North American field guide: Kenneth Pietrobono's queer landscape of US Empire

“North American field guide: Kenneth Pietrobono's queer landscape of US Empire” offers a meditation on the photographic and exhibition strategies of Queens-based artist Kenneth Pietrobono. Chambers-Letson argues that Pietrobono builds a critique of the imperial and exclusionary practices of the US state by appropriating and (re)deploying the state's appurtenances of power, resignifying the landscape on which US nationalism is constructed and over which US power is exercised. As a point of critical entry, Pietrobono builds upon feminist and queer representational strategies, refusing direct figuration of the body while emphasizing the body of the spectator in the art encounter. Inviting the spectator to project a range of bodies into the landscapes that Pietrobono offers up, the artist asks the spectator to make connections between embodied experiences of race, gender, and sexual difference and the exercise and expansion of US Empire.     

Gubernatorial Veto Powers and the Size of Legislative Coalitions

Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find consistent evidence that the presence and strength of gubernatorial veto powers affect the lawmaking behavior of state legislatures. Our analysis shows how institutional provisions condition executives' ability to affect policy outcomes in separation‐of‐powers systems.     

Linking ammonium nitrate-aluminum (AN-AL) post-blast residues to pre-blast explosive materials using isotope ratio and trace elemental analysis for source attribution

Forensic science practitioners are often called upon to attribute crimes using trace evidence, such as explosive remnants, with the ultimate goal of associating a crime with a suspect or suspects in order to prevent further attacks. The explosive charge is an attractive component for attribution in crimes involving explosives as there are limited pathways for acquisition. However, there is currently no capability to link an explosive charge to its source via post-blast trace residues using isotope ratios or trace elements. Here, we sought to determine if pre-blast attribution signatures are preserved after detonation and can be subsequently recovered and detected. A field study was conducted to recover samples of post-blast explosives from controlled detonations of ammonium nitrate-aluminum (AN-Al), which were then analyzed via isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for quantitation and profiling of isotopes ratio and trace element signatures, respectively. Oxygen and nitrogen isotope ratios from AN-Al yielded some of the most promising results with considerable overlap within one standard deviation of the reference between the spreads of pre- and post-blast data. Trace element results from AN-Al support the findings in the isotope ratio data, with 26 elements detected in both pre- and post-blast samples, and several elements including B, Cd, Cr, Ni, Sn, V, and Zn showing considerable overlap. These preliminary results provide a proof-of-concept for the development of forensic examinations that can attribute signatures from post-blast debris to signatures in pre-blast explosive materials for use in future investigations.     

‘Omnus et Singulatim’: Establishing the Relationship Between Transitional Justice and Neoliberalism

First developed by human rights lawyers and activists, transitional justice emerged from the so-called third wave of democratisations in Latin America. Over the last 30 years, transitional justice has risen to become a ‘global project’ of global governance. Locating the emergence of transitional justice within the global rise of neoliberalism, this article shows that transitional justice serves an important function in regards to the particularly neoliberal contours of many transitions. Understanding this relation, the article argues, is best served with recourse to what Wendy Brown describes as neoliberalism’s practice of omnus et singulatim, a double process through which ‘communities’ are gathered together as stakeholders to take part in economic activities whilst simultaneously being individualised as ‘responsibilised’ and self-sufficient entrepreneurial units. Taking this concept, I argue that transitional justice also undertakes a process of omnus et singulatim that usefully prefigures and supports processes of neoliberalisation during ‘transition’. Transitional justice, it concludes, does the necessary work of bringing conflictual, traumatised, societies back together, whilst doing so on terms that do not threaten but instead prefigure the individualising demands made upon subjects at the sites of neoliberal transition.