This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that the structural instability and the accelerated pace of life driven by the conditions for 'flexible accumulation' makes meaningful existence and fulfilment in work ever more difficult. It considers the importation of market values to the public sector and their import for the attitudes and behaviours of its middle-class professional employees. The book considers Ian McEwan's novel Saturday to show how story is used to make sense of experience and how coherent identity is constructed by the suppression of contradiction. It looks at the nature of the autobiographic text, drawing on the form's history and contemporary manifestation in migrant travelogues to understand its particular appeal at this time of structural instability and biographical uncertainty.

The programmes such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show offer up an alternative and arguably more honest version of the news in the guise of satire. Numerous studies demonstrate that many Americans actually get their 'news' from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; they trust it more than the 'real' news. This is especially true of younger viewers who are very postmodern in their approach to news, news commentary and infotainment. The Colbert Report exemplifies a postmodern pastiche that rejects Jean Baudrillard's thinking about the exhaustion of communication, instead injecting meaning in meta-humour. The opening of The Colbert Report is an almost hallucinogenic display of exaggerated patriotism, underscored by a compelling rock and roll main theme, written by and performed by Rick Nielsen and his band, the classic rock act Cheap Trick.

In the spring of 1964, the first British lesbian magazine, Arena Three, was produced and circulated to a small number of subscribers. Amongst the most heated debates enacted in Arena Three throughout its eight years were those which touched upon issues identified in sexological and other medical and scientific writings on lesbianism. Alison Oram has argued that Minorities Research Group (MRG) sought to exploit medico-scientific interest in lesbianism, believing that collaborating in research would offer an opportunity to push MRG's own agenda. A proposal to establish a social club, suggested in the first issue of Arena Three, enabled many readers to crystallise their early notions of lesbian identity and to define the boundaries of their community. In addition to the fundamental conflict that existed between the material and discursive communities of MRG and Arena Three, the organisation of social meetings, particularly in London, exacerbated existing financial and administrative tensions.

We have seen how to use TLA to write abstract programs and show that they satisfy simple safety and liveness properties. In this chapter, we pause in our development to consider two problems. The first is determining if an abstract program written in TLA expresses what we want it to. We consider an approach to this problem that is different from what we have been doing—determining what the program might do, rather than what it must or must not do. The second problem is describing and reasoning about the real-time behavior of systems. I hope that seeing how this problem is addressed with TLA helps you appreciate the power of thinking of an abstract program as a predicate on behaviors rather than a generator of behaviors.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the origins of the refugee problem and shows that the flight and expulsion of the refugees and expellees from their homelands from the autumn of 1944 onwards was a direct consequence of National Socialist policies. It demonstrates that the task of integrating the refugees and expellees was one of the most urgent facing the Allied Occupying authorities and German State Governments after the Second World War. The book analyses the relations between the refugee and native populations in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany in the period 1945-1950. It focuses on the attitude of the political parties towards the refugees and expellees in the early post-war years and also analyses the newcomers' voting behaviour up to 1950. The book examines the issue of political radicalisation.

We have seen how to write the safety property of an abstract program in TLA. We now see how to write its liveness property. This chapter precisely defines safety and liveness properties, and shows why and how the liveness property of an abstract program is written as a particular kind of liveness property called a fairness property. In principle, any property that can be described mathematically can be expressed in TLA by such an abstract program. The chapter also shows how to use TLA to prove that a program satisfies a liveness property.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book concentrates upon performance in conjunction with the concept of genre. It begins with an examination of contemporary film noir, which specifically builds upon de Cordova's account of 'dissimulation' as performed within the genre. The book focuses on an expansive account of shifts in performance styles associated with the British television horror play. It notes that television docudrama seems to invite a knowing audience to draw upon their knowledge of other television genres as well as anterior knowledge of reported events. The book examines the ways in which comedic performance strategies are utilised by the 'left-leaning' presenters of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. It is concerned with a certain mixing of truth and falsehood in performance and the overt blurring of generic boundaries in British comedy series.

This chapter outlines the theoretical framework in which this study is located, emphasising the process's ideological continuum, and the existence, nature and function of different spaces within a constantly changing context, as well as considering the dominant patterns of interpretation in analyses of Cuban literature and culture since 1959. It also looks at the idea of a different notion of value, suggesting an essential framework for understanding the whole question. The chapter ends by setting out the conceptual tools and methods that have been developed here in order to understand literary culture in the Revolution.

In The Balcony, Jean Genet departs from the Aristotelian schema that he implicitly rails against in the 'Avertissement' by investing in allegory. In Society of the Spectacle, written roughly a decade after the first version of The Balcony, Guy Debord borrowed and updated Georg Lukács' theory of reification to show how life in mediatised. In opposition to the spectacle which sought to heal the wound by manufacturing images of national consensus and by encouraging a retreat into private space, The Balcony makes this 'lack' palpable in the public space of the auditorium. Recalling Henri Lefebvre's dictum that every society secretes its own space, it is possible to suggest that Genet's focus on theatre's heterotopic spatiality is an attempt to produce a new type of politically efficacious theatre. Lefebvre's dialectically complex reading of modernisation provides the specific context that is missing in sociologist Lucien Goldmann's interpretation of The Balcony.

The pamphlet attack on Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes's began with the Queen Mother's revolt. The anti-Luynes attack accelerated with the southwestern campaign against the Protestants, and continued for a year after his death. Historians agree that Cardinal Richelieu participated in this campaign, but they disagree on his role. The short-term effects of the anti-Luynes pamphlet campaign are difficult to determine because of Luynes's sudden death. Fearing the effects of widespread unpopularity, Luynes launched a vigorous counterattack by publishing pamphlets that defended his role as a favorite. Richelieu's political style was harsher than that of Luynes. Luynes was the forerunner of Richelieu as a minister favorite. Louis XIII had initially disliked Richelieu because of his arrogance, but Richelieu learned from Luynes how to manage the king by making him feel appreciated and understood.

The difference in critical estimation of the cartoon-style comedies and science fiction animations has much to do with the divergent modes of address and performance styles associated with the two genres. Titan A. E. and Final Fantasy featured star voices, although these tended to belong to actors new to animation voiceover and who had clearer previous attachments to 'straight' as opposed to comic performance. As a genre that has been concerned with displacing ontological certainty, any sense of presence that a star performer might confer is often diluted in science fiction cinema. A Scanner Darkly works with the codes and conventions of both the animated cartoon and science fiction film and playfully puts the power of performance back on the agenda. Hollow Man's substituted performance via digital mapping and the extensive use of 'motion capture' in the creation of characters in Final Fantasy relied on the recording of human performance.

This chapter seeks to make a modest contribution to the growing body of work on gender and the rural, and more specifically on the relationships between rurality and masculinity. It focuses on two films, which can be seen to be very different in terms of genre, production values and intended audience, but which nevertheless share certain thematics; most notably, in their depictions of urban and rural men. The films are the comedy City Slickers, and the horror movie Hunter's Blood. Reading City Slickers and Hunter's Blood in tandem, there are clear divergences that emerge; the former is more firmly in the sensitive-guy film mould, while the latter belongs more squarely with the humiliation-redemption set. The chapter explains the ways in which City Slickers and Hunter's Blood articulate different modes of masculinity, in relation to rurality.

This chapter examines China’s evolving governance of international marriages through the lens of sovereign concerns, focusing on border stability, population management and national security. It explores how material and affective processes inform the regulations and representations of marriage migration to China. The discussion shows how the Chinese state continually revises its administrative and legal framework for international marriage, and also highlights the historical, racialised and gendered forces embedded in this process. The argument contends that the regulatory framework of marriage migration is shaped by shifting ‘structures of feeling’ that define belonging in Chinese society. These intersecting spheres of state affective and regulatory practices reveal new power dynamics and inequalities in China’s relations with the outside world.