This essay offers a broad look at the way critique as a mode, method, and attitude in post-war art history research and teaching intersects with occurrences of critique in humanities scholarship and teaching generally, but also how distorted forms of critique occur in contexts outside the academic field. The essay outlines concerns raised by humanities scholars with what they consider to be an over-reliance on critique as a negative skill, resulting in scholarship that tears down without building up, and self-satisfied debunking of anything that does not stand up to the current era’s identity politics. The essay argues that the question of critique is of particular urgency to the field of contemporary art. Here critique is embedded in the material studied—artworks, artistic practices, and discourses—and therefore in dire need of being understood, challenged, and decentered as a method.
The exothermic H + O3 reaction produces OH(v) Meinel band emissions, used to derive mesospheric H concentrations and chemical heating rates. We remeasured its rate constant to reduce its uncertainty and extended the measurements to lower mesospheric temperatures using modern laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) techniques. H atoms were produced by pulsed ultraviolet laser trace photolysis of O3, followed by reaction of O((1)D) with added H2. A second, delayed, frequency-mixed dye laser measured the reaction decay rate with the remaining ozone using LIF. We monitored either the H atom decay by two photon excitation at 205 nm and detection of red fluorescence, or the OH (v = 9) product time evolution with excitation of the B(2)Σ(+)-X(2)Π (0,9) band at 237 nm and emission in the blue B(2)Σ(+)-A(2)Σ(+) (0,7) band. By cooling the enclosed low pressure flow cell we obtained measurements from 140 to 305 K at 20 to 200 Torr in Ar. Small kinetic modeling corrections were made for secondary regeneration of H atoms. The results are consistent with the current NASA JPL recommendation for this rate constant and establish its extrapolation down to the lower temperatures of the mesosphere.
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