Habit and Affect: Revitalizing a Forgotten History

Habit is an integral concept for body studies, a hybrid concept and one that has provided the bedrock across the humanities for considering the interrelationships between movement and stasis, being and becoming, and process and fixity. Habits are seen to provide relay points between what is taken to be inside and outside, disrupting any clear and distinct boundary between nature and culture, self and other, the psychological and social, and even mind and matter. Habit thus discloses a paradox. It takes up a unique position in affect modulation, which encompasses both regulation (in the form of discipline) and also extends the body’s potential for engaging the new, change and creativity. In order to understand the basis of the ambivalent duality governing understandings of habit it is argued that a genealogical approach to this question is necessary. This will be located within the recent ‘turn to affect’ and histories of conation within the psychological sciences, particularly taking the writings of William McDougall as a focus.

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Forms of a Posthuman Fantastic in Mia Gallagher’s Shift

Estudios Irlandeses ◽

10.24162/ei2021-10097 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-12

Author(s):

Hedwig Schwall ◽

Keyword(s):

Short Stories ◽

Human Subject ◽

Human Perception ◽

Human Beings ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Self And Other ◽

Life And Death ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

Individual Entity ◽

The Individual

In posthuman philosophy the human subject is not regarded as an entity but a relational process. Yet the historical construct of “the individual” remains the (unconscious) reference point in human perception, feeding ego- and anthropocentrism. This article will argue that in their call to revise the static ideal of the individual entity posthuman philosophers find “allies” in fiction. More specifically, the fantastic is a genre which offers great possibilities to drastically reshuffle basic tenets of perception. Mia Gallagher’s Shift offers a spectrum of fantastic stories in which protagonists relate to human and nonhuman agents such as animals, minerals, air and water. But, in this posthuman theory and fiction, not only human beings are deconstructed into relational nodes; the categories that constitute them are no independent concepts either, but mere interactional factors. This article’s analysis of Gallagher’s short stories focuses on the ways in which self and other, nature and culture, life and death, feminine and masculine, interior and exterior worlds interact.

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The semiotics of emotion and narrative therapy in the case of Montaigne

Semiotica ◽

10.1515/sem-2014-0058 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2015 (204) ◽

Author(s):

Yunhee Lee

Keyword(s):

Narrative Therapy ◽

Self Regulation ◽

The Self ◽

Psychological Processes ◽

Michel De Montaigne ◽

Self And Other ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

Semiotic Approach ◽

Writing Activity

AbstractThis paper investigates a writing activity for therapeutic effect by means of self-regulation through which emotion and thinking are welded to discover the self and other. This activity is undertaken with a Peircean semiotic approach. Accordingly, a feeling of emotion as a material quality of thought-sign is observed as to how it develops into higher psychological processes by virtue of object of thinking, friendship, and love, as external stimulus. This is found in Michel de Montaigne who arrives at a feeling of unity between nature and culture by way of gravity of narrative as a remedial method in narrative mind.

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Intimate Connections

Camera Obscura Feminism Culture and Media Studies ◽

10.1215/02705346-8085111 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 39-75

Author(s):

Cristina Albu

Keyword(s):

Interpersonal Relationships ◽

Open Systems ◽

Time Frame ◽

Video Technology ◽

Technological Mediation ◽

Self And Other ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

Reciprocal Influences ◽

The Invisible

Through her versatile use of video technology, Nina Sobell explores nonverbal means of communication that interfere with normative modes of behavior and closely regulated interpersonal relationships. Deeply informed by the pursuit of intimate connections, her practice fosters reflection on how we modulate our sense of selfhood through interactions with others. This article examines Sobell’s video performances with chicken carcasses, instantiating the ambiguities of mother- infant relationships, in connection with her Brainwave Drawings, a series of installations based on biofeedback that unveils reciprocal influences between art participants’ psychic states. Even though these sets of works were developed during the same time frame (1974–82) and are equally concerned with bodily communication, they are almost never interpreted as conceptually related. Underscoring their mutual affiliation with a feminist agenda, this article argues that these works are deeply intertwined at the level of their interrogation of socially sanctioned forms of interaction. Embracing the dynamics of open systems, Sobell cultivates fluid forms of communication and exposes the invisible threads that connect us to others. She relies on technological mediation in order to advance a more complex understanding of the biological and social underpinnings of selfhood. Sobell’s works invite viewers to consider interpersonal exchanges that surpass linguistic forms of communication and reveal the porous thresholds between body and mind, self and other, nature and culture.

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The Fractal Self

10.21313/hawaii/9780824866617.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

John L. Culliney ◽

David Jones

Keyword(s):

Complex Structure ◽

Big Bang ◽

Human Potential ◽

Self And Other ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

Life Itself ◽

Definition Of ◽

And Function ◽

Nature And Society ◽

The Big Bang

“The Fractal Self” traces fresh insights on the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to sociobiology and human culture. The book posits that on every scale, complex structure and function and ultimately life itself arose by virtue of the power of cooperation between self and other. Cooperation has proved a catalytic force for complexity from organic molecules to human affairs, and appears to oscillate with competition, as yin with yang. However, progressive complexity emerging from antecedent simplicity consistently has come from cooperation, writ large. This is a tendency in our universe that we have called the cooperative constant; cooperation appears to have held a small average edge over competition to engender richness and diversity in nature and culture. The book further explores the human potential of achieving a seminal state of being in the world as a fractal self: any person drawn to some walk-of-life, a vocation or avocation, and who begins to realize a seamless participatory ethos as a “natural” or an “adept.” With growing sensitivity, adaptation, understanding and expertise, this self tends to develop a capacity to foster creative complexity. Insights from primatology as well as ancient myth and philosophy, especially Daoism and Buddhism, enrich our understanding regarding the emergence of empathy and morality and their applications vis`a vis nature and society. The book concludes with a new definition of free will and a hopeful vision for Gaian sustainability as our species transcends tribalism and entrains itself in partnership with nature.

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