Expression and Silence: Music and Language in Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Phenomenology

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1093-1116
Author(s):  
Rhonda Siu

Despite increasing application of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body in areas like music education, there remains little philosophical scholarship on music’s role in his philosophy. This is partly because Merleau-Ponty does not write about music in an explicit manner. However, he does open the possibility for such an account via his unconventional yet highly suggestive claim that language and music are both equally “creative” forms of expression. This paper draws out that link between musical and linguistic expression by expounding what Merleau-Ponty views as their shared basis – the corporeal, affective, and transformative dimension of all expression. It locates the core of this expressivity in his rich conception of “silence.” More generally, the analysis reveals how, despite the lack of explicit discussion of music in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, when viewed in light of his insights into language and expression, music does feature implicitly in his early and more mature works, being intertwined with his notions of “style,” “gesture” and “flesh” as well as his general critiques of intellectualism and empiricism.

Author(s):  
Jonathan Savage

Music education exists in multiple spaces. Within formal approaches to music education in academic institutions, there has been an acknowledgment that more informal pedagogical approaches can be useful (as evidenced in the work of movements such as Musical Futures). However, constructive links between formal and informal contexts for music education remain difficult to navigate for many teachers. Within the United Kingdom, the newly defined roles for music education hubs have made some headway in recasting these relationships in a more productive direction. Similarly, social media has an important role to play in developing new relationships between key agencies within music education. Like any specific technology, there are positive affordances and more negative limitations to such approaches. People have a complex relationship with technology, but they are not gadgets! Lanier’s (2010) thesis argues strongly that recent cultural developments can deaden personal interaction, stifle genuine inventiveness, and change people. Within an educational setting, careful consideration needs to be given to the affordances and limitations of social media. For teachers and designers of learning spaces and opportunities, pedagogy should be underpinned by careful, mindful choices—including wise choices about the tools that teachers and students are using. It is about a focus on the core, asking: What is the key learning that this music lesson is facilitating? Is this tool the best one for the job? Does this tool or approach allow one to teach music musically? Done skillfully and conscientiously, social media can help develop collaborative approaches to music education that provide teachers with pedagogical strength and security. They result in mindful teaching and mindful learning that will last a lifetime. They can also help teachers develop meaningful relationships with students that help them make sense of their musical experiences in whatever context they have emerged through: a truly, “joined-up” approach to music education with the student at the core.


Author(s):  
Marissa Silverman

This chapter asks an important, yet seemingly illusive, question: In what ways does the internet provide (or not) activist—or, for present purposes “artivist”—opportunities and engagements for musicing, music sharing, and music teaching and learning? According to Asante (2008), an “artivist (artist + activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation” (p. 6). Given this view, can (and should) social media be a means to achieve artivism through online musicing and music sharing, and, therefore, music teaching and learning? Taking a feminist perspective, this chapter interrogates the nature of cyber musical artivism as a potential means to a necessary end: positive transformation. In what ways can social media be a conduit (or hindrance) for cyber musical artivism? What might musicing and music sharing gain (or lose) from engaging with online artivist practices? In addition to a philosophical investigation, this chapter will examine select case studies of online artivist music making and music sharing communities with the above concerns in mind, specifically as they relate to music education.


Author(s):  
David Carus

This chapter explores Schopenhauer’s concept of force, which lies at the root of his philosophy. It is force in nature and thus in natural science that is inexplicable and grabs Schopenhauer’s attention. To answer the question of what this inexplicable term is at the root of all causation, Schopenhauer looks to the will within us. Through will, he maintains that we gain immediate insight into forces in nature and hence into the thing in itself at the core of everything and all things. Will is thus Schopenhauer’s attempt to answer the question of the essence of appearance. Yet will, as it turns out, cannot be known immediately as it is subject to time, and the acts of will, which we experience within us, do not correlate immediately with the actions of the body (as Schopenhauer had originally postulated). Hence, the acts of will do not lead to an explanation of force, which is at the root of causation in nature. Schopenhauer sets out to explain what is at the root of all appearances, derived from the question of an original cause, or as Schopenhauer states “the cause of causation,” but cannot determine this essence other than by stating that it is will; a will, however, that cannot be immediately known.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Elias Bibri

AbstractA new era is presently unfolding wherein both smart urbanism and sustainable urbanism processes and practices are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism under what has to be identified as data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. This flourishing field of research is profoundly interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in nature. It operates out of the understanding that advances in knowledge necessitate pursuing multifaceted questions that can only be resolved from the vantage point of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. This implies that the research problems within the field of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism are inherently too complex and dynamic to be addressed by single disciplines. As this field is not a specific direction of research, it does not have a unitary disciplinary framework in terms of a uniform set of the academic and scientific disciplines from which the underlying theories can be drawn. These theories constitute a unified foundation for the practice of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. Therefore, it is of significant importance to develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework. With that in regard, this paper identifies, describes, discusses, evaluates, and thematically organizes the core academic and scientific disciplines underlying the field of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. This work provides an important lens through which to understand the set of established and emerging disciplines that have high integration, fusion, and application potential for informing the processes and practices of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. As such, it provides fertile insights into the core foundational principles of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism as an applied domain in terms of its scientific, technological, and computational strands. The novelty of the proposed framework lies in its original contribution to the body of foundational knowledge of an emerging field of urban planning and development.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANIRUDDH D. PATEL ◽  
MEREDITH WONG ◽  
JESSICA FOXTON ◽  
ALIETTE LOCHY ◽  
ISABELLE PERETZ

TO WHAT EXTENT DO MUSIC and language share neural mechanisms for processing pitch patterns? Musical tone-deafness (amusia) provides important evidence on this question. Amusics have problems with musical melody perception, yet early work suggested that they had no problems with the perception of speech intonation (Ayotte, Peretz, & Hyde, 2002). However, here we show that about 30% of amusics from independent studies (British and French-Canadian) have difficulty discriminating a statement from a question on the basis of a final pitch fall or rise. This suggests that pitch direction perception deficits in amusia (known from previous psychophysical work) can extend to speech. For British amusics, the direction deficit is related to the rate of change of the final pitch glide in statements/ questions, with increased discrimination difficulty when rates are relatively slow. These findings suggest that amusia provides a useful window on the neural relations between melodic processing in language and music.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 2780
Author(s):  
Zahra Rahemtulla ◽  
Theodore Hughes-Riley ◽  
Tilak Dias

Overexposure to hand transmitted vibrations (HTVs) from prolonged use of vibrating power tools can result in severe injuries. By monitoring the exposure of a worker to HTVs, overexposure, and injury, can be mitigated. An ideal HTV-monitoring system would measure vibration were it enters the body, which for many power tools will be the palm and fingers, however this is difficult to achieve using conventional transducers as they will affect the comfort of the user and subsequently alter the way that the tool is held. By embedding a transducer within the core of a textile yarn, that can be used to produce a glove, vibration can be monitored close to where it enters the body without compromising the comfort of the user. This work presents a vibration-sensing electronic yarn that was created by embedding a commercially available accelerometer within the structure of a yarn. These yarns were subsequently used to produce a vibration-sensing glove. The purpose of this study is to characterize the response of the embedded accelerometer over a range of relevant frequencies and vibration amplitudes at each stage of the electronic yarn’s manufacture to understand how the yarn structure influences the sensors response. The vibration-sensing electronic yarn was subsequently incorporated into a fabric sample and characterized. Finally, four vibration-sensing electronic yarns were used to produce a vibration-sensing glove that is capable of monitoring vibration at the palm and index finger.


2003 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Tikuisis

Certain previous studies suggest, as hypothesized herein, that heat balance (i.e., when heat loss is matched by heat production) is attained before stabilization of body temperatures during cold exposure. This phenomenon is explained through a theoretical analysis of heat distribution in the body applied to an experiment involving cold water immersion. Six healthy and fit men (mean ± SD of age = 37.5 ± 6.5 yr, height = 1.79 ± 0.07 m, mass = 81.8 ± 9.5 kg, body fat = 17.3 ± 4.2%, maximal O2 uptake = 46.9 ± 5.5 l/min) were immersed in water ranging from 16.4 to 24.1°C for up to 10 h. Core temperature (Tco) underwent an insignificant transient rise during the first hour of immersion, then declined steadily for several hours, although no subject's Tco reached 35°C. Despite the continued decrease in Tco, shivering had reached a steady state of ∼2 × resting metabolism. Heat debt peaked at 932 ± 334 kJ after 2 h of immersion, indicating the attainment of heat balance, but unexpectedly proceeded to decline at ∼48 kJ/h, indicating a recovery of mean body temperature. These observations were rationalized by introducing a third compartment of the body, comprising fat, connective tissue, muscle, and bone, between the core (viscera and vessels) and skin. Temperature change in this “mid region” can account for the incongruity between the body's heat debt and the changes in only the core and skin temperatures. The mid region temperature decreased by 3.7 ± 1.1°C at maximal heat debt and increased slowly thereafter. The reversal in heat debt might help explain why shivering drive failed to respond to a continued decrease in Tco, as shivering drive might be modulated by changes in body heat content.


Author(s):  
Anthony Brandt ◽  
L. Robert Slevc ◽  
Molly Gebrian

Language and music are readily distinguished by adults, but there is growing evidence that infants first experience speech as a special type of music. By listening to the phonemic inventory and prosodic patterns of their caregivers’ speech, infants learn how their native language is composed, later bootstrapping referential meaning onto this musical framework. Our current understanding of infants’ sensitivities to the musical features of speech, the co-development of musical and linguistic abilities, and shared developmental disorders, supports the view that music and language are deeply entangled in the infant brain and modularity emerges over the course of development. This early entanglement of music and language is crucial to the cultural transmission of language and children’s ability to learn any of the world’s tongues.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
J.L. Ayuso-Mateos

The concept of disability has changed enormously, from a notion of handicap (ICIDM,1980) to the idea of person with disability (ICF,2001). The ICF considers three different levels of disability: body, person and environment, offering a possibility to address it in a universal, integrative and interactive perspective. The utility of the ICF in shifting the attention from a medical to a biopsychosocial perspective is therefore accepted. Having 1464 categories, it is hardly applicable to clinical practice and research. Mood disorders are characterized by a variety of psychiatric and somatic symptoms, associated with a significant loss of quality of life and functioning. Practical tools, such as Core Sets, that cover the spectrum of problems are needed. ICF Core Sets have been developed for depression and are currently being developed by our group for bipolar disorder. The ICF Comprehensive Core Sets for depression is the second larger among 12 Comprehensive ICF Core Sets for chronic disorders. This fact reflects the complex limitations in functioning and the numerous interactions with environmental factors. From the first version of the ICF Core Sets for depression as well as the preliminary studies for the bipolar disorder's core sets mental functions are mostly represented among the body functions domain. Few aspects important to mood disorders, as suicide, have been found to be relevant from both a systematic literature review and an expert survey in BD and in the consensus conference were the Core Sets for depression were establish but are not covered in the ICF.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Marxiano Melotti

In post-modernity, the millenarian search for mythical sites has become a tourist attraction and the process of culturalization of consumption has created and is creating a new global heritage. Places already celebrated for leisure have been reinvented as mythical and archaeological sites. A good example is the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. Here, Plato’s mythical Atlantis has inspired an underwater pseudo-archaeological reconstruction of a civilization that most likely had never existed. The myth-making force of the sea transforms the false ruins and affects how they are perceived. This is quite consistent with a tourism where authenticity has lost its traditional value and sensory gratifications have replaced it. A more recent Atlantis Hotel in Dubai and another one under construction in China show the vitality of this myth and the strength of the thematization of consumption. Other examples confirm this tendency in even more grotesque ways. At the core of this process there is the body: the tourist’s and the consumer’s body. The post-modernity has enhanced its use as tool and icon of consumption.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document