When Is a Religion Like a Weed?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Nathan Rein
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
The Way

Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's 2014 article, "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion," offers a comprehensive rationale for the use of real, essentialist definitions of religion in the field of religious studies. In this article, I examine her arguments and the proposed definition she supplies. I argue that a close reading of Schaffalitzky's piece, concentrating especially on the way she uses examples, helps to demonstrate that she and her anti-essentialist opponents view the field of religious studies in incommensurable ways. While Schaffalitzky views definitions as serving the analytical study of religion as an object, her opponents view definitions primarily rhetorically and seek to focus attention on the process of defining.

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.

First as Sociology, Then as Geography

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Justin Tse
Keyword(s):  
Social Geography ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Ideological Work ◽  
The Way

This essay reviews Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus's New Age Spiritualities: Rethinking Religion. It shows that their attempt to redefine religion through new age spiritualities is actually an attempt to impose an economically elite social geography onto religious studies as a social fact. My central argument is that this effort in turn reveals that religious studies serves as a sociological factory for liberal economic ideologies. It suggests that to mitigate this ideological work, a shift toward critical geography in religious studies is the way forward.

Eye Camera Window: Takashi Homma on Le Corbusier

Public ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (63) ◽  
pp. 118-121
Author(s):  
Na’ama Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Camera Lens ◽  
The Way

A new exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal, QC), Eye Camera Window: Takashi Homma on Le Corbusier, investigates the practice of Japanese architectural photographer Takashi Homma (1962) and his exploration of the intrinsic similarities between windows and cameras in the way they mediate an experience, be it in a modernist dwelling or in a photograph recalling a memory. Homma’s photographs focus attention on the ‘eye’, the ‘camera’, and the ‘window’ in the way they shape perspective in intimate form. In a visual interpretation that uses the camera lens as an eye to witness new forms, Homma advances an argument of timelessness, providing intimate architectural perspectives on eternal vistas.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

scholarly journals Ruin philosophy, poetic discourse and the collapse of meta-narratives in Aleksandr Kushner's poetry of the 1970s

Nordlit ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Schönle
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
The Face ◽  
Creative Forces ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

This article offers an analysis of the trope of ruin in the poetry of Aleksandr Kushner (born 1936), in particular through a close reading of two of his poems: “In a slippery graveyard, alone” and “Ruins”. The analysis of these poems is preceded by an overview of ruin philosophy from Burke and Diderot to Simmel and Benjamin, with particular emphasis on the way the trope of ruin contemplation stages a confrontation between the self and what transcends it (death, history, nature, etc.). This philosophical background serves as a heuristic tool to shed light on the poetry of Kushner. Through the trope of ruin, Kushner explores the legitimacy of poetic speech after the collapse of all meta-narratives. Kushner has no truck with Diderot's solipsism, nor with Hegel's bold narrative of progress, nor with Simmel's peaceful reconciliation with the creative forces of nature. Nor, really, does he intend to bear witness to history, the way Benjamin does in the faint anticipation of some miracle. Instead, Kushner posits the endurance of a community united not around a grand project, but around the idea of carrying on in the face of everything, muddling through despite the lack of hopes for a transformational future and making the most of fleeting moments of positivity that emerge out of the fundamental serendipity of history.

Final Remarks

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-142
Author(s):  
Majid Daneshgar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The Way

The final chapter of the book is divided into two sections: conclusions, and “Islamic Apologetics” everywhere. It informs readers about the future of Islamic studies in the West and the way it gets gradually changed to Islamic Apologetics. In so doing, some of the true stories that have happened in both Muslim and Western academic contexts are discussed. The final remarks aim to show that, in fact, the stronger the connection with politics and traditionalism, the more diminished is the academic approach toward religion and the greater the conservative presentation of religious studies, in both Western and Muslim academic contexts.

On the transmodality of signs and their interpretants: Evidence from Peirce’s MS 599, Reason’s Rules

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (228) ◽  
pp. 223-235
Author(s):  
Winfried Nöth
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
External Sign ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe paper begins with a survey of the state of the art in multimodal research, an international trend in applied semiotics, linguistics, and media studies, and goes on to compare its approach to verbal and nonverbal signs to Charles S. Peirce’s approach to signs and their classification. The author introduces the concept of transmodality to characterize the way in which Peirce’s classification of signs reflects the modes of multimodality research and argues that Peirce’s classification of the signs takes modes and modalities in two different respects into consideration, (1) from the perspective of the sign and (2) from the one of its interpretant. While current research in multimodality has its focus on the (external) sign in a communicative process, Peirce considers additionally the multimodality of the interpretants, i.e., the mental icons and indexical scenarios evoked in the interpreters’ minds. The paper illustrates and comments on the Peircean method of studying the multi and transmodality of signs in an analysis of Peirce’s close reading of Luke 19:30 in MS 599, Reason’s Rules, of c. 1902. As a sign, this text is “monomodal” insofar as it consists of printed words only. The study shows in which respects the interpretants of this text evince trans and multimodality.

Everything is Noise: Don Delillo’s White Noise and the Affectivity of Media, Religion, and Divination

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Eric Chalfant
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
White Noise ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Spiritual Meaning ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
Warren Weaver

This paper provides a theoretical defense of the concept of noise, borrowed and loosened from the field of information theory, as a heuristic tool for discussing mediation as divination and exploring the intersection of media studies and religious studies. I first provide a theoretical primer for the concept of noise as it is articulated by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver and developed in media studies by Friedrich Kittler and in religious studies by Mark Taylor. Then, a close reading of Don Delillo’s White Noise draws out the potential of noise to highlight media’s ability to provide spiritual meaning and truth through an affect of divination. Finally, I connect these themes to current conceptions of media’s relationship to truth as well as recent anthropology on religious divination, suggesting the utility of noise to aid in scholarly efforts to materialize both media studies and religious studies as they engage with affect theory.

Australian Gothic Soundscapes: The Proposition

2013 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnny Milner
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
The Way

While recent studies demonstrate a significant increase in the level of interest in the soundtracks of Australian cinema, very little attention has focused on the way soundtracks can convey the ‘gothic’ within an outback-cinematic context. This article attempts to begin to address this issue by providing a close reading of the Australian gothic Western The Proposition – looking specifically to its sonic dimensions, namely the amalgam of score, dialogue and sound effects. The article argues that the film's soundtrack draws from a range of Australian literary and cinematic tropes, and draws specifically on the aural and epistemological gothic traits of Australia, the outback and its perception as unfamiliar space during the time of settlement. Following this discussion, the focus shifts to ways in which The Proposition's soundtrack foregrounds significations that offer new, and complex, articulations of a specifically ‘Australian gothic’.

Paleontology's Greatest Hits

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Richard K. Bambach
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Analysis ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Analytical Study ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paleontological Society ◽  
Link Pattern ◽  
The Way

Although this paper mentions many specific discoveries and advances it is not intended as a catalog of the “biggest hits” in the sense of public notice, but rather it is an effort to chart how the diversity of paleontological work in the last century fits into the context of the biggest hit of all, the emergence of a “new paleontology” in which conceptual advances have revolutionized every aspect of our profession. When the Paleontological Society was founded no unambiguous fossils were known from the immense stretch of Precambrian time and no hominine fossils were known from Africa. Rigorous phylogenetic analysis and a seat for paleontology at the “high table” of evolutionary biology were in the future. Where once we learned a series of guide fossils and thought we had studied paleontology, now students explore taphonomy, paleoeocology, geobiology and macroevolution in our general courses on paleontology. This paper attempts to take notice of some of the highlights of our evolution from a field focused on cataloging and describing the contents of the fossil record into a complex, multidisciplinary endeavor focused on analytical study of general questions. Some of those hits have been discoveries that document the course of evolution, some have been new conceptual approaches that give us insights that link pattern to process, some are new ways of compiling, analyzing or communicating our knowledge. But with all that the study of the history of life remains at the heart of our profession. The change has been the shift in goal from description to understanding of that history, from “what” to “how.” The greatest hits have been the steps that have opened the way to understanding, that have made following the path possible.

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