Abstract The painful history of slavery has profoundly affected the identities and social interactions of Afro-Caribbean migrants, whose descendants continue to contend with prejudice and socio-economic marginalization. Andrea Levy's semi-autobiographical novel, The Long Song (2010), traces the turbulent history of Jamaica in the nineteenth century through the lens of Miss Kitty, a character based on Levy's great-great-great grandmother, who was born a slave on the plantation Amity in Saint Catherine's parish. The narrative blends the historical with the fictional and depicts various environmental contexts, inscribed meanings, and human exchanges, including the prominence of social situations perceived through race and class tensions ironically reconstructed through social interactions. Levy boldly broadens the understanding of freedom and subjectivity contested beyond the abolition of slavery.The novel raises compelling issues concerning the construction and negotiation of identity within the context of colonialism, slavery, and the emergent plantation economy in the Caribbean. Levy deals with the notion of identity, an ambiguous term aggregating entangled layers of representational frameworks, contextual meanings, and social negotiations inscribed within the intricacies of cultural encounters. The analysis draws on broadening horizons on identity theory, offering different constructs of identity inscribed within the narrative strands of The Long Song, taking on the complexity of racial stigma, the misrepresentation and projection of black identity through colonial discourse, and the entangled social interactions and exchanges through which identity is constructed and negotiated within contested socio-racial environments.Levy's notion of identity implies a form of social construction performed through the negotiation of increasingly-engaged modes of representation within a complex fabric of social codes, customs, practices, dialects, and worldviews punctuated through the entanglement of one's self and multiple alterities. The precision and nuance of her observation cause the character to realize the "dangerous" assumptions of the English and an awareness of "contested terrain." The negotiation and representation of racialized identity echo an unsettling realization of race triggered by her isolation in the white institution's womb marked by the religious overtone of the day. Kitty contends with the constant projection of her and her fellow slaves' blackness beyond the negative perception construing unreliability, deceitfulness, and brutishness while evoking exoticism and primitivism. The multifaceted engagements with the surround are conveyed through Kitty's subjective first-person narration complemented by different modes of enunciation, including the shifting narration of the slave owner's white wife and the authoritative voice of Ms. Annie, the largely absent historian.
The importance of vibrations in rotating rotors in engineering applications has been examined, as has the best approach to interpreting vibration data. The most extensively used analytical approaches for rotating shaft vibration analysis have been investigated. In this research, a detailed study was made of the Rayleigh and Dunkerley methods due to their importance in the special calculations to find the amplitude of vibrations in the rotation system. The multi-node method was used to calculate both Dunkerley's and Rayleigh's methods. An experimental platform was built to study the vibrations that occur in the rotating shafts, and the results were compared with theoretical calculations and with different distances of the bearings. It pro
... Show MoreIn this paper, fire resistance and residual capacity tests were carried out on encased pultruded glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) I-beams with high-strength concrete beams. The specimens were loaded concurrently under 25% of the ultimate load and fire exposure (an increase in temperature of 700 °C) for 70 min. Subsequently, the fire-damaged specimens were allowed to cool and then were loaded statically until failure to explore the residual behaviors. The effects of using shear connectors and web stiffeners on the residual behavior were investigated. Finite Element (FE) analysis was developed to simulate the encased pultruded GFRP I-beams under the effect of fire loading. The thermal analyses were performed using the general-pu
... Show MoreDielectric barrier discharges (DBD) can be described as the presence of contact with the discharge of one or more insulating layers located between two cylindrical or flat electrodes connected to an AC/pulse dc power supply. In this work, the properties of the plasma generated by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) system without and with a glass insulator were studied. The plasma was generated at a constant voltage of 4 kV and fixed distance between the electrodes of 5 mm, and with a variable flow rate of argon gas (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5) L/min. The emission spectra of the DBD plasmas at different flow rates of argon gas have been recorded. Boltzmann plot method was used to calculate the plasma electron temperature (Te), and Stark broadeni
... Show MoreKinematics is the mechanics branch which dealswith the movement of the bodies without taking the force into account. In robots, the forward kinematics and inverse kinematics are important in determining the position and orientation of the end-effector to perform multi-tasks. This paper presented the inverse kinematics analysis for a 5 DOF robotic arm using the robotics toolbox of MATLAB and the Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) parameters were used to represent the links and joints of the robotic arm. A geometric approach was used in the inverse kinematics solution to determine the joints angles of the robotic arm and the path of the robotic arm was divided into successive lines to accomplish the required tasks of the robotic arm.Therefore, this
... Show MoreArum maculatum is traditionally used for the control of many diseases and illnesses such as kidney pain, liver injury, hemorrhoids. However, the detailed biomedical knowledge about this species is still lacking. This study reports on the bioactive components and the possible mechanisms underlying the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic activity of A. maculatum leaf extract. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used for phytochemical analysis. Assay of 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide ) (MTT) was used to determine the cytotoxicity in the murine cell line L20B upon exposure to different extract concentrations for 24 h. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect pro-in
... Show MoreTo investigate the prevalence of true periodontal chief complaints (CC) and the factors affecting their reporting by patients with periodontal diseases (PD).
This cross‐sectional study was based on retrospective analysis of available periodontal records. Different personal and demographic variables were obtained from these records including CC, age, gender, working status, past medical/dental history, smoking status and diagnosis. In addition, clinical parameters of plaque index, gingival index, probing pocket depth (PPD), and number of missing teeth. Periodontal CC were r
Liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) consist of hydrocarbons obtained by refining crude oil, either from propane or butane or a mixture of the two. There are often other components such as propylene, butylene or other hydrocarbons, but they are not the main component. The study aims to review previous studies dealing with designing an LPG system to deliver gas to residential campuses and buildings. LPG is extracted from natural gas NG by several processes, passing through fractionation towers and then pressuring into CNG storage tanks. Gas contains several problems, including gas leakage through the pipes and leads to fires or explosions in LPG storage and distribution tanks, so safety conditions were taken in the design and implementation. T
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