Journal articles: 'Appropriations and expenditures, 1972' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

ABSTRACTThis paper examines trends in world military expenditures and offers an econometric examination of their determinants in 125 countries from 1972 to 1988. A simultaneous equation framework based on a public choice model shows military expenditures as a ratio of GDP to be influenced by the level of GDP, central government expenditures, other financial indicators, the form of government, and geographical characteristics of countries. The study also examines the opportunity cost of military expenditures and analyzes the budgetary trade-off between military, social, and development expenditures. Although military expenditures may benefit a given country, they may also have a negative impact on the welfare of rival nations. Hence a coordinated reduction in military expenditures that does not alter the strategic balance will increase economic wellbeing in the world.

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After describing a newly assembled dataset consisting of almost 9,000 local appropriations made by the U.S. Congress between 1789 and 1882, we test competing accounts of the politics surrounding them before offering a more nuanced, historically contingent view of the emergence of the pork barrel. We demonstrate that for most of this historical period—despite contemporary accusations of crass electoral motives—the pattern of appropriations is largely inconsistent with accounts of distributive politics grounded in a logic of legislative credit-claiming. Instead, support for appropriations in the House mapped cleanly onto the partisan/ideological structure of Congress for most of this period, and only in the 1870s produced the universalistic coalitions commonly associated with pork-barrel spending. We trace this shift to two historical factors: the emergence of a solid Democratic South, and growth in the fraction of appropriations funding recurrent expenditures on extant projects rather than new starts.

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Purpose – The main goal of this paper is to create a methodology for estimating public research and development (R&D) expenditures on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the European Union (EU). The study further applies this methodology on business expenditures on R&D (BERD) data across all sectors and estimate ICT BERD within each of them. Then the study assesses the evolution of these expenditures in the context of the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) and its specific target to double them by 2020. Design/methodology/approach – The study assumes that the share of public ICT R&D expenditures in total public R&D expenditures is similar to the share of ICT R&D labour costs. The study bases its estimation on government budget appropriations or outlays on R&D (GBAORD). Findings – EU public ICT R&D expenditures grew steadily over the period 2004-2010 and in 2010 reached 5.9 billion. The study also estimates that the total EU ICT BERD in 2010 amounted to 15.8 billion. Regarding the DAE target about ICT R&D expenditures, the study shows that, in both public and private, the EU drops behind. Research limitations/implications – The study estimates that substantial ICT BERD can be found also in non-ICT sectors. Practical implications – The methodology allows for monitoring one of the DAE targets. Originality/value – The methodology currently represents the only way for measuring public ICT R&D expenditures in the EU.

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Understanding the revenue–expenditure nexus is the core essence of this research in the Pakistani context. This research examines the non-linear relationship between government revenues and government expenditures during 1972–2014. The recently developed non-linear co-integration technique has been used along with the symmetry test. The result shows that the revenues and expenditures have co-integration and provide the evidence in favour of fiscal synchronization hypothesis in the budgetary process. Moreover, the finding also reveals that the relationship between these two fiscal elements is asymmetric and negative changes in revenues and expenditures have a greater impact than the positive ones. Furthermore, another important aspect that was revealed during the study was that the negative shocks in the revenues will lead towards the drastically large increase in the expenditure.

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This paper explores the impacts of defence expenditures on economic growth and other major economic variables in the Pakistan economy over the period 1972-1995. The results of Granger-causality tests show that there is bi-directional feedback between the defence burden and GDP growth. We test four different single equation models that are widely used in the defence literature. In these frameworks we generally find the defence burden to be negatively related to GDP growth. Finally, we specify a three-equation model which explains GDP growth, average propensity to save, and the defence ratio. In single equation estimations of the savings ratio and the defence burden, we uncover some interesting relationships. The savings ratio is affected positively by the defence ratio, and negatively by the inflation rate. The Pakistani defence burden is impacted negatively by the Indian defence burden and positively by the government budget. When all three equations are estimated as a system to account for feedback and covariance between these equations, these effects are diminished and go down in statistical significance.

Abstract:

This paper establishes empirically the causal relationship and long run relationship between government expenditures and government revenues for the case of Pakistan from 1972 to 2007. Fiscal policy, a short run issue, but that can have testing macro economic consequences. Fiscal policy is viewed as an instrument to mitigate short run fluctuations. In this paper we examine tax/spend or spend/tax hypothesis. For this purpose, bi-directional Granger causality will be applied for instance flow from government expenditure to revenue or revenue to government expenditure. This issue has been concerned with intretemporal relationship between revenue and expenditure, so to check long run relationship Engel Granger cointegration will be used. For checking data stationary, non stationary unit root, and ADF/DF approaches give the proof for this hypothesis. The results show the presence of co-integration between government expenditure and tax revenue variables implying evidence of a stable long-run relationship between them. The Granger Causality test suggest the unidirectional causality flow from government expenditure to tax revenue. Keywords: Government Expenditures, Government Revenues, Granger Causality, Stationary, Co-integration

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Health has a major contribution in attaining better human capital and wellbeing both at the individual as well as at country levels. Although military spending may boost economic growth through multiplier and spillover effects, yet tradeoffs exist between military expenditures and health outcomes. Grossman (1972) explains health as output which depends on many input variables. By covering a panel of 156 countries ranging from the time period 1970 to 2014, this study incorporates military expenditures, GDP per capita, urbanization, access to the improved drinking water source, number of physicians, and secondary school enrollment as determinants of health (life expectancy and infant mortality). OLS, fixed effects, random effects, and system GMM have been used as estimation techniques. The study reveals that countries with low military expenditures have a comparatively high life expectancy and low infant mortality as compared to countries with high military expenditures. Robustness of results was checked through sensitivity analyses performed on the bases of determinants of health, international geopolitical scenario, and the development status of the country. The evidence of sensitivity analysis suggests that overall results are robust in life expectancy model but somehow sensitive in case of infant mortality. The study affirms the explicit tradeoff between military expenditures and welfare spending and concludes that hefty defense expenditures lower life expectancy and enhance infant mortality.

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The paper empirically examines the effects of trade liberalization reforms on food security in South Asia countries (sacs) using econometric analysis in a panel framework for the period from 1972 to 2013. The estimated results indicate that trade liberalization has a significant positive effect on food production and food security in the region. The results also endorse the role of agriculture factors in improving food production and food security in sacs. The findings indicate that food security is mainly a political problem in South Asia. Solving conflicts politically, violence prevention, the reduction of international arms trade, and the reduction of military expenditures and protection of civil and political rights should be central to policies that address food security issue in the region.

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Abstract Financial control, as part of internal managerial control and economic control, is an activity of overwhelming importance for the efficient, effective and economical use of resources economic and financial institutions in public institutions and beyond.The profile literature in this field has outlined the conceptual aspects, the necessary classifications and other defining dimensions of financial control as a highly responsible activity, meant to prevent facts contrary to the good management of wealth elements in public institutions and private entities.Preventive financial control, with its two components (own and delegated), is designed and carried out in public institutions according to a very rigorous methodology, meant to grant a visa only to those public money expenditures that meet all the requirements entered in the checklist. inserts requirements regarding the existence of supporting documents, visas, certifications and approvals regarding the legality of operations, the inclusion of amounts in the allocations of budgetary appropriations and the existence of supporting documents specific tooperations.

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Prior work uses a parametric approach to study the distributional effects of school finance reform and finds evidence that reform yields greater equality of school expenditures by lowering spending in high-spending districts (leveling down) or increasing spending in low-spending districts (leveling up). We develop a kernel density difference-in-difference approach to isolate how tax limits and/or education finance reform affect the full distribution of education expenditures. Simulations of the difference in distributional differences across school finance regimes over time suggest that parametric approaches offer an incomplete description of the distributional impacts of policy changes. Using data for the population of U.S. school districts in 1972, 1982, and 1992, we find that educational reforms and tax limits yield greater equality of expenditures by reducing the number of districts in the tails of the distribution, particularly when both are adopted during the same decade. Our results also suggest that the incompleteness of the parametric descriptions used in prior work can suggest greater variation in the distributional consequences of reform than is actually present.

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This study uses a market structure framework to analyze the presence of black-owned businesses in manufacturing sectors of the U.S. economy in 1972. Tobit analysis reveals that black-owned firms tend to be concentrated in those industries with a relatively large small-business presence. High advertising expenditures are a significant barrier to black presence in a given industry. The amount of government purchases from an industry is found to have no significant relationship to black presence.

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The current study focused on health expenditures and labor force participation linkages taking Pakistan as a sample case. Data sample cover the period from 1972 to 2013. Economic survey of Pakistan and WDI were consulted for data collection and the estimated results were extracted by using Autoregressive Distributive Lag Model which revealed that there is positive association between health and labor force participation rate in Pakistan. Amongst the other variables, secondary school enrolment and Investment also has positive impacts on labor force participation in both long and short span of time. Life expectancy has adverse effects and trade openness is insignificant in a model. It is suggested that to encourage higher labor force participation government may increase its expenditures on basic health issues along with investment friendly policies. Furthermore it is also suggested that education may also be encouraged for productive labor in a country.

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The U.S. federal government awards a priority review voucher (“PRV”) to a pharmaceutical manufacturer after the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approves a product for one of a list of voucher-eligible indications. The voucher, which can be transferred or sold, allows the company to accelerate the review timeline of another product for any indication. The PRV program was proposed in 2006 as an incentive for research and development for neglected diseases, such as dengue and leishmaniasis.Neglected tropical diseases (“NTDs”) predominantly affect the world’s poorest populations and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Despite their global public health importance, neglected diseases were estimated to account for less than 1% of pharmaceutical research and development expenditures. The voucher program was intended to address this gap between investment and disease burden: “[t]he major obstacle to stimulating the R&D of new medicines for neglected diseases is lowincome nations' inability to pay for such medicines.” The voucher would provide an additional financial incentive to fund clinical development of these products without requiring additional appropriations from Congress.

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End Stage Renal Disease impacts the lives of more than seven hundred thousand Americans and their families. Initially, the CMS funded program, as it was designed in 1972, encouraged nephrologists to open dialysis facilities as a part or extension of their medical practice opening the door to access to care that otherwise seemed impossible.

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Abstract Passage of the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 prompted states to invest significant resources to develop programs to control nonpoint source (NPS) pollution from forestry and other activities. Forestry-related agencies and organizations have since developed silvicultural best managementpractice (BMP) guidelines to reduce NPS pollution, maintain stream integrity, and meet state water quality standards. To determine the effectiveness and implementation level of best management practices (BMP) on public and private forestland, states further developed and implemented theirBMP compliance monitoring programs. This study documents the similarities and differences in efforts, methods, resources, and expenditures among BMP compliance monitoring programs across the 13 southern states. 29(1):48–52.

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There exist a large number of studies related to the estimates of government budgetary redistributive effects and its related problems with regard to different countries of the world.1 Studies of the impacts of government expenditures and taxes in Pakistan have been conducted within the framework of either incidence of taxes or the impact of expenditures across the income groups. The studies carried out by Azfar (1972); Jeetun (1978); Alauddin and Raza (1981) Malik and Saqib (1985, 1989) cover different aspects of taxation—tax incidence, progressivity or regressivity of the tax system across the income groups/individuals and regions. These studies did not discuss the expenditure side of the budget. Shirazi (1996) analysed the impact of government transfer programmes (Zakat and Ushr) across the income deciles. Ghaus (1989) studied the incidence of provincial and municipal government service-related expenditure benefits in Karachi metropolitan and therefore, the scope of her study was limited to one city only. Despite the existence of a rich bibliography on the subject of government redistrbutive budgetary effects and its related problems, no study is available which covers the overall redistributive impacts of government budgetary policy in Pakistan. This study explores the impacts of government expenditures and taxes on the distribution of income across various income groups along with net fiscal impacts in the urban-rural areas of Pakistan. The rest of our study is organised as follows. In the following section, Part II, we describe the methodology and data set. In Part III, the results of the study are presented. The Part IV concludes the paper.

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The lack of access to equal financial resources with male candidates has been viewed as a major contributing factor in women's inability to gain public office. Analysis of the campaign finance records for election to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1972 to 1982 shows that although on the average women nominees have never raised or spent as much as men, the size of their disparity is curvilinear over these years, and the correlation between gender and campaign financing is weak. Within candidate status groups (incumbents, challengers, and open races) and within the parties female nominees have not been consistently disadvantaged. Women candidates of both parties even have outdistanced their male counterparts on occasion. Data from the 1980 and 1982 elections also indicate that the structure of male and female fund raising is similar in their support from large contributors, political action committees, and the parties. Further, for women challengers, expenditures have a larger impact on votes than for male challengers. The financial problem for women candidates would appear not to lie at the general election stage of the process. Earlier stages, however, may account for women's relative absence from the elected political elite.

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Over 1200 post-fire assessment and treatment implementation reports from four decades (1970s–2000s) of western US forest fires have been examined to identify decadal patterns in fire characteristics and the justifications and expenditures for the post-fire treatments. The main trends found were: (1) the area burned by wildfire increased over time and the rate of increase accelerated after 1990; (2) the proportions of burned area assessed as low, moderate and high burn severity likely have remained fairly constant over time, but the use of satellite imagery that began c. 2000 increased the resolution of burn severity assessments leading to an apparent decreased proportion of high burn severity during the 2000s; (3) treatment justifications reflected regional concerns (e.g. soil productivity in areas of timber harvest) and generally reflected increased human encroachment in the wildland–urban interface; (4) modifications to roads were the most frequently recommended post-fire treatment type; (5) seeding was the most frequently used land treatment, but declined in use over time; (6) use of post-fire agricultural straw mulch has steadily increased because of proven success; and (7) the greatest post-fire expenditures have been for land treatments applied over large areas to protect important resources (e.g. municipal water sources).

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A global epidemiological surveillance system is needed both for verification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol and as a confidence-building measure for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). This proposal should be part of the agenda of the Fourth Review Conference of the BWC, with preliminary consideration and analysis conducted at the national level and by appropriate international expert groups in preparation for the Review Conference. An example of the kind of program that might be constructed is described. Such a program would make it very difficult for hostile use of biological agents to remain undetected, would catalyze a dramatic increase in global public, agricultural, and veterinary health, and would offer reasonable assurance that emerging diseases would be detected at an early stage. These benefits easily justify the expenditures that would be required.

Abstract:

In the era of digitization the frauds are found in all categories of health insurance. It is finished next to deliberate trickiness or distortion for acquiring some pitiful advantage in the form of health expenditures. Bigdata analysis can be utilized to recognize fraud in large sets of insurance claim data. In light of a couple of cases that are known or suspected to be false, the anomaly detection technique computes the closeness of each record to be fake by investigating the previous insurance claims. The investigators would then be able to have a nearer examination for the cases that have been set apart by data mining programming. One of the issues is the abuse of the medical insurance systems. Manual detection of frauds in the healthcare industry is strenuous work. Fraud and Abuse in the Health care system have become a significant concern and that too inside health insurance organizations, from the most recent couple of years because of the expanding misfortunes in incomes, handling medical claims have become a debilitating manual assignment, which is done by a couple of clinical specialists who have the duty of endorsing, adjusting, or dismissing the appropriations mentioned inside a restricted period from their gathering. Standard data mining techniques at this point do not sufficiently address the intricacy of the world. In this way, utilizing Symbolic Data Analysis is another sort of data analysis that permits us to address the intricacy of the real world and to recognize misrepresentation in the dataset.

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Abstract This paper deals with a macro-simulation and forecasting model, called PASSIM, essentially markovian, of the working of the Quebec system of Public Assistance. It has to do with both the numbers of persons involved and with the expenditures. It became fully operational in the summer of 1972 albeit it still contains a number of important imperfections. The model relies on a linear programming procedure to estimate probability transition matrices. This seems to represent one of the original features of the model. The basic philosophy of the Quebec Public Assistance is simple: a modified version of a guaranteed income program. This needs test is simply used to constitute the submodel for the determination of allowances. Transition matrices are three dimensional; transition probabilities may change over time due to changes in various exogeneous variables. The model is particularly oriented to test some major changes in the law. An example of a typical simulation is presented and some gross sensitivity tests are also given.

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This study examines the relationship between types of government and level of public spending. There are two competing perspectives about the consequences of coalition governments for the size of public expenditures. The most common argument is that government spending increases under coalition governments, compared with one-party governments. Another line of thought contends that coalition governments are often stalled in the status quo due to the veto power of each member. Our analysis of public spending in 33 parliamentary democracies between 1972 and 2000 confirms the latter argument that coalition governments have a status quo bias. We find, particularly, that single-party governments are apt to modify the budget according to the current fiscal condition, which enables them to increase or decrease spending more flexibly. By contrast, coalition governments find it difficult not only to decrease spending under difficult fiscal conditions but also to increase it even under a more favorable context, because each member of the coalition has a veto power.

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Purpose. The goal of this study was to develop a method to measure the impact and cost-effectiveness of health promotion. Design. Age- and sex-specific changes in life expectancy in Canada between 1970 to 1972 and 1985 to 1987, after the introduction of national health insurance (1970) and health promotion (1975), are used to assess the impact due to biological hardiness, improvements in the health care field, and the effects of health promotion. Subjects. The subjects were the total male and female population of Canada between the years 1970 to 1972 and 1985 to 1987. Measures. Life expectancy by years of age by sex was the measurement used. Results. A method is presented that allows the calculation of the differential effects of health promotion, heath care, and biological hardiness on changes in life expectancy based on sequential subtraction of life expectancies for one-year age cohorts over a 15-year period. Results were obtained for each year of age for men and women, showing gender and age differences in the relative impact of the three factors. In this illustrative example using Canadian data, health promotion was found to have less impact on longevity than health care or biological hardiness. However, of the three, health promotion was the most cost-effective. Conclusion. This method can be used to quantify changes in life span due to health promotion, health care, and biological hardiness for men and women at each year of age and to relate this to health expenditures for the whole population. The method is limited in that it cannot determine the relative impact of other factors that can affect life expectancy such as environmental changes or social trends.

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This study investigates the impact of economic growth on three main development sectors, household final consumption expenditure, and trade openness towards the growth of final energy consumption in Indonesia using annual data for the period 1972-2016. We applied autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) procedures which consist of stationarity test, cointegration test, as well as estimation the short-term and long-term relationships. The cointegration test revealed existence cointegration<br />relationship among the variables in the model. In the short-term and long-term model, our results indicated that the growth of value-added in agriculture sector and industry sector, household final consumption expenditures, and trade openness in the short-term and long-term have a significant effect toward final energy consumption in Indonesia, while the growth of value-added in the service sector only given a short-term effect toward final energy consumption in Indonesia. Based on these<br />results, it can be concluded that sustainable economic development in Indonesia needs to be accompanied by the development of new and renewable energy in order to fulfil domestic energy supply which is predicted to continue to increase rapidly in the future.<br />Keyword : final energi consumption, economic development, household final consumption expenditure, trade openness, autoregressive distributed lag modeling<br />JEL Classification : D1, E21, F14, O13, Q43.

Abstract:

Distortion in balance of payments is one of the dominant causes for the sluggish economic condition of Pakistan. The present article has focused to scrutinize the relationship of the balance of payments to its certain determinants that are actually blamable or not for its distortion. The robust ARDL structure has been utilized to develop the bound testing approach to co-integration and error correction models on data set for 1972-2013.The bound test declares that there exists stable long run relationship of balance of payments to its determinants. The upshots indicate that real exchange rate inversely influences the balance of payments not only in the long run but also in the short run. Interest rate inversely affects the balance of payment in the long run but positively affects in the short run .Fiscal balance affects the BOP negatively in the long and short run simultaneously. As regards the real GDP, it moves the BOP in the positive direction in both long and short run. The money supply cast a positive influence on the BOP in the short run but negative effect in the long run. So the need of the hour is that the real GDP of Pakistan should be increased by the deliberate policy of the government. Because it is the GDP that can increase our savings consumption and government expenditures and exports and can improve balance of balance of payment.

Abstract:

This research is the foremost determination to investigate the long and short run affiliation amongst the variables of employment. For this purpose we use ARDL bound tests. The data from the period of 1972 to 2016 has been used in this research. These results indicate that employment has statistically significant and positive relationship between the variables of employment. Orders of integration of variables used in this analysis are I (O) and I (1). The results of this study show that per capita of GDP and expenditures of government have significant positive relationship with the employment in both time periods, the short and long run. Thenoteworthyempirical relationship is found in long run between GFCF, while in short period of time it shows destructive relation with employment. While FDI shows a high level of significant and positive relation both in long run and short run. Secondary school enrolment has significant and positive relation with employment in both time periods the long and short run time period. The relationship of money supply with employment in long run is positive while in short run it shows significant but negative relation with employment. Trade and political stability both are the main factors to estimate the strength of an economy. According to this study trade and political stability shows significant and positive relation with employment in long run while in short run both shows negative relationship with employment.

Abstract:

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of cardinal welfare based on Sen’s index using both Pareto and non-Pareto states besides evaluating the effective factors on the welfare changes according to a fuzzy least-squares regression model. Design/methodology/approach The social welfare functions express the optimal social allocations in the public economics. Therefore, they can be applied as a tool to represent the difference of utility allocations among consumers. There are various criteria on the literature pertaining to the social welfare functions such as those of Dasgupta et al. (1970), Sheshinski (1972), Sen (1974), Yitzhaki (1979), Shorrocks (1983), Kakwani (1984), Dagum (1990, 1993), Mukhopadhaya (2003), and Mukhopadhaya and Rao (2001). The Sen’s welfare function because of strong theoretical basis and enjoying the welfare axioms is more celebrated among others so that it is a function of individual utilities resulting from the individual’s social positions. Findings The findings indicate that the welfare level has increased by about 4.8 percent during the period 2002-2007; by nearly 3.1 percent during 1997-2001 and mature to 2.7 percent from 1992 to 1996 such that the period 1997-2007 has had the highest level of social welfare improvement in Iran. The results obtained from the fuzzy regression show that the unemployment rate, inflation rate and Gini coefficient variables have an adverse relation with the cardinal welfare in both Pareto and non-Pareto cases, while the literacy rate and government expenditures have a positive relation with the welfare index. The findings also imply that there is a positive relationship between economic growth and welfare level in Iran. Originality/value I verify that this manuscript is an original study.

Abstract:

Snow affects foraging conditions of reindeer e.g. by increasing the energy expenditures for moving and digging work or, in contrast, by making access of arboreal lichen easier. Still the studies concentrating on the role of the snow pack structure on reindeer population dynamics and reindeer management are few. We aim to find out which of the snow characteristics are relevant for reindeer in the northern boreal zone according to the experiences of reindeer herders and is this relevance seen also in reproduction rate of reindeer in this area. We also aim to validate the ability of the snow model SNOWPACK to reliably estimate the relevant snow structure characteristics. We combined meteorological observations, snow structure simulations by the model SNOWPACK and annual reports by reindeer herders during winters 1972-2010 in the Muonio reindeer herding district, northern Finland. Deep snow cover and late snow melt were the most common unfavorable conditions reported. Problematic conditions related to snow structure were icy snow and ground ice or unfrozen ground below the snow, leading to mold growth on ground vegetation. Calf production percentage was negatively correlated to the measured annual snow depth and length of the snow cover time and to the simulated snow density. Winters with icy snow could be distinguished in three out of four reported cases by SNOWPACK simulations and we could detect reliably winters with conditions favorable for mold growth. Both snow amount and also quality affects the reindeer herding and reindeer reproduction rate in northern Finland. Model SNOWPACK can relatively reliably estimate the relevant structural properties of snow. Use of snow structure models could give valuable information about grazing conditions, especially when estimating the possible effects of warming winters on reindeer populations and reindeer husbandry. Similar effects will be experienced also by other arctic and boreal species.

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The article analyzes the problems of effective use of local budget funds and their causes on the example of the Ferghana region. KEYWORDS: local budget, revenues and expenditures, financing, deficit, appropriations, illegal expenditures.

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Operating within a flat real budget envelope, the Fund delivered on the priorities and initiatives laid out in the Global Policy Agenda and Management’s Key Goals (MKGs). Resource pressures were addressed via implementation of streamlining initiatives, strategic reallocation of resources towards higher priority areas, and careful budget management. In terms of outputs, spending in FY 16 continued the shift from crisis management to crisis prevention, in line with the MKGs. Output shifted moderately from multilateral surveillance and oversight of the global system to bilateral surveillance and capacity development. Lending activity expenditure remained broadly unchanged. Average country spending was broadly aligned with assessment of risk. The net administrative budget outturn in FY 16 was $1,038 million against an approved budget of $1,052 million. The modest underspend reflects the preservation of the contingency reserve and lower-than-planned travel expenditure. Relative to FY 15, higher budget execution led to a small real (0.8 percent) year-on-year increase in net expenditures. Total capital expenditures of $131 million were recorded in FY 16 out of the $435 million in available appropriations. HQ1 Renewal expenses made up 70 percent of the spending.

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Funds, whether from government or generated by institutions from other sources are the lifeblood of institutional development. Since there is never an end to development and improvement, fund sourcing and allocation are continuing concerns of every educational institution. The study determined the financial variables and productivity of SUCs in Region VI for CY 2002-2003. The study aimed to determine the a) institutional profile of the 11 SUCs in Region VI, b) profile of financial managers of SUCs in Region VI, c) budgetary allocation based on the General Appropriations Act (GAA) and income from the Special Trust Fund (STF), and d) how these financial resources are utilized for the operation. Descriptive method of research was employed and data were analyzed through frequency count and percentage mean. Study revealed that 11 SUCs in Region VI shared a common vision of becoming the center excellence, research, extension, and production with a mission of producing globally competitive graduates. The West Visayas State University (WVSU) had the biggest budgetary allocation from GAA, and got the highest earnings in school fees. A similar pattern of expenditures had been adopted by the 11 SUCs in Region VI. The SUCs in the region foresee their respective institutions as Center of Excellence. Fiscal managers had upgraded their educational qualifications. Faculty members have conducted extension, income generating projects and published researches. Fiscal managers of SUCs in Region VI should think and implement strategic plans to increase budgetary allocations to meet the demands of necessary expenditures vital to the attainment of quality education.Keywords – Fiscal Administration, SUCs productivity, descriptive research, Western Visayas, Philippines

Abstract:

The word 'nigg*r' is arguably the most charged epithet in American English; thus it is surprising that this word has been appropriated by some African Americans to refer to themselves. To be precise, the African-American version of this term is not 'nigg*r' but 'nigg*', a word that has, as Geneva Smitherman notes, "a variety of meanings ranging from positive to negative to neutral" (Black Talk 167). Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his study of African-American literature, provides a theoretical foundation for understanding why some African Americans use this word and how it operates rhetorically. Building on Gates's work, I will argue that the co-optation of the slur often involves a complex of three rhetorical devices that fall under the rubric of an African-American rhetorical strategy called Signifyin(g)—a term that will be discussed at length later. The first of these devices is agnominatio, defined as "the repetition of a word with an alteration of both one letter and a sound" (Gates 46). The second, semantic inversion, is the reversal of the meaning of a term (Holt qtd. in Smitherman, "Chain"). Chiastic slaying, the third rhetorical strategy, is a critique that transforms the status of a group or individual.1 Through these three modes of rhetorical transfiguration, the slur 'nigg*r' becomes 'nigg*' a positive term that carries with it a critique of racism. I will further argue that all of these rhetorical devices operate through a principle I term "semantic looping" in which a new term derives meaning by continual reference to an older, existing term. This principle is a key to understanding how Signifyin(g) works in the appropriation of 'nigg*r' and helps to reveal how, in the words of Michel Foucault, the appropriation is a culturally rooted form of "reverse discourse" (101). Ultimately, this rhetorical analysis reveals that the African-American usage of 'nigg*' is a strategy for asserting the humanity of black people in the face of continuing racism, a strategy that celebrates an anti-assimilationist vision of African-American identity. Foucault has argued that while the naming of oppressed groups by those in power serves as an instrument for oppression, such naming can also engender group identification and resistance to oppression (101). The coining of the word 'hom*osexual', for example, allowed for the repression of gay people but also allowed hom*osexuals to organise a gay rights movement using the very terminology utilized to oppress them (Foucault 101). One strategy for resisting hostile slurs like 'queer' or 'nigg*r' is for the oppressed group to appropriate the name and transform it into a rallying cry or "reverse discourse". An understanding of how 'nigg*' operates as a reverse discourse requires a culturally rooted rhetorical analysis of the term. Gates, in The Signifyin(g) Monkey, provides background for such an analysis. Because his project is ultimately to derive an African-American theory of literary criticism, he touches on the appropriation of 'nigg*r' only briefly, asserting that a "political offensive" was mounted against the term by African-Americans through a black rhetorical strategy called Signifyin(g) (47). Gates, however, does not explain precisely how Signifyin(g) works in this case, except to suggest that it involves agnominatio (46). Thus 'nigg*r' becomes 'nigg*', a word that differs from the racial slur but originates from and recalls it.2 Although Gates's commentary on the appropriation of 'nigg*r' amounts to little more than a sentence, much of his explication of the term Signifyin(g) implicitly applies to the co-optation of 'nigg*r'. The rhetorical analysis presented in this paper is a logical extension of Gates's initial linkage of the appropriation of 'nigg*r' with the rhetorical practice of Signifyin(g). The social baggage attached to 'nigg*' assures that every use of the term is double-voiced in the Bakhtinian sense. More precisely, 'nigg*' is a Bakhtinian parody of 'nigg*r'; the new connotation parodies or comments on the original because the new term carries with it the history of its pejorative use as well as the refashioned connotation of defiant group pride.3 This kind of rhetorical turn or critique is an example of the African-American rhetorical practice Gates identifies as Signifyin(g). Pinning down exactly what constitutes Signifyin(g) is difficult. Numerous black language scholars have commented on the expansiveness of the term.4 Gates argues that in its broadest sense, to Signify means to be "figurative," further noting that "to define it in practice is to define it through any number of its embedded tropes" (81).5 For our purposes it can be described as a rhetorical action that indirectly critiques another term or sign by revising it. Gates explains that, fundamentally, this revision and critique involve "repetition, with a signal difference" (51). Gates distinguishes the African-American term, 'Signifyin(g)', from the word 'signifying' by capitalizing the 'S' and bracketing the 'g' (46). It is helpful to think of the former term as 'Signifyin(g) on' (or critiquing) something whereas the latter word 'signifies' (or means) something but does not inherently involve a critique. Thus, to parody the motions of a police officer behind his or her back 'Signifies on' the officer and 'signifies' one's disrespect.6 Signifyin(g) is inherently a counter-puncher's strategy, an act of resistance against an oppressive force. Gates even goes so far as to call it the "slave's trope" (52). In Signifyin(g), the revised term, through its parodic double-voicedness, enters into a semantic loop with the original term; recollection of past oppressive usage must occur to fuel the term's new meaning. Figure 1 - Semantic Loop of Semantic Inversion and Agnominatio This semantic loop recalls what W.E. B. Dubois termed African-American double consciousness, a consciousness that yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. (16-17) While 'nigg*' recalls how blacks have been measured by the tape of the world, it also defies this estimation through ironic revision of the name. Although Dubois would criticize this pathway through the white term as a road to false consciousness, others might insist that since revision of the white term occurs through distinctly African-American rhetorical strategies, the revision is emblematic of an authentically African-American consciousness—which is a double consciousness. In this view the revision does not attempt to reconcile what DuBois calls the "two unreconciled strivings" of the black person as "an American and a Negro" but instead involves them in an endless interplay (17). The interplay of the two signs sustains an antagonistic stand toward the dominant white community through the polemical comment: "this is how whites see us but we are something more". 'nigg*', then, is "authentically black" speech because it recognizes and maintains the divide between black and white worlds. As Smitherman notes: [e]ncoded within the rhetoric of racial resistance, nigg* is used to demarcate (Black) culturally rooted from (white) culturally assimilated African Americans. nigg*z are those Bloods (Blacks) who are down for Blackness and identify with the trials as well as triumphs of the Black experience… ("Chain") The defiance implied by the revision of the white slur is also an assertion of human subjectivity. Gates identifies a parallel strategy in African-American slave narratives. Referring to Frederick Douglass's famous chiasmus—"You have seen how a man became a slave, you will see how a slave became a man."—Gates asserts that "Douglass's major contribution to the slave narrative was to make chiasmus the central trope of slave narration, in which a slave-object writes himself or herself into a human subject through the act of writing" (172). By comparison, through the semantic inversion of 'nigg*r'/'nigg*', dehumanized blacks speak themselves into human subjects through the act of speaking. This transfiguration conforms to what Gates terms "chiastic slaying" (66). His somewhat off-hand phrase is inspired by the African-American use of chiasmus, which is defined as, "a grammatical figure by which the order of words in one of two parallel clauses is inverted in the other" (Oxford English Dictionary qtd. in Grothe). Chiasmus is often represented as an ABBA pattern (so Douglass's chiasmus would be reduced to: (A) man - (B) slave - (B) slave - (A) man). In Gates's usage, chiastic slaying involves repetition and reversal but not necessarily a literal ABBA pattern of chiasmus. In the same vein, 'nigg*' is a repetition of 'nigg*r' that reverses the position of African Americans (from objects to subjects). Analogously, 'nigg*r to nigg*' can be conceived of as the inverted second clause of a chiastic statement like Douglass's 'man - slave - slave - man' in which personhood and agency are re-affirmed. This re-affirmation of humanity implicit in 'nigg*' is not likely to be understood by many whites given, as Smitherman notes, that they often fail to recognize the semantic difference between 'nigg*r' and 'nigg*'.7 Since whites are frequently unaware of the Signification of 'nigg*', it is impossible for African Americans to kill (i.e. end) the white use of the racist term. In the context of Signification, chiastic slaying does not put an end to the idea Signified upon. In fact, Signification must be activated by what Gates calls the "absent presence" of the original term (48). The critique of racism and assertion of subjectivity implicit in the employment of 'nigg*' is not aimed at white people or the elimination of their sign; it is aimed at a black audience that must survive in a continually racist environment. What, then, is the "slaying" of chiastic slaying? It must be seen as a refutation of the original term or sign. In the case of 'nigg*', it is a rejection of the dehumanization implied by 'nigg*r' with the recognition that African Americans will still be continually subjected to this libel despite its refutation. Thus, the chiastic slaying of 'nigg*r' by 'nigg*' requires a continual interplay or semantic loop between the two terms. The context of continuing racism, then, requires 'nigg*' to recurrently signify on (i.e. assert the falsity of) the slur. The recurrent Signification can be thought of as a loop inscribed upon the linear chiastic pattern: Figure 2 - Semantic Loop Inscribed on the Chiastic PatternThe context of continuing racism is one factor that accounts for the value of semantic looping in African-American rhetoric. Since the semantic loops of African-American culture draw their strength from the oppression to which they react, they are continually useful. This kind of resistance does not attempt to overcome racism but instead draws African-American attention to it so blacks can survive it. The first step in this survival is to be aware, as DuBois might say, that blacks in America are perceived of as a "problem" (15). The Signification of 'nigg*' also "keeps it real", by reminding African Americans of the harsh truth of racism and by continually enacting a refutation of racism through a complex of culturally familiar rhetorical strategies. In this respect, the appropriation of the white slur is, to borrow the words of Foucault, a culturally inspired "reverse discourse" aimed at responding to white oppression. The identification of semantic looping in this case opens up an array of other questions. How does semantic looping function in the appropriation of other epithets by other groups? (A few cases that may be worth investigating in addition to the previously mentioned 'queer', are 'dyke', 'girl'/'grrl' by young feminists and 'anorexia'/'ana' as well as 'bulimia'/'mia' by pro-eating-disorder advocates.) Do the cultural differences of various groups affect how semantic looping operates? What does semantic looping reveal about the struggle over authenticity or identity, especially with respect to gender, class and subculture? And lastly, how do groups respond to re-appropriations by dominant groups? (In particular I am thinking of the increasing use of 'nigg*' by white American teenagers.) I hope others will find these questions worth pursuing. Notes 1. While Gates suggests that agnominatio is involved in the co-optation of 'nigg*r', he does not mention the term 'semantic inversion' at all (although he is obviously aware that Signifyin(g) often involves this rhetorical action). Gates's phrase, chiastic slaying, occurs only in the context of a general discussion of Signifyin(g). See 66 in Gates for his use of chiastic slaying. 2. Other English speakers including Australians and the English may find it difficult to distinguish between these spoken words and 'hear' them both as 'nigguh'. But to those from the United States the distinction is noticeable. 3. Gates identifies Bakhtin's notion of the double voiced word and his concept of narrative parody as relevant to African-American rhetoric. See 50, 110-13 and 131 in Gates. Bakhtin's most comprehensive discussion of double-voiced discourse can be found in 185-186, and 190-99. Bakhtin's distinction between parody and other types of discourse can be found in 193-99. 4. Gates lists the following as providing substantive definitions of Signifyin(g): H. Rap Brown, Roger D. Abrahams, Thomas Kochman, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Geneva Smitherman and Ralph Ellison (71). Gates considers Mitchell Kernan's data to be more representative than the others' and even she states that she could not get consensus from her informants regarding Signifyin(g) (Gates 80-81). 5. Gates has identified numerous rhetorical strategies that can be involved in Signifyin(g). See 52 in Gates for a complete list of these tropes. 6. I build on an example from Abrahams who states that "... it is signifying to make fun of a policeman by parodying his motions behind his back..." (52). 7. Smitherman notes that the semantic inversion of 'nigg*r' (or 'flippin the script' as it is known in the hip-hop world) "... is often misunderstood by European Americans and castigated by some African Americans" (Chain). Smitherman's comment suggests that the ability to discriminate between the two terms (as well as one's comfort level with the usage of 'nigg*') is not racially monolithic. Whites who participate in hip-hop culture, for example, are likely to see the distinction between 'nigg*r' and 'nigg*'. Some factors that seem likely to complicate any generalization about understanding and comfort level with 'nigg*' are race, affinity for hip-hop, class, age and geographic location. References Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine, 1970. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. DuBois, W.E. Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1961. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. Grothe, Mardy. Chiasmus.com. Online. Internet. 9 Oct. 2001. Available <http://www.chiasmus.com/whatischiasmus.shtml>. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford U P, 1988. Smitherman, Geneva. "'The Chain Remain the Same'." Journal of Black Studies 28 (1997): n.pag. Online. Academic Search Elite. 10 May 2002. - - -. Black Talk. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Links http://www.chiasmus.com/whatischiasmus.shtml Citation reference for this article MLA Style Jacobs, Andrew T.. "Appropriating a Slur" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php>. Chicago Style Jacobs, Andrew T., "Appropriating a Slur" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Jacobs, Andrew T.. (2002) Appropriating a Slur. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/semantic.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Creators and Creation Creation is a troubling word today, because it suggests an impossible act, indeed a miracle: the formation of something out of nothing. Today we no longer believe in miracles, yet we see all around us myriad acts which we routinely define as creative. Here, I am not referring to the artistic performances and works of gifted individuals, which have their own genealogy of creativity in the lineages of Western art. Rather, I am referring to the small, personal events that we see within the mediated spaces of the everyday (on the television screen, in magazines and newspapers) where lives are suddenly changed for the better through the consumption of products designed to fulfil our personal desires. In this paper, I want to explore the implications of thinking about everyday creativity as a modern cultural form. I want to suggest that not only is such an impossible possibility possible, but that its meaning has been at the centre of the desire to name, to gain status from, and to market the products of modern industrialisation. Furthermore I want to suggest that beyond any question of marketing rhetoric, we need to attend to this desire as the ghost of a certain kind of immanence which has haunted modernity and its projects from the very beginning, linking the great thoughts of modern philosophy with the lowliest products of modern life. Immanence, Purity and the Cogito In Descartes' famous Discourse on Method, the author-narrator (let's call him Descartes) recounts how he came about the idea of the thinking self or cogito, as the foundation of worldly knowledge: And so because sometimes our senses deceive us, I made up my mind to suppose that they always did. . . . I resolved to pretend that everything that had ever entered my mind was as false as the figments of my dreams. But then as I strove to think of everything false, I realized that, in the very act of thinking everything false, I was aware of myself as something real. (60-61) These well known lines are, of course, the beginnings of a remarkable philosophical enterprise, reaching forward to Husserl and beyond, in which the external world is bracketed, all the better to know it in the name of reason. Through an act of pretence ("I resolved to pretend"), Descartes disavows the external world as the source of certain knowledge, and, turning to the only thing left: the thought of himself—"I was aware of myself as something real"—makes his famous declaration, "I think therefore I am". But what precisely characterises this thinking being, destined to become the cogito of all modernity? Is it purely this act of self-reflection?: Then, from reflecting on the fact that I had doubts, and that consequently my existence was not wholly perfect, it occurred to me to enquire how I learned to think of something more perfect than myself, and it became evident to me that it must be through some nature which was in fact more perfect. (62) Descartes has another thought that "occurred to me" almost at the same moment that he becomes aware of his own thinking self. This second thought makes him aware that the cogito is not complete, requiring yet a further thought, that of a perfection drawn from something "more perfect than myself". The creation of the cogito does not occur, as we might have first surmised, within its own space of self-reflection, but becomes lodged within what might be called, following Deleuze and Guattari, a "plane of immanence" coming from the outside: "The plane of immanence is . . . an outside more distant than any external world because it is an inside deeper than any internal world: it is immanence" (59). Here we are left with a puzzling question: what of this immanence that made him aware of his own imperfection at the very moment of the cogito's inception? Can this immanence be explained away by Descartes' appeal to God as a state of perfection? Or is it the very material upon which the cogito is brought into existence, shaping it towards perfection? We are forced to admit that, irrespective of the source of this perfection, the cogito requires something from the outside which, paradoxically, is already on the inside, in order to create itself as a pure form. Following the contours of Descartes' own writing, we cannot account for modernity purely in terms of self-reflection, if, in the very act of its self-creation, the modern subject is shot through with immanence that comes from the outside. Rather what we must do is describe the various forms this immanence takes. Although there is no necessary link between immanence and perfection (that is, one does not logically depend on the other as its necessary cause) their articulation nevertheless produces something (the cogito for instance). Furthermore, this something is always characterised as a creation. In its modern form, creation is a form of immanence within materiality—a virtualisation of material actuality, that produces idealised states, such as God, freedom, reason, uniqueness, originality, love and perfection. As Bruno Latour has argued, the "modern critical stance" creates unique, pure objects, by purging the material "networks" from which they are formed, of their impurities (11-12). Immanence is characterised by a process of sifting and purification which brings modern objects into existence: "the plane of immanence . . . acts like a sieve" (Deleuze and Guattari 42). The nation, the state, the family, the autonomous subject, and the work of art—all of these are modern when their 'material' is purged of impurities by an immanence that 'comes from the outside' yet is somehow intrinsic to the material itself. As Zygmunt Bauman points out, the modern nation exists by virtue of a capacity to convert strangers into citizens; by purging itself of impurities inhabiting it from within but coming from the outside (63). The modern work of art is created by purging itself of the vulgarities and impurities of everyday life (Berman 30); by reducing its contingent and coincidental elements to a geometrical, punctual or serialised form. The modern nuclear family is created by converting the community-based connections between relatives and friends into a single, internally consistent self-reproducing organism. All of these examples require us to think of creativity as an act which brings something new into existence from within a material base that must be purged and disavowed, but which, simultaneously, must also be retained as its point of departure that it never really leaves. Immanence should not be equated with essence, if by essence we mean a substratum of materiality inherent in things; a quality or quiddity to which all things can be reduced. Rather, immanence is the process whereby things appear as they are to others, thereby forming themselves into 'objects' with certain identifiable characteristics. Immanence draws the 'I' and the 'we' into relations of subjectivity to the objects thus produced. Immanence is not in things; it is the thing's condition of objectivity in a material, spatial and temporal sense; its 'becoming object' before it can be 'perceived' by a subject. As Merleau-Ponty has beautifully argued, seeing as a bodily effect necessarily comes before perception as an inner ownership (Merleau-Ponty 3-14). Since immanence always comes from elsewhere, no intensive scrutiny of the object in itself will bring it to light. But since immanence is already inside the object from the moment of its inception, no amount of examination of its contextual conditions—the social, cultural, economic, institutional and authorial conditions under which the object was created—will bring us any closer to it. Rather, immanence can only be 'seen' (if this is the right word) in terms of the objects it creates. We should stop seeking immanence as a characteristic of objects considered in themselves, and rather see it in terms of a virtual field or plane, in which objects appear, positioned in a transversally related way. This field does not exist transcendentally to the objects, like some overarching principle of order, but as a radically exteriorised stratum of 'immaterial materiality' with a specific image-content, capable of linking objects together as a series of creations, all with the stamp of their own originality, individuality and uniqueness, yet all bound together by a common set of image relations (Deleuze 34-35). If, as Foucault argues, modern objects emerge in a "field of exteriority"—a complex web of discursive interrelations, with contingent rather than necessary connections to one another (Foucault 45)—then it should be possible to map the connections between these objects in terms of the "schema of correspondence" (74) detected in the multiplicities thrown up by the regularities of modern production and consumption. Commodities and Created Objects We can extend the idea of creation to include not only aesthetic acts and their objects, but also the commodity-products of modern industrialisation. Let's begin by plunging straight into the archive, where we might find traces of these small modern miracles. An illustrated advertisem*nt for 'Hudson's Extract of Soap' appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News, on Saturday February 22nd, 1888. The illustration shows a young woman with a washing basket under her arm, standing beside a sign posted to a wall, which reads 'Remarkable Disappearance of all Dirt from Everything by using Hudson's Extract of Soap' (see Figure 1). The woman has her head turned towards the poster, as if reading it. Beneath these words, is another set of words offering a reward: 'Reward !!! Purity, Health, Perfection, Satisfaction. By its regular daily use'. Here we are confronted with a remarkable proposition: soap does not make things clean, rather it makes dirt disappear. Soap purifies things by making their impurities disappear. The claim made applies to 'everything', drawing attention to a desire for a certain state of perfection, exemplified by the pure body, cleansed of dirt and filth. The pure exists in potentia as a perfect state of being, realised by the purgation of impurities. Fig 1: Hudson's Soap. Illustrated Sydney News, on Saturday February 22nd, 1888 Here we might be tempted to trace the motivation of this advertisem*nt to a concern in the nineteenth century for a morally purged, purified body, regulated according to bourgeois values of health, respectability and decorum. As Catherine Gallagher has pointed out, the body in the nineteenth century was at the centre of a sick society requiring "constant flushing, draining, and excising of various deleterious elements" (Gallagher 90). But this is only half the story. The advertisem*nt offers a certain image of purity; an image which exceeds the immediate rhetorical force associated with selling a product, one which cannot be simply reduced to its contexts of use. The image of perfection in the Hudson's soap advertisem*nt belongs to a network of images spread across a far-flung field; a network in which we can 'see' perfection as a material immanence embodied in things. In modernity, commodities are created objects par excellence, which, in their very ordinariness, bear with them an immanence, binding consumers together into consumer formations. Each act of consumption is not simply driven by necessity and need, but by a desire for self-transformation, embodied in the commodity itself. Indeed, self-transformation becomes one of the main creative processes in what Marshal Berman has identified as the "third" phase of modernity, where, paraphrasing Nietzsche, "modern mankind found itself in the midst of a great absence and emptiness of values and yet, at the same time, a remarkable abundance of possibilities" (Berman 21). Commodification shifts human desire away from the thought of the other as a transcendental reality remote from the senses, and onto a future oriented material plane, in which the self is capable of becoming an other in a tangible, specific way (Massumi 35 ff.). By the end of the nineteenth century, commodities had become associated with scenarios of self-transformation embedded in human desire, which then began to shape the needs of society itself. Consumer formations are not autonomous realms; they are transversally located within and across social strata. This is because commodities bear with them an immanence which always exceeds their context of production and consumption, spreading across vast cultural terrains. An individual consumer is thus subject to two forces: the force of production that positions her within the social strata as a member of a class or social grouping, and the force of consumption that draws her away from, or indeed, further into a social positioning. While the consumption of commodities remained bound to ideologies relating to the formation of class in terms of a bourgeois moral order, as it was in Britain, America and Europe throughout the nineteenth century, then the discontinuity between social strata and cultural formation was felt in terms of the possibility of self-transformation by moving up a class. In the nineteenth century, working class families flocked to the new photographic studios to have their portraits taken, emulating the frozen moral rectitude of the ideal bourgeois type, or scrimped and saved to purchase parlour pianos and other such cultural paraphernalia, thereby signalling a certain kind of leisured freedom from the grind of work (Sekula 8). But when the desire for self-transformation starts to outstrip the ideological closure of class; that is, when the 'reality' of commodities starts to overwhelm the social reality of those who make them, then desire itself takes on an autonomy, which can then be attached to multiple images of the other, expressed in imaginary scenarios of escape, freedom, success and hyper-experience. This kind of free-floating desire has now become a major trigger for transformations in consumer formations, linked to visual technologies where images behave like quasi-autonomous beings. The emergence of these images can be traced back at least to the mid-nineteenth century where products of industrialisation were transformed into commodities freely available as spectacles within the public spaces of exhibitions and in mass advertising in the press, for instance in the Great Exhibition of 1851 held at London's Crystal Palace (Richards 28 ff.) Here we see the beginnings of a new kind of object-image dislocated from the utility of the product, with its own exchange value and logic of dispersal. Bataille's notion of symbolic exchange can help explain the logic of dispersal inherent in commodities. For Bataille, capitalism involves both production utility and sumptuary expenditure, where the latter is not simply a calculated version of the former (Bataille 120 ff.) Sumptuary expenditure is a discharge of an excess, and not a drawing in of demand to match the needs of supply. Consumption thus has a certain 'uncontrolled' element embedded in it, which always moves beyond the machinations of market logic. Under these conditions, the commodity image always exceeds production and use, taking on a life of its own, charged with desire. In the late nineteenth century, the convergence of photography and cartes-de-visites released a certain scopophilic desire in the form of postcard p*rnography, which eventually migrated to the modern forms of advertising and public visual imagery that we see today. According to Suren Lalvani, the "onset of scopophilia" in modern society is directly attributable to the convergence of photographic technology and erotic display in the nineteenth century (Lalvani). In modern consumer cultures, desire does not lag behind need, but enters into the cycle of production and consumption from the outside, where it becomes its driving force. In this way, modern consumer cultures transform themselves by ecstasis (literally, by standing outside oneself) when the body becomes virtualised into its other. Here, the desire for self-transformation embodied in the act of consumption intertwines with, and eventually redefines, the social positioning of the subject. Indeed the 'laws' of capital and labour where each person or family group is assigned a place and regime of duties, are constantly undone and redefined by the superfluity of consumption, gradually gathering pace throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These tremendous changes operating throughout all capitalist consumer cultures for some time, do not occur in a calculated way, as if controlled by the forces of production alone. Rather, they occur through myriad acts of self-transformation, operating transversally, linking consumer to consumer within what I have defined earlier as a field of immanence. Here, the laws of supply and demand are inadequate to predict the logic of this operation; they only describe the effects of consumption after desire has been spent. Or, to put this another way, they misread desire as need, thereby transcribing the primary force of consumption into a secondary component of the production/labour cycle. This error is made by Humphrey McQueen in his recent book The Essence of Capitalism: the origins of our future (2001). In chapter 8, McQueen examines the logic of the consumer market through a critique of the marketeer's own notion of desire, embodied in the "sovereign consumer", making rational choices. Here desire is reduced back to a question of calculated demand, situated within the production/consumption cycle. McQueen leaves himself no room to manoeuvre outside this cycle; there is no way to see beyond the capitalist cycle of supply/demand which accelerates across ever-increasing horizons. To avoid this error, desire needs to be seen as immanent to the production/consumption cycle; as produced by it, yet superfluous to its operations. We need therefore to situate ourselves not on the side of production, but in the superfluity of consumption in order to recognise the transformational triggers that characterise modern consumer cultures, and their effects on the social order. In order to understand the creative impulse in modernity today, we need to come to grips with the mystery of consumption, where the thing consumed operates on the consumer in both a material and an immaterial way. This mystification of the commodity was, of course, well noted by Marx: A commodity is . . . a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. (Marx 43, my emphasis) When commodities take on such a powerful force that their very presence starts to drive and shape the social relations that have given rise to them; that is, when desire replaces need as the shaping force of societies, then we are obliged to redefine the commodity and its relation to the subject. Under these conditions, the mystery of the commodity is no longer something to be dispelled in order to retrieve the real relation between labour and capital, but becomes the means whereby "men's labour" is actually shaped and formed as a specific mode of production. Eric Alliez and Michel Feher (1987) point out that in capitalism "the subjection framework which defines the wage relation has penetrated society to such an extent that we can now speak not only of the formal subsumption of labor by capital but of the actual or 'real' subsumption by capital of society as a whole" (345). In post-Fordist economic contexts, individuals' relation to capital is no longer based on subjection but incorporation: "space is subsumed under a time entirely permeated by capital. In so doing, they [neo-Fordist strategies] also instigate a regime in which individuals are less subject to than incorporated by capital" (346). In societies dominated by the subjection of workers to capital, the commodity's exchange value is linked strongly to the classed position of the worker, consolidating his interests within the shadow of a bourgeois moral order. But where the worker is incorporated into capital, his 'real' social relations go with him, making it difficult to see how they can be separated from the commodities he produces and which he also consumes at leisure: "If the capitalist relation has colonized all of the geographical and social space, it has no inside into which to integrate things. It has become an unbounded space—in other words, a space coextensive with its own inside and outside. It has become a field of immanence" (Massumi 18). It therefore makes little sense to initiate critiques of the capital relation by overthrowing the means of subjection. Instead, what is required is a way through the 'incorporation' of the individual into the capitalist system, an appropriation of the means of consumption in order to invent new kinds of selfhood. Or at the very least, to expose the process of self-formation to its own means of consumption. What we need to do, then, is to undertake a description of the various ways in which desire is produced within consumer cultures as a form of self-creation. As we have seen, in modernity, self-creation occurs when human materiality is rendered immaterial through a process purification. Borrowing from Deleuze and Guattari, I have characterised this process in terms of immanence: a force coming from the outside, but which is already inside the material itself. In the necessary absence of any prime mover or deity, pure immanence becomes the primary field in which material is rendered into its various and specific modern forms. Immanence is not a transcendental power operating over things, but that which is the very motor of modernity; its specific way of appearing to itself, and of relating to itself in its various guises and manifestations. Through a careful mapping of the network of commodity images spread through far-flung fields, cutting through specific contexts of production and consumption, we can see creation at work in one of its specific modern forms. Immanence, and the power of creation it makes possible, can be found in all modern things, even soap powder! References Alliez, Eric and Michel Feher. "The Luster of Capital." Zone 1(2) 1987: 314-359. Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity, 1991. Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Penguin, 1982. Bataille, George. "The Notion of Expenditure." George Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Trans. Alan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, pp.116-129. Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault. Trans. Seán Hand, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method. Trans. Arthur Wollaston, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith, London: Tavistock, 1972. Gallagher, Catherine. "The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew." The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur (Eds.), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987: 83-106. Lalvani, Suren. "Photography, Epistemology and the Body." Cultural Studies, 7(3), 1993: 442-465. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Karl. Capital, A New Abridgement. David McLellan (Ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Massumi, Brian. "Everywhere You Want to Be: Introduction to Fear" in Brian Massumi (Ed.). The Politics of Everyday Fear. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993: 3-37. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1968. McQueen, Humphrey. The Essence of Capitalism: the Origins of Our Future. Sydney: Sceptre, 2001. Richards, Thomas. The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Sekula, Allan. "The Body and the Archive." October, 39, 1986: 3-65.

Abstract:

Le champ sémantique de la maison imprègne nos perceptions individuelles et collectives du monde comme peu d’autres. Il suffit de songer à la distinction très marquée entre house et home en anglais, si difficile à retranscrire dans nos langues latines, ou encore aux usages politiques de l’expression « chez nous » en français. Ce champ renvoie à des lieux souvent riches d’affects, de mémoires et de désirs, qui nous définissent en propre et orientent nos perceptions du temps et de l’espace. Ils font d’ailleurs la matière des poètes, peintres et autres artistes. À cet égard, lorsque nous perdons notre maison, nous ne nous retrouvons pas seulement privés d’un bien utile et échangeable, d’un « logement », nous voyons aussi s’effacer une partie de nous-mêmes et le centre à partir duquel s’organise notre existence quotidienne. En dépit de sa densité, les anthropologues ont d’abord rabattu le thème de la maison sur ceux de la famille et de la culture matérielle. Pour Lewis H. Morgan, la forme de l’espace domestique ne fait qu’épouser un certain type d’organisation familiale; elle en est, pour ainsi dire, le révélateur (1877). À la « hutte » des « sauvages » correspond donc la famille consanguine, qui autorise le mariage entre cousins, alors qu’à la « maison commune » des « barbares » correspond la famille patriarcale, autoritaire et polygame. Les « maisons unifamiliales » de l’Occident contemporain renvoient à la famille nucléaire, fondement de la « civilisation ». Quant aux anthropologues davantage intéressés par l’architecture et les artefacts domestiques, leurs analyses consistent souvent à expliquer leur genèse en accord avec une vision évolutionniste du progrès technique ou par des facteurs géographiques. On aurait pu s’attendre à ce que l’invention de l’ethnographie par Bronislaw Malinowski ouvre de nouvelles perspectives. Avec elle, c’est en effet un certain rapport à la maison qui se met à définir le métier d’anthropologue, celui-là même qu’exemplifie la célèbre représentation de ce dernier sous sa tente, immortalisée dans la première planche photographique des Argonautes du Pacifique occidental. Pour autant, la maison reste un objet secondaire par rapport à l’organisation de la vie familiale, le vrai principe de la société. Elle est avant tout le lieu où le couple choisit de résider après le mariage et ce choix se plie à certaines « règles », dont on peut assez facilement faire l’inventaire, grâce aux liens de filiation entre les membres du couple et les autres résidents (Murdock 1949). On parlera, par exemple, de résidence « matrilocale » quand le couple emménage chez les parents de l’épouse, « patrilocale » dans le cas inverse. Quant aux sociétés occidentales, où le couple forme habituellement un nouveau ménage, on parlera de résidence « néolocale ». La critique de ces règles permet, dans les années 1950 et 1960, d’étendre la réflexion sur la maison. Face aux difficultés concrètes que pose leur identification, Ward Goodenough suggère d’abandonner les taxinomies qui « n’existent que dans la tête des anthropologues » et de « déterminer quels sont, de fait, les choix résidentiels que les membres de la société étudiée peuvent faire au sein de leur milieu socioculturel particulier » (1956 : 29). Autrement dit, plutôt que de partir d’un inventaire théorique, il faut commencer par l’étude des catégories natives impliquées dans les choix résidentiels. La seconde critique est de Meyer Fortes, qui formule le concept de « groupe domestique », « unité qui contrôle et assure l’entretien de la maison (householding and housekeeping unit), organisée de façon à offrir à ses membres les ressources matérielles et culturelles nécessaires à leur conservation et à leur éducation » (1962 : 8). Le groupe domestique, à l’instar des organismes vivants, connaît un « cycle de développement ». En Europe du sud, par exemple, les enfants quittent le domicile parental lorsqu’ils se marient, mais y reviennent en cas de rupture conjugale ou de chômage prolongé ; âgés, les parents souvent cherchent à habiter près de leurs enfants. En conséquence, « les modèles de résidence sont la cristallisation, à un moment donné, d’un processus de développement » (Fortes 1962 : 5), et non l’application statique de règles abstraites. La maison n’est donc pas seulement le lieu où réside la famille, elle est nécessaire à l’accomplissem*nt de tâches indispensables à la reproduction physique et morale des individus, telles que manger, dormir ou assurer l’éducation des nouvelles générations (Bender 1967). Cette conception du groupe domestique rejoint celle qu’avait formulée Frédéric Le Play un siècle auparavant : pour l’ingénieur français, il fallait placer la maison au centre de l’organisation familiale, par la défense de l’autorité paternelle et la transmission de la propriété à un héritier unique, de façon à garantir la stabilité de l’ordre social (1864). Elle exerce de fait une influence considérable sur les historiens de la famille, en particulier ceux du Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, dirigé par Peter Laslett (1972), et sur les anthropologues (Netting, Wilk & Arnould 1984), notamment les marxistes (Sahlins 1976). En Amérique latine, de nombreuses enquêtes menées dans les années 1960 et 1970 mettent en évidence l’importance des réseaux d’entraide, attirant ainsi l’attention sur le rôle essentiel du voisinage (Lewis 1959, Lomnitz 1975). La recherche féministe explore quant à elle le caractère genré de la répartition des tâches au sein du groupe domestique, que recoupe souvent la distinction entre le public et le privé : à la « maîtresse de maison » en charge des tâches ménagères s’oppose le « chef de famille » qui apporte le pain quotidien (Yanagisako 1979). Un tel découpage contribue à invisibiliser le travail féminin (di Leonardo 1987). On remarquera néanmoins que la théorie du groupe domestique pense la maison à partir de fonctions établies par avance : ce sont elles qui orientent l’intérêt des anthropologues, plus que la maison en elle-même. C’est à Claude Lévi-Strauss que l’on doit la tentative la plus systématique de penser la maison comme un principe producteur de la société (1984 ; 2004). Celui-ci prend pour point de départ l’organisation sociale de l’aristocratie kwakiutl (Amérique du Nord), telle qu’elle avait été étudiée par Franz Boas : parce qu’elle présentait des traits à la fois matrilinéaires et patrilinéaires, parce qu’elle ne respectait pas toujours le principe d’exogamie, celle-ci défiait les théories classiques de la parenté. Lévi-Strauss propose de résoudre le problème en substituant le groupe d’unifiliation, tenu pour être au fondement des sociétés dites traditionnelles, par celui de « maison », au sens où l’on parlait de « maison noble » au Moyen Âge. La maison désigne ainsi une « personne morale détentrice d’un domaine, qui se perpétue par transmission de son nom, de sa fortune et de ses titres en ligne réelle ou fictive » (Lévi-Strauss 1984 : 190). Plus que les règles de parenté, ce sont les « rapports de pouvoir » entre ces « personnes morales » qui déterminent les formes du mariage et de la filiation : celles-ci peuvent donc varier en accord avec les équilibres politiques. Lévi-Strauss va ensuite généraliser son analyse à un vaste ensemble de sociétés apparemment cognatiques, qu’il baptise « sociétés à maison ». Celles-ci se situeraient dans une phase intermédiaire de l’évolution historique, « dans un état de la structure où les intérêts politiques et économiques tend[ent] à envahir le champ social » (Lévi-Strauss 1984 : 190). Très discuté par les spécialistes des sociétés concernées, ce modèle a eu la grande vertu de libérer l’imagination des anthropologues. Critiquant son évolutionnisme sous-jacent, Janet Carsten et Stephen Hugh-Jones (1995) proposent toutefois d’approfondir la démarche de Lévi-Strauss, en considérant la maison comme un véritable « fait social total ». L’architecture, par exemple, ne relève pas que d’une anthropologie des techniques : celle de la maison kabyle, analysée par Pierre Bourdieu, met en évidence un « microcosme organisé selon les mêmes oppositions et mêmes hom*ologies qui ordonnent tout l’univers » (1972 : 71), un parallélisme que l’on retrouve dans de nombreux autres contextes socioculturels (Hamberger 2010). Fondamentalement, la maison relève d’une anthropologie du corps. Dans son enquête sur la parenté en Malaisie, Carsten souligne le rôle joué par la cuisine ou le foyer, en permettant la circulation des substances qui assurent la production et la reproduction des corps (alimentation, lait maternel, sang) et leur mise en relation, ce que Carsten appelle la « relationalité » (relatedness) (1995). Fait dynamique plutôt que statique, la maison nous met directement au contact des processus qui forment et reforment nos relations et notre personne : son étude permet donc de dépasser la critique culturaliste des travaux sur la parenté; elle nous montre la parenté en train de se faire. Il convient aussi de ne pas réduire la maison à ses murs : celle-ci le plus souvent existe au sein d’un réseau. Les enquêtes menées par Émile Lebris et ses collègues sur l’organisation de l’espace dans les villes d’Afrique francophone proposent ainsi le concept de « système résidentiel » pour désigner « un ensemble articulé de lieux de résidences (unités d’habitation) des membres d’une famille étendue ou élargie » (Le Bris 1985 : 25). Ils distinguent notamment entre les systèmes « centripètes », « de concentration en un même lieu d’un segment de lignage, d’une famille élargie ou composée » et les systèmes « centrifuges », de « segmentation d’un groupe familial dont les fragments s’installent en plusieurs unités résidentielles plus ou moins proches les unes des autres, mais qui tissent entre elles des liens étroits » (Le Bris 1985 : 25). Examinant les projets et réseaux que mobilise la construction d’une maison dans les quartiers noirs de la Bahia au Brésil, les circulations quotidiennes de personnes et d’objets entre unités domestiques ainsi que les rituels et fêtes de famille, Louis Marcelin en déduit lui aussi que la maison « n’est pas une entité isolée, repliée sur elle-même. La maison n’existe que dans le contexte d’un réseau d’unités domestiques. Elle est pensée et vécue en interrelation avec d’autres maisons qui participent à sa construction – au sens symbolique et concret. Elle fait partie d’une configuration » (Marcelin 1999 : 37). À la différence de Lebris, toutefois, Marcelin part des expériences individuelles et des catégories socioculturelles propres à la société étudiée : une « maison », c’est avant tout ce que les personnes identifient comme tel, et qui ne correspond pas nécessairement à l’image idéale que l’on se fait de cette dernière en Occident. « La configuration de maisons rend compte d’un espace aux frontières paradoxalement floues (pour l'observateur) et nettes (pour les agents) dans lequel se déroule un processus perpétuel de création et de recréation de liens (réseaux) de coopération et d'échange entre des entités autonomes (les maisons) » (Marcelin 1996 : 133). La découverte de ces configurations a ouvert un champ de recherche actuellement des plus dynamiques, « la nouvelle anthropologie de la maison » (Cortado à paraître). Cette « nouvelle anthropologie » montre notamment que les configurations de maisons ne sont pas l’apanage des pauvres, puisqu’elles organisent aussi le quotidien des élites, que ce soit dans les quartiers bourgeois de Porto au Portugal (Pina-Cabral 2014) ou ceux de Santiago au Chili (Araos 2016) – elles ne sont donc pas réductibles à de simples « stratégies de survie ». Quoiqu’elles se construisent souvent à l’échelle d’une parcelle ou d’un quartier (Cortado 2019), ces configurations peuvent très bien se déployer à un niveau transnational, comme c’est le cas au sein de la diaspora haïtienne (Handerson à paraître) ou parmi les noirs marrons qui habitent à la frontière entre la Guyane et le Suriname (Léobal 2019). Ces configurations prennent toutefois des formes très différentes, en accord avec les règles de filiation, bien sûr (Pina-Cabral 2014), mais aussi les pratiques religieuses (Dalmaso 2018), le droit à la propriété (Márquez 2014) ou l’organisation politique locale – la fidélité au chef, par exemple, est au fondement de ce que David Webster appelle les « vicinalités » (vicinality), ces regroupements de maisons qu’il a pu observer chez les Chopes au sud du Mozambique (Webster 2009). Des configurations surgissent même en l’absence de liens familiaux, sur la base de l’entraide locale, par exemple (Motta 2013). Enfin, il convient de souligner que de telles configurations ne sont pas, loin de là, harmonieuses, mais qu’elles sont généralement traversées de conflits plus ou moins ouverts. Dans la Bahia, les configurations de maisons, dit Marcelin, mettent en jeu une « structure de tension entre hiérarchie et autonomie, entre collectivisme et individualisme » (Marcelin 1999 : 38). En tant que « fait social total », dynamique et relationnel, l’anthropologie de la maison ne saurait pourtant se restreindre à celle de l’organisation familiale. L’étude des matérialités domestiques (architecture, mobilier, décoration) nous permet par exemple d’accéder aux dimensions esthétiques, narratives et politiques de grands processus historiques, que ce soit la formation de la classe moyenne en Occident (Miller 2001) ou la consolidation des bidonvilles dans le Sud global (Cavalcanti 2012). Elle nous invite à penser différents degrés de la maison, de la tente dans les camps de réfugiés ou de travailleurs immigrés à la maison en dur (Abourahme 2014, Guedes 2017), en passant par la maison mobile (Leivestad 2018) : pas tout à fait des maisons, ces formes d’habitat n’en continuent pas moins de se définir par rapport à une certaine « idée de la maison » (Douglas 1991). La maison relève aussi d’une anthropologie de la politique. En effet, la maison est une construction idéologique, l’objet de discours politiquement orientés qui visent, par exemple, à assoir l’autorité du père sur la famille (Sabbean 1990) ou à « moraliser » les classes laborieuses (Rabinow 1995). Elle est également la cible et le socle des nombreuses technologiques politiques qui organisent notre quotidien : la « gouvernementalisation » des sociétés contemporaines se confond en partie avec la pénétration du foyer par les appareils de pouvoir (Foucault 2004); la « pacification » des populations indigènes passe bien souvent par leur sédentarisation (Comaroff & Comaroff 1992). Enfin, la maison relève d’une anthropologie de l’économie. La production domestique constitue bien sûr un objet de première importance, qui bénéficie aujourd’hui d’un regain d’intérêt. Florence Weber et Sybille Gollac parlent ainsi de « maisonnée » pour désigner les collectifs de travail domestique fondés sur l’attachement à une maison – par exemple, un groupe de frères et sœurs qui s’occupent ensemble d’un parent âgé ou qui œuvrent à la préservation de la maison familiale (Weber 2002, Gollac 2003). Dans la tradition du substantialisme, d’autres anthropologues partent aujourd’hui de la maison pour analyser notre rapport concret à l’économie, la circulation des flux monétaires, par exemple, et ainsi critiquer les représentations dominantes, notamment celles qui conçoivent l’économie comme un champ autonome et séparé (Gudeman et Riviera 1990; Motta 2013) – il ne faut pas oublier que le grec oikonomia désignait à l’origine le bon gouvernement de la maison, une conception qui aujourd’hui encore organise les pratiques quotidiennes (De l’Estoile 2014). Cycles de vie, organisation du travail domestique, formes de domination, identités de genre, solidarités locales, rituels et cosmovisions, techniques et production du corps, circulation des objets et des personnes, droits de propriété, appropriations de l’espace, perceptions du temps, idéologies, technologies politiques, flux monétaires… Le thème de la maison s’avère d’une formidable richesse empirique et théorique, et par-là même une porte d’entrée privilégiée à de nombreuses questions qui préoccupent l’anthropologie contemporaine.

Abstract:

In a recent gaming anthology, Henry Jenkins cannot help contrasting his son's cramped, urban, media-saturated existence with his own idyllic, semi-rural childhood. After describing his own Huck Finn meanderings over "the spaces of my boyhood" including the imaginary kingdoms of Jungleoca and Freedonia, Jenkins relates his version of his son's experiences: My son, Henry, now 16 has never had a backyard He has grown up in various apartment complexes, surrounded by asphalt parking lots with, perhaps, a small grass buffer from the street… Once or twice, when I became exasperated by my son's constant presence around the house I would … tell him he should go out and play. He would look at me with confusion and ask, where? … Who wouldn't want to trade in the confinement of your room for the immersion promised by today's video games? … Perhaps my son finds in his video games what I found in the woods behind the school, on my bike whizzing down the hills of suburban backstreets, or settled into my treehouse with a good adventure novel intensity of experience, escape from adult regulation; in short, "complete freedom of movement". (Jenkins 1998, 263-265) Games here are connected with a shrinking availability of domestic and public space, and a highly mediated experience of the world. Despite his best intentions, creeping into Jenkins's piece is a sense that games act as a poor substitute for the natural spaces of a "healthy" childhood. Although "Video games did not make backyard play spaces disappear", they "offer children some way to respond to domestic confinement" (Jenkins 1998, 266). They emerge, then, as a palliation for the claustrophobic circ*mstances of contemporary urban life, though they offer only unreal spaces, replete with "lakes of fire … cities in the clouds … [and] dazzling neon-lit Asian marketplaces" (Jenkins 1998, 263), where the work of the childish imagination is already done. Despite Jenkins's assertion that games do offer "complete freedom of movement", it is hard to shake the feeling that he considers his own childhood far richer in exploratory and imaginative opportunities: Let me be clear I am not arguing that video games are as good for kids as the physical spaces of backyard play culture. As a father, I wish that my son would come home covered in mud or with scraped knees rather than carpet burns ... The psychological and social functions of playing outside are as significant as the impact of "sunshine and good exercise" upon our physical well-being. (Jenkins 1998, 266) Throughout the piece, games are framed by a romantic, anti-urban discourse: the expanding city is imagined as engulfing space and perhaps destroying childhood itself, such that "'sacred' places are now occupied by concrete, bricks or asphalt" (Jenkins 1998, 263). Games are complicit in this alienation of space and experience. If this is not quite Paul Virilio's recent dour contention that modern mass media forms work mainly to immobilise the body of the consumer--Virilio, luckily, has managed to escape the body-snatchers--games here are produced as a feeble response to an already-effected urban imprisonment of the young. Strikingly, Jenkins seems concerned about his son's "unhealthy" confinement to private, domestic space, and his inability to imaginatively possess a slice of the world outside. Jenkins's description of his son's confinement to the world of "carpet burns" rather than the great outdoors of "scraped knees" and "mud" implicitly leaves the distinction between domestic and public, internal and external, and even the imagined passivity of the domestic sphere as against the activity of the public intact. For those of us who see games as productive activities, which generate particular, unique kinds of pleasure in their own right, rather than as anaemic replacements for lost spaces, this seems to reduce a central cultural form. For those of us who have at least some sympathy with writers on the urban environment like Raban (1974) and Young (1990), who see the city's theatrical and erotic possibilities, Jenkins's fears might seem to erase the pleasures and opportunities that city life provides. Rather than seeing gamers and children (the two groups only partially overlap) as unwitting agents in their own confinement, we can arrive at a slightly more complex view of the relationship between games and urban space. By looking at the video games arcade as it is situated in urban retail space, we can see how gameplay simultaneously acts to regulate urban space, mediates a unique kind of urban performance, and allows sophisticated representations, manipulations and appropriations of differently conceived urban spaces. Despite being a long-standing feature of the urban and retail environment, and despite also being a key site for the "exhibition" of a by-now central media form, the video game arcade has a surprisingly small literature devoted to it. Its prehistory in pinball arcades and pachinko parlours has been noted (by, for example, Steven Poole 2000) but seldom deeply explored, and its relations with a wider urban space have been given no real attention at all. The arcade's complexity, both in terms of its positioning and functions, may contribute to this. The arcade is a space of conflicting, contradictory uses and tendencies, though this is precisely what makes it as important a space as the cinema or penny theatre before it. Let me explain why I think so. The arcade is always simultaneously a part of and apart from the retail centres to which it tends to attach itself.1 If it is part of a suburban shopping mall, it is often located on the ground floor near the entrance, or is semi-detached as cinema complexes often are, so that the player has to leave the mall's main building to get there, or never enter. If it is part of a city or high street shopping area, it is often in a side street or a street parallel to the main retail thoroughfare, or requires the player to mount a set of stairs into an off-street arcade. At other times the arcade is located in a space more strongly marked as liminal in relation to the city -- the seaside resort, sideshow alley or within the fences of a theme park. Despite this, the videogame arcade's interior is usually wholly or mostly visible from the street, arcade or thoroughfare that it faces, whether this visibility is effected by means of glass walls, a front window or a fully retractable sliding door. This slight distance from the mainstream of retail activity and the visibility of the arcade's interior are in part related to the economics of the arcade industry. Arcade machines involve relatively low margins -- witness the industry's recent feting and embrace of redemption (i.e. low-level gambling) games that offer slightly higher turnovers -- and are hungry for space. At the same time, arcades are dependent on street traffic, relentless technological novelty and their de facto use as gathering space to keep the coins rolling in. A balance must be found between affordability, access and visibility, hence their positioning at a slight remove from areas of high retail traffic. The story becomes more complicated, though, when we remember that arcades are heavily marked as deviant, disreputable spaces, whether in the media, government reports or in sociological and psychological literature. As a visible, public, urban space where young people are seen to mix with one another and unfamiliar and novel technologies, the arcade is bound to give rise to adult anxieties. As John Springhall (1998) puts it: More recent youth leisure… occupies visible public space, is seen as hedonistic and presents problems within the dominant discourse of 'enlightenment' … [T]he most popular forms of entertainment among the young at any given historical moment tend also to provide the focus of the most intense social concern. A new medium with mass appeal, and with a technology best understood by the young… almost invariably attracts a desire for adult or government control (160-161, emphasis mine) Where discourses of deviant youth have also been employed in extending the surveillance and policing of retail space, it is unsurprising that spaces seen as points for the concentration of such deviance will be forced away from the main retail thoroughfares, in the process effecting a particular kind of confinement, and opportunity for surveillance. Michel Foucault writes, in Discipline and Punish, about the classical age's refinements of methods for distributing and articulating bodies, and the replacement of spectacular punishment with the crafting of "docile bodies". Though historical circ*mstances have changed, we can see arcades as disciplinary spaces that reflect aspects of those that Foucault describes. The efficiency of arcade games in distributing bodies in rows, and side by side demonstrates that" even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular" (Foucault 1977, 143). The efficiency of games from Pong (Atari:1972) to Percussion Freaks (Konami: 1999) in articulating bodies in play, in demanding specific and often spectacular bodily movements and competencies means that "over the whole surface of contact between the body and the object it handles, power is introduced, fastening them to one another. It constitutes a body weapon, body-tool, body-machine complex" (Foucault 1977,153). What is extraordinary is the extent to which the articulation of bodies proceeds only through a direct engagement with the game. Pong's instructions famously read only "avoid missing ball for high score"--a whole economy of movement, arising from this effort, is condensed into six words. The distribution and articulation of bodies also entails a confinement in the space of the arcade, away from the main areas of retail trade, and renders occupants easily observable from the exterior. We can see that games keep kids off the streets. On the other hand, the same games mediate spectacular forms of urban performance and allow particular kinds of reoccupation of urban space. Games descended or spun off from Dance Dance Revolution (Konami: 1998) require players to dance, in time with thumping (if occasionally cheesy) techno, and in accordance with on-screen instructions, in more and more complex sequences on lit footpads. These games occupy a lot of space, and the newest instalment (DDR has just issued its "7th Mix") is often installed at the front of street level arcades. When played with flair, games such as these are apt to attract a crowd of onlookers to gather, not only inside, but also on the footpath outside. Indeed games such as these have given rise to websites like http://www.dancegames.com/au which tells fans not only when and where new games are arriving, but whether or not the positioning of arcades and games within them will enable a player to attract attention to their performance. This mediation of cyborg performance and display -- where success both achieves and exceeds perfect integration with a machine in urban space -- is particularly important to Asian-Australian youth subcultures, which are often marginalised in other forums for youthful display, like competitive sport. International dance gamer websites like Jason Ho's http://www.ddrstyle.com , which is emblazoned with the slogan "Asian Pride", explicitly make the connection between Asian youth subcultures and these new kinds of public performance. Games like those in the Time Crisis series, which may seem less innocuous, might be seen as effecting important inversions in the representation of urban space. Initially Time Crisis, which puts a gun in the player's hand and requires them to shoot at human figures on screen, might even be seen to live up to the dire claims made by figures like Dave Grossman that such games effectively train perpetrators of public violence (Grossman 1995). What we need to keep in mind, though, is that first, as "cops", players are asked to restore order to a representation of urban space, and second, that that they are reacting to images of criminality. When criminality and youth are so often closely linked in public discourse (not to mention criminality and Asian ethnicity) these games stage a reversal whereby the young player is responsible for performing a reordering of the unruly city. In a context where the ideology of privacy has progressively marked public space as risky and threatening,2 games like Time Crisis allow, within urban space, a performance aimed at the resolution of risk and danger in a representation of the urban which nevertheless involves and incorporates the material spaces that it is embedded in.This is a different kind of performance to DDR, involving different kinds of image and bodily attitude, that nevertheless articulates itself on the space of the arcade, a space which suddenly looks more complex and productive. The manifest complexity of the arcade as a site in relation to the urban environment -- both regulating space and allowing spectacular and sophisticated types of public performance -- means that we need to discard simplistic stories about games providing surrogate spaces. We reify game imagery wherever we see it as a space apart from the material spaces and bodies with which gaming is always involved. We also need to adopt a more complex attitude to urban space and its possibilities than any narrative of loss can encompass. The abandonment of such narratives will contribute to a position where we can recognise the difference between the older and younger Henrys' activities, and still see them as having a similar complexity and richness. With work and luck, we might also arrive at a material organisation of society where such differing spaces of play -- seen now by some as mutually exclusive -- are more easily available as choices for everyone. NOTES 1 Given the almost total absence of any spatial study of arcades, my observations here are based on my own experience of arcades in the urban environment. Many of my comments are derived from Brisbane, regional Queensland and urban-Australian arcades this is where I live but I have observed the same tendencies in many other urban environments. Even where the range of services and technologies in the arcades are different in Madrid and Lisbon they serve espresso and alcohol (!), in Saigon they often consist of a bank of TVs equipped with pirated PlayStation games which are hired by the hour their location (slightly to one side of major retail areas) and their openness to the street are maintained. 2 See Spigel, Lynn (2001) for an account of the effects and transformations of the ideology of privacy in relation to media forms. See Furedi, Frank (1997) and Douglas, Mary (1992) for accounts of the contemporary discourse of risk and its effects. References Douglas, M. (1992) Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London ; New York : Routledge. Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin,. Furedi, F.(1997) Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Morality of Low Expectation. London ; Washington : Cassell. Grossman, D. (1995) On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little, Brown. Jenkins, H. (1998) Complete freedom of movement: video games as gendered play spaces. In Jenkins, Henry and Justine Cassell (eds) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat : Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Poole, S. (2000) Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames. London: Fourth Estate. Raban, J. (1974) Soft City. London: Hamilton. Spigel, L. (2001) Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and the Postwar Suburbs. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Springhall, J. (1998) Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics : Penny Gaffs to Gangsta-rap, 1830-1996. New York: St. Martin's Press. Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Websites http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/s... (Time Crisis synopsis and shots) http://www.dancegames.com/au (Site for a network of fans revealing something about the culture around dancing games) http://www.ddrstyle.com (website of Jason Ho, who connects his dance game performances with pride in his Asian identity). http://www.pong-story.com (The story of Pong, the very first arcade game) Games Dance Dance Revolution, Konami: 1998. Percussion Freaks, Konami: 1999. Pong, Atari: 1972. Time Crisis, Namco: 1996. Links http://www.dancegames.com/au http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/arcade/ag1154.php http://www.pong-story.com http://www.ddrstyle.com Citation reference for this article MLA Style Wilson, Jason A.. "Performance, anxiety" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php>. Chicago Style Wilson, Jason A., "Performance, anxiety" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Wilson, Jason A.. (2002) Performance, anxiety. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/performance.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Art Imitating ArtThis article discusses the global, historical and literary references that are present in the video game franchise Bayonetta. In particular, references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the works of Dr John Dee, and European traditions of witchcraft are examined. Bayonetta is modern in the sense that she is a woman of the world. Her character shows how history and literature may be used, re-used, and evolve into new formats, and how modern games travel abroad through time and space.Drawing creative inspiration from other works is nothing new. Ideas and themes, art and literature are frequently borrowed and recast. Carmel Cedro cites Northrop Frye in the example of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. These writers created stories and characters that have developed a level of acclaim and resonated with many individuals, resulting in countless homages over the years. The forms that these appropriations take vary widely. Media formats, such as film adaptations and even books, take the core characters or narrative from the original and re-work them into a different context. For example, the novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1883 was adapted into the 2002 Walt Disney animated film Treasure Planet. The film maintained the concepts of the original narrative and retained key characters but re-imaged them to fit the science fiction genre (Clements and Musker).The video-game franchise Bayonetta draws inspiration from distinct sources creating the foundation for the universe and some plot points to enhance the narrative. The main sources are Dante’s Divine Comedy, the projections of John Dee and his mystical practices as well as the medieval history of witches.The Vestibule: The Concept of BayonettaFigure 1: Bayonetta Concept ArtBayonetta ConceptsThe concept of Bayonetta was originally developed by video game designer Hideki Kamiya, known previously for his work including The Devil May Cry and the Resident Evil game series. The development of Bayonetta began with Kamiya requesting a character design that included three traits: a female lead, a modern witch, and four guns. This description laid the foundations for what was to become the hack and slash fantasy heroine that would come to be known as Bayonetta. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri during the 1300s, was a revolutionary piece of literature for its time, in that it was one of the first texts that formalised the vernacular Italian language by omitting the use of Latin, the academic language of the time. Dante’s work was also revolutionary in its innovative contemplations on religion, art and sciences, creating a literary collage of such depth that it would continue to inspire hundreds of years after its first publication.Figure 2: Domenico di Michelino’s fresco of Dante and his Divine Comedy, surrounded by depictions of scenes in the textBayonetta explores the themes of The Divine Comedy in a variety of ways, using them as an obvious backdrop, along with subtle homages and references scattered throughout the game. The world of Bayonetta is set in the Trinity of Realities, three realms that co-exist forming the universe: Inferno, Paradiso and the Chaos realm—realm of humans—and connected by Purgitorio—the intersection of the trinity. In the game, Bayonetta travels throughout these realms, primarily in the realm of Purgitorio, the area in which magical and divine entities may conduct their business. However, there are stages within the game where Bayonetta finds herself in Paradiso and the human realm. This is a significant factor relating to The Divine Comedy as these realms also form the areas explored by Dante in his epic poem. The depth of these parallels is not exclusive to factors in Dante’s masterpiece, as there are also references to other art and literature inspired by Dante’s legacy. For example, the character Rodin in Bayonetta runs a bar named “The Gates of Hell.” In 1917 French artist Auguste Rodin completed a sculpture, The Gates of Hell depicting scenes and characters from The Divine Comedy. Rodin’s bar in Bayonetta is manifested as a dark impressionist style of architecture, with an ominous atmosphere. In early concept art, the proprietor of the bar was to be named Mephisto (Kamiya) derived from “Mephistopheles”, another name for the devil in some mythologies. Figure 3: Auguste Rodin's Gate of Hell, 1917Aspects of Dante’s surroundings and the theological beliefs of his time can be found in Bayonetta, as well as in the 2013 anime film adaptation Bayonetta, Bloody Fate. The Christian virtues, revered during the European Middle Ages, manifest themselves as enemies and adversaries that Bayonetta must combat throughout the game. Notably, the names of the cardinal virtues serve as “boss ranked” foes. Enemies within a game, usually present at the end of a level and more difficult to defeat than regular enemies within “Audito Sphere” of the “Laguna Hierarchy” (high levels of the hierarchy within the game), are named in Italian; Fortitudo, Temperantia, Lustitia, and Sapientia. These are the virtues of Classical Greek Philosophy, and reflect Dante’s native language as well as the impact the philosophies of Ancient Greece had on his writings. The film adaption of Bayonetta incorporated many elements from the game. To adjust the game effectively, it was necessary to augment the plot in order to fit the format of this alternate media. As it was no longer carried by gameplay, the narrative became paramount. The diverse plot points of the new narrative allowed for novel possibilities for further developing the role of The Divine Comedy in Bayonetta. At the beginning of the movie, for example, Bayonetta enters as a nun, just as she does in the game, only here she is in church praying rather than in a graveyard conducting a funeral. During her prayer she recites “I am the way into the city of woe, abandon all hope, oh, ye who enter here,” which is a Canto of The Divine Comedy. John Dee and the AngelsDr John Dee (1527—1608), a learned man of Elizabethan England, was a celebrated philosopher, mathematician, scientist, historian, and teacher. In addition, he was a researcher of magic and occult arts, as were many of his contemporaries. These philosopher magicians were described as Magi and John Dee was the first English Magus (French). He was part of a school of study within the Renaissance intelligensia that was influenced by the then recently discovered works of the gnostic Hermes Trismegistus, thought to be of great antiquity. This was in an age when religion, philosophy and science were intertwined. Alchemy and chemistry were still one, and astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe cast horoscopes. John Dee engaged in spiritual experiments that were based in his Christian faith but caused him to be viewed in some circles as dangerously heretical (French).Based on the texts of Hermes Trismegistas and other later Christian philosophical and theological writers such as Dionysius the Areopagite, Dee and his contemporaries believed in celestial hierarchies and levels of existence. These celestial hierarchies could be accessed by “real artificial magic,” or applied science, that included mathematics, and the cabala, or the mystical use of permutations of Hebrew texts, to access supercelestial powers (French). In his experiments in religious magic, Dee was influenced by the occult writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486—1535). In Agrippa’s book, De Occulta Philosophia, there are descriptions for seals, symbols and tables for summoning angels, to which Dee referred in his accounts of his own magic experiments (French). Following his studies, Dee constructed a table with a crystal placed on it. By use of suitable rituals prescribed by Agrippa and others, Dee believed he summoned angels within the crystal, who could be seen and conversed with. Dee did not see these visions himself, but conversed with the angels through a skryer, or medium, who saw and heard the celestial beings. Dee recorded his interviews in his “Spiritual Diaries” (French). Throughout Bayonetta there are numerous seals and devices that would appear to be inspired by the work of Dee or other Renaissance Magi.In these sessions, John Dee, through his skryer Edward Kelley, received instruction from several angels. The angels led him to believe he was to be a prophet in the style of the biblical Elijah or, more specifically like Enoch, whose prophesies were detailed in an ancient book that was not part of the Bible, but was considered by many scholars as divinely inspired. As a result, these experiments have been termed “Enochian conversations.” The prophesies received by Dee foretold apocalyptic events that were to occur soon and God’s plan for the world. The angels also instructed Dee in a system of magic to allow him to interpret the prophesies and participate in them as a form of judge. Importantly, Dee was also taught elements of the supposed angelic language, which came to be known as “Enochian” (Ouellette). Dee wrote extensively about his interviews with the angels and includes statements of their hierarchy (French, Ouellette). This is reflected in the “Laguna Hierarchy” of Bayonetta, sharing similarities in name and appearance of the angels Dee had described. Platinum Games creative director Jean-Pierre Kellams acted as writer and liaison, assisting the English adaptation of Bayonetta and was tasked by Hideki Kamiya to develop Bayonetta’s incantations and subsequently the language of the angels within the game (Kellams).The Hammer of WitchesOne of the earliest and most integral components of the Bayonetta franchise is the fact that the title character is a witch. Witches, sorcerers and other practitioners of magic have been part of folklore for centuries. Hideki Kamiya stated that the concept of” classical witches” was primarily a European legend. In order to emulate this European dimension, he had envisioned Bayonetta as having a British accent which resulted in the game being released in English first, even though Platinum Games is a Japanese company (Kamiya). The Umbra Witch Clan hails from Europe within the Bayonetta Universe and relates more closely to the traditional European medieval witch tradition (Various), although some of the charms Bayonetta possesses acknowledge the witches of different parts of the world and their cultural context. The Evil Harvest Rosary is said to have been created by a Japanese witch in the game. Bayonetta herself and other witches of the game use their hair as a conduit to summon demons and is known as “wicked weaves” within the game. She also creates her tight body suit out of her hair, which recedes when she decides to use a wicked weave. Using hair in magic harks back to a legend that witches often utilised hair in their rituals and spell casting (Guiley). It is also said that women with long and beautiful hair were particularly susceptible to being seduced by Incubi, a form of demon that targets sleeping women for sexual intercourse. According to some texts (Kramer), witches formed into the beings that they are through consensual sex with a devil, as stated in Malleus Maleficarum of the 1400s, when he wrote that “Modern Witches … willingly embrace this most foul and miserable form of servitude” (Kramer). Bayonetta wields her sexuality as proficiently as she does any weapon. This lends itself to the belief that women of such a seductive demeanour were consorts to demons.Purgitorio is not used in the traditional sense of being a location of the afterlife, as seen in The Divine Comedy, rather it is depicted as a dimension that exists concurrently within the human realm. Those who exist within this Purgitorio cannot be seen with human eyes. Bayonetta’s ability to enter and exit this space with the use of magic is likened to the myth that witches were known to disappear for periods of time and were purported to be “spirited away” from the human world (Kamiya).Recipes for gun powder emerge from as early as the 1200s but, to avoid charges of witchcraft due to superstitions of the time, they were hidden by inventors such as Roger Bacon (McNab). The use of “Bullet Arts” in Bayonetta as the main form of combat for Umbra Witches, and the fact that these firearm techniques had been honed by witches for centuries before the witch hunts, implies that firearms were indeed used by dark magic practitioners until their “discovery” by ordinary humans in the Bayonetta universe. In addition to this, that “Lumen Sages” are not seen to practice bullet arts, builds on the idea of guns being a practice of black magic. “Lumen Sages” are the Light counterpart and adversaries of the Umbra Witches in Bayonetta. The art of Alchemy is incorporated into Bayonetta as a form of witchcraft. Players may create their own health, vitality, protective and mana potions through a menu screen. This plays on the taboo of chemistry and alchemy of the 1500s. As mentioned, John Dee's tendency to dabble in such practices was considered by some to be heretical (French, Ouellette).Light and dark forces are juxtaposed in Bayonetta through the classic adversaries, Angels and Demons. The moral flexibility of both the light and dark entities in the game leaves the principles of good an evil in a state of ambiguity, which allows for uninhibited flow in the story and creates a non-linear and compelling narrative. Through this non-compliance with the pop culture counterparts of light and dark, gamers are left to question the foundations of old cultural norms. This historical context lends itself to the Bayonetta story not only by providing additional plot points, but also by justifying the development decisions that occur in order to truly flesh out Bayonetta’s character.ConclusionCompelling story line, characters with layered personality, and the ability to transgress boundaries of time and travel are all factors that provide a level of depth that has become an increasingly important aspect in modern video gameplay. Gamers love “Easter eggs,” the subtle references and embellishments scattered throughout a game that make playing games like Bayonetta so enjoyable. Bayonetta herself is a global traveller whose journeying is not limited to “abroad.” She transgresses cultural, time, and spatial boundaries. The game is a mosaic of references to spatial time dimensions, literary, and historical sources. This mix of borrowings has produced an original gameplay and a unique storyline. Such use of literature, mythology, and history to enhance the narrative creates a quest game that provides “meaningful play” (Howard). This process of creation of new material from older sources is a form of renewal. As long as contemporary culture presents literature and history to new audiences, the older texts will not be forgotten, but these elements will undergo a form of renewal and restoration and the present-day culture will be enhanced as a result. In the words of Bayonetta herself: “As long as there’s music, I’ll keep on dancing.”ReferencesCedro, Carmel. "Dolly Varden: Sweet Inspiration." Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 37-46. French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London: London, Routledge and K. Paul, 1972. Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology. Infobase Publishing, 2009. Howard, Jeff. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Wellesley, Mass.: A.K. Peters, 2008. Kamiya, Hideki.Bayonetta. Bayonetta. Videogame. Sega, Japan, 2009.Kellams, Jean-Pierre. "Butmoni Coronzon (from the Mouth of the Witch)." Platinum Games 2009.Kramer, Heinrich. The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Eds. Sprenger, Jakob, or joint author, and Montague Summers. New York: Dover, 1971.McNab, C. Firearms: The Illustrated Guide to Small Arms of the World. Parragon, 2008.Ouellette, Francois. "Prophet to the Elohim: John Dee's Enochian Conversations as Christian Apocalyptic Discourse." Master of Arts thesis. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2004.Treasure Planet. The Walt Disney Company, 2003.Various. "Bayonetta Wikia." 2016.

Abstract:

Introduction Burning Man (BM) is a festival of art and music that materialises for one week each year in the Nevada desert. It is considered by many to be the world’s largest countercultural event. But what is BM, really? With record attendance of 69,613 in 2013 (Griffith) (the original event in 1986 had twenty), and recent event themes that have engaged with mainstream political themes such as “Green Man” (2007) and “American Dream” (2008), can BM still be considered countercultural? Was it ever? In the first part of this article, we define counterculture as a subculture that originates in the hippie movement of 1960s America and the rejection of “mainstream” values associated with post-WWII industrial culture, that aligns itself with environmentalism and ecological consciousness, and that is distinctly anti-consumer (Roszak, Making). Second, we identify BM as an art and music festival that transcends the event to travel with its desert denizens out into the “real world.” In this way, it is also a festival that has countercultural connections. Third, though BM bears some resemblance to counterculture, given that it is founded upon “Radical Self-Reliance”, BM is actually anything but countercultural because it interlocks with the current socioeconomic zeitgeist of neoliberalism, and that reflects a “new individualism” (Elliot & Lemert). BM’s ambition to be a commercial-free zone runs aground against its entanglement with market relations, and BM is also arguably a consumer space. Finally, neoliberal ideology and “new individualism” are encoded in the space of BM at the level of the spectacle (Debord). The Uchronian’s structure from BM 2006 (a cavernous wooden construction nicknamed the “Belgian Waffle”) could be read as one example. However, opportunities for personal transformation and transcendent experience may persist as counterculture moves into a global age. Defining Counterculture To talk about BM as a counterculture, we must first define counterculture. Hebdige provided a useful distinction between subculture and counterculture in an endnote to a discussion of Teds versus Rockers (148). According to Hebdige, what distinguishes counterculture from mere subculture and related styles is its association with a specific era (1967–70), that its adherents tended to hail from educated, middle-class families, and that it is “explicitly political and ideological” and thus more easily “read” by the dominant powers. Finally, it opposes the dominant culture. Counterculture has its roots in “the hippies, the flower children, the yippies” of the 60s. However, perhaps Hebdige’s definition is too narrow; it is more of an instance of counterculture than a definition. A more general definition of counterculture might be a subculture that rejects “mainstream” values, and examples of this have existed throughout time. For example, we might include the 19th century Romantics with their rejection of the Enlightenment and distrust of capitalism (Roszak 1972), or the Beat generation and post-War America (Miller). Perhaps counterculture even requires one to be a criminal: the prominent Beat writer William S. Burroughs shot guns and heroin, was a hom*osexual, and accidentally shot and killed his wife in a drug haze (Severo). All of these are examples of subcultures that rejected or opposed the mainstream values of the time. But it was Roszak (Making) who originally defined counterculture as the hippie movement of 1960s era college-aged middle-class American youth who revolted against the values and society inherited not only from their parents, but from the “military-industrial complex” itself, which “quite simply was the American political system” (3). Indeed, the 1960s counterculture—what the term “counterculture” has more generally come to mean—was perhaps the most radical expression of humanity ever in its ontological overthrow of industrial culture and all that it implied (and also, Roszak speculates, in so much that it may have been an experiment gone wrong on the part of the American establishment): The Communist and Socialist Left had always been as committed to industrialism as their capitalist foes, never questioning it as an inevitable historical stage. From this viewpoint, all that needed to be debated was the ownership and control of the system. But here was a dissenting movement that yearned for an entirely different quality of life. It was not simply calling the political superstructure into question; with precocious ecological insight, it was challenging the culture of industrial cities on which that superstructure stood. And more troubling still, there were those among the dissenters who questioned the very sanity of that culture. These psychic disaffiliates took off in search of altered states of consciousness that might generate altered states of society. (8) For the purposes of this paper, then, counterculture refers specifically to those cultures that find their roots in the hippie movement of the late 1960s. I embrace both Roszak’s and Hebdige’s definitions of counterculture because they define it as a unique reaction of post-WWII American youth against industrial culture and a rejection of the accompanying values of home, marriage and career. Instead, counterculture embraced ecological awareness, rejected consumption, and even directed itself toward mystical altered states. In the case of the espoused ecological consciousness, that blossomed into the contemporary (increasingly mainstream) environmental movement toward “green” energy. In the case of counterculture, the specific instance really is the definition in this case because the response of postwar youth was so strong and idiosyncratic, and there is overlap between counterculture and the BM community. So what is Burning Man? Defining Burning Man According to the event’s website: Burning Man is an annual event and a thriving year-round culture. The event takes place the week leading up to and including Labor Day, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The Burning Man organization […] creates the infrastructure of Black Rock City, wherein attendees (or “participants”) dedicate themselves to the spirit of community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. They depart one week later, leaving no trace […] Outside the event, Burning Man’s vibrant year-round culture is growing through the non-profit Burning Man Project, including worldwide Regional Groups and associated non-profits who embody Burning Man’s ethos out in the world. (“What is Burning Man?”) I interpret BM as a massive art festival and party that materialises in the desert once a year to produce one of the largest cities in Nevada, but one with increasingly global reach in which the participants feel compelled to carry the ethos forward into their everyday lives. It is also an event with an increasing number of “regional burns” (Taylor) that have emerged as offshoots of the original. Creator Larry Harvey originally conceived of burning the effigy of a man on San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986 in honor of the solstice (“Burning Man Timeline”). Twenty people attended the first BM. That figure rapidly rose to 800 by 1990 when for legal reasons it became necessary to relocate to the remote Black Rock desert in Nevada, the largest expanse of flat land in the United States. In the early 90s, when BM had newly relocated and attendees numbered in the low thousands, it was not uncommon for participants to mix drugs, booze, speeding cars and firearms (Bonin) (reminiscent of the outlaw associations of counterculture). As the Internet became popular in the mid-1990s word spread quickly, leading to a surge in the population. By the early 2000s attendance regularly numbered in the tens of thousands and BM had become a global phenomenon. In 2014 the festival turned 28, but it had already been a corporation for nearly two decades before transitioning to a non-profit (“Burning Man Transitions”). Burning Man as Countercultural Event BM has connections to the counterculture, though the organisation is quick to dispel these connections as myths (“Media Myths”). For example, in response to the notion that BM is a “90s Woodstock”, the organisers point out that BM is for all ages and not a concert. Rather, it is a “noncommercial environment” where the participants come to entertain each other, and thus it is “not limited by the conventions of any subculture.” The idea that BM is a “hippie” festival is also a myth, but one with some truth to it: Hippies helped create environmental ethics, founded communes, wore colorful clothing, courted mysticism, and distrusted the modern industrial economy. In some ways, this counterculture bears a resemblance to aspects of Burning Man. Hippie society was also a youth movement that often revolved around drugs, music, and checks from home. Burning Man is about “radical self-reliance”–it is not a youth movement, and it is definitely not a subculture (“Media Myths”). There are some familiar aspects of counterculture here, particularly environmental consciousness, anti-consumer tendencies and mysticism. Yet, looking at the high attendance numbers and the progression of themes in recent years one might speculate that BM is no longer as countercultural as it once was. For instance, psychedelic themes such as “Vault of Heaven” (2004) and “Psyche” (2005) gave way to “The Green Man” (2007) and “American Dream” (2008). Although “Green Man” was an environmental theme it debuted the year after Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) brought the issue of climate change to a mainstream audience. Indeed, as a global, leaderless event with a strong participatory ethos in many respects BM followed suit with the business world, particularly given it was a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) for many years (though it was ahead of the curve): “Capitalism has learned from the counter culture. But this is not news” (Rojek 355). Similarly, just in time for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election the organisational committee decided to juxtapose “the Man” with the American flag. Therefore, there has been an arguable shift toward engagement with mainstream issues and politics in recent years (and away from mysticism). Recent themes are really re-appropriations of mainstream discourses; hence they are “agonistic” readings (Mouffe). Take for example the VoterDrive Bus, an early example of political talk at BM that engaged with mainstream politics. The driver was seven-time BM veteran Corey Mervis (also known as “Misty Mocracy”) (“Jack Rabbit Speaks”). Beginning on 22 July 2004, the VoterDrive Bus wrote the word VOTE in script across the continental United States in the months before the election, stopping in the Black Rock City (BRC) for one week during the BM festival. Four years later the theme “American Dream” would reflect this countercultural re-appropriation of mainstream political themes in the final months leading up to the 2008 Presidential election. In that year, “the Man,” a massive wooden effigy that burns on the last night of the event, stood atop a platform of windows, each inscribed with the flag of a different country. “American Dream” was as politically as it was poetically inspired. Note the agonistic appeal: “This year's art theme is about patriotism—not that kind which freights the nation state with the collective weight of ego, but a patriotism that is based upon a love of country and culture. Leave ideology at home…Ask yourself, instead…What can postmodern America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, yet give to the world?” (“2008 Art Theme: American Dream”). BM has arguably retained its countercultural authenticity despite engagement with mainstream political themes by virtue of such agonistic appeals to “American Dream”, and to “Green Man” which promoted environmental awareness, and which after all started out in the counterculture. I attended BM twice in 2006 and 2007 with “The Zombie Hotel”, one among a thousand camps in the BRC, Nevada (oddly, there were numerous zombie-themed camps). The last year I attended, the festival seemed to have come of age, and 2007 was the first in its history that BM invited corporate presence in the form of green energy companies (and informational kiosks, courtesy of Google) (Taylor). Midway through the week, as I stumbled through the haphazard common area that was The Zombie Hotel hiding from the infernal heat of the desert sun, two twin fighter jets, their paths intertwining, disturbed the sanctity of the clear, blue afternoon sky followed by a collective roar from the city. One can imagine my dismay at rumours that the fighter jets—which I had initially assumed to be some sort of military reconnaissance—were in fact hired by the BM Organizational Committee to trace the event’s symbol in the sky. Speculation would later abound on Tribe.net (“What was up with the fighter jets?”). What had BM become after all? Figure 1: Misty Mocracy & the VoterDrive Bus. Photo: Erick Leskinen (2004). Reproduced with permission. “Radical Self-Reliance”, Neoliberalism and the “New Individualism” Despite overlap with elements of counterculture, there is something quite normative about BM from the standpoint of ideology, and thus “mainstream” in the sense of favouring values associated with what Roszak calls “industrial society”, namely consumption and capitalist labor relations. To understand this, let us examine “The Ten Principles of BM”. These include: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation and Immediacy (“Ten Principles of Burning Man”). These categories speak to BM’s strong connection to the counterculture. For example, “Decommodification” is a rejection of consumerism in favour of a culture of giving; “Immediacy” rejects mediation, and “Participation” stresses transformative change. Many of these categories also evoke political agonism, for example “Radical Inclusion” requires that “anyone may be a part of Burning Man”, and “Radical Self-Expression”, which suggests that no one other than the gift-giver can determine the content of the message. Finally, there are categories that also engage with concepts associated with traditional civil society and democracy, such as “Civic Responsibility”, which refers to the “public welfare”, “Participation”, and “Communal Effort.” Though at first it may seem to connect with countercultural values, upon closer inspection “Radical Self-Reliance” aligns BM with the larger socioeconomic zeitgeist under late-capitalism, subverting its message of “Decommodification.” Here is what it says: “Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.” That message is transformative, even mystical, but it aligns well with a neoliberal ideology and uncertain labor relations under late capitalism. Indeed, Elliot and Lemert explore the psychological impact of a “new individualism”, setting the self in opposition to the incoming forces of globalisation. They address the question of how individuals respond to globalisation, perhaps pathologically. Elliot and Lemert clarify the socio-psychological ramifications of economic fragmentation. They envision this as inextricably caught up with the erosion of personal identity and the necessity to please “self-absorbed others” in a multiplicity of incommensurate realities (20, 21). Individuals are not merely atomised socially but fragmented psychologically, while at the macroscopic level privatisation of the economy spawns this colonisation of the personal Lifeworld, as social things move into the realm of individualised dilemmas (42). It is interesting to note how BM’s principles (in particular “Radical Self-Reliance”) evoke this fracturing of identity as identities and realities multiply in the BRC. Furthermore, the spectre of neoliberal labour conditions on “the Playa” kicks down the door for consumer culture’s entrée. Consumer society “technicises” the project of the self as a series of problems having consumer solutions with reference to expert advice (Slater 86), BM provides that solution in the form of a transformative experience through “Participation”, and acolytes of the BM festival can be said to be deeply invested in the “experience economy” (Pine & Gilmore): “We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation” (“Ten Principles”). Yet, while BM rejects consumption as part of “Decommodification”, the event has become something of a playground for new technological elites (with a taste for pink fur and glow tape rather than wine and cheese) with some camps charging as much as US $25,000 in fees per person for the week (most charge $300) (Bilton). BM is gentrifying, or as veteran attendee Tyler Hanson put it, “Burning Man is no longer a counterculture revolution. It’s now become a mirror of society” (quoted in Bilton). Neoliberalism and “new individualism” are all around at BM, and a reading of space and spectacle in the Uchronian structure reveals this encoding. Figure 2: “Message Out of the Future by Night” (also known as “the Belgian Waffle). Photo: Laurent Chavanne (2006). Reproduced with permission. “Long Gone Hippies” Republican tax reformist Grover Norquist made his way to BM for the first time this year, joining the tech elites. He subsequently proclaimed that America had a lot to learn from BM: “The story of Burning Man is one of radical self-reliance” (Norquist). As the population of the BRC surges toward seventy thousand, it may be difficult to call BM a countercultural event any longer. Given parallels between the BM ethos and neoliberal market relations and a “new individualism”, it is hard to deny that BM is deeply intertwined with counterposing forces of globalisation. However, if you ask the participants (and Norquist) they will have a different story: After you buy your ticket to Burning Man to help pay for the infrastructure, and after you pay for your own transportation, food and water, and if you optionally decide to pay to join a camp that provides some services THEN you never have to take your wallet out while at Burning Man. Folks share food, massages, alcohol, swimming pools, trampolines, many experiences. The expenses that occur prior to the festival are very reasonable and it is wonderful to walk around free from shopping or purchasing. Pockets are unnecessary. So are clothes. (Alex & Allyson Grey) Consumerism is a means to an end in an environment where the meanings of civic participation and “giving back” to the counterculture take many forms. Moreover, Thornton argued that the varied definitions of what is “mainstream” among subcultures point more to a complex and multifaceted landscape of subculture than to any coherent agreement as to what “mainstream” actually means (101), and so perhaps our entire discussion of the counterculture/mainstream binary is moot. Perhaps there is something yet to be salvaged in the spaces of participation at BM, some agonistic activity to be harnessed. The fluid spaces of the desert are the loci of community action. Jan Kriekels, founder of the Uchronia Community, holds out some hope. The Belgian based art collective hauled 150 kilometres of lumber to the BRC in the summer of 2006 to construct a freestanding, cavernous structure with a floor space of 60 by 30 metres at its center and a height of 15 metres (they promised a reforestation of the equivalent amount of trees) (Figure 1). “Don’t mistake us for long gone hippies in the desert”, wrote Kriekels in Message Out of the Future: Uchronia Community, “we are trying to build a bridge between materialism and spiritualism” (102). The Uchronians announced themselves as not only desert nomads but nomads in time (“U” signifying “nothing” and “chronos” or “time”), their time-traveller personas designed to subvert commodification, their mysterious structure (nicknamed the “Belgian Waffle” by the burners, a painful misnomer in the eyes of the Uchronians) evoking a sense of timelessness. I remember standing within that “cathedral-like” (60) structure and feeling exhilarated and lonely and cold all at once for the chill of the desert at night, and later, much later, away from the Playa in conversations with a friend we recalled Guy Debord’s “Thesis 30”: “The spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere.” The message of the Uchronians provokes a comparison with Virilio’s conceptualisations of “world time” and “simultaneity” that emerge from globalisation and digital technologies (13), part of the rise of a “globalitarianism” (15)—“world time (‘live’) takes over from the ancient, immemorial supremacy of the local time of regions” (113). A fragmented sense of time, after all, accompanies unstable labour conditions in the 21st century. Still, I hold out hope for the “resistance” inherent in counterculture as it fosters humanity’s “bothersomely unfulfilled potentialities” (Roszak, Making 16). I wonder in closing if I have damaged the trust of burners in attempting to write about what is a transcendent experience for many. It may be argued that the space of the BRC is not merely a spectacle—rather, it contains the urban “forests of gestures” (de Certeau 102). These are the secret perambulations—physical and mental—at risk of betrayal. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore. Paramount Pictures, 2006. Bilton, Nick. “At Burning Man, the Tech Elite One-Up One Another.” The New York Times: Fashion & Style, 20 Aug. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/fashion/at-burning-man-the-tech-elite-one-up-one-another.html› “Burning Man Timeline.” Burningman. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://burningman.org/timeline/›. “Burning Man Transitions to Non-Profit Organization.” Burningman 3 Mar. 2014. 10 Oct. 2014 ‹http://blog.burningman.com/2014/03/news/burning-man-transitions-to-non-profit-organization/›. De Bord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. 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