scholarly journals Mesmerization with the Lights On: Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”

Text Matters ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 353-368
Author(s):  
Robert Tindol
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Insight Into

Edgar Allan Poe’s eerie short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is a particularly noteworthy example of the sublime, a psychological state in which one is overwhelmed by the magnitude of that which is perceived by the mind. Valdemar exemplifies the sublime in that his death has somehow been suspended in time because he was under hypnosis as part of a medical experiment at the moment of his passing. However, the story also draws particular attention to the means by which insight into the nature of death is acquired by the hypnotist who narrates the story. For a more comprehensive understanding of the sublime experience, one may turn to the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan and the postmodernist work of Slavoj Žižek, which lead to the conclusion that the dramatic chain of events in “Valdemar” is an example of the sliding signifier, and, moreover, that the instability of the signifier may explain the sublime effect.

Interpassivity and Misdemeanours: The Art of Thinking in Examples and the Žižekian Toolbox

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pfaller
Keyword(s):  
Specific Role ◽  
Slavoj Zizek ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
The Sublime

Starting from a passage from Slavoj Žižek`s brilliant book The Sublime Object of Ideology, the very passage on canned laughter that gave such precious support for the development of the theory of interpassivity, this chapter examines a question that has proved indispensable for the study of interpassivity: namely, what does it mean for a theory to proceed by examples? What is the specific role of the example in certain example-friendly theories, for example in Žižek’s philosophy?

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CATEGORY OF GUILT THROUGH PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Хусейн Вахаевич Идрисов
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Psychological State

Статья посвящена характеристике элемента вины в теории психоанализа. Рассматриваются основные положения психоанализа в отношении таких категорий как вина, стыд, совесть, чувство неполноценности и ряд др. В заключении работы формулируется вывод о том, что вина как психологическое чувство, определенное внутреннее психологическое состояние, возникает в ситуациях, когда индивид претерпевает дискомфортные состояния, связанные с внешними последствиями, проявлениями своего поведения, действий, выходящих за рамки общепринятых правил. the article is devoted to the characterization of the element of guilt in the theory of psychoanalysis. Discusses the tenets of psychoanalysis in relation to such categories as guilt, shame, conscience, a sense of inferiority and many others. In the conclusion of the work, the conclusion is formulated that guilt as a psychological feeling, a certain internal psychological state, occurs in situations when an individual undergoes uncomfortable states associated with external consequences, manifestations of his behavior, actions that go beyond the generally accepted rules.

Nature and the Sublime

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sandy
Keyword(s):  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Percy Bysshe Shelley ◽  
John Keats ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
John Clare ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Mind

An account of Edmund Burke’s central ideas about the Sublime and the Beautiful shows how the emphasis Burke gave to terror helped to shape the Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. Focusing on examples from the poetry of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Charlotte Smith, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare, the remainder of this essay explores the ways in which Romantic poets both thought about and attempted to represent those elements of the sublime that were instigated by their encounters with the natural world. What emerges as defining about these interactions between the mind and world is how imaginative impulses towards a sense of the sublime often led to a renewed sense of the material world and the very contingencies of existence they sought to transcend. Even Wordsworth’s more reverential response to the natural world as sacrosanct recognises the ‘awe’ of the sublime can be as much consoling as it is disturbing. These disturbing aspects of natural process and the sublime are self-consciously explored in the poetry of Shelley, who subjects notions of transcendence and idealism to sceptical scrutiny. With varying degrees of emphases, the poetry of Byron, Smith, and Clare elide distinctions between nature and culture to acknowledge a sublime more explicitly shaped by temporal and material processes. Finally, a key episode in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale is read as exemplifying the many difficulties and complexities of the Romantic imagination’s encounter with, and its attempts, to represent transcendence and the sublime.

Take-Em!

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Charles Williams ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Bonding Time ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Father And Son ◽  
Undue Pressure

At what point is a discussion a debate, and at what point is it undue pressure? Is all unwanted pressure a kind of manipulation and violence? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, the narrator is invited by his father to go duck hunting as part of their bonding time. The narrator wants to spend time with his father, but expresses ethical concerns about hunting ducks. The father asserts hunting is a natural part of human evolution. The debate continues as the narrator decides to go on the hunt, but is undecided if he will pull the trigger. The story ends with father and son in the blind just at the moment before the narrator must decide if he is going to pull the trigger.

scholarly journals From de Clérambault's Theory of Mental Automatism to Lacan's Theory of the Psychotic Structure

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Vanheule
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Clinical Issues ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
Structural Perspective

In 1966, in a paper on those who have influenced his work, Jacques Lacan suggested that his concept of ‘paranoid knowledge’ and his structural approach to psychoanalysis were closely linked to the work of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. This article examines both of these points. Starting with an introduction to de Clérambault, focusing on his concept ‘mental automatism,’ the link between ‘mental automatism’ and ‘paranoid knowledge’ is discussed. Loyalty to Henri Claude and conflicts around theoretical and clinical issues seem to lie at the basis of Lacan's initial neglect of his conceptual indebtedness to de Clérambault. Second, the author discusses the presumed connection between mental automatism and Lacan's structural psychoanalytic theory, which Lacan did not elaborate. It is argued that from a structural perspective, mental automatism comes down to a rupture in the continuity of the signifying chain, which provokes the disappearance of the subject. Furthermore, Lacan's theory implies the hypothesis that manifestations of mental automatism are determined by a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, where questions related to existence cannot be addressed in a stable way. Lacanian theory thus retained de Clérambault's notion of a rupture in mental life that lies at the basis of psychosis, but replaced his biological framework with the dimension of the subject as produced through speech.

scholarly journals The teachings of Alexei Chernyakov about the soul and mind: reflections and comments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleg Gushchin
Keyword(s):  
General Feeling ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Continuous Dynamic ◽  
Common Feeling ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Mind

Chernyakov in his famous monograph reveals the concept of the soul through the opposite — the concept of the mind. But the point is not only in the explication of the concept through the opposite meaning. Following the logic of Chernyakov, the soul and mind at a certain stage fall into a kind of dynamic unity as the highest participation in the divine gaze. Being, according to Aristotle, a common feeling, the soul is through continuous “flipping” of private feelings, and so that in the formula: “I feel and understand what I feel,” the second term is exfoliated, i.e. the terminological limitation has been removed. As a result, the pure movement “feel the feeling of feeling” is released as a continuity of sensual evidence. The soul lives in the gaps of the mind and sees its infinity in them. Chernyakov draws attention to the fact that any distinction is simultaneously and latently the moment of binding distinctions. But the moments of discrimination / binding in soul and mind are given in different ways. Awakening (discriminating), the soul simultaneously connects the different so as to survey the all-encompassing expanse of itself and all that exists in the unity of self-movement. The soul, like the mind, is a form without matter, but in a different way from the mind. The soul also moves towards the object, but does not deviate from it to meet with itself, as the mind does, but passes through the object at the moment when it is already (still) decomposed or is in a de-objectified form. An object, being the energy of the mind, is "weathered" in relation to the soul, leaving a kind of living sensory imprint, the soul revives when it connects sensory imprints of objects, meeting itself in them. Chernyakov, referring to Aristotle, believes that the general feeling really contains in some way all the objects of the senses (but without matter). We explain to ourselves that these objects are in a de-objectified form. Unimpeded by overcoming (opening) the gap of the mind, the soul “sees” (binds) a multitude of sensory forms, in each of which a free gaze as such is released. This is not a gaze fixed on something unchanging. And it is also not a perception, which, as part of a speculative form, adds a new “perceive something” to “I perceive something”. Now the act: “I perceive something” is opened and partially discarded, leaving only an independent, continuous dynamic attachment in the remainder: “perceives” + “perceives” + “perceives”, etc.

scholarly journals What is the Meaning of Immanuel Kant’s Notion of the Human Being as the Ultimate End of Nature?

Problemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
Danutė Bacevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Vulnerability ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Lisbon Earthquake ◽  
Ecological Problems ◽  
Natural Element ◽  
Ethical Vision ◽  
Insight Into

The article explores Kant’s notion of the human being as the ultimate end of nature, presenting an ethical interpretation of this notion. The author of this article believes that the analysis of Kant’s assumptions will allow a deeper understanding of our own hermeneutical situation, in which ecological problems force us to rethink our relationship with nature and the meaning of human existence. Analyzing Kant’s early texts on Lisbon earthquake and his reflection on the sublime in the Critique of Judgement, the author asks how the experience of an uncontrolled natural element complements Kant’s ethical vision of nature’s teleology. Emphasizing the importance of insight into human vulnerability for the implementation of moral purpose in nature, the article outlines guidelines for interpretation that allow the relevance of Kant’s position in the context of contemporary environmental ethics.

scholarly journals Catching the wandering mind: Meditation as a window into spontaneous thought

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Hasenkamp
Keyword(s):  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Physiological Measures ◽  
Great Utility ◽  
Spontaneous Thought ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Subjective Reports ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Research Recommendations

This chapter considers a form of attention-based meditation as a novel means to gain insight into the mechanisms and phenomenology of spontaneous thought. Focused attention (FA) meditation involves keeping one’s attention on a chosen object, and repeatedly catching the mind when it strays from the object into spontaneous thought. This practice can thus be viewed as a kind of self-caught mind wandering paradigm, which suggests it may have great utility for research on spontaneous thought. Current findings about the effects of meditation on mind wandering and meta-awareness are reviewed, and implications for new research paradigms that leverage first-person reporting during FA meditation are discussed. Specifically, research recommendations are made that may enable customized analysis of individual episodes of mind wandering and their neural correlates. It is hoped that by combining detailed subjective reports from experienced meditators with rigorous objective physiological measures, we can advance our understanding of human consciousness.

scholarly journals Sounding diasporic dislocation: The object voice in postcolonial short stories

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Jorge Sacido-Romero
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Acoustic Field ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Introductory Part ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Limited Scope

Jacques Lacan conceives of the voice as more than meets the ear: that is, as an objet a that must be subtracted from the acoustic field to preserve the coherence of reality as a symbolically constructed order in which subjects are inserted and from which they derive a sense of identity. Disruptive manifestations of the object voice are frequent in the modernist and postmodernist British short story, a form which, on account of its brevity and limited scope, renders more sharply the traumatic nature of such episodes, which thus become more memorable and engaging for readers. The short story, likewise, is an apt vehicle for postcolonial and diasporic subjectivities characterized by the tensions and psychic distress provoked by their liminal location between different cultures and their heterogenous and often conflicting interpellations. After an introductory part which elaborates on the interrelations between object voice, the short story genre and the postcolonial subject, this article examines two recent stories by Koye Oyedeji (‘Postscript from the Black Atlantic’) and Diriye Osman (‘Earthling’), in which existential conflicts become so acute that they trigger aural hallucinations, which determine the central characters’ predicament in the context of the migrant diaspora in Britain.

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