conditions play an important role in shaping boundary spanning activity in the case studies discussed in this paper, indicating limitations in these theories which tend to overlook such conditions. The paper tests the explanations for policy change through original qualitative analysis of incremental convergence across the welfare and immigration policy fields in Australia from 1947 to 1996.     

Armenia in the Eurasian Economic Union: reasons for joining and its consequences

On 3 September 2013, the president of Armenia shifted the long-praised process of initialing political association and economic integration with the European Union and announced Armenia’s decision to join the Russia-led Customs Union and participate in the processes of formation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Practitioners and observers interpreted it either as a U-turn or as a surprise move mainly assuming that what happened was the result of Russian pressure on Armenia. However, when tensions and uncertainty eased, it became obvious that what happened was a result of complex reasons. Geopolitical constraints and socio-political problems that had accumulated in Armenia during recent years coincided with an assertive expansion of Russia’s foreign policy. This research provides a number of explanations for that political decision to understand the primary determinants of that move. It also examines the political and economic implications of Armenia’s membership of the EAEU.