פרסומים

David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King has been increasingly recognized as a critique of American neoliberalism, but whether Wallace suggests any specific way to challenge the status quo is still an open question. Focusing on the character Leonard Stecyk and his relationship with Wallace’s metafictional stand-in in the novel, this essay demonstrates how Wallace expresses an oppositional politics that takes on the ontological premise of neoliberalism. I argue that, against neoliberalism as an ontological project of immanent totality that configures capitalism as the nature of reality and the competitive homo economicus as human subjectivity, Stecyk represents three ontologies of alterity — the radical alterity of free work, the internal alterity of social reproduction, and the pre-individual alterity of affective resonance — that resist the totalization of capitalism, opening up the possibility of sociopolitical change.

March 2023: Shuyu Lee is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. She has published works on late-twentieth-century and twenty-first-century American authors, including Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and David Foster Wallace, from the perspective of contemporary continental philosophy. Her research interests include political economy, new materialisms, and workplace fiction. shuyulee@mx.nthu.edu.tw.

The purpose of the present study is to examine possible differences between orofacial migraine (OFM) and neurovascular orofacial pain (NVOP). Facial presentations of primary headache are comparable to primary headache disorders; but occurring in the V2 or V3 dermatomes of the trigeminal nerve. These were classified and recently published in the International Classification of Orofacial Pain, 1st edition (ICOP). A category in this classification is "orofacial pains resembling presentations of primary headaches," which encompasses OFM and NVOP. The differences between NVOP and OFM are subtle, and their response to therapy may be similar. While classified under two separate entities, they contain many features in common, suggesting a possible overlap between the two. Consequently, their separation into two entities warrants further investigations. We describe OFM and NVOP, and their pathophysiology is discussed. The similarities and segregating clinical signs and symptoms are analyzed, and the possibility of unifying the two entities is debated.

BACKGROUND: Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a chronic oral pain disorder characterized by a generalized burning sensation in the oral mucosa without apparent medical or dental causes. Despite various hypotheses proposed to explain BMS pathogenesis, a clear understanding of the cellular-level events and associated histologic and molecular findings is lacking. Advancing our understanding of BMS pathogenesis could facilitate the development of more targeted therapeutic interventions.

TYPES OF STUDIES REVIEWED: The authors conducted an extensive literature search and review of cellular mechanisms, focusing on evidence-based data that support a comprehensive hypothesis for BMS pathogenesis. The authors explored novel and detailed mechanisms that may account for the characteristic features of BMS.

RESULTS: The authors proposed that BMS symptoms arise from the uncontrolled activation of proapoptotic transmembrane calcium permeable channels expressed in intraoral mucosal nerve fibers. Elevated levels of reactive oxygen species or dysfunctional antiapoptosis pathways may lead to uncontrolled oxidative stress-mediated apoptosis signaling, resulting in upregulation of transmembrane transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 and P2X 3 calcium channels in nociceptive fibers. Activation of these channels can cause nerve terminal depolarization, leading to generation of action potentials that are centrally interpreted as pain.

CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The authors present a novel hypothesis for BMS pathogenesis, highlighting the role of proapoptotic transmembrane calcium permeable channels and oxidative stress-mediated apoptosis signaling in the development of BMS symptoms. Understanding these underlying mechanisms could provide new insights into the development of targeted therapeutic interventions for BMS. Additional research is warranted to validate this hypothesis and explore potential avenues for effective management of BMS.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard is among the least researched of his works, the few critiques on it limited to explorations of the art and the artist in the novel. This article examines the main characters, mostly women, in Bluebeard, in a psychoanalytic framework based on the studies on archetypes and complexes by Carl Jung, Robert Moore, Douglas Gillette, and Joseph Campbell. The article uses these findings along with feminist critiques of Jung to assert that Bluebeard refutes Jung’s essentialist anima-animus model by its anti-sexist depiction of characters. By analyzing the male protagonist’s immature masculinity in Bluebeard and the feminine influence in his turning from an elitist impulsive man-child into an empathetic old artist, the article concludes that Bluebeard replaces the male-biased Jungian schema with a more balanced structure in the post-Jungian feminist vein, presenting a quest for mother, rare in the otherwise father-centric American fiction.

March 2023: Ankit Raj is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Government College Gharaunda, Karnal and has a PhD in English from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. His current research interests include Postmodern Fiction, Archetypal and Myth Criticism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and Comparative Literature, on which he has published in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Scrutiny2, The Explicator, and ANQ among other journals. Ankit is a guest editor for Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies (Bingöl University, Turkey). His poems and short fiction have appeared in numerous print and online venues across seven countries. He is a winner of the Hawakal Young Poets 2022 series and the author of Pinpricks (Hawakal, 2022). Prior to entering academia, Ankit has been a software engineer and lead vocalist with rock bands in India. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4565-7682

Nagendra Kumar is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India. He has been the recipient of the Teachers’ Research Grant of the American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad (1996) and the Outstanding Teacher Award, IIT Roorkee (2015). He is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar (Austria) and the International Shaw Society (Canada). He has travelled extensively around the globe on academic and professional assignments. His articles have appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Scrutiny2, ANQ, The Explicator, South Asian Review, South Asian Popular Culture, Neohelicon, and Media Watch among other journals. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 8292-794

Pain catastrophizing is understood as a negative cognitive and emotional response to pain. Researchers, advocates and patients have reported stigmatizing effects of the term in clinical settings and the media. We conducted an international study to investigate patient perspectives on the term pain catastrophizing. Open-ended electronic patient and caregiver proxy surveys were promoted internationally by collaborator stakeholders and through social media. 3,521 surveys were received from 47 countries (77.3% from the U.S.). The sample was mainly female (82.1%), with a mean age of 41.62 (SD 12.03) years; 95% reported ongoing pain and pain duration > 10 years (68.4%). Forty-five percent (n = 1,295) had heard of the term pain catastrophizing; 12% (n = 349) reported being described as a 'pain catastrophizer' by a clinician with associated high levels of feeling blamed, judged, and dismissed. We present qualitative thematic data analytics for responses to open-ended questions, with 32% of responses highlighting the problematic nature of the term. We present the patients' perspective on the term pain catastrophizing, its material effect on clinical experiences, and associations with negative gender stereotypes. Use of patient-centered terminology may be important for favorably shaping the social context of patients' experience of pain and pain care. PERSPECTIVE: Our international patient survey found that 45% had heard of the term pain catastrophizing, about one-third spontaneously rated the term as problematic, and 12% reported the term was applied to them with most stating this was a negative experience. Clinician education on patient-centered terminology may improve care and reduce stigma.