In 1959, literary critic Warren Tallman published a landmark study of Kerouac’s spontaneous method that focused on The Subterraneans, a novel Kerouac wrote over the course of just three days in 1953. This chapter builds on Tallman’s work (and other subsequent scholarship) to show how Kerouac adopted the use of spontaneity from what he understood to be a jazz aesthetic, purposively repudiating the reigning New Critical norms that dictated “good” fiction must exhibit certain kinds of “unity” and “selectivity” of expression. This chapter therefore takes The Subterraneans as a concentrated case study in how Kerouac composes, rehearses and constructs a Spontaneous Prose text.

The question motivating this chapter is: What are the key characteristics of double stimulation and what is its role in concept formation in an everyday work activity facing transformations? The analysis shows how volitional change actions emerge and take shape in processes of double stimulation in critical encounters, and how they lead to attempts at concept formation. Critical encounters are fruitful breeding grounds for double stimulation and concept formation efforts in work activities. They may be described with the help of two dimensions, namely the dimension of restrictive vs. expansive use of artifacts and the dimension of incidental vs. planned use of artifacts. Conceptualization efforts often accompany the volitional actions resulting from the expansive use of artifacts. These conceptualization efforts are seldom conscious attempts to fully define or explain a concept. The conceptualization efforts are predominantly fragmentary and focused on specific aspects of the emerging concept. In this light, conceptualization efforts in critical encounters resemble the construction of a mosaic pattern distributed in time and social space across many actors and encounters. Although seemingly modest and piecemeal, such efforts may lead to a radical sea change over time.

This chapter argues that the terms “Latinx” and “latinidad” are messy signifiers that allow us to contend with Latinx’s complicated racial history. While the term Latinx continues to be controversial, and scholars such as Tatiana Flores have examined the case for cancelling latinidad, “Racing Latinidad” points to how latinidad can signify particular political commitments and affinities. Through readings of Manuel Muñoz’s What You See in the Dark (2011) and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone (2009), this chapter illuminates how excavating racial histories outside the logic of the state is a way to summon a politics to imagine a people. Within this framework, “Racing Latinidad” ultimately argues for embracing the incoherence of latinidad as term that resists legibility and visibility and thus institutionalization and state management.

It is tempting to think that the CMB, a remnant of the primordial fireball event, was conceived as smoking gun (or rather the smoke of a firing gun) evidence of the Hot Big Bang. Certainly, the work of some cosmologists was predicated on this assumption, but a number of others developed explanations based on variations on the Big Bang, and those who devised substantially different alternative explanations had various other motives. Moreover, the explanations involved both an historical (including the smoking gun) and a regular experimental mode of inquiry. This is, strictly speaking, even true of contemporary particle physics. Finally, although in principle, experimental and observational approaches to physical phenomena may be on a par epistemically, the physical limitations of studying the entire and unique universe puts cosmology in a far more challenging position than experimental fields of physics. The chapter argues this should prompt an especially cautious attitude to our understanding of the role of the alternatives.

This chapter presents a construction of the minimal model of LSA from a hypothesis implied by strong forcing axioms such as PFA and by large cardinal hypotheses such as the existence of a strongly compact cardinal. Consequently, LSA is consistent relative to PFA and LSA is consistent relative to the existence of a strongly compact cardinal. This chapter is an application of the theory developed in the previous chapters and the core model induction technique, which is a general method for calibrating consistency strength of strong theories.

A bitch, as most people already know, is a female dog. As a trendy word we hear (and say) all the time, it might be tempting to guess that it isn’t very old. But if we look up its etymology, that is, the origins of the word, we discover that bitch meaning “a female dog” has a far longer pedigree that goes back over one thousand years. Over the course of a millennium, bitch became stigmatized by its association with social taboos such as prostitution, promiscuity, “bad” women, and “unmanly” men. This led to its offensive senses pushing out the inoffensive one. Bitch – which was once just the literal word for a female dog – eventually became what it is today, arguably one of the most insulting words in the English language. But on the other hand, bitch has developed positive uses in slang and has even been reclaimed in some ways.

The NHS, the great survivor of the post-war consensus, faced a period of considerable uncertainty. This chapter will examine if, and how, the Conservatives have changed the NHS in the face of economic pressures, technological advances, demographic change, changing expectations and the pandemic. Any analysis of the health policy of a government is incomplete without examining the wider state of social care and its relation to healthcare policy.

In Chapter 5, the final case study examines the spate of Tibetans burning themselves alive in opposition to rule by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 2009. First delineating significant events in the relationship between the nation of Tibet and the PRC, prior to and through the Cultural Revolution, I describe the social, political, and cultural situation of Tibetans during their loss of their sovereign nation. Interrogating the most attested claims and desires of these self-immolators—called pawo or martyrs in Tibetan circles—I highlight the role Tibetan Buddhism plays in the conflict as target of the PRC, core of Tibetan identity, and solution to the crisis on the plateau. I connect that discussion to an analysis of the historical and religious bases for the practice of auto-cremation as a means of resistance and meritorious action. Drawing these arguments together, I conclude by describing the state of emergency within Tibet, most notable in lands which now exist within the internationally recognized borders of China. I conclude by showing how suffering is constructed as an affirmation of the truth of the Tibetan imaginary made plain in the burned bodies of pawo.

Chapter 6 is the first to develop the new theory of martyrdom and draws together insights from case studies towards an understanding of martyrdom as a performance of suffering that enacts the truth of a sovereign imaginary. First, I analyze the similarities and differences regarding the practices of self-killing and introduce the concept of performance suffering to explain how martyrdom’s afflictions of the body are used to communicate a truth by a) seeking to directly influence the situation martyrs face, and b) making a symbolic statement about the nature of the crisis, the social collectives involved, and the hopes for an ideal world. I examine the settings wherein martyrs are produced, the scripts guiding their performances, the sacred models they reinscribe, and the audiences to whom martyrdom communicates. In doing so, I argue the present becomes aligned with a sacred past, creating an experience of living again in legendary times requiring legendary feats. As martyrdoms are seen to reiterate the deeds of sacred models, they are marked as possessing the highest character, lending their speech a greater impact through the form of truth-telling known as parrhēsia.

As we’ve seen, bitch has been used against men for almost as long as it’s been used against women. Bitch is still thrown at men and women alike, but it’s used somewhat differently. Bitch can have positive connotations when a woman reclaims it, but when aimed at a man, bitch is rarely a compliment. While a bitch can be a strong woman, it usually means a weak man. But unlike powerful women who are hit with the word, men are targeted with bitch when they are considered to be powerless. Bitch likens a woman to a man, while it likens a man to a woman. It’s an emasculating insult that suggests he’s lacking in courage and strength. Bitch might also accuse him of being effeminate or gay. There are many different versions of the slur for a man – he’s a little bitch, someone’s bitch, a prison bitch, or he’s a son of a bitch.