Subalterns ‘speak’: migrant bodies,and the performativity of the arts

ABSTRACT

The contemporary globalizing world has unleashed new flows of migrant labour, among which are young women working in homes. As is well known, many find themselves in a situation of virtual slavery, having no juridical protections against both physical and emotional abuse, and against being held in servitude against their wills. While the situation of migrant domestic workers is increasingly well known, there has been little analysis of how their precarious lives look from their points of view and the complex set of affects and relations that make their lives meaningful. The following investigation treats the way their precarity can become political critique. It focuses on a critical locus of enunciation supplied by the conditions of migrant female domestic workers as it is articulated not in ethnographic work that solicits their actual voices, but through a focus on literary and cinematic texts in which the female protagonists compare domestic servitude to colonialism (in the case of Ousmane Sembene’s film Black Girl) and to war crimes (in the case of Zadie Smith’s story, The embassy of Cambodia). Mediated with some thoughts from Gayatri Spivak’s Can the subaltern speak and Mahasweta Devi’s short story The breast-giver, we also reflect on the ethical significance of aesthetic interruptions through other genres as illustrated by our reading of images from Ramiro Gomez’s Happy Hills painting and cardboard cutting series. In effect, the artistic texts we analyse raise an important ethico-political question regarding the effect of capitalist modernization on ethical life while provoking us to recognize the ethical weight of proximate and distant others.     

Ethical Challenges in International HIV Prevention Research

Members of an HIV-prevention research network were asked to describe ethical challenges faced in their work. Major themes included acceptable standards of care for participants, defining research of relevance to host countries, reducing risks related to stigma, designing research that meets local needs without contributing to an inadequate status quo, and ensuring informed consent for complex research with potentially vulnerable participants. The challenges are interrelated and highlight the need for innovative, practical strategies to be incorporated into the planning, design, and conduct of HIV prevention trials. Research in applied ethics to support decision-making about HIV prevention research is needed, along with ethics training, mechanisms to support community-wide benefit from research, and expanded dialog on the ethics surrounding HIV prevention and public health research.     

Positive and Negative Interactions Observed Between Siblings: Moderating Effects for Children Exposed to Parents' Conflict

This study investigated links between interparental conflict appraisals (specifically threat and self‐blame), sibling relationship quality (positive and negative dimensions), and anxiety in sibling pairs comprised of an adolescent and a younger sibling close in age. Sibling relationship quality was measured through behavioral observation. Links between self‐blame and anxiety were moderated by sibling relationship quality. In older siblings, positive behavior with a sibling was associated with an attenuated relation between self‐blame and anxiety. A paradoxical moderating effect was found for negative interactions; for both younger and older siblings, a relation between self‐blame and anxiety was weakened in the presence of sibling negativity. Results offered support for theorized benefits of sibling relationship quality in helping early adolescents adjust to conflict between parents.     

EMDR、适应性信息加工与个案概念化(上)

EMDR是一个整合性的、以咨客为中心的心理治疗方法,它着重于大脑的信息加工系统、烦扰经历的记忆,这些病理学基础不是由器质性的损伤导致的。EMDR强调对临床情境有作用的经历,和那些需要带领咨客达到更健康的心理状态的经历。EMDR作为以经验为主的支持治疗,本文综述其历史、发展和研究,在阐述适应性信息加工模型之后,用一个延续的个案实例来说明了EMDR的个案概念化和8个阶段的治疗。这个方法用于加工那些建立病理学基础的和触发当前功能失调的早期记忆,并为将来恰当的行为提供模板,包括克服技能和(或)发展性的不足所需的知识与行为。整合的EMDR与家庭系统观点的好处是可以提供最综合的治疗效果。