SPECTRA

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/104330

A peer-reviewed, graduate student-run journal of the ASPECT program

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The 21st Century is Lacanian: Thoughts in Reading Élisabeth Roudinesco's Lacan: In Spite of Everything
Bejan, Raluca (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2017-09-08)
Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Lacan: In Spite of Everything. Verso Books, 2014. Paperback. £12.09 ISBN: 9-781-78168162-6
Antebellum Fantasies and Southern Legacies: Memory and Sex in Turn of the Century New Orleans
Edmondson, Taulby (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2013-09-01)
At the turn of the twentieth century, “there was at least one red-light district in virtually every American city with a population over 100,000”—and New Orleans was no different. However, neither New Orleans, nor its vice, was a typical American establishment, as Emily Landau’s study on New Orleans’ mixed-race prostitution in Storyville, the emergent red-light district that encompassed it, argues. Like the city itself—with a long history of colonialism and racial intermixing that “made New Orleans resemble a Caribbean enclave more than a Deep South city”—Storyville was a melting pot. The district was an interracial sexual laboratory that bred whiteness as Southern white men satisfied sexual fantasies of racial domination and exoticism, while Jim Crow segregationists and Progressive moral reformers fought to restrict the “racially inferior” and rid the United States of moral depravity outside of its confines. But Storyville was not an exception from larger social processes, and it was certainly not a throwback to an era of ethical laxity in New Orleans. Instead, the district was representative of the historical processes that constituted, and altered, American racial, gendered, and sexual identities at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...
Artist Statement
Neumann, Catherine (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2017-09-08)
The piece represents my thoughts about how I teach, urge on and encourage my students and how my students teach, urge on and encourage me. My students teach and inspire me in their ability to critically think, transcend assumptions and function well in complex, increasingly polarized contexts. This piece came as an artwork, as opposed to words, as the sentiment is meant to be ethereal/abstract to indicate the connectedness, agency and ability of people.
Artist's Statement
Khraish, Alessandra (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Nazi: One Possible Meaning Behind the Mischievous Banality of the Banality of Evil
Curtis, Richard (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
This article examines the painting “The Banality of the Banality of Evil” by graffiti artist, Banksy. I argue that his painting represents a current cultural phenomenon, the banality of the banality of evil, which takes Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil to a different meaning. I argue that the painting represents not only the Nazi’s, in this case Eichmann, unwillingness to confront his crimes, but people’s unwillingness to engage in political debate without confronting the significance and exclusivity of Nazism. Furthermore, I argue that instead of the banality of the Nazi as an ordinary man committing horrendous act, the increasing use of the accusation of ‘being a Nazi’ presents Nazism as the cliché and banal subject.
The Banality of Ideology
Struwe, Alex (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
For many thinkers, Hannah Arendt seems to exemplify the ultimate horizon for a contemporary leftist critique. Nonetheless, the recent film depiction of her is subject to an ideological incorporation with the function of reinforcing the (neo-)liberal ideologeme of the ultimate subject (the individual) by presenting its empty universalization as the immunization against any substantial evil. This fundamentally contradicts even Arendt’s own achievements and the implicit radicality of her analysis on the banality of evil. The systemic origin of evil that Arendt indicated in her work on Eichmann can be revealed with Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis on anti-Semitism. Combined with an Althusserian position of a critique of ideology one can identify the systemic production of empty subjectivity that is at the heart of capitalism’s ideological reproduction and simultaneously the condition for a fascist (and totalized) system to emerge. In order not to fall back behind this essential insight, one must confront today’s ideological constellation with its own contradictions and, in respect to Hannah Arendt, unmask the ideological reduction of her to a similar empty subject that she was criticizing in her own analysis.
Barriers against Democracy: Rethinking the Nations Founding: An Interview with Dana Nelson
Petkova, Yanka; Reed, Taylor; Butera, Mike (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
Beastly Politics: Derrida, Animals, and the Political Economy of Meat
Young, Katherine E. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2015-09-01)
In this essay, I employ Derridas analysis of carnophallogocentrism in Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject_x0094_ and beastly politics in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 to bring to view the carnivorism that drives contemporary politics and capitalist society. Via careful explication of Derridas ideas and elaboration of his canonical analyses, especially Plato, Hobbes, and Machiavelli, I hope to show how Derridas discussions of animals and politics offer an intriguing perspective with which to augment a Marxian analysis of the political economy of meat. Overall, I contend that when viewed in relation to the political economy of meat, Derridas analyses reveal the irrational, ideological, and fetishized functions of the carnivorous center of politics and point to the potential shortcomings of theoretical strategies that do not directly confront the capitalist framework that sustains the beastly politics of contemporary liberalism and neoliberalism.
Between Hospitality and Inhospitality: The Politics of Migrants Protection in Germany
Safouane, Hamza (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2017-09-08)
In Europe, the public discourse on migration opposes narratives of endangered national identities and sovereignties to utilitarian arguments that migrants can restore fiscal balance and demographic dynamism. The notion of hospitality as the foundational basis for granting protection is, however, absent from the debate. In Germany, the initial spirit of organized popular solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers that came in during summer and fall 2015 were soon disillusioned by the unpreparedness of the bureaucracy in processing all asylum claims. As a result of the massive streams of migrants in the recent years, resentment towards migrants, while still marginal in Germany, has become more outspoken. The state’s duty to provide protection to refugees and asylum seekers has become fraught with political considerations that serve bureaucratic interests. Consequently, the provision of protection paradoxically developed into inhospitable practices that disenfranchises migrants and hinders the provision of protection to incoming displaced populations. This article proposes a re-discovery of hospitality by integrating the analyses of Derrida and Hallie. It argues for a politicization of hospitality that can achieved by enabling migrants themselves to enter discourse and fill it with their subjective outlook on their own mobility. Hospitality, as a discursive act that relates the host and the guest on a basis of equality, demarginalizes migrants in the reception country as they are invited into the public space to express their own voices on the migratory processes that they experienced.
Between Schmitt and Foucault: Interview with Michael Hardt
Morris, Edwin Kent; Georgakis, Stefanie; Hill, Jordan; Kirsch, Robert (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
Beyond the Spatial? A Temporal Perspective. A Review of Sarah Sharma’s In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics
Grow, Johannes (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2015-04-01)
Biocolonialism: Examining Biopiracy, Inequality, and Power
Breske, Ashleigh (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2018-09-19)
Colonialism has for centuries been a driving force for territorial expansion and economic gains. In today’s globalized economy, there is a continuation of colonial exploitation in areas with great biodiversity through the act of taking indigenous knowledge and biodiversity for profit, also known as biopiracy. Biopiracy is a practice of economic exploitation by powerful multinational corporations (MNCs). These MNCs taking on the identity and power structures of nation-states, and biopiracy becomes a tool of these transnational corporations. The established laws protect those corporations that obtain patents or intellectual property rights more readily than the original indigenous knowledge holders. Biocolonialism has been established through neoliberal trade practices and the whittling away of indigenous control over indigenous knowledge. This is done on the premise that indigenous knowledge is communal knowledge, and not privately ‘owned’, and therefore available to be used by everyone. These communal intellectual property rights have allowed MNCs to coopt indigenous knowledge for profit. Biopiracy can extend to multiple forms of practice. This paper will look at it in the context of drug patents, agricultural gene manipulation, and genetic cell lines.
Bitcoin and The Philosophy of Money: Evaluating the Commodity Status of Digital Currencies
Barber, Andrew (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2015-09-01)
The rhetoric in Satoshi Nakamoto's "White Paper" on the origins of Bitcoin suggests that the digital currency was envisioned as an entirely autonomous money. Due to the increase in popularity and circulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an intense regulatory debate has been sparked at the global level. These debates reveal a fundamental tension regarding the role of the state in establishing money. While the digital currency community insists that Bitcoin is money, states and monetary authorities have declared Bitcoin a commodity, a declaration that can be traced back to Georg Friedrich Knapp's foundational text The State Theory of Money and reinforced by A. Mitchell Innes' The Credit Theory of Money. Circulating alongside state monies, Bitcoin is then neaccessory money,' unable to satisfy tax obligations and behaving as a commodity. This chartalist account of Bitcoin is refuted by what I identify as a libertarian/von Misean understanding of money motivating the circulation of digital currencies. I argue that the circulation of digital currencies is better explained by the chartalist narrative. I then prescribe Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money, a broader understanding of money in which more abstract monies might create a supranational economic society, as an ideological alternative to digital currency advocates -- one that better conforms to the nature of money gestured to in Nakamoto's "White Paper". However, even through the lens of Simmel, the limitations imposed by domestic authorities and taxation prevent digital currencies from reaching the envisioned state of autonomy. Synthesizing these understandings of money, Bitcoin may exist as a compromise, a means of international money transfer that weakens the abstract, international economic borders created by state monies.
Black Cultural Heritage and the Subversion of the Stereotypical Images of the Black Woman in Toni Morrison's Sula
Sahyoun, Mona Faysal (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
One consequence of American slavery was the de-gendering of female slaves, divesting them of a traditional feminine gender identity that their White mistresses were encouraged to assume, thus rendering female slaves sexed yet genderless females. The female slaves are constructed as "breeder" rather than "mother" and promiscuous rather than chaste. While Angela Davis states in Women, Race & Class that, from the perspective of slaveholders, female slaves were no more than "breeders", Eugene D. Genovese records in Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made that Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were appalled by the sexual traditions of West Africans and were persuaded that West Africans lacked morals and sexual restraints. The slavery system also fostered the later constructions of Black women as "mammies", "matriarchs", and the most recent stereotypes of "welfare mothers", and "hoochies". Such constructions revealed the dominant group's concern that Black women maintain a subordinate position. In this paper, I argue that Morrison in Sula draws on the tradition of other-mothering and community other-mothering, notions adapted from West African societies, as well as the practice of biological mothering in ways that successfully disrupt negative stereotypes about Black womanhood originating from slavery.
Black Feminist Thought and why it Matters Today
Hein, Lindsay (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2017-09-08)
As tensions based on race, gender and class continue, I believe it is imperative for scholars reexamine Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought. Collins uses an intersectional approach to describe the unique oppression which women of color in the United States face. Although the book was published over a decade ago, I believe it can aid one in understanding current oppression women of color still face today. Furthermore, Black Feminist Thought can help to facilitate meaningful dialogue around topics of racism and sexism which are happening across the country. As women continue to be at the forefront of activism against the current division and oppression in the United States, Black Feminist Thought will aid in establishing an inclusive and educated movement.
Building New Platforms for Civil Society: the Right to Image in Syrian Abounaddara Collective’s Cinema of Emergency
Popan, Elena R. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-12-03)
In the past five years, the Syrian conflict became “the most socially mediated civil conflict in history” i, bringing into spotlight controversial debates that involve freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the urgency to create a balance between them. In this context, Syrian Abounaddara Collective, a group of self-taught filmmakers based in Damascus, launched the concept of emergency cinema. Starting with April 2011, Abounaddara uploaded every week a film on Facebook, Twitter, and on Vimeo, aiming to represent Syrians in a just and dignified way and offering an alternate narrative to those of Assad’s regime and (inter)national media. The project is very accessible since the Collective is a promoter of the power of “smaller screens” like computers and smartphones, with all films being subtitled from the original Arabic to French and English. Their works combines visual culture and film with philosophy, history, science, sociology etc. inviting critics to provide in-depth analyses of cultural phenomena linked to visuality. The films are supposed to make the viewer look at reality differently, to empathize, and demand for justice; however, the message is intended to be open to interpretation, not merely reduced to the clash between good and evil. The article explores the interdisciplinary features of emergency cinema, especially its juridical dimension and the emphasis on one person’s right to image, that recommend it as an updated version of social cinema. By concisely analyzing several films created by Abounaddara Collective and by relying on information made available by interviews, I aim to offer a fresh perspective on the role of cinema in today’s geopolitical context and open a dialogue on how innovative artistic and media forms can challenge the dominant representations of politics and events.
Can the Global Transmit the Local for Diaspora?
Dhillon, Komal K. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2013-09-01)
In Modernity at Large, flows of global culture are examined through the neologisms of five various “scapes”: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, financescapes and technoscapes. According to Appadurai, the cross-cultural nature of these strands informs the imagination of social life among both individuals and the collective. Unlike other area studies scholars, anthropologists, historians, economists, sociologists and the like, Appadurai’s project is to investigate the advent of mass media communication as it relates to cultural aspects of globalization. Specifically, he seeks to demonstrate the ways in which the effects of mass migration and media combine to create a force that ruptures our current understanding of the nation-state. To Appadurai, the inevitable break from the nation-state is made possible through the societal sphere of the imaginary that has been formed through images disseminated by mass media. It is precisely the interpretation and conceptualization of these imaginaries by diaspora communities that produce agency and allow for the construction of imagined and material worlds that cannot be understood through the current spatial center-periphery binary. Early on in his volume, Appadurai provides readers with ample methodological and explanatory framework for his theories and the existing models in which he situates himself. The groundwork for his volume is laid out in an organized and comprehensive manner and directs us towards anticipation of the explicatory cultural intersections of globalization...
The Changing Landscape of Online Pornography: Translocal Networks and Transcultural Practices
Martin, Jessica A. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
Pornography's massive growth online in the last 25 years, and the emergence of technologies such as broadband, webcams and smartphones, has led to fundamental changes in the ways people encounter, consume, and relate to online porn. Pornography has undoubtedly infiltrated the Western mainstream; it is now woven into the fabric of ordinary life and everyday online multitasking. The ways porn is accessed and consumed continue to evolve, keeping pace with broader changes in Web use. While there is much work being done in contemporary porn studies which examines these changes, there is an aspect of porn's evolution online that has for the most part been neglected: the ways it is linked to globalization and the spread of ideas across nations and borders. Processes of globalization, the Internet, and developing media technologies have facilitated global access to pornography. Pornography now moves across geographic space, transcends national borders and links global communities – spreading narratives, norms, and social texts across global contexts. Despite these changes, contemporary porn studies has, for the most part, remained insulated from the theoretical work coking out of transnational studies. Conversely, transnational theory—as well as the theoretical positions developing out of transnational theory, such as translocal and transcultural theory—has all but ignored pornography as one of the flows of information that increasingly moves between and connects global spaces, and that has specific impacts on relations of intimacy, sexuality and desire. This paper explores how, when taken together, each of these approaches has the potential to broaden the scope of the other, and potentially answer some important questions around the ways globalization is impacting sexualities.
The Changing Nature of Intellectual Production
Chaves, Elisabeth (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2011-04-01)
Cloud Watching, 2019
Kron, Jillian Eve (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2019-03-28)
This piece began as a stream of consciousness drawing. Two rows of sexless faces all looking in the same direction formed what reminded me of a gust of wind. I continued using the face as a repeating unit to create the sky. Cloud Watching was heavily influenced by the Ukiyo-e period of Japanese art and the psychedelic fractalization of objects by the human eye during altered states of consciousness.

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