scholarly journals The staff of madness: The visualization of insanity and the othering of the insane

2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2198922
Author(s):  
Alvise Sforza Tarabochia

In this article I trace a history of the most ubiquitous visual symbol of madness: the staff. First, I argue that the staff, in its variants (such as the pinwheel) and with its attachments (such as an inflated bladder), represents madness as air. It thus represents madness as an invisible entity that must be made visible. Secondly, I claim that the staff – being iconic of other ‘unwanted’ categories such as vagabonds – represents the insane as outsiders. Also in this case, the staff serves the purpose of making madness visible. Through this interpretation I show that the urge to make madness visible outlives icons of insanity such as the staff, making it a constant presence in popular culture and medical practice.

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-71
Author(s):  
V. Rameev ◽  
L. Kozlovskaya ◽  
A. Rameeva ◽  
P. Tao

The article discusses the current possibilities of postinfectious AA-amyloidosis treatment with dimexide on the example of clinical observation, discribes in detail the problem of functional amyloid and debates the prospects of the principle of amyloid resorption in the treatment of systemic amyloidosis. The history of the use of dimexide in medical practice is given, thenecessary dataon the pharmacology of dimexide are presented.


Author(s):  
Erik Gray

Love begets poetry; poetry begets love. These two propositions have seemed evident to thinkers and poets across the Western literary tradition. Plato writes that “anyone that love touches instantly becomes a poet.” And even today, when poetry has largely disappeared from the mainstream of popular culture, it retains its romantic associations. But why should this be so—what are the connections between poetry and erotic love that lead us to associate them so strongly with one another? An examination of different theories of both love and poetry across the centuries reveals that the connection between them is not merely an accident of cultural history—the result of our having grown up hearing, or hearing about, love poetry—but something more intrinsic. Even as definitions of them have changed, the two phenomena have consistently been described in parallel terms. Love is characterized by paradox. Above all, it is both necessarily public, because interpersonal, and intensely private; hence it both requires expression and resists it. In poetry, especially lyric poetry, which features its own characteristic paradoxes and silences, love finds a natural outlet. This study considers both the theories and the love poems themselves, bringing together a wide range of examples from different eras in order to examine the major structures that love and poetry share. It does not aim to be a comprehensive history of Western love poetry, but an investigation into the meaning and function of recurrent tropes, forms, and images employed by poets to express and describe erotic love.


Author(s):  
Mirza Sangin Beg

The second part of the translation has three segments. The first is dedicated to the history of Delhi from the time of the Mahabharat to the periods of Anangpal Tomar to the Mughal Emperor Humayun as also Sher Shah, the Afghan ruler. In the second and third segments Mirza Sangin Beg adroitly navigates between twin centres of power in the city. He writes about Qila Mubarak, or the Red Fort, and gives an account of the several buildings inside it and the cost of construction of the same. He ambles into the precincts and mentions the buildings constructed by Shahjahan and other rulers, associating them with some specific inmates of the fort and the functions performed within them. When the author takes a walk in the city of Shahjahanabad, he writes of numerous residents, habitations of rich, poor, and ordinary people, their mansions and localities, general and specialized bazars, the in different skills practised areas, places of worship and revelry, processions exemplifying popular culture and local traditions, and institutions that had a resonance in other cultures. The Berlin manuscript gives generous details of the officials of the English East India Company, both native and foreign, their professions, and work spaces. Mirza Sangin Beg addresses the issue of qaum most unselfconsciously and amorphously.


Author(s):  
Nisha P R

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.


2009 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy A. Lander ◽  
John R. Graham-Pole

This article explores the art of letter-writing, specifically to our beloved dead, as a form of autoethnographic research, pedagogy, and care work. As university teachers and qualitative researchers in palliative and end-of-life care, we review the literature and history of epistolary communications with the deceased, as a prelude to writing our own letters. John writes to his long-dead mother and Dorothy to her recently deceased spouse Patrick, each letter followed by a reflective dialogue between us. Through this dialogue, we highlight the potential application of this art, or handcraft, to formal and informal palliative care, and the implications for practice, pedagogy, policy, and research. We propose that such direct, non-mediated, communications can offer a valuable form of healing for bereaved people. The therapeutic potential of letter writing and the abundance of literary and popular culture exemplars of responses from the dead are also largely unexplored in death education and research.


2021 ◽  

The history of European videogames has been so far overshadowed by the global impact of the Japanese and North American industries. However, European game development studios have played a major role in videogame history, and prominent videogames in popular culture, such as <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>, <i>Tomb Raider</i> and <i>Alone in the Dark</i> were made in Europe. This book proposes an exploration of European videogames, including both analyses of transnational aspects of European production and close readings of national specificities. It offers a kaleidoscope of European videogame culture, focusing on the analysis of European works and creators but also addressing contextual aspects and placing videogames within a wider sociocultural and philosophical ground. The aim of this collective work is to contribute to the creation of a, so far, almost non-existent yet necessary academic endeavour: a story of the works, authors, styles and cultures of the European videogame.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M Ryan

Popular culture has critiqued ‘vertical video syndrome’, or video shot on smartphones in the portrait rather than landscape orientation, as something aesthetically unpleasing which should be avoided. But the design of smartphones seems to encourage shooting vertical video. This article examines the aesthetic desirability of vertical videos through applied media aesthetics. It traces the history of horizontal film and television orientations, as well as the image-centric orientation model found in still photography. It argues that vertical video, rather than a syndrome to be avoided, instead takes advantage of the technological innovations and embodied pleasures offered by the smartphone to rupture the visual paradigms and create a new visual aesthetic for phone-based moving images.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Adem Balaban ◽  
Bünyamin Çağlayan ◽  
Rahım Ombashı

Hafiz Ali Korça had singled Islamic mysticism and its poetics, the tasavvuf, Oriental Sufi literature of Omar Khayyam. Nezim Berati, author of the Divan, the names mutesavvif. The form and manner of spiritual cleansing, uplifting, lighting internal and external, in order to obtain the agreement of God and eternal bliss, has singled out the Eqrem Çabej to Naim Frashëri poetic beginnings. Religious feelings helped him strengthen ethnic sense. The Divan, in complex form of oriental supplied popular culture, written text spoken text (sung text). Paid the debt that had to Albanian oral literary culture. The study will argue that the Albanian literature is added value. Our history of the spiritual culture of literary monuments go 4. The Divan first Albanian has pure literary discourse. It is a way of being self-sufficient. The truth of gazellas, his kasidas possible. Marked what could happen. The event provided the writers figured through the process of story, description or image. Real size of fables not lose, time and space are not fantasy. Therefore this is not fantasy literature, but the tassavvuf. Its hero acts in the domain of spirituality. As a combination of spiritual requirements for completing their dream. It is poetry as a separate value and beauty. Austrian researcher Han author make antonymyzation Anakreont of Albania. The Divan in Albanian literature was a unified stylistic formation, which served the Islamic aesthetic purpose. Her literary theoretical codification is tasavvuf. Is more universal than the national poet, despite the trend towards national.


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