Organising time: contraction,synthesis, contemplation

In his exploration of ‘repetition for itself’, Deleuze (2004a), beginning with Hume, invites us to see imagination, prior to understanding, as site of contraction of instants and place of synthesis of time, through contemplation. But synthesis and contemplation here are not the deliberative work of the mind. Rather, they occur ‘in the mind… prior to all memory and all reflection’ (91, original emphasis). Working through Bergson and Butler, Deleuze moves us up and down different levels of his contraction–synthesis–contemplation triptych in dizzying whorls of mutuality of the active and passive. Down to matter, through its contemplation by the ordering of organism; up to memory and its potential for reflection and representation; down again (or is that up?) to reminiscence. In the process time slips. not by but in and out, as variously both condition and agent. Kant and Descartes are contrasted, identity put in its place, the difference between repetitions of the eternal return celebrated. Kierkegaard, Freud, Lacan, Klein and Borges circle this difference, both nurturing and threatening it as they invite in and expel the suffocations of the same. Proust, Joyce, Caroll and, finally, Plato’s Socratic cipher cross the stage of the page as imitation and resemblance transform into simulacra and ‘give… way to repetition’ (156). It is a text about time and organisation and difference worth repeating. In this paper, such repetition is enacted through a close reading of the temporal in Michel Tournier’s Friday or the other island: a repetition of Defoe (his precursors and his political economic apologist followers) through which time, organisation and their sympathies are revealed in the re‐writing of a ‘world without others’ (Deleuze 2004b Deleuze, G. 2004b. “Michel Tournier and the world without others”. In The logic of sense, Edited by: Deleuze, G., Lester, M., Stivale, C. and Boundas, C.V. 341–59. London: Continuum.  [Google Scholar]).     

Till Faith Do Us Part …: Relation Between Religious Affiliation and Attitudes Toward Cross-Cultural and Interfaith Dating and Marriage

This article addresses the relationship between religious and/or cultural affiliation and attitudes toward cross-cultural and interfaith relationships among university students in Australia. The questions of interest were as follows: (1) what is the relationship between the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and attitudes toward interfaith dating and marriages, and (2) how do the participants perceive their religious backgrounds to impact on their decisions to enter or avoid cross-cultural and interfaith relationships? Using semistructured interviews, qualitative data were gathered from 57 students (42 women, 15 men, mean age 21.9 [SD 8.8]). The findings suggest that university students in Australia (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) are generally disinclined to engage in a cross-cultural or interfaith relationship. Only some participants in the present study were open to engaging in a cross-cultural and interfaith relationship, provided the partner was neither too religious nor demanded for the participants to change in any way. However, none of these participants was actively searching for a partner of a different culture or faith. Finally, there was a clear reluctance by non-Muslim participants to be with a Muslim partner.     

Differential fertility and intergenerational mobility under private versus public education

We study differential fertility and intergenerational mobility in an overlapping-generations framework with skilled and unskilled individuals. Assuming unskilled parents are less productive in educating children, we show that they choose higher fertility but less investment for child education than skilled parents. Public education reduces the fertility gap but may increase intergenerational mobility under certain conditions. We also find very different responses of fertility differential and intergenerational mobility to a variation in a preference or technology parameter. As the ratio of skilled to working population rises towards its steady state, average income rises, average fertility falls, but income inequality first rises and then falls.     

Some Like It Mellow: On Gay Men Complicating Pornography Discourses

Despite the proliferation of writing on pornography generally, much of the literature that focuses on gay pornography specifically conforms to either a pro- or anti-porn framework. This overly simplistic dichotomy positions pornography as a homogeneous construct, albeit one that is either “good” or “bad.” Even theorists who situate pornography on a continuum, with erotica at one end and hardcore at the other, tend to reify these discourses. Further, it is not uncommon for researchers to draw conclusions about the effects of pornography consumption without defining exactly what pornography is. This ethnographic research draws on qualitative interviews with 20 consumers’ of gay pornography in Toronto, Canada. By using a thematic analysis to document the ways in which gay men define, distinguish, and conceptualize gay pornography, five definitional categories were developed: Mellow; Commercial; Raunch; Amateur; and Bareback. These broad conceptualizations are discussed in reference to writing on gay pornography. Our research results emphasize the importance of clear definitions of pornography within pornography research.     

Unique decomposition of low-order time series

ABSTRACT

We give necessary and sufficient conditions on the parameters of processes ARMA(1, 1) and ARMA(2, 1) for representation of each as unique sums of independent simpler ARMA processes, including deduction from the sum process of the innovation variances of these summands. This work on inversion is motivated by examples in the article of Granger and Morris (1976 Granger, C.W.J., Morris, M.J. (1976). Time series modelling and interpretation. J. Roy. Statist. Soc., Ser. A 139:246–257.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and by our earlier article (Ku and Seneta, 1998 Ku, S., Seneta, E. (1998). Practical estimation from the sum of AR(1) processes. Commun. Statist. Simul. Computat. 27:981–998.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), to which the present article is a self-contained sequel. The theory is illustrated by the analysis of tree ring data.     

Retrospective accounts of first exposure to minoritized sexual and gender identities

Although there has been considerable research about attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, there has been little research into how people first come to be aware of minoritized sexual and gender minority (SGM) identities. This study sought to address this gap. A sample of sexual minority (n = 150) and heterosexual (n = 802) young adults (N = 952; M_age = 18.88 years, SD = 1.75; 949 were cisgender, three were transgender), primarily recruited from a large southern university, were asked retrospectively to recount their first exposure to or awareness of SGM identities. Responses between SGM and heterosexual participants were compared through a variety of analytical approaches, including analyzing themes about the source from which participants first recalled encountering these identities, and whether understanding about these identities came through a personal connection to someone with these identities. SGM participants reported encountering minoritized sexual identities a year earlier than did heterosexual participants, with both groups encountering these concepts in middle childhood, on average. SGM participants were more likely than heterosexual participants to report learning about minoritized gender identities from someone with a minoritized gender identity, while heterosexual participants more often reported learning about these identities from media or celebrities. Heterosexual (vs. SGM) participants were also more likely to imply that minoritized gender identities were adopted to be popular, rather than being authentic identities in themselves. Framed by developmental intergroup theory (DIT), we discuss implications of these findings, especially potential interrelationships with the development of prejudiced attitudes about SGM identities.