The Taste to Come

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 238-262
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Brower

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.

Author(s):  
Verne Harris

Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is the lecture Jacques Derrida gave in 2003 at an event to honor Hélène Cixous and mark the donation of her archive to the National Library of France. The lecture was a moving tribute to Cixous (her corpus, her genius, her archive), but it was also Derrida's reading of Cixous' "secrets of the archive". This essay explores "the secrets" - those of Cixous, those of Derrida - along two primary lines of enquiry. On the one hand, the question of archival stakes - what stakes are at play in archive? On the other, the question of the work of archive. For both Cixous and Derrida the work of archive is an endless opening to what is being "othered" and a tireless importuning of a justice-to-come. The work of archive is justice. But what does that work look like? Is there a deconstructive praxis in archive shaped by the call to, and of, justice? What stranger emerges from an insistering of the familiar Derridean formulations?


Author(s):  
Eloísa Porto C. Allevato Braem ◽  
Paulo S. Oliveira

A violência tem se apresentado como um tema recorrente em pesquisas de estudiosos das literaturas, até porque obras de imaginação sempre se mostraram como um locus privilegiado para o estudo de diferentes temas ligados ao humano e às suas sociedades. Em virtude disso, o dossiê “Representações da Violência na Literatura” reúne e divulga pesquisas acadêmicas sobre diferentes modalidades da violência refletidas em obras literárias de variadas épocas e nacionalidades, a partir de diversificados enfoques teórico-metodológicos. São cotejadas obras desde as tebanas Édipo Rei e Antígona, de Sófocles, até Vidas secas, de Graciliano Ramos, e Infância dos mortos, de José Louzeiro, dentre muitas outras. Servem de ancoragem para os estudos obras como as de Walter Benjamin (2011), Jacques Derrida (1997), Michel Foucault (1987, 2013), Freud (2010), Friedrich Nietzsche (1998).


Somatechnics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-38
Author(s):  
Michael O'Rourke ◽  
Kamillea Aghtan

This pair of texts, article and response – a performance poem of sorts – focuses on the sexual and textual erotics which circulate in the texts written by Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous for and about each other. It is based on Michael O'Rourke's ‘The Divivacities of Cixous and Derrida’, a keynote lecture delivered at the Bodies in Movement conference at Edinburgh in May of 2011 and Kamillea Aghtan's response to O'Rourke. It seeks to discuss the textual intimacies of Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida (and by reflection Michael O'Rourke and Kamillea Aghtan) and the various sensual bodies of text created between them. As O'Rourke enfolds his textual subjects, Aghtan repositions O'Rourke's conception of textual friendship and love in terms of her response and, by doing so, suggests a new kind of (un)balanced relationship in its writing, the creation of different amalgams and further bodies of text that are thoroughly contingent, multiplying and obstinately open-ended.


Ruminants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Frank van Eerdenburg ◽  
Lars Ruud

Lying is an important behavior of dairy cattle. Cows should spend more than 50% of a day lying as it has a high impact on their milk yield and animal welfare. The design, size, and flooring properties of the free stalls influence the time cows spend lying, the way they lie down, and their rising movements. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the currently available information with the aim to assist farmers and advisors to come to an optimal design of the free stalls. The design of the free stalls should enable the cows to move and lie in positions as natural as possible. Cows should rest, with all parts of the body, on a clean, dry and soft bed, be able to stretch their front legs forward, lie on their sides with unobstructed space for their neck and head, and rest with their heads against their flanks without hindrance from a partition. When they stand, they should not be hindered by neck rails, partitions, or supports. A comfortable place for cows to lie down helps cows to stay healthy, improve welfare, and increase milk yield. Hence, the probability of a longer productive life for the cows increases and the number of replacements per year decreases.


Author(s):  
Aku Visala ◽  
Olli-Pekka Vainio

SummaryIn this article, we will use contemporary analytic tools to make sense of the main arguments in the classic debate on free will between Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Reformer Martin Luther. Instead of offering another exegesis of these texts, we put forward an analysis that links this historical debate with contemporary discussions on free will and grace in philosophical theology. We argue that the debate was ultimately about how three theological core claims are related to one another: the Anti-Pelagian Constraint (humans are incapable of willing any good, in order to come to faith), the Responsibility Principle (humans are morally responsible in the eyes of God) and human free will. Erasmus attacks Luther by arguing that the Responsibility Principle cannot be maintained without free will, while Luther responds by arguing that Erasmus must reject free will, because it is in conflict with the Anti-Pelagian Constraint. Luther is then left with the dilemma of justifying the Responsibility Principle without free will – a task, which in our estimation, fails. In the concluding section of the article, we point out some continuities and discontinuities between the contemporary debate and that of Luther and Erasmus.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110085
Author(s):  
Sofia Aboim ◽  
Pedro Vasconcelos

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.


2013 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 780-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydnor Roy

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventise terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 5per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenereedita doctrina sapientum templa serena,despicere unde queas alios passimque videreerrare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, 10certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,noctes atque dies niti praestante laboread summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 15degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest! nonne viderenil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utquicorpore seiunctus dolor absit, mensque fruaturiucundo sensu cura semota metuque?(Lucr. 2.1–19)It is pleasant, when the winds stir up the waters on the great sea,to watch the great struggle of another from land;not because it is a great pleasure that anyone be troubled,but because it is pleasant to observe the troubles you yourself lack.It is also pleasant to watch the great contests of war 5spread out over the plains without taking any part in the danger.But nothing is more pleasing than to hold lofty yet calm templesthat are well defended by the teachings of wise men,from which you can look down and see others everywherego astray and wander while seeking the path of their life, 10competing in wits and contending over their nobility;throughout nights and days they strive with outstanding labourto come out at the peak of riches and have power over everything.O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!In what shadows of life and in how many dangers 15is this bit of life, whatever it may be, being spent by you! Do you not seethat nature barks for nothing other than this – thatgrief be separated from the body and far away, and that the mind enjoypleasant feelings cut off from anxiety and fear? Epicurus' advice to his young friend Pythocles to ‘flee all education, raising up the top sail’ (παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, ϕεῦγε τἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, Diog.Laert. 10.6 = Epicurus fr. 163 Us.) contains an allusion to Circe's advice to Odysseus in Odyssey 12.37–58. For much of the Greek (and Roman) world, education was based on the Homeric epics, and thus Epicurus' statement represents a complicated position towards Homer in particular and poetry in general. Epicurean philosophy rejects poetry because it is misleading about the gods and the nature of the soul, but Epicurus and his followers, most notably Philodemus and Lucretius, engage in poetic allusion and even the composition of poetry. Much work has been done on allusions to poetry in all three writers, but I hope here to bring out a heretofore unnoticed poetic allusion at the start of De rerum natura Book 2, in which Lucretius makes a programmatic statement about not only his philosophy, but also his poetry and its place in the poetic tradition.


Author(s):  
Suparna Roy

Stevie Jackson and Jackie Jones regarded in her article- Contemporary Feminist Theory that “The concepts of gender and sexuality as a highly ambiguous term, as a point of reference” (Jackson, 131, ch-10). Gender and Sexuality are two most complexly designed, culturally constructed and ambiguously interrelated terms used within the spectrum of Feminism that considers “sex” as an operative term to theorize its deconstructive cultural perspectives. Helene Cixous notes in Laugh of Medusa that men and women enter the symbolic order in a different way and the subject position open to either sex is different. Cixious’s understanding that the centre of the symbolic order is ‘phallus’ and everybody surrounding it stands in the periphery makes women (without intersectionality) as the victim of this phallocentric society. One needs to stop thinking Gender as inherently linked to one’s sex and that it is natural. To say, nothing is natural. The body is just a word (as Judith Butler said in her book Gender Trouble [1990]) that is strategically used under artificial rules for the convenience of ‘power’ to operate. It has been a “norm” to connect one’s sexuality with their Gender and establish that as “naturally built”. The dichotomy of ‘penis/vagina’ over years has linked itself to make/female understanding of bodies. Therefore my main argument in this paper is to draw few instances from some literary works which over time reflected how the gender- female/women characters are made to couple up with a male/man presenting the inherent, coherent compulsory relation between one’s gender and sexuality obliterating any possibility of ‘queer’ relationships, includes- Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), Bombay Brides (2018) by Esther David, Paulo Coelho’s Winner Stands Alone (2008) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall apart (1958).


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-191
Author(s):  
Nicholas Xenos

David McNally styles this book as beginning in a polemic and ending in a “materialist approach to language” much indebted to the German critic Walter Benjamin. The charge is that “postmodernist theory, whether it calls itself poststructuralism, deconstruction or post-Marxism, is constituted by a radical attempt to banish the real human body—the sensate, biocultural, laboring body—from the sphere of language and social life” (p. 1). By treating language as an abstraction, McNally argues, postmodernism constitutes a form of idealism. More than that, it succumbs to and perpetuates the fetishism of commodities disclosed by Marx insofar as it treats the products of human laboring bodies as entities independently of them. Clearly irritated by the claims to radicalism made by those he labels postmodern, McNally thinks he has found their Achilles' heel: “The extra-discursive body, the body that exceeds language and discourse, is the ‘other’ of the new idealism, the entity it seeks to efface in order to bestow absolute sovereignty on language. To acknowledge the centrality of the sensate body to language and society is thus to threaten the whole edifice of postmodernist theory” (p. 2).


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