The Writing Lesson: Imaginary Inscriptions in Cultural Encounters

Abstract

This article takes a moment of intercultural exchange, first reported as "The Writing Lesson" by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques and later explored by Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology, as the occasion for further reflection on the role played by the aesthetic in what it terms intercultural transference. Transference occurs whenever unconscious desires, fantasies or patterns of being and relating are enacted in an interpersonal or intercultural encounter, including the indirect encounters between literary or artistic objects and their recipients. It emerges as a largely unconscious operation designed to bridge, close, fill or deny the inevitable gaps in knowing another person or another culture, and to manage the affects such gaps bring forth. Intercultural transference provides a framework to read "The Writing Lesson" differently and suggests a theoretical model able to account for the complex performances of intercultural transference that enter any exchange or translation between cultures.     

State writing,subversion and citizenship in Southern Rhodesia’s state of emergency, 1959–1960

This article takes a moment of political upheaval – Southern Rhodesia’s 1959 State of Emergency – to explore the uses of writing in the remaking of state authority and citizenship. The 1950s had produced a powerful bureaucratic state, a shaky attempt at multi-racial “partnership,” and African aspirations to a citizenship able to encompass equality, rights and self-determination. The Emergency brought the tensions in these modes of government and citizenship to the fore. The article explores the working out of these tensions in two instances: the bureaucratic attempt to manage political detainees, and the police evidence used to substantiate charges of subversion on the part of nationalists in court. The article traces the limits of the state’s “lawfare” and the means by which detainees and nationalists developed new understandings of citizenship as aspirational imaginary, legal condition and practical tool, through the written word.     

A Set of Handwriting Features for Use in Automated Writer Identification,

A writer's biometric identity can be characterized through the distribution of physical feature measurements (“writer's profile”); a graph‐based system that facilitates the quantification of these features is described. To accomplish this quantification, handwriting is segmented into basic graphical forms (“graphemes”), which are “skeletonized” to yield the graphical topology of the handwritten segment. The graph‐based matching algorithm compares the graphemes first by their graphical topology and then by their geometric features. Graphs derived from known writers can be compared against graphs extracted from unknown writings. The process is computationally intensive and relies heavily upon statistical pattern recognition algorithms. This article focuses on the quantification of these physical features and the construction of the associated pattern recognition methods for using the features to discriminate among writers. The graph‐based system described in this article has been implemented in a highly accurate and approximately language‐independent biometric recognition system of writers of cursive documents.     

如何保证《实用文体写作》课程教学质量

首都职工素质教育工程是实现党的十六大报告中提出的"形成全民学习、终身学习的学习型社会,促进人的全面发展"的全面建设小康社会目标的重要举措;是深入开展"创争"活动的重要形式,是"学习型城市建设、创新型城市建设、和谐城市建设"的重要途径。《实用文体写作》是通用能力培训的必修课程之一。     

Effect of electron beam irradiation on forensic evidence. 2. Analysis of writing inks on porous surfaces

The effect of electron beam irradiation on a series of different writing inks is described. As the anthrax-tainted letters were discovered in October 2001, the U.S. government began to experiment with the use of the electron beam irradiation process for destroying such biological agents. Plans initially considered a large-scale countrywide use of this technology. However, over time the scope of this plan as well as the radiation dosage were reduced, especially when some adverse consequences to mailed items subjected to this process were observed. Little data existed at the time to characterize what level of damage might be expected to occur with common items sent through the mail. This was especially important to museums and other institutions that routinely ship valuable and historic items through the mail. Although the Smithsonian Institution initiated some studies of the effect of electron beam irradiation on archived materials, little data existed on the effect that this process would have on forensic evidence. Approximately 97 different black, blue, red, green, and yellow writing inks were selected. Writing ink types included ballpoint, gel, plastic/felt tip, and rollerball. All noncontrol samples were subjected to standard mail irradiation conditions used by the U.S. Postal Service at the time this experiment was performed. A video spectral comparator and thin-layer chromatography (TLC) analysis were used to evaluate both the control and the irradiated samples. Some published studies reported changes in the presence/absence of dye bands in the chromatograms of irradiated writing inks. Some of these studies report the formation of additional dye bands on the chromatogram while others report missing dye bands. However, using standard testing guidelines and procedures, none of the 97 irradiated inks tested were found to show any significant optical or chemical differences from the control samples. In addition, random testing of some of the ink samples using a second solvent system did not reveal any changes. However, one control ink did show some minor changes in optical properties and dye characteristics over time (but not TLC) while the irradiated sample remained stable. Significant changes in the ultraviolet fluorescence characteristics of the irradiated paper samples themselves (not inks) were also observed.     

签名笔迹的分析与鉴定

签名笔迹字数较少、变化多端、易被模仿,鉴定难度较大。因此,了解、研究签名笔迹的特殊性以及影响其变化的各种因素。就成为签名笔迹检验的重要课题。扶影响签名笔迹鉴定的各种因素入手,深入研究签名笔迹的细节特征,才能为正确作出笔迹鉴定结论提供科学的依据。     

论高等院校学生应用写作能力的培养

随着社会的发展,大学生的应用写作能力受到社会各界的普遍关注。然而在很多高等院校,应用写作教学却存在诸多问题。学生的应用写作知识贫乏,应用写作能力极为欠缺,与社会需求相去甚远。因此,高等院校在应用写作教学方面需加大力度,引导学生认清学习应用写作的重要意义,并从教学方法、实践训练、教学手段、教学评价等方面入手,全面提高应用写作的教学质量,培养学生的应用写作能力。     

大学英语写作测试命题原则、来源及类别

本文对历年来大学英语四、六级写作测试中的命题原则、命题题材来源和分类进行了分析,探讨了大学英语四、六级写作测试的发展动态以及作文设立最低分的命题特点,并就考前的准备提出了具体建议：必须有计划、有步骤、有针对性地进行英语短文写作能力的强化训练。     

试论水书的书写系统及其文化属性

水书是一种特殊的汉字系文字,其书写符号系统的主体在汉字基础上发展而成。水书的使用和发展与水族宗教关系密切,是一种较为典型的巫术文字。这一文化属性对水书书写系统的发展有着重要的影响。