Critique of Flowers: The Exigency of Life in the Era of Its Technical Reproducibility

October ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 26-69
Author(s):  
Cassandra Xin Guan
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Technical Reproducibility ◽  
Responsive Behavior ◽  
Selling Point ◽  
Century Science

Abstract Need, as an epigenetic concept, originated with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, for whom it referred to the pressure of circumstances that compel animals to develop new organs in the course of evolution. It reappeared in twentieth-century science as the somatic disequilibrium that Sigmund Freud, following Psycho-Lamarckian biologists, first called “the need of life” (die Not des Lebens) and then “the drives” (Trieb). The invention of time-lapse cinematography around 1900, initially as an optical instrument in the experimental study of plant physiology, visibly enlarged the epigenetic paradigm: Plants were suddenly perceived as agential beings, attached to the physical environment not by their roots, but rather by their needs and activities. The disquieting impression of responsive behavior became the selling point of the BASF-commissioned nitrogen-fertilizer commercial Miracle of Flowers (1926), a film celebrated by Rudolf Arnheim as “the most fantastic, thrilling, and beautiful picture ever made.” This article interrogates the sovereignty of need in epigenesis, using Miracle of Flowers as a case study. Through a close reading of the animal-like organisms in this film and the emotional reactions they elicited, need is reimagined as a maladaptive force embodied in technical media that tethers unhappy individuals to punishing environments.

scholarly journals Death, Innocence, and the Cyborg: Theorizing the Gynoid Double-Bind in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-125
Author(s):  
Kwasu D. Tembo
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Framework Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Patriarchal Power ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

Abstract In Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1983), the author presents a discussion of the concept and praxis of the cyborg in emancipatory terms. Haraway presents the cyborg as a transgressive and latently mercurial figure that decouples and contravenes numerous exploitative ideological frameworks of repressive biopower that repress human being and reproduce the conditions of said repression. Using Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004) as a dialogic case study, this essay explores the manner in which the cyborg, particularly its figuration as female-gendered anthropic machine or gynoid in 20th- and 21st-century science fiction, simultaneously confirms and contradicts Haraway’s assessment of the concept of the cyborg. As to its methodology, this essay opens with a contextualizing excursus on the cyber-being in contemporary Western society and sociopolitics, with a view to offering a framework analysis of the figuration of the gynoid in Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence as a recent example of contemporary science fiction’s representation of the issues and debates inherent to the concept of the gynoid. Lastly, this essay performs a detailed close reading of Oshii’s text in relation to its exploration of themes of the conceptual emancipatory potential of the cyber-being and the paradoxically exploitative patriarchal power relations that re-inscribe said potential within what this essay refers to as ‘the gynoid double-bind.’

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

‘Behind the Poetic Fiction’: Freud, Schnitzler and Feminine Subjectivity

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-223
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Goodstein
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Arthur Schnitzler ◽  
Feminine Subjectivity ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Poetic Fiction ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

In 1922 Sigmund Freud wrote to fellow Viennese author and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler: ‘I believe I have avoided you out of a sort of fear of my double’. Through a series of reflections on this imagined doubling and its reception, this paper demonstrates that the ambivalent desire for his literary other attested by Freud's confession goes to the heart of both theoretical and historical questions regarding the nature of psychoanalysis. Bringing Schnitzler's resistance to Freud into conversation with attempts by psychoanalytically oriented literary scholars to affirm the Doppengängertum of the two men, it argues that not only psychoanalytic theories and modernist literature but also the tendency to identify the two must be treated as historical phenomena. Furthermore, the paper contends, Schnitzler's work stands in a more critical relationship to its Viennese milieu than Freud's: his examination of the vicissitudes of feminine desire in ‘Fräulein Else’ underlines the importance of what lies outside the oedipal narrative through which the case study of ‘Dora’ comes to be centered on the uncanny nexus of identification with and anxious flight from the other.

The two dreams in Freud’s (1905) Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘Dora’) (Draft of chapter to be published in the forthcoming Routledge book The Science and Art of Dreaming, by Blagrove and Lockheart.)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blagrove ◽  
Julia Lockheart
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Science And Art

This chapter argues that the two dreams of ‘Dora’, told as part of her analysis with Sigmund Freud at the end of 1900, are poignant depictions of the distress, abuse and hopes in her life. The argument is that this can be seen clearly from Dora’s free associations to her dreams. Unfortunately, these interpretations of her dreams, although present in Freud’s account of the analysis, are overshadowed in the case study by the highly speculative further interpretations of the dreams by Freud, which derive from Freud’s own associations. Freud did have oppressive and patriarchal judgements and advice to Dora, yet he did believe that Dora was subjected to ‘persecution’ by Herr K. We must credit Freud, though, for recording, and interpreting the two dreams of Dora, on the basis of her free-associations to her waking life, even though his own associations may overshadow that success and instead relate the dreams to unconfirmable unconscious processes.

scholarly journals Evaluating the utility of time-lapse imaging in the estimation of post-mortem interval: An Australian case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 204-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyson Wilson ◽  
Stanley Serafin ◽  
Dilan Seckiner ◽  
Rachel Berry ◽  
Xanthé Mallett
Keyword(s):  
Time Lapse ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Post Mortem Interval ◽  
Australian Case ◽  
Time Lapse Imaging

Emotional reactions and coping responses of employees to a cyber-attack: A case study

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 102298
Author(s):  
Patrick Stacey ◽  
Rebecca Taylor ◽  
Omotolani Olowosule ◽  
Konstantina Spanaki
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Cyber Attack ◽  
Coping Responses ◽  
And Coping

Irrigation in the Medieval Islamic Fayyum: Local Control in a Large-Scale Hydraulic System

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yossef Rapoport ◽  
Ido Shahar
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Local Control ◽  
Water Allocation ◽  
Hydraulic System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Distinctive Aspect

Abstract Because of the unique set of sources available, the Fayyum in Middle Egypt offers a unique case study of large-scale irrigation from antiquity to the Islamic period. A close reading of a cadastral survey of the province from 641/1243-4 shows that the distinctive aspect of the Islamic period was the local control of water supply and management. Drawing on the engineering experience of the villagers, water allocation and management in the gravity-fed canals of the Fayyum were in the hands of iqṭāʿ holders and tribal groups along the main canals, a pattern similar to that which pertained in mediaeval al-Andalus.

Time-lapse full waveform inversion based on curvelet transform: Case study of CO2 storage monitoring

2021 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 103417
Author(s):  
Dong Li ◽  
Suping Peng ◽  
Xingguo Huang ◽  
Yinling Guo ◽  
Yongxu Lu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Storage ◽  
Waveform Inversion ◽  
Curvelet Transform ◽  
Time Lapse ◽  
Full Waveform Inversion ◽  
Full Waveform

scholarly journals Arkitektur og pedagogikk i samspill eller motspill? - om betydning av koherens mellom planlegging og etablering av nye typer barnehagebygg

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi Evenstad ◽  
Aslaug Andreassen Becher
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Educational Changes ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Buildings

Abstract: This article discusses the intentions and experiences from architects and pedagogues involved in planning and establishing kindergartens with new building topologies in Oslo. The National Kindergarten effort (St.meld.nr. 24 2002-2003) with the political aim that all children between one and six years should have the right to attend kindergarten, led to a huge development of kindergarten buildings all over Norway. Many of the buildings were designed as new typologies named base and zone kindergartens. There are barely research on processes and consequences of the changes in physical structures in educational institutions. The results of the research presented here are based on a case study of processes in four municipalities in Oslo. It shows that the staff working in the new buildings had scarcely any knowledge of the intentions behind the new design, and the support in  establishing pedagogical work in new physical frames was limited. The aim of the article is to expand the knowledge about connections between architecture and pedagogic, and point to the importance of involving the staff/professionals in educational changes where the physical environment is at stake. These findings may be relevant to other transformations involving organizational and architectural changes. Sammendrag: Artikkelen drøfter intensjoner og erfaringer hos arkitekter og pedagoger involvert i planlegging og etablering av barnehager med nye bygningstypologier i Oslo. Barnehageforliket (St.meld.nr.24 2002-2003) innebar et politisk vedtak om barnehageplass for alle og førte til en massiv utbygging av barnehager over hele landet. Mange av de nye byggene ble oppført med nye typer planløsninger (base- og sonebarnehager). Det finnes lite forskning om prosesser og konsekvenser knyttet til endring av fysiske strukturer i pedagogiske institusjoner. Forskningsresultatene som presenteres i artikkelen er basert på en casestudie av prosesser i fire bydeler i Oslo, og viser at personalet i de nye byggene hadde lite kjennskap til intensjoner bak byggenes utforming og opplevde lite støtte i etableringsprosessen. Artikkelens formål er å bidra til kunnskap om betydningen av å involvere personalet i pedagogiske reformer og i utvikling av det fysiske miljøet. Funnene kan ha overføringsverdi til andre reformer som innebærer organisatoriske og arkitektoniske endringer.   

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