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.//thoughts/
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» Italian Islamophobia: the Church, the Media and the Xenophobic Right |
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My questions regarding Italian “Islampophobia” are: Was “Islamophobia” well established in Italy before September 11, 2001? To what degree are discourses on Islam and immigration closely linked? How did the cultural elite generate and perpetuate discourses that played an important role in the construction of images of Muslims as “the enemy”? How did the image of Muslims, as reflected in Italian newspapers, reinforce “Islamophobia” within the radical right? My hypothesis is that negative representations of Muslims are not only a byproduct of terrorism in recent years. Islamophobic attitudes were already in existence prior to the events of 9/11, although the attack on New York City served as an amplifying factor of the Italian “Islamophobia” more than a decisive one. This kind of “Islamophobia” could primarily be the expression of a “culturalist” racism as opposed to a biological one. Thus, I will argue that the elitist dimension of Italian “Islamophobia,” through the stigmatization of Islam, has provided a political framework to discriminate against Muslims. Such framework has three political trends that interact and feed into each other. The first one is the secular liberal trend, represented by some editorialists and political scientists. The second is the Catholic trend, headed by some local exponents of the Church and by the so-called atei devoti . The last is the popular trend, represented by xenophobic groups such as the Lega Nord [Northern League].
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» Glamorizing Sick Bodies: How Commercial Advertising Has Changed the Representation of HIV/AIDS |
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As consequence of the pharmaceutical advancements, HIV is no longer described in terms of the absence of health or presence of illness and advertisements promoting anti-AIDS medications commercialize idealized and desirable bodies. The present study discusses representations of HIV/AIDS in commercial advertising and their change over time. The article traces the shift in the AIDS/HIV representations in commercial advertising from the early 1990s, when images of decay and disease represented AIDS, to nowadays, when the wider availability of antiretroviral medications and their ability to prolong life produced new representations of HIV-afflicted bodies. Claiming that HIV individuals can lead a normal life where everything is possible, advertisement has re-established the definition of a sick body. On the other hand, this marketing approach has important social implications because such representations minimize the seriousness of HIV infection and fail to take into account the real dangers of contracting HIV and to accurately represent the life with HIV and AIDS.. |
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» 17 Octobre 1961: A War on Both Sides of the Mediterranean |
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The Algerian War (1954-62) was unique in the panorama of historical independence conflicts because the fighting between the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) and French forces took place not only in Algeria, but also in the streets of Paris. In this political context, the Police Prefecture of Paris, led by Marice Papon, introduced a significant body of colonial techniques and practices into the capital, including arbitrary arrest, and systematic violence that led to the militarization of the Paris police and a brutality that culminated in the massacre of 17 Octobre 1961. It was then that during a pacific demonstration of Algerians in Paris, many protesters were killed and violently herded by police into the River Seine. October 17, 1961, after a long period of relative investigative silence, has become a key historic event and moment wherein contemporary French society make its connection to the Vichy. Therefore, this discussion seeks to answer two central questions: Why did protest reactions to the Massacre of October 17 take the form of indifference? How have the memories of 17 October become reinvested in the French society since the 1980s and now again today? The exploration of the roots of this massacre provides a point of entry into how the terminal crisis of colonialism was played out in the streets of a city that had long stood as a symbol of European enlightenment and civilization but defines today or throughout history its central values and identity in both European and Mediterranean contexts. |
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» Sin, repentance, and death: conversion in the AIDS epidemic
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Tondelli’s last novel, Camere Separate, is a powerful story of the strength of love and the trauma of death. Nevertheless, Catholic critics see Camere Separate as a testimony of conversion that repudiates the transgressiveness of the author’s earlier texts and documents his return to the Catholic faith. In 1991 Tondelli moved from Milan to Bologna and re-embraced Catholicism. At the end of August he was hospitalized in Reggio Emilia with AIDS complications. The article will describe Tondell’s double conversion: his seroconversion – when his antibody status changed from negative to positive – and his religious conversion. Catholic critics have transformed the novelist into a redeemed soul, a conception that Tondelli’s alleged deathbed pronouncements may encourage, but one that his texts deny. Secondly, the article will describe the interaction between conversion and language, intellectual debates, and the political/religious initiatives that the AIDS epidemic engendered. The analysis will discuss the role of conversion and salvation within collective narratives in the time of AIDS. In which forms have people with AIDS reconstructed and recognized themselves after having received the diagnosis? How has the AIDS epidemic in Italy signaled the renewal of a deep Christianization through faith and conversion? Sin, confession, repentance and forgiveness in AIDS writing will shed new light on the cultural history of this epidemic. Witness writing stages in "performativ" spaces of confession, where experience and memory called for the strengthening of Christian formation in the individual’s existence. In conclusion, the purpose of this investigation is to demonstrate how, in the face of the AIDS epidemic and death, conversion and salvation were assimilated to normalize the excesses of the 1970s through devices of power-knowledge such as confession, which were linked to both intimacy and the body. |
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» Bareback movies: men, fantasies and semen exchange |
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Why do some gay men continue want to engage in unsafe sexual practices despite the known and widely publicized risks of HIV infections? Since epidemiological research on “bareback sex” overlooks several socio-cultural and psychological dimensions of sexual fantasies, this research attempts to construct an appropriate framework through which fantasies concerning this sexual practice and its relation with pornography can be understood. In the first part, the study analyzes a large collection of movies using a semiotic approach focused on the issues of desire, transgression and pleasure through the exchange of semen in visual and verbal sexual content. In the second part, the research investigates the relationship between sexual fantasies and attitudes toward unprotected sexual behavior. A fuller understanding of the meaning of pleasure and the desire for semen exchange in gay male fantasies is a worthwhile research goal. In order to achieve this second aim, qualitative research has been selected, and 10 in-depth interviews will be carried out with gay men from New York City. This work tends to be descriptive, in that it reports the narratives of bareback movies, and summarizes the fantasy content, the incidence, and the frequency of unprotected sexual intercourse. Although the relationship between sexual fantasies and unprotected sex is not well understood, the presence of a causal link between the two would have important implications both theoretically and practically. |
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