The magnificent territory: Pausing to reflect on a lifetime of working with people and music

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Zeserson
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
The World ◽  
Biographical Account

In this biographical account of a musical lifecourse, I highlight the psychosocial, vocational, functional and affective meaning of music. Using my own musical journey as an illustrative example, I draw attention to the ways in which music can be a catalyst for understanding of the self, for meaning-making in the world and for developing understandings of one’s role in that world. My overarching message is that a musical lifecourse can frame our deepest relationships and most significant moments of profound joy.

‘Storying the self’: Autobiography as pedagogy in undergraduate creative writing teaching

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Jess Moriarty ◽  
Ross Adamson
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Academic Level ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
The World ◽  
Personal Histories

The telling and sharing of stories is synonymous with what it is to be human. The narrative threads reaching back through our personal histories can help us to make sense of who we are in the present and we already use these stories anecdotally, at school, on dates, over coffee, in the local, to make connections with people and our social worlds. At an academic level, storytelling that engenders meaning making is becoming legitimized as branch of qualitative research that can inform us about our culture and identity. Autoethnography is a methodology that links the self (auto) with ethno (culture) to research (graphy). Helping students to work in this way and make these connections in their assessed work can be a challenge, but it can also help them to identify the stories that already exist inside themselves and give them the confidence to believe that these stories might matter in the world beyond their writing journals and university lectures. In this article, the authors share personal stories to reflect on our pedagogic approach to undergraduate creative writing teaching.

scholarly journals Between History and Universality: Understanding Identity in the Public Sphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Nisar Alungal Chungath
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

Identity is not a fixed and frozen prison-house for the self, but a liquid continuum, affected and shaped by the ‘outside’ or the world. The self, which is situated and which undergoes revisions and transformations, keeps identity as a frame within which it makes sense of things. On the one hand, there is a ‘history’ within which an identity is rooted and through which meaning-making is made possible, and on the other hand, every person aspires to be a ‘universal’ and recognition-worthy human being. Both inherent identity and inherent universality of the self should be considered in their interactions in the public sphere, which has been traditionally viewed as a space of discrete individualities. The ontological force of this argument aside, the paper demonstrates that reduction of an identity without crediting its aspiration for universality and consideration of universality without crediting the historical underpinnings of identity are both acts of violation. 

scholarly journals Aweと意味生成

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masataka Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Human Adaptation ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
The Relationship

Creating a meaning system is fundamental to human adaptation. This article reviews how the emotion of awe, characterized with perceived vastness and the need for accommodation, plays a crucial role in meaning making. Empirical evidence suggests that the experience of awe alters how people construe the world, the self, and the relationship between them, in finding meaning in life. Directions for future research are discussed by focusing on how the dynamic process of meaning making through awe would be constrained by cultural meaning systems and how sharing awe experiences with others, in turn, would contribute to collective meaning making processes.

Textures of Spirituality in Rural Malawi

2021 ◽  
pp. 210-226
Author(s):  
Ann Swidler
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Inner Resources

What does religion in rural Malawi have to teach us about spirituality more broadly? If spirituality is the experience of the self as connected directly to the sacred, rural Malawi fosters intense religiosity, but often muffles spirituality. Nonetheless, where spirituality pushes up through the undergrowth of practical religious concerns, we see some of what the spiritual does for Malawians, and for us as well: it replenishes and revitalizes the inner resources of the self by linking the self to transcendent sources of power and meaning. Based on interviews and participant observation conducted in Malawi, this chapter focuses on the meaning-making process of spirituality and shows how the experience of the self is connected directly to the sacred. The analysis of this process has implications for our understanding of spirituality in other parts of the world as well.

scholarly journals “Atmos-fear”: A psycho-semiotic analysis of messages in New York everyday life

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (226) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Luca Tateo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
Dialogical Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
Affect And Cognition ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Semiotic Process

AbstractWe live in societies emphasizing security and its complementary side of fear. In this work, I analyze the peripheral messages disseminated in the urban environment, whose function is that of regulating human and collective conduct through orienting specific forms of affective meaning-making. According to the perspective of Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics, affect and cognition work always together. Affect has the primacy in the relationship with the world and on top of affective distinctions we build conceptual distinctions. Thus, I describe a type of semiotic process I have called “atmos-fear,” that works through the production of empty representamen that frames meaning. The concept of “atmos-fear” could be fruitfully developed to understand phenomena of politics, communication and construction of the Other in contemporary societies, where the dialogical relationship between security and fear is at stake.

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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