Kamala Russell | University of Chicago (original) (raw)
Papers by Kamala Russell
Space and Culture, Jul 16, 2020
Mutations in the developmental control gene PAX6 have been shown to be the genetic cause of aniri... more Mutations in the developmental control gene PAX6 have been shown to be the genetic cause of aniridia, which is a severe panocular eye disease characterised by iris hypoplasia. The inheritance is autosomal dominant with high penetrance but variable expressivity. Here we describe a mutational analysis of 27 Danish patients using a dideoxy fingerprinting method, which identified PAX6 mutations in 18 individuals with aniridia. A thorough phenotype description was made for the 18 patients. A total of 19 mutations, of which 16 were novel, are described. Among these were five missense mutations which tended to be associated with a milder aniridia phenotype, and in fact one of them seemed to be non-penetrant. Four of the five missense mutations were located in the paired domain. We also describe a third alternative spliced PAX6 isoform in which two of the four missense mutations would be spliced out. Our observations support the concept of dosage effects of PAX6 mutations as well as presenting evidence for variable expressivity and gonadal mosaicism.
This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of ... more This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of Śħerēt, a Modern South Arabian language, living in Dhofar, Oman. I argue that participants in face-to-face interactions (particularly the domestic hospitality that dominates daily activity) move, speak, and position themselves in ways that attenuate interactional contact itself. This drawing out of contact is a site of normative practice across modalities including body posture, gaze, movement, and seating position in participation frameworks. Not simply creating distance or imposing categorical bounds on relationality, these signs attenuate the intensity of contact as the spatial extent of possible or actual encounters with others by complicating the accessibility of participants. As such, I constitute attenuation as an analytic that registers distortions of contact as manipulations of social space in a way that runs alongside (not counter to) other semiotic functions of gradation and c...
in Duranti ed. Rethinking Politeness with Henri Bergson (forthcoming 2022)
Signs in Society, 2020
This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of ... more This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of Śħerēt, a Modern South Arabian language, living in Dhofar, Oman. I argue that participants in face-to-face interactions (particularly the domestic hospitality that dominates daily activity) move, speak, and position themselves in ways that attenuate interactional contact itself. This drawing out of contact is a site of normative practice across modalities including body posture, gaze, movement, and seating position in participation frameworks. Not simply creating distance or imposing categorical bounds on relationality, these signs attenuate the intensity of contact as the spatial extent of possible or actual encounters with others by complicating the accessibility of participants. As such, I constitute attenuation as an analytic that registers distortions of contact as manipulations of social space in a way that runs alongside (not counter to) other semiotic functions of gradation and categorization. The role of space as the medium of contact with others and its attenuation points to Dhofari concerns about accessibility that locally structure both interactional performance and understandings of so-ciality as such. This article in turn indicates new ways we can describe the nonneutrality of the spaces of social life.
Space and Culture, 2020
In this essay, I describe two logics of space that are operative in responses to the COVID-19 pan... more In this essay, I describe two logics of space that are operative in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Quarantine partitioning is unavoidable and widespread. As a mode of governing, it presents a logic of space understood through its divisibility, making this logic seem like a given. Using the topological concept of a sphere eversion, I describe an alternative way of understanding spaces of quarantine as surroundings that we are exposed to or in contact with. I locate this alternative logic of space within already existing practices and concerns around public spaces newly invested with the possibility of exposure to and exposing others. If a quarantine presumes an orderly spatialization of the risk of exposure, then it depends on a way of thinking about space as necessarily divisible into bounded regions by partitions at set locations. Such thresholds have rapidly come to mark public, private, and psychic space in the COVID-19 pandemic. With the spread of shelter-in-place orders and various forms and degrees of lockdown, many spaces of formerly other designations (outdoor, indoor, domestic, commercial , and public alike) are now crosscut by the question of on which side of the quarantine their areas fall. In this sense, it is fair to say that "quarantine" is a condition defining spaces of life and mobility generally. There are of course enclosures around those who are ill, obviously quarantined areas such as military bases, hospitals, or the homes of the sick. But the broad application of a logic of quarantine turns being anywhere into a question about possible exposure. The SARS-CoV-2 virus and responses to it have reorganized space into areas of shelter and safety, and outside of those, wide areas of greater and lesser risk of exposure. Recent ideas in circulation-on antibody testing and "suppress and lift" or "smart" quarantines -foreshadow the fact that others have noticed the governmental potential that this general and divisible space affords. A quarantine that would cycle off and on is based on a calculation around infection rate and is only imaginable across territory that is defined by its divisibility, as affording the potential for the orderly spatialization of risk. Prior to this pandemic, imagining
Cultural Anthropology - Theorizing the Contemporary, 2019
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Space and Culture, Jul 16, 2020
Mutations in the developmental control gene PAX6 have been shown to be the genetic cause of aniri... more Mutations in the developmental control gene PAX6 have been shown to be the genetic cause of aniridia, which is a severe panocular eye disease characterised by iris hypoplasia. The inheritance is autosomal dominant with high penetrance but variable expressivity. Here we describe a mutational analysis of 27 Danish patients using a dideoxy fingerprinting method, which identified PAX6 mutations in 18 individuals with aniridia. A thorough phenotype description was made for the 18 patients. A total of 19 mutations, of which 16 were novel, are described. Among these were five missense mutations which tended to be associated with a milder aniridia phenotype, and in fact one of them seemed to be non-penetrant. Four of the five missense mutations were located in the paired domain. We also describe a third alternative spliced PAX6 isoform in which two of the four missense mutations would be spliced out. Our observations support the concept of dosage effects of PAX6 mutations as well as presenting evidence for variable expressivity and gonadal mosaicism.
This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of ... more This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of Śħerēt, a Modern South Arabian language, living in Dhofar, Oman. I argue that participants in face-to-face interactions (particularly the domestic hospitality that dominates daily activity) move, speak, and position themselves in ways that attenuate interactional contact itself. This drawing out of contact is a site of normative practice across modalities including body posture, gaze, movement, and seating position in participation frameworks. Not simply creating distance or imposing categorical bounds on relationality, these signs attenuate the intensity of contact as the spatial extent of possible or actual encounters with others by complicating the accessibility of participants. As such, I constitute attenuation as an analytic that registers distortions of contact as manipulations of social space in a way that runs alongside (not counter to) other semiotic functions of gradation and c...
in Duranti ed. Rethinking Politeness with Henri Bergson (forthcoming 2022)
Signs in Society, 2020
This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of ... more This article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of Śħerēt, a Modern South Arabian language, living in Dhofar, Oman. I argue that participants in face-to-face interactions (particularly the domestic hospitality that dominates daily activity) move, speak, and position themselves in ways that attenuate interactional contact itself. This drawing out of contact is a site of normative practice across modalities including body posture, gaze, movement, and seating position in participation frameworks. Not simply creating distance or imposing categorical bounds on relationality, these signs attenuate the intensity of contact as the spatial extent of possible or actual encounters with others by complicating the accessibility of participants. As such, I constitute attenuation as an analytic that registers distortions of contact as manipulations of social space in a way that runs alongside (not counter to) other semiotic functions of gradation and categorization. The role of space as the medium of contact with others and its attenuation points to Dhofari concerns about accessibility that locally structure both interactional performance and understandings of so-ciality as such. This article in turn indicates new ways we can describe the nonneutrality of the spaces of social life.
Space and Culture, 2020
In this essay, I describe two logics of space that are operative in responses to the COVID-19 pan... more In this essay, I describe two logics of space that are operative in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Quarantine partitioning is unavoidable and widespread. As a mode of governing, it presents a logic of space understood through its divisibility, making this logic seem like a given. Using the topological concept of a sphere eversion, I describe an alternative way of understanding spaces of quarantine as surroundings that we are exposed to or in contact with. I locate this alternative logic of space within already existing practices and concerns around public spaces newly invested with the possibility of exposure to and exposing others. If a quarantine presumes an orderly spatialization of the risk of exposure, then it depends on a way of thinking about space as necessarily divisible into bounded regions by partitions at set locations. Such thresholds have rapidly come to mark public, private, and psychic space in the COVID-19 pandemic. With the spread of shelter-in-place orders and various forms and degrees of lockdown, many spaces of formerly other designations (outdoor, indoor, domestic, commercial , and public alike) are now crosscut by the question of on which side of the quarantine their areas fall. In this sense, it is fair to say that "quarantine" is a condition defining spaces of life and mobility generally. There are of course enclosures around those who are ill, obviously quarantined areas such as military bases, hospitals, or the homes of the sick. But the broad application of a logic of quarantine turns being anywhere into a question about possible exposure. The SARS-CoV-2 virus and responses to it have reorganized space into areas of shelter and safety, and outside of those, wide areas of greater and lesser risk of exposure. Recent ideas in circulation-on antibody testing and "suppress and lift" or "smart" quarantines -foreshadow the fact that others have noticed the governmental potential that this general and divisible space affords. A quarantine that would cycle off and on is based on a calculation around infection rate and is only imaginable across territory that is defined by its divisibility, as affording the potential for the orderly spatialization of risk. Prior to this pandemic, imagining
Cultural Anthropology - Theorizing the Contemporary, 2019
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory