Piss(ed): The Biopolitics of the Bathroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-415
Author(s):  
Mia Fischer

AbstractThis article analyzes two recent works by transgender performance artist Cassils, PISSED and Fountain (2017), which were created in response to the Trump administration's decision to rescind federal protections allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their choice. While Cassils primarily conceptualized PISSED/Fountain as a queering of binary, essentialist understandings of gendered embodiment, I draw on performance, queer, and critical ethnic studies to illustrate that these pieces simultaneously challenge other kinds of oppositional embodiments, particularly health versus disease and citizen versus alien and/or terrorist; conceptualizations the state frequently deploys to surveil and control marginalized populations. PISSED/Fountain offer audiences a new strategy for both exposing and contesting state violence: these pieces can be read as a politically strategic disidentification with the state's classification of certain bodies and their excretions as ``deviant'' and ``toxic'' in order to purposefully ``terrorize'' the state's bio- and necropolitical aims.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 537-550
Author(s):  
SM Rodriguez ◽  
Liat Ben-Moshe ◽  
H Rakes

The United States relies on carceralism—mass incarceration and institutionalization, surveillance and control—for its continued operation. The criminalization of difference, particularly in relation to race, disability and queerness, renders certain people as perpetually subject to state violence due to their perceived unruliness. This article relies on two case studies, in Toledo, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York to question the construction and co-optation of vulnerability by state agents and focus on interrelated instances of state violence done under the guise of protectionism of and from unruly subjects. We then discuss the response to these instances of violence- from the state in the form of carceral ableism and sanism, and from local activists trying to navigate the shifting contours of protectionist violence by enacting queer transformative justice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73
Author(s):  
D. O. Koshikov

The phenomenon of the state’s functions as the main directions of its activity for the fulfillment of tasks and the purpose of its existence in a specific period of development, their peculiarities and types have been studied. Based on the analysis of scientific works on the implementation of state policy in the sphere of economy and social and humanitarian sphere, the author has defined own definition of the functions of state policy in the sphere of economic security. In particular, the author has emphasized that they could be considered, first of all, as general directions of the state’s activity to create a stable economic security system, which includes a legal framework, a list of agencies authorized to implement regulatory requirements, a system of defined principles, forms and methods of implementation policies, etc; and, secondly, as separate groups of homogeneous actions of public administration subjects on the regulation, development and protection of social economic relations, ensuring the realization of socio-economic rights and freedoms of citizens, as well as creating conditions for further development and growth of the national economy. Based on the first approach, the regulatory, institutional, regulatory and law enforcement functions of public policy in the field of economic security should be distinguished. According to the second direction, the following functions can be considered: information-analytical, planning, organization, interaction and coordination, accounting and control. The obtained results are the integral part of the author’s scientific research on determining the administrative and legal foundations of the implementation of state policy in the sphere of economic security of Ukraine and can be used for carrying out other fundamental and applied scientific researches in the field of national security of the state.


2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Scott Pittman

The story of anti-communism in California schools is a tale well and often told. But few scholars have appreciated the important role played by private surveillance networks. This article examines how privately funded and run investigations shaped the state government’s pursuit of leftist educators. The previously-secret papers of Major General Ralph H. Van Deman, which were opened to researchers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., only a few years ago, show that the general operated a private spy network out of San Diego and fed information to military, federal, and state government agencies. Moreover, he taught the state government’s chief anti-communist bureaucrat, Richard E. Combs, how to recruit informants and monitor and control subversives. The case of the suspicious death of one University of California, Los Angeles student – a student that the anti-communists claimed had been “scared to death” by the Reds – shows the extent of the collaboration between Combs and Van Deman. It further illustrates how they conspired to promote fear of communism, influence hiring and firing of University of California faculty, and punish those educators who did not support their project. Although it was rarely successful, Combs’ and Van Deman’s coordinated campaign reveals a story of public-private anticommunist collaboration in California that has been largely forgotten. Because Van Deman’s files are now finally open to researchers, Californians can gain a much more complete understanding of their state bureaucracy’s role in the Red Scare purges of California educators.


2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Mrówczyńska

Abstract The paper attempts to determine an optimum structure of a directional measurement and control network intended for investigating horizontal displacements. For this purpose it uses the notion of entropy as a logarithmical measure of probability of the state of a particular observation system. An optimum number of observations results from the difference of the entropy of the vector of parameters ΔHX̂ (x)corresponding to one extra observation. An increment of entropy interpreted as an increment of the amount of information about the state of the system determines the adoption or rejection of another extra observation to be carried out.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaolei Zhan ◽  
Younes Makoudi ◽  
Judicael Jeannoutot ◽  
Simon Lamare ◽  
Michel Féron ◽  
...  

Over the past decade, on-surface fabrication of organic nanostructures has been widely investigated for the development of molecular electronic devices, nanomachines, and new materials. Here, we introduce a new strategy to obtain alkyl oligomers in a controlled manner using on-surface radical oligomerisations that are triggered by the electrons/holes between the sample surface and the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope. The resulting radical-mediated mechanism is substantiated by a detailed theoretical study. This electron transfer event only occurs when <i>V</i><sub>s</sub> < -3 V or <i>V</i><sub>s</sub> > + 3 V and allows access to reactive radical species under exceptionally mild conditions. This transfer can effectively ‘switch on’ a sequence leading to formation of oligomers of defined size distribution due to the on-surface confinement of reactive species. Our approach enables new ways to initiate and control radical oligomerisations with tunnelling electrons, leading to molecularly precise nanofabrication.


Author(s):  
Oleksandra Maslii ◽  
Andrii Maksymenko ◽  
Svitlana Onyshchenko

Place of monitoring and control of risks of financial stability of the state in the system of ensuring financial security of the state was substantiated. Methods of identifying threats to Ukraine's financial security through the current and strategic analysis of financial system development indicators were considered. Tendencies of economic development of Ukraine in the context of revealing sources of threats to financial stability of the state were analyzed. Dynamic analysis of the actual values of the financial security indicators of Ukraine as a whole and its separate components had been carried out. Threats to Ukraine's financial security were identified based on comparative and trend analysis. Reasons for the critical state of debt, banking and monetary security in the financial structure and the preconditions for the emergence of systemic threats had been investigated. Systematization of risks and threats to Ukraine's financial security by its components had been carried out. Influence of systemic threats in the financial sphere on the economic security of the state was generalized. International experience of monitoring financial stability of the state was analyzed. Additional risks to the national financial system are associated with the globalization and digitization of the state financial system that are not taken into account by valid methodological recommendations for calculating the level of economic security of Ukraine were highlighted.


Author(s):  
Zenoviy Siryk

Ukraine is a unitary state, yet historically various regions, oblasts, districts, and local areas have different levels of economic development. To secure sustainable economic and social development and provide social services guaranteed by the state for each citizen according to the Constitution, the mechanism of redistribution between revenues and expenditures of oblasts, regions, and territories through the budgets of a higher level is used. The paper aims to research the peculiarities of improving interbudgetary relations in conditions of authorities’ decentralization. The paper defines the nature of interbudgetary relations. The basic and reverse subsidies to Ukraine and Lvivska oblast are analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages the communities face at changing approaches to balancing local budgets are determined. Regulative documents that cover the interbudgetary relations in Ukraine are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the problem of local finances reforming, including the development of interbudgetary relations. The scheme of the economic interbudgetary relations system in Ukraine is developed. The ways to improve the system of interbudgetary relations in Ukraine are suggested. The negative and positive aspects, advantages, and disadvantages of the system of interbudgetary relations in Ukraine require the following improvements. 1. It is necessary to avoid the complete budget alignment in the process of budgets balancing by interbudgetary transfers as the major objective. 2. The interbudgetary transfers should be distributed based on a formal approach. 3. The changes have to be introduced to the calculation of medical and educational subsidies in terms of financial standard of budget provision to avoid the money deficit for coverage of necessary expenditures. 4. There is a need to improve interbudgetary relations at the levels of districts, villages, towns, and cities of district subordination. 5. Improvement of the mechanism of targeted benefits provision, their real evaluation, and control for the use of funds.


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