Point of Departure

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-19
Keyword(s):  
1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Strelau

This paper presents Pavlov's contribution to the development of biological-oriented personality theories. Taking a short description of Pavlov's typology of central nervous system (CNS) properties as a point of departure, it shows how, and to what extent, this typology influenced further research in the former Soviet Union as well as in the West. Of special significance for the development of biologically oriented personality dimensions was the conditioned reflex paradigm introduced by Pavlov for studying individual differences in dogs. This paradigm was used by Russian psychologists in research on types of nervous systems conducted in different animal species as well as for assessing temperament in children and adults. Also, personality psychologists in the West, such as Eysenck, Spence, and Gray, incorporated the CR paradigm into their theories. Among the basic properties of excitation and inhibition on which Pavlov's typology was based, strength of excitation and the basic indicator of this property, protective inhibition, gained the highest popularity in arousaloriented personality theories. Many studies have been conducted in which the Pavlovian constructs of CNS properties have been related to different personality dimensions. In current research the behavioral expressions of the Pavlovian constructs of strength of excitation, strength of inhibition, and mobility of nervous processes as measured by the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) have been related to over a dozen of personality dimensions, mostly referring to temperament.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Alejo

There is a pressing need to extend our thinking about diplomacy beyond state-centric perspectives, as in the name of sovereignty and national interests, people on move are confronting virtual, symbolic and/or material walls and frames of policies inhibiting their free movement. My point of departure is to explore migrant activism and global politics through the transformation of diplomacy in a globalised world. Developing an interdisciplinary dialogue between new diplomacy and sociology, I evidence the emergence of global sociopolitical formations created through civic bi-nationality organisations. Focusing on the agent in interaction with structures, I present a theoretical framework and strategy for analysing the practices of migrant diplomacies as an expression of contemporary politics. A case study from North America regarding returned families in Mexico City provides evidence of how these alternative diplomacies are operating.


Anger is a basic human emotion that has a force for constructive or destructive ends. Its expression in any circumstance can be a trigger for a desire to change a prevailing situation. In all cases, anger is a fundamental component of art. This study examines the use of anger in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Osofisan’s The Chattering and the Song. Osborne and Osofisan are two writers who are very anxious to change their societies through their art. In spite of differences in their origin (Osborne was a Briton while Osofisan is a Nigerian), they wrote at a time of certain social and political upheavals in their countries. They also share similar concerns and attitudes towards art. My focus in this paper is on the early plays of Osborne and Osofisan where anger is strongest and where their artistic triumph is most poignant. Working within the formalist approach, the paper reveals that in Osborne and Osofisan, extreme anger is both material and style and is what marks their art out. The reification by the intellect provides a potent instrument for investigating society. Anger becomes the point of departure for their art, it is not mere hysterics but a cerebral one and it is the motivating force for their writings.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Highmore

From a remarkably innovative point of departure, Ben Highmore (University of Sussex) suggests that modernist literature and art were not the only cultural practices concerned with reclaiming the everyday and imbuing it with significance. At the same time, Roger Caillois was studying the spontaneous interactions involved in games such as hopscotch, while other small scale institutions such as the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham, London attempted to reconcile systematic study and knowledge with the non-systematic exchanges in games and play. Highmore suggests that such experiments comprise a less-often recognised ‘modernist heritage’, and argues powerfully for their importance within early-twentieth century anthropology and the newly-emerged field of cultural studies.


Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-293
Author(s):  
Avital Ronell

Reflecting on the debts collected by Shoshana Felman's work, within the theoretical contexts of the time in which the 1977 Yale French Studies issue of ‘Psychoanalysis and Literature’ first appeared, this article takes as its point of departure Lacan's analysis of Hamlet's father as the barred Other, focusing on Hamlet's ‘complaint’. The nature of the complaint (plainte, or Klage, also closely allied to Anklage, or accusation) is then explored in relation to various writers and thinkers — Rilke, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, among others — and more specifically via a reading of François Roustang's La Fin de la plainte (The End of the Complaint), and his own interpretations of Freudian narcissism. Scanning the wreckage for which the little narcissists are responsible, the article aims to give more insight into the structuring principles of those who whine incessantly.


Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-227
Author(s):  
Matt Phillips

This essay examines the place of love in grief, staging a relation between a mourner and her lover. Taking as its point of departure Freud's observation that mourning leads to a ‘loss of the capacity to love’, it considers the effects bereavement might have on the bereaved's relations with those that love them, and the possibilities, pitfalls and ethics of care in such a context. This is explored largely through a reading of Roland Barthes's late work (both as a writer of grief and a theorist of love), as well as ideas drawn from Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Sara Ahmed, Hamlet and personal observation. Love and care are thought through alongside notions of ‘tact’, ‘benevolence’ and ‘parrying against reduction’ in late Barthes.


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Peperkamp

This article addresses the distinctive spiritual qualities of aerial movement. Taking as a point of departure the feature lm Maria, Mãe do Filho de Deus (2003) played by famous Brazilian Padre Marcelo Rossi, it argues for an engagement with cinematic images in terms of aerial dynamic imagination. It will be shown that the “inspired breath” of Padre Marcelo organizes the universe and affects the constitution of subjects and space in the lm according to the Scriptures. The same aerial dynamic applies to his other contexts of performance such as Byzantine praying techniques and their relation to space. Subsequently, the article explores underlying analogies between electronic technology, acoustic environment, and pneumatic spirituality within common practices of embodied experience.


2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-132
Author(s):  
Sabine Gebhardt Fink

In performativen künstlerischen Projekten der Ambient Art werden Raum und Körper neu erzeugt. Diese These verdeutliche ich mit Beispielen aus den Bereichen Musik, Theater und Kunst, die das transdisziplinäre Phänomen Ambient als komplexe mediale Struktur erklären. Des weiteren gehe ich vom Modell des gelebten Raums aus, um auszuführen, wie der Ort eines künstlerischen Projekts die Art und Weise der Verkörperungen seiner Teilnehmer definiert. Umgekehrt wird deutlich, daß die immersive ästhetische Erfahrung von Ambient erst Präsenz und Raum konstituiert. During performative artistic projects in Ambient Art, both space and structures of embodiment are constituted. I illustrate this thesis with examples of performative works in music, theatre and art, in order to analyze the transdisciplinary phenomenon of Ambient Art as a complex structure. My point of departure is a model of lived space in which the bodily enactment in the performative artwork produces place and, vice versa, the place of the artwork determines the active body as an immersive aesthetic experience.


Author(s):  
Erika Weiberg

The point of departure for this paper is the publication of two Early Helladic sealing fragments from the coastal settlement of Asine on the north-east Peloponnese in Greece. After an initial description and discussion they are set in the context of sealing custom established on the Greek mainland around 2500 BCE. In the first part of the paper focus is on the apparent qualitative differences between the available seals and the contemporary seal impressions, as well as between different sealing assemblages on northeastern Peloponnese. This geographical emphasis is carried into the second part of the paper which is a review and contextualisation of the representational art of the Aegean Early Bronze Age in general, and northeastern Peloponnese in particular. Seal motifs and figurines are the main media for Early Helladic representational art preserved until today, yet in many ways very dissimilar. These opposites are explored in order to begin to build a better understanding of Peloponnesian representational art, the choices of motifs, and their roles in the lives of the Early Helladic people.


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