Embodied Presence and Dislocated Spaces

Author(s):  
Jane Collins
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-394
Author(s):  
Emelia Quinn

When we encounter the work of Grinling Gibbons, we find ourselves in the presence of multiple non-human animals. However, it is unclear how one should address these presences. On the one hand, for ecofeminist scholars such as Josephine Donovan, the aestheticization of animal death is to be vehemently resisted and the embodied presence of animals recovered by looking beyond the surface: a mode of looking that Donovan terms ‘attentive love’. On the other hand, a re-reading of the philosophical ideas of Simone Weil, upon which Donovan premises her argument, suggests that attention to others requires a mode of radical detachment. These two positions speak in important ways to the dilemmas faced by a vegan spectator. Drawing on Jason Edwards’s previous work on ‘the vegan viewer’, this article seeks to reconcile a vegan resistance to Gibbons’s depictions of animal death, in their spontaneous falling under human dominion, with the aesthetic pleasure generated by Gibbons’s craftmanship. I therefore propose ‘vegan camp’ as a means of reconciling oneself to insufficiency and complicity in systems of violence without renouncing pleasure. Vegan camp is detailed as an aesthetics that acknowledges the violence of humanity and one’s inescapable place within it, dissolving the subjective idea of the beautiful vegan soul to pay attention to the pervasive presence of an anthropocentrism that, in the case of Gibbons, decoratively adorns the sites at which animals might be eaten, worn, or offered up for sacrifice.


2017 ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Caroline Brazier
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Meredith Stephens ◽  
Meagan Renee Kaiser

This is a study of Japanese learners’ perspectives on visual and audio scaffolds in the teaching of second language English reading. We compare the approaches of ER, according to Day & Bamford’s (1998) ten principles (outlined below) in class, and Assisted Repeated Reading (ARR) of a work of fiction to a class. ARR refers to the reading aloud of a text multiple times to students as they follow along silently (see Taguchi & Gorsuch, 2002). Two classes of students in required English classes undertook both ER and ARR. Both the ER and ARR enhanced the students’ comprehension of the texts; in the case of ER, most students chose picture books, which aided their comprehension. In the case of ARR, the embodied presence of the reader, and the modeling of prosody facilitated comprehension.


boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Katryn Evinson

This essay revises post-15M movement political party landscape, emphasizing the intentional yet unusual use of the present within the New Left's organizing grammar. Against sectors of the traditional Left, who see presentism as a product of neoliberalism, I claim that in the post-15M conjuncture, the present constituted a battleground in the struggle for a dignified life. First, I focus on the Catalan left-wing nationalist party CUP's use of anarchist symbols to suggest that references to sabotage were deployed to disrupt parliamentary politics, forcing constant interruption. Second, I analyze Podemos founding member Iñigo Errejón's speech after the party's 2016 national election defeat, where his rhetoric linked the temporality of the present with anti-austerity protestors’ embodied presence. Last, I read the rise of neomunicipalisms as another iteration of presentism, aiming to politicize everyday life. To conclude, I advance that such material practices of “generative presentism” problematize presentism's assumed depoliticizing nature.


2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 158-163
Author(s):  
Alissa Clarke

In his performance installation, ELECTRODE (2011), Dani Ploeger repeatedly “fakes” orgasms. Using medical devices, digital sound synthesis, and graphs, Ploeger rigorously and specifically labors to replicate the sphincter muscle contraction pattern registered by an anonymous male subject during masturbation and orgasm. In so doing, Ploeger critically explores gender and abjection and creates a heightened, embodied presence.


2020 ◽  
pp. 194084472097875
Author(s):  
Kitrina Douglas ◽  
David Carless

Our performative contribution to the 2019 Special Interest Group in autoethnography provided an opportunity to consider the materiality of absence and presence. Using the film These Things and the research-inspired song that underpins the film, we explore how a 5-min multimedia performative act opened possibilities for solidarity and resistance, offering ways to include the absent other.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Smolenski

In what *technê*, and what *habitus*, must a psychoanalytic practitioner beskilled in order to facilitate the healing of patients? To answer thisquestion, this paper takes as its case study the clinical practice ofGeorge Atwood, the phenomenological psychoanalyst whose book, *The Abyss ofMadness*, describes his work with patients embroiled in struggles with themost serious psychological disorders. Atwood’s method is fundamentallyemancipatory in that it seeks to help the patient liberate himself frompsychological bondage to and enmeshment within the traumatic experiencesand oppressive social bonds that have shaped his excruciating experientialworld. The path toward this emancipation can only be based in truth, and assuch, Atwood’s method is predicated on the continual exercise of courage inservice of “the inner truth of a life." The dedication to practice suchcourage through the often-overwhelming encounter with the “blood” that,according to Atwood, characterizes every healing analysis is born of whatcan only be called deep love. In this context, love names a set of profoundinner resources the therapist brings to his own comportment and conduct,and by extension and implication the overall trajectory of the patient’slife. This paper explores several specific analytic practices through whichthe love of the analyst meets and is co-translated into the subjectiveexperience of the patient, enabling him through embodied presence, example,and guidance to re-structure the world of his experience in ways that aremore open, more life-giving, and ultimately more loving to self and other.


Author(s):  
Becky Thompson

“To You, I Belong” examines historical memory as an embodied concept. Teaching asks us to work with memories in our bodies. The memories that we store often defy coherent narratives, require us to patchwork sensation with emotion, an energetic presence with evidence shaken by time. The presence and insistence of historical memory inevitably asks us to make room for fear, grief, betrayal, and ambivalence. Dealing with historical memory isn’t easy—our own or our students’ memories. Working closely with the student life office, counseling services, and other support centers becomes crucial. At the same time, outsourcing emotional work to spaces beyond the classroom runs the risk of separating content from process, the mind from the body. This outsourcing can send a message that a teacher is not up to the task of witnessing student journeys. In the chapter, Thompson shares some examples of when students were willing to share an embodied presence in the classroom and what they teach through their courage.


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