"La mala madre": la maternidad como práctica subversiva en la escritura de Lucía Etxebarria

Pese a las promesas emancipatorias del feminismo, las ideologías de la maternidad siguen ejerciendo graves presiones sobre las mujeres, atrapadas en un cúmulo de exigencias - familiares, laborales y personales - y constantemente culpabilizadas por no llegar a ser la madre perfecta que exige la sociedad. Como consecuencia de los discursos reprobatorios muchas madres se valoran negativamente, desvelando sentimientos conflictivos hacia sí mismas y el ejercicio de la maternidad. En la línea de su reputación de niña rebelde de la literatura española, Lucía Etxebarria arremete contra el estereotipo abrumador y limitador de la madre abnegada, potenciado en los últimos años por la filosofía de la «crianza con apego». En dos publicaciones - la novela, Un milagro en equilibrio (2004) y un ensayo sobre la educación de los hijos, El club de las malas madres (2009) - la escritora prosigue la tarea de desmantelar el discurso moral (y político) responsable de la situación de angustia y desconcierto en que se encuentran las mujeres convertidas en madres. A través de la figura subversiva de la «mala madre» y una irónica (auto)estigmatización, Etxebarria consigue descreer la imagen irreal y desvalorizar el fantasma de madre perfect

“This story is impossible to be told”. Difficulty in depicting the past in two novels by Javier Cercas

In two novels based on the subject of war: Soldados de Salamina (“Soldiers of Salamis”) (2001) and Velocidad de la luz (“the Speed of Light”) (2005), Javier Cercas raises the problem of recuperation of a traumatic past through literary discourse. The questions which these novels discuss and which we want to examine here concern complex relations between fiction and reality, history and memory (individual and collective), guilt and responsibility. In order to confront the historical reality from the contemporary perspective, from postmemory, Javier Cercas proposes a narrative with a clear metafictional dimension creating interferences in distinct narrative levels.In two novels based on the subject of war: Soldados de Salamina (“Soldiers of Salamis”) (2001) and Velocidad de la luz (“the Speed of Light”) (2005), Javier Cercas raises the problem of recuperation of a traumatic past through literary discourse. The questions which these novels discuss and which we want to examine here concern complex relations between fiction and reality, history and memory (individual and collective), guilt and responsibility. In order to confront the historical reality from the contemporary perspective, from postmemory, Javier Cercas proposes a narrative with a clear metafictional dimension creating interferences in distinct narrative levels

The intercultural and translation

The article takes up the subject of stereotypes within the contractive linguistics and translation area. The authors investigate the presence of cultural and national differences in language systems demonstrating that the fixed set ideas about particular tlings are compactly built in linguistic expressions. The requisites of culture are examined in word components, conceptual models and means of categorization. The selected examples go to prove the individual character of the world representation within different cultures. Other expressions seem to converge or because of language acquisitions (translations) or due to the identical experiences that create the particular forms of understanding the world. In the second part of the article the cultural stereotype is situated in the translation frame. Several translation strategies are proposed. The conclusion, nevertheless, reveals that the stereotypes belong to the linguistic system and, unlike the sense, can be departed from it. Unless the cultural experience of different linguistic communities converges, the stereotypes are untranslatable. The commented patterns of translation procedures demonstrate that the cultural stereotypes do not cross the language barriers in the process of translation

Coulomb Blockade in an Open Quantum Dot

We report the observation of Coulomb blockade in a quantum dot contacted by two quantum point contacts each with a single fully-transmitting mode, a system previously thought to be well described without invoking Coulomb interactions. At temperatures below 50 mK we observe a periodic oscillation in the conductance of the dot with gate voltage that corresponds to a residual quantization of charge. From the temperature and magnetic field dependence, we infer the oscillations are Mesoscopic Coulomb Blockade, a type of Coulomb blockade caused by electron interference in an otherwise open system.Comment: Text and supplementary information. Text: 4 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information: 4 pages, 4 figure

Zeeman energy and anomalous spin splitting in lateral GaAs quantum dots

The level splittings induced by a horizontal magnetic field in a parabolic two-dimensional quantum dot with spin-orbit interaction are obtained. Characteristic features induced by the spin-orbit coupling are the appearance of zero-field gaps as well as energy splittings that depend on the electronic state and the orientation of the magnetic field in the quantum-dot plane. It is suggested that these quantum-dot properties could be used to determine the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit intensitiesComment: 6 pages, 6 figures. To be published in Eur. Phys. J. B (2004

Detecting Spin-Polarized Currents in Ballistic Nanostructures

We demonstrate a mesoscopic spin polarizer/analyzer system that allows the spin polarization of current from a quantum point contact in an in-plane magnetic field to be measured. A transverse focusing geometry is used to couple current from an emitter point contact into a collector point contact. At large in-plane fields, with the point contacts biased to transmit only a single spin (g < e^2/h), the voltage across the collector depends on the spin polarization of the current incident on it. Spin polarizations of greater than 80% are found for both emitter and collector at 300mK and 7T in-plane field.Comment: related papers at http://marcuslab.harvard.ed