Bluetooth Orgasms

Bluetooth-operated sex toys penetrate and are penetrated by the human body, leaving code behind. This article analyzes the relationships that develop between bodies and Bluetooth-operated interactive sex toys. Resembling the pods and portals of David Cronenberg’s film eXistenZ, interactive sex toys allow us to consider how technologies relate intimately to the sexual body. I use Massumi’s work on virtuality and affect theory as a starting point from which to frame embodiment, virtuality, and the circulation of affects. Further, I consider the importance of embodiment and the translations of intensities and vibrations through digital coding among the open sexual body, the technology of the sexual machine, and the applications that foster those connections, in the context of Bluetooth-operated sex toys. This article advocates the need to consider intimate encounters between interactive sex toys and bodies as complex technological and biological assemblages, where vibrating machines and the human body’s flesh come into intimate connection through datafication.

Ontological Motives of Home-Antihome in the Novel Demons by F.M. Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky realizes the motive of home in an inseparable antinomical connection with the motive of homelessness, which is opposite to it, artistically embodied in the idea of familylessness, wandering, Chaos, and Entropy. The relevance of the study of the motives of home and homelessness lies in the gradual reconstruction of the author's concept of the saving future. In this article, the motives of home and homelessness are considered in several aspects, including toponymic, functional, archetypal and ontological. We tried to demonstrate the implementation of the stated motives at the level of such categories as faith-unbelief, Heaven and Hell, brotherhood and isolation. In the novel Demons , the idea of national soil and separation from it, the possible salvation of a person and the consequences that await society in the event of the dominance of demons and the loss of the primordial brotherhood - the intimate connection between people, is consistently developed. From this point of view, the motives of home and homelessness become significant for the novel space. The archetype of home contains the idea of a saving own circle, which is opposed to the outside world with its hostility, spontaneity, and disaster. Everything that is located outside this circle are elements belonging to the anti-world, and therefore their effect on the microcosm of home is destructive. Analysis of the text confirms that the archetype of Dostoevsky's home is destabilized. Its tightness is broken; the boundaries protecting the interior are permeable. The motive of the home is typically supplanted by the motive of homelessness, and therefore it is natural to consider this motive couple in its antinomical continuity. In the above study, the motives of home and homelessness are considered as ontological: they are associated with the existential level of the work, due to which it is possible to establish the ontological status of the actants and determine the relationship with the so-called initial idea.

Introduction

Beginning with the moment in Robinson Crusoe when the castaway rescues a cache of books before the ship goes down, this introduction situates the history of nineteenth-century reading in the intimate connection that is made between itinerant readers and their books. Crusoe is the culmination of a historic tradition and does much to define later perceptions of the place of reading and the formation of later assumptions about the ability of books to provide consolation for readers under strange skies. This introduction goes on to account for scholarly assumptions about the place of texts in the British empire and some of the fundamental approaches to the history of reading that have occupied scholars over recent decades.

Scrape, Brush, Flick

No thing makes a sound. All sounds are made by two things. They touch; they speak; they sing. We hear that most intimate connection between two entities rubbing up against each other. It is the things talking to themselves. We eavesdrop on the world. As we listen, we attune to our surroundings, sounding out what we do not see: the insides of things, things hidden behind other things, hidden things inside our own bodies. For the ear, things are no longer stuck to their physical locations: intimations of them arrive by air, running all the way around our bodies and passing right though them. These auditory communiques animate us from within even as they animate the world without. Hearing participates with the other senses in the sensuous epistemology that grants us knowledge of our world and ourselves.

The role of memory in the Wisdom of Solomon

The theme of memory in the Wisdom of Solomon shows affinities with the conceptualization of memory in the ancient world generally. The book is written such that the more one has internalized the texts and traditions of the Jewish community, the more meaningful and persuasive its argument will be. To have shaped oneself according to the authoritative Scriptural texts is to perceive the true reality of how history is unfolding. Even if there is danger or suffering in the present, one can make sense of this in terms of a coming eschatological judgment because one will contextualize the present in the patterns of the remembered past. Thus, virtues like fortitude, self-control, justice, and prudence can be developed because God and Wisdom, from whom these come, have assured their eventual reward. In addition, the same pedagogical role of memory that Pseudo-Solomon describes through the plague sequence is evident in the author’s approach to his audience as well. They are expected to learn from the remembered, sacred past as well as from their own experiences. And when shaped by these memories, they will have the prudence to remain faithful because they perceive the intimate connection between virtue and immortality that has been evident throughout history. They will understand that wisdom provides eternal remembrance, both among people but even more importantly, in the mind of God.

The Testimony of Moses in the Fourth Gospel: Beyond the Passover Feast, and into the Wilderness

By examining the narrative framing of the Eucharistic Discourse (Jn 6:25-71) around the ancestral journey through the wilderness as recorded in Numbers, this paper highlights the intimate connection that the Fourth Gospel has to its Jewish context. In the Fourth Gospel’s Eucharistic Discourse, Jesus is not framed by the Passover Lamb, which the people offer to propitiate the Divine, but as manna from heaven, a gift from the Divine to the people, brining Life into the world. In the spirit of Nostra aetate, I conclude with some proposals for future interreligious dialogues that could fruitfully take place within these new parameters.

The importance of early recognition of the so-called. cervical pregnancy highlights

The differential diagnosis between uterine abortion and cervical pregnancy is easily made on the basis of an internal study - in the first case, the examining finger easily penetrates between the cervical wall and the egg in it, while in the second case, the finger finds an intimate connection of the placenta with the cervical wall.

Sinitic Poetry in Early Heian Japan: Kidendō Literacy, Banquet Culture, and the Sugawara House

In this paper, I explore the intimate connection between the Sugawara House and the composition of Sinitic poetry for institutionalised poetry banquets in early Heian Japan. While poetry remained a marginal occupation for the Confucian scholars trained at the Bureau of Education, its performance at banquets constituted a prestigious niche that could be occupied by those who sought to exploit it as an autonomous form of cultural capital. Here I sketch the contours of this connection and analyse a number of anthologizing strategies at work in the personal collection of the renowned early Heian scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) known as Kanke bunsō (Literary Drafts of the Sugawara House).

Secrecy and Subjectivity: Double Agents and the Dark Underside of the International System

Drawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a “dark underside” of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's main point of entry when analyzing these spaces is the intimate connection between secrecy and subjectivity. While secrecy as a social practice has received increased attention in sociological accounts of secret intelligence, the constitutive role of secrecy in relation to subjectivity is a much less explored theme. This theme, it is argued, becomes especially valuable for thinking about the conflicting lines that constitute the life and becoming of the double agent. In particular, it can be drawn on to show how this subject both is captured by the transparent norms and limits of the international state system and effectively transgresses those limits. In this way, rather than upholding a dichotomy of secrecy and transparency as two separable sides of the international system, the double agent emerges as a disruptive figure calling for its deconstruction.

Picturing the Meaning of Scandinavian Rock Art – Graphic Representations, Archaeological Interpretations and Material Alterations

The paper presents a reflective overview of the recursive relation between the archaeological practice of picturing Scandinavian rock art in printed works since the mid-19th century, and how archaeologists have constructed its meaning. There seem to be an intimate connection between graphic representations of rock art and an interpretative bias towards the mimetic qualities of images. When picturing rock art, the identification of motifs is prioritized at the expense of the materiality of rock art. Ultimately, the production of graphic representations has influenced the antiquarian alteration of the archaeological remains. Today, major Scandinavian rock art sites are frequently painted red, with the purpose of highlighting the engraved imagery for visitor legibility. This practice transforms the materiality of stone into a visual language of graphic representations.