THE POLITICS OF DANCE: EUNOMIA AND THE EXCEPTION OF DIONYSUS IN PLATO'S LAWS

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Yu
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Class ◽  
A Site

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component of choreia constitutes one of the principal concerns in the Laws (= Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music and paideia for the construction of his ideal city since the Republic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on the Laws has enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage in Laws Book 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4): τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι. So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us.

A Situated or a Jvdetaphysical Body?

Janus Head ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 625-647
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Rawnsley ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
The Body ◽  
A Site ◽  
Work Done

A common feature of much recent work done in a variety of disciplines is the foregrounding of embodiment. Thinking in terms of a situated body however, brings up a complex problem which has often been overlooked: the re-importation of a kind of metaphysics of the body or a covert idealism, which stubbornly persists in many such discussions. This is seen in treatments ofthe body as a mediation or as a site for inscription of socio-cultural codings. We will briefly show how even such an influential account ofritualization practices, that of Catherine Bell, shows traces of these problems. The corrective strategy to such conceptions is a properly situational ontology as suggested by Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and Tim Ingolds critical work on environments.

The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The Body ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Clear Sign ◽  
A Site ◽  
Deaths In Custody

Paul Alphonse, a 67 year-old Aboriginal died in hospital while in police custody. A significant contributing factor to his death was that he was stomped on so hard that there was a boot print on his chest and several ribs were broken. His family alleged police brutality. The inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse offers an opportunity to explore the contemporary relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian society and, significantly, how law operates as a site for managing that relationship. I suggest that we consider the boot print on Alphonse's chest and its significance at the inquest in these two different ways. First, although it cannot be traced to the boot of the arresting officer, we can examine the boot print as an event around which swirls Aboriginal/police relations in Williams Lake, both the specific relation between the arresting officer and Alphonse, and the wider relations between the Aboriginal community and the police. Second, the response to the boot print at the inquest sheds light on how law is a site for obscuring the violence in Aboriginal people's lives. A boot print on the chest of an Aboriginal man, a clear sign of violence, comes to mean little because Aboriginal bodies are considered violable – both prone to violence, and bodies that can be violated with impunity. Law, in this instance in the form of an inquest, stages Aboriginal abjection, installing Aboriginal bodies as too damaged to be helped and, simultaneously to harm. In this sense, the Aboriginal body is homo sacer, the body that maybe killed but not murdered. I propose that the construction of the Aboriginal body as inherently violable is required in order for settlers to become owners of the land.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

The role of the female body in contesting and negotiating space in sports for women in rural and urban Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Obert Bernard Mlambo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
School Sports ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Gender Ideals ◽  
A Site ◽  
Embodied Practice

This article examined attitudes, knowledge, behavior and practices of men and society on Gender bias in sports. The paper examined how the African female body was made into an object of contest between African patriarchy and the colonial system and also shows how the battle for the female body eventually extended into the sporting field. It also explored the postcolonial period and the effects on Zimbabwean society of the colonial ideals of the Victorian culture of morality. The study focused on school sports and the participation of the girl child in sports such as netball, volleyball and football. Reference was made to other sports but emphasis was given to where women were affected. It is in this case where reference to the senior women soccer team was made to provide a case study for purposes of illustration. Selected rural community and urban schools were served as case references for ethnographic accounts which provided the qualitative data used in the analysis. In terms of methodology and theoretical framework, the paper adopted the political economy of the female body as an analytical viewing point in order to examine the body of the girl child and of women in action on the sporting field in Zimbabwe. In this context, the female body is viewed as deeply contested and as a medium that functions as a site for the redirection, profusion and transvaluation of gender ideals. Using the concept of embodiment, involving demeanor, body shape and perceptions of the female body in its social context, the paper attempted to establish a connection between gender ideologies and embodied practice. The results of the study showed the prevalence of condescending attitudes towards girls and women participation in sports.

scholarly journals Broadening the Scope of Diversity Management : Strategic Implications in the Case of the Netherlands

2005 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Folke Glastra ◽  
Martha Meerman ◽  
Petra Schedler ◽  
Sjiera de Vries
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
The Body ◽  
Organizational Dynamics ◽  
Contextual Approach ◽  
Challenging Tasks

An analysis of theories and practices of diversity management, as illustrated in the case of the Netherlands, shows that they are too narrowly focused on redressing imbalances experienced by ethnic minorities and bridging cultural differences between majorities and ethnic minorities in the workplace. Agencies in the field of diversity management have fallen back on a limited and standardized stock of methods that ignore the specificity of organizational dynamics and largely operate in isolation from existing equity policies. The influence of diversity management has thus remained quite superficial. A contextual approach would broaden both the body of thought and the repertory of methods of diversity management, and strengthen its political and social relations. Such an approach would respond to its most challenging tasks: fostering social justice, enhancing productivity, and breaking the circle that equates cultural difference with social inequality

‘The Beast within’: Race, Humanity, and Animality

10.1068/d229 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Sydney Australia

Recent years have seen efforts to critique the dichotomy of ‘nature’ and ‘society’ in Western thought, and to demonstrate their coconstruction under specific material conditions. As yet, however, little work has uncovered the discourses of animality that lie buried within a social field whose ontological status until recently has been securely ‘human’. In this paper, I show how Western concepts of animality have circulated across the nature border and into a politics of social relations. Concepts of savagery and vulgarity can, in particular, be found within racialised representational systems with whose historicity, I will be suggesting, we can make fresh critical engagements. In much recent work on colonial power formations, ‘othering’ practices have been implicitly conceived within a psychoanalytic frame—one in which the white self's ‘interior beasts’ are anxiously displaced onto an externalised other. Whilst not refuting the efficacy of repression I wish to historicise the workings of a peculiar western model of the Human self, ‘split’ into physical ‘animal’ and cultural ‘human’. This is done both through an extended theoretical account, followed by a microstudy of geographies of savagery and civility in Sydney, Australia.

Gendered Secularization and the Body Policing of Muslim Women

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raissa Killoran
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Women ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site

The many usages of the term ‘secularism’ have generated an ambiguity in the word; as a political guise, it may be used to engender anti-religious fervor. Particularly in regards to veiling among female Muslim adherents, the attainment of a secular state and touting of the necessity of dismantling religious symbols have functioned as linguistic shields. By calling a “burka ban” necessary or even egalitarian secularization, legislators employ ‘secularization’ as jargon for political ends, enacting a stance of supremacy under the semblance of progress. Secularization has come to function as a political tool - in the name of it, governments may prescribe which cultural symbols are normative and which are of ‘other’ cultures or religious origins. As such, the identification of some religious symbols as foreign and others as normative is a usage of secularization for normalization of dominant religious expression. In this, there is an implicit neocolonialism; by imposing standards of cultural normalcy which are definitively nonMuslim, such policies attempt to divorce Muslims from Islam.  Further, I intend to investigate the gendered aspect of secularization politics. By critiquing clothing and body policing of women, I will demonstrate how secularization projects use the female body and dress as a site for display. By rendering the female physically emblematic of the honor and virtue of an ‘other’ culture, those enacting secularization norms target women’s bodies to act as visual exhibitions of the dominant culture’s hegemony. Here, we see gendered secularization at work - female bodies become controlled by the antireligious zeal of the state, while the state carries out this control on the predicate that it is the religious group enacting unjust control. As such, the policing of female Muslim bodies is symbolic of the policing of Islam as a whole; it acts as an illustration of an imposed, gendered secularization project.

The Spiritualization of Politics and the Technologies of Resistant Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Ashjan Ajour
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Principal Tool ◽  
A Site

Abstract This article explores the body as a site of subjectivity production during a hunger strike in Occupied Palestine. It further explores the former political prisoners’ theory of subjectivity as it emerges through their praxis and philosophy of freedom. Although the body is the principal tool that the hunger strikers use, they don't consider it the decisive factor in attaining their goal. For that they build on the immaterial strength that develops with the deterioration of the body and from which they construct the concept of rouh (soul). This is expressed through the formation of contradictory binaries: body versus soul and body versus mind. The article shows that the hunger strike not only is a political strategy for liberation; it also moves into a spiritualization of the struggle. It uses and problematizes Foucault's “technologies of the self” to theorize the specific formation of subjectivity in the Palestinian hunger strike under colonial conditions, and it contributes to theories of subjectivation. The hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent technologies of resistance to transcend the colonial and carceral constraints on their freedom and create the capacity for the transformation from a submissive subject to a resistant one.

Pedagogiczny testament Profesora Andrzeja Jaczewskiego

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-225
Author(s):  
Maciej Tanaś
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
New School ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Mature Person ◽  
Scientific Achievements

The article presents the enormous scientific, organisational and social achievements of Professor Andrzej Jaczewski – the doyen of Polish sexology, doctor and educator. The author recalls the awarding of the Medal of Merit for the Development of Polish Pedagogy, presented by the Chapter of the Committee of Pedagogical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The author describes and analyses the various fields of the Professor’s activities, referring to available studies and insightful personal accounts. Undisputed, original and significant scientific achievements at the medical and pedagogical junctions, as well as beautiful accounts from his own life and accomplishments set new perspectives for pedagogical sciences, earning the Professor enormous respect from within and beyond his Polish and German academic cohort and peers. The Professor was and remains to many, a physician of the body, mind and spirit. With his unwavering passion and dedication to his students and the scouts, he truly exemplifies and models a path that seeks truth, beauty and doing good. There is a discussion about the shape of Polish education concerning errors in teaching science and biology, wasting children’s abilities in the sciences more than it is commonly believed, the problem of physical and mental “splitting maturation”, the role of adventure in scouting, “becoming” a mature person, the highest grades on secondary school-leaving certificates and young people’s lack of skills in communicating in other languages. In addition, the discussion addresses the competences needed to build social relations, personal courage and responsibility, tolerance and respect for other people, the ability to cooperate and build a community, the catalogue of values in the process of education, integration of education and upbringing processes, theatre, ballet, classical and opera music concerts, popular culture, as well as digital media and human rights to a life of value, sailing and education reforms. The conversation with professor Andrzej Jaczewski at his home in Ropki in the Beskid Niski leads to the conclusion: “We have to invent a new school. A school worthy of our dreams and the fate of our children and grandchildren”. The author treats it as the Professor’s pedagogical will.

scholarly journals Office Setting as Organizational Structure in “Bartleby the Scrivener”

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401769043
Author(s):  
Lori Duin Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Interpersonal Dynamics ◽  
Office Setting ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
A Site

This article uses a methodology from the social sciences known as institutional ethnography to analyze the office setting in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a site of social organization. This approach contributes to an understanding of how that office came to adopt specific structures as crucial to its functioning and how, as a consequence of those structures, individuals’ roles within the organization’s hierarchies became constituted. As fieldwork occurs inside of organizations, institutional ethnography also provides a tool for identifying and evaluating linguistic markers for an individual’s placement within a larger organizational structure. This approach to the story seems particularly useful for understanding the interpersonal dynamics at the heart of “Bartleby.” At the same time, it provides a method for identifying the larger institutional process at work in Melville’s story, one that contributes to the reproduction of a system of social relations in the workplace that requires subordination and compliance to insure its success.

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