Theorising the neurotypical gaze: autistic love and relationships in The Bridge (Bron/Broen 2011–2018)

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-011906
Author(s):  
Catherine McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Social Communication ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Insight Into

In popular media, autistic subjectivity is most often produced through the lens of the neurotypical gaze. Dominant understandings of autism therefore tend to focus on perceived deficits in social communication and relationships. Accordingly, this article has two primary concerns. First, it uses the Danish/Swedish television series The Bridge (Bron/Broen, 2011–2018) and critical responses to the series as examples of how the neurotypical gaze operates, concentrating on the pleasures derived from looking at autism, how autism is ‘fixed’ (Frantz Fanon, 1986) as a socially undesirable subject position, and the self-interested focus of the gaze. Second, it analyses key scenes from the series to expose and challenge the dominance of the neurotypical perspective in scholarly accounts of autistic sexuality and relationality. Using Lauren Berlant’s (2012) work on love, I argue that the non-normative ways of being constructed by the series do not fit easily within neuroconventional frameworks of love and desire. Consequently, autistic expressions of love are rendered both undesirable and illegible to the neurotypical gaze. The article therefore offers a flexible framework for understanding how the neurotypical gaze functions across cultural and academic spheres and gives vital insight into how autistic love and relationships are narratively constructed.

The Relationship between Seeker and Spiritual Guide as portrayed in contemporary Western Sufi Autobiographies

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.

Die Eigen-Werte der Literatur

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Matthias Bickenbach
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Literary Writing ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
Insight Into

Eine der zentralen Fragen moderner Poetik ist, wie der Werkentstehungsprozeß von kreativer Materialfülle zur ästhetischen Bestimmtheit des Erzählten als autonomem Kunstwerk übergeht. Sten Nadolnys Poetikvorlesung gibt überraschende Einsichten in die Selbstorganisation von Steuerungsbewegungen, die noch unterhalb der Ebene des Schreibens liegen und die als Theorie der Eigenwerte in der Literatur herauszustellen ist. One of the central questions in modern poetics is, how literary writing proceeds from the creative richness of its material to an aesthetic determination as autonomous art. Sten Nadolnys lectures on his poetics enable an astonishing insight into the self-organisation of operations beyond writing, which can be considered as a theory of self-values in literature.

Speed vs. comfort: Testing the efficacy of a single question for predicting transit users’ route choices

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph John Pyne Simons ◽  
Ilya Farber
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Efficient Method ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Single Item ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Single Question ◽  
Insight Into

Not all transit users have the same preferences when making route decisions. Understanding the factors driving this heterogeneity enables better tailoring of policies, interventions, and messaging. However, existing methods for assessing these factors require extensive data collection. Here we present an alternative approach - an easily-administered single item measure of overall preference for speed versus comfort. Scores on the self-report item predict decisions in a choice task and account for a proportion of the differences in model parameters between people (n=298). This single item can easily be included on existing travel surveys, and provides an efficient method to both anticipate the choices of users and gain more general insight into their preferences.

Women and Agency in Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife and Tagore’s The Home and The World

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Status Of Women

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.

Vibration-Induced Loosening Performance of Preloaded Threaded Fasteners

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianjie Yang ◽  
Sayed Nassar
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Model ◽  
Excitation Amplitude ◽  
The Self ◽  
Transverse Displacement ◽  
Transverse Loading ◽  
Threaded Fasteners ◽  
Bolt Preload ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Number Of Cycles ◽  
Insight Into

In an effort to establish a theoretical outline of a criterion for preventing the vibration-induced loosening of preloaded threaded fasteners, this paper provides an experimental and analytical insight into the effect of the initial bolt preload and the excitation amplitude on the self loosening performance of cap screw fastener. A nonlinear model is used for predicting the clamp load loss caused by the vibration-induced loosening of cap screw fasteners under cyclic transverse loading. Experimental verification was conducted on the twisting torque variation and the effect of the preload level and transverse displacement amplitude. Comparison of the experimental and analytical results on the clamp load loss with the number of cycles verifies that the proposed model accurately predicts self-loosening performance.

scholarly journals Lanthanide Homobimetallic Triple-Stranded Helicates: Insight into the Self-Assembly Mechanism

2004 ◽  
Vol 2004 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mourad Elhabiri ◽  
Josef Hamacek ◽  
Jean-Claude G. Bünzli ◽  
Anne-Marie Albrecht-Gary
Keyword(s):  
Self Assembly ◽  
The Self ◽  
Assembly Mechanism ◽  
Insight Into

Self as One and Many Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Joseph Ulatowski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Self ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
One And Many ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Work And Life

There are different approaches to the narrative self. I limit myself to one approach that argues narratives have an important role to play in our lives without it being true that a narrative constitutes and creates the self. My own position is broadly sympathetic with that view, but my interest lies with the question of whether there is truth in the claim that to create one’s self-narrative is to create oneself. I argue that a self-narrative may be multiply realised by the inner self—impressions and emotions—and the outer self—roles in work and life. I take an optimistic attitude to the idea that narrative provides a metaphor that may stimulate insight into the nature of self if we accept a plurality of narrative selves. This paper mines a vein of research on narratives for insights into selves without being bewitched into accepting implausible conclusions.

Nina Simone as Poet and Orchestrator

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147
Author(s):  
Marcus R. Pyle
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Nina Simone

How do you fashion an identity in a society that, at every turn, tries to snuff you out? In this article, I address Nina Simone's praxis of renaming and reinvention to demonstrate strategies of resistance. To this point, I analyze the musico-poetic setting of Nina Simone’s songs “Images” (1964) and “Four Women” (1965) to argue that her artistic musical choices sonically orchestrate varying issues of Black female subjectivity, identity, and self-making. In Simone’s songs, she refuses to discount the materiality of the Black body; instead, she envelops the Black body with signifiance and significance. The sonic bearers of semantic content become extensions of the Self—transmutable and heterodox. The compositional and poetic subtleties in these songs claim that the gaze of the Other can potentiate exteriority and freedom—what I term the “exo(p)tic.”

Psychotic, acritical and precarious? A Lacanian exploration of the neoliberal consumer subject

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.

scholarly journals California and Irony in Mad Men

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Taveira
Keyword(s):  
Visual Rhetoric ◽  
Soap Opera ◽  
The Self ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mad Men ◽  
Intimate Relations ◽  
The Aesthetic

The combination of melodramatic and art cinematic techniques and influences in AMC’s television series Mad Men (2007¬–) reveals how a melodramatic televisuality can image novel modes of social and intimate relations and an alternative to the archetypal American narrative of the self-made man. Set in 1960s’ America, the series uses a contemporaneous and cosmopolitan California to triangulate the formal and narrative insistence of the past on the present. This triangulation is played out by Don Draper’s relations with his family, women, and his former identities and by the representation of homosexuality throughout the series. The application of Lee Edelman’s concept of “sinthomosexuality” and Richard Rorty’s “liberal ironist” reveal a queer, visual rhetoric to the show’s narrative and formal structures, forming a queer irony that allows the show to straddle the aesthetic extremes of “quality TV” (Jane Feuer) and soap opera, which, in turn, queers the exemplary American heterosexuality of Don Draper.

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