Prima Donna Assoluta

Prima Donna ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 9-38
Author(s):  
Paul Wink
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
The World ◽  
One Year

This chapter “Prima Donna Assoluta: Psychological Mysteries,” uses two performances of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena to illustrate how, within the space of one year (1957–1958), Callas went from being the darling of Milan’s La Scala audiences to its utmost villain. This shift in attitude resulted from a series of cancelled appearances, including the infamous Roman fiasco. Callas’s polarization of public opinion reflects her own tendency to view the world in black or white terms. This dichotomy is a hallmark of a narcissistic self that oscillates between grandiosity and vulnerability without allowing for shades of gray in self-evaluation. These two faces of narcissism capture the disjunction between the self-assured and imperial la Callas, the operatic diva, and the vulnerable and insecure Maria, the woman. It is not Callas’s grandiosity and entitlement but her consciously experienced vulnerability, along with the sheer brilliance of her artistry, that distinguishes her personality from her operatic peers.

I Like Her, Because I Like Myself: Self-Evaluation as a Source of Interpersonal Attitudes

2003 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Walther ◽  
Claudia Trasselli
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Learning Phase ◽  
The Self ◽  
Attitude Formation ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
False Feedback ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Evaluation Group ◽  
Group A ◽  
The Difference

Abstract. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that self-evaluation can serve as a source of interpersonal attitudes. In the first study, self-evaluation was manipulated by means of false feedback. A subsequent learning phase demonstrated that the co-occurrence of the self with another individual influenced the evaluation of this previously neutral target. Whereas evaluative self-target similarity increased under conditions of negative self-evaluation, an opposite effect emerged in the positive self-evaluation group. A second study replicated these findings and showed that the difference between positive and negative self-evaluation conditions disappeared when a load manipulation was applied. The implications of self-evaluation for attitude formation processes are discussed.

A regulatory focus approach to the self evaluation process

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Leonardelli ◽  
Jessica Lakin ◽  
Robert Arkin
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Focus ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Evaluation

The ideal self is me: Deconstructing the self-evaluation process

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey L. Guenther ◽  
Kathryn Applegate ◽  
Steven Svoboda ◽  
Emily Adams
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation Process ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ideal Self ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
The Ideal

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Nihilistic Thinking as the Self-Will of the Mind and the Projects of Its Overcoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Transformation

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.

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