scholarly journals My performance is my world. Queer and normativity in the practices of New York’s ballroom culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Łukasz Kiełpiński

The central concept of the article is performance as a form of expression specific to non-normative people. In confrontation with the oppressive discourse of dominant groups, the body of an excluded individual and its metamorphoses in themselves appear to be an alternative way of non-alienated expression. This phenomenon is discussed via the example of the practices of New York’s ballroom culture — primarily via the example of the film Paris is Burning from 1990, directed by Jennie Livingston. In the ballroom community, black and non-heteronormative Americans found a safe space for experiments with their identity, thanks to which they could experience a form of capitalistic success through an ephemeral performance. However, these practices, despite their apparent subversiveness and emancipatory potential, did not have the ambition to change the status quo. They only allowed experiencing the feeling of social advancement within the existing system. The story that ballroom culture members in the 1980s told about themselves through their own performances was part of a unique, non-verbal discourse of excluded groups, which developed a specific communication code based on the human body, its ways of moving and its aesthetic metamorphoses.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Chantelle VanDeWeghe

Tracey Emin's My Bed (1998) presents an alternative representation to normative notions of the body, offending hegemonic propriety so greatly that it caused a tabloid media sensation when it was shortlisted for the 1999 Turner Prize. Emin applies certain feminist notions as she continues the motif of the reclining nude, offering semiotic gestures that indicate evidence of the body rather that the body itself. My Bed is the site of trauma and disgust, with all of the abjection left intact, and above all, a self expressionist piece documenting her personal trauma. The expressionist qualities harkens back to cultural discourse of hysteria, reinforcing the legitimacy of the feminist lens. Hysteria is a performance that Emin represents through confessing her traumatic history. Like the archetypal reality television star, she confesses personal emotions and histories, but breaks the status quo by offering an alternative representation with the abjected authenticity of the bed.


Author(s):  
С. С. Бескаравайний

The article discusses the analogies between the formation of humanity as a collective subject, and the modern process of forming artificial intelligence, which should also have the features of a collective subject. It is shown that attempts to rely solely on the study of individual intelligence are unproductive. The isomorphism of anthroposociogenesis and the creation of AI is motivated by the following: AI is created by human civilization - therefore, its thinking will reproduce both the features of individual intelligence and the features of civilization that ensure the socialization of the individual. The problem of copying consciousness is difficult to analyze, therefore, the formation of subjectivity is considered. A technosubject is a collection of devices and programs that can determine their own future. It has been established that the bio-genetic law acts as a vector for the evolutionary variability of technical devices and sets the boundary conditions that must be met in the process of becoming a techno-subject. Copying the process of the emergence of the human mind and at the same time the practice of society in the accumulation and processing of information shows the path of development. Since now all functional mechanisms of the development of the mind and consciousness have not been revealed, it is necessary to correlate the new, computer mind with the form, with the external manifestations of the previous, natural, intelligence. There are also differences between these processes: 1) in comparison with the formation of human intelligence, the formation of AI is more reflexive, conscious, 2) the fundamentally different physicality of AI, due to the transfer of a large amount of information between machines, 3) the formation of techno-subject can be completely different in speed, since the learning ability of neural networks can exceed the learning ability of a person. Now, technological structures for storing information that we perceive in a socio-technological context can become elements of the body of a new subject. The Internet of things shows the possibility of a fundamentally new physicality, and communications in it are equivalent to unconscious biochemical processes in the human body. At the same time, copying the forms of the human body is redundant, but copying of manipulators and robot operators that can interact with the infrastructure created by man is necessary. It is shown that the Internet as a whole, as a single system, in modern conditions cannot become an AI carrier, it is more a medium than a subject. The carriers of AI should be the structural units of the technosphere, which will become the spokesmen of those contradictions that are sources of development. Probably, these will be technocenoses that will strive to achieve autotrophy, which will require extremely clear goal-setting from them, and, as a result, will lead them to the status of a techno-subject.


2012 ◽  
Vol 253-255 ◽  
pp. 2231-2236
Author(s):  
Rong Yi Niu ◽  
Xiao Yan Yin ◽  
Ming Yu Zhao

Basing on the status quo of the development of electric vehicle and electric vehicle’s Charging/battery swap infrastructure, Discussion and analysis is made with focus on the battery swap mode and it’s practising method of electric passenger car. According to the body structure of different types of electric passenger car and the Situation that the battery pack is equipped with, Electric passenger car are divided into two types: chassis battery type and battery rear-equipped type. Respectively, analyzed the battery swap mode for the two types of electric passenger cars; And two feasible battery swap projects are advanced , analysed and compared.Then pointed out the difficulties and problems with the construction of the battery swap station for electric passenger car; Finally, suggestions and methods to solve the problems were offered.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-40
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Lambe

Abstract Antonio Maceo Grajales (1845–1896) is one of the most celebrated heroes of Cuban independence. Though he died before he could see the dawn of a sovereign, if U.S.-occupied, Cuba, Maceo would become an important node of nationalist commemoration. Throughout this process, Maceo’s blackness represented both a source of his prestige—the struggle against African slavery had been intimately tied to independence—and a barometer of lingering racial inequalities. Posthumous depictions thus tended to downplay racial tensions in a unifying vision of nation. Yet Maceo’s martyrdom in the Spanish-Cuban-American War also reverberated in more uncanny registers. Before and after his death, apocryphal sons emerged periodically from the shadows, opening battles over Maceo’s legacy. In their movement across borders, these real and apocryphal children gave voice to silences around race and sovereignty as they converged on the body of their lionized “father,” while also opening up narrative spaces wherein the status quo could be reimagined.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Georgievna Krushinovskaya

  This article is dedicated to comprehension of the idea of technification of body, as well as practical results and consequences of its implementation. The author examines the emergence of individual dimensionality of body, its relevant perception, as well as goals and meanings of the heightened technoscientific attention toward it. The idea of radical transformation of a human, is acquiring the status of feasible, and the purpose of such transformation consists in elimination of natural principles, and thus, predetermination of a human through gradual technification of body — imposition of high technologies for modification of its external and internal structure. A human is essentially opposed to the natural world, his initial biological “insufficiency” assigns the ability to transcend the givenness, which underlies the establishment and evolution of culture. Such circumstance in a certain way is the cause of instrumental attitude to the body, which is of biological origin. In the process of cultural development, body acquires the status of personal property, which means liberation from its nonhuman determination. In the modern context, the aforementioned trends supported by technological progress and transhumanist expectations, result in the fact that body as a "soma", as a local autopoietic biosystem is being abated. The elimination of the purpose of human body set by nature is interpreted as “self-sovereignty"; however, the abolition of natural determinism implies the emergence of technological determinism.  


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Chantelle VanDeWeghe

Tracey Emin's My Bed (1998) presents an alternative representation to normative notions of the body, offending hegemonic propriety so greatly that it caused a tabloid media sensation when it was shortlisted for the 1999 Turner Prize. Emin applies certain feminist notions as she continues the motif of the reclining nude, offering semiotic gestures that indicate evidence of the body rather that the body itself. My Bed is the site of trauma and disgust, with all of the abjection left intact, and above all, a self expressionist piece documenting her personal trauma. The expressionist qualities harkens back to cultural discourse of hysteria, reinforcing the legitimacy of the feminist lens. Hysteria is a performance that Emin represents through confessing her traumatic history. Like the archetypal reality television star, she confesses personal emotions and histories, but breaks the status quo by offering an alternative representation with the abjected authenticity of the bed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-149
Author(s):  
Barbara Sasse

»Old Poet«, New Readings: Recent Work on Hans Sachs and Perspectives for Future Research Stimulated by the flourishing of research on literature and culture of the early modern period in recent decades across the disciplines, interest in the body of literary works by the Nuremberg author Hans Sachs (1494–1576) is also on the rise again. This paper offers a report on scholarship devoted to his wide-ranging creative output and published between the re-emergence of Sachs studies in the mid-1970s up until the present day. Beginning with a retrospective that is primarily thematic in structure, it then turns to a discussion (in terms both of methodology and of content) of the focus and findings of studies to date, including the consideration of continuing gaps and desiderata. The latter are in the main related to textual problems, but also touch on many other aspects (literary, historical etc.) yet to be properly examined. There follows, finally, a delineation, based on the status quo as presented, of four highly relevant fields of study: the report thus provides a thematic and methodological framework of potential use for future research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Dimitri Ginev

This article explores the status of the human body within configured social practices. It argues that the body is at once situated in configurations of practices and transcended by the horizons of possibilities upon which these practices project their existence as a potentiality-for-being. The human body’s status of situated transcendence is addressed in terms of a hermeneutic theory of practices that conceptualizes the interplay of practices and possibilities. Placed within this interplay, the body cannot be taken as a static point of reference. This conclusion is employed for the purpose of criticizing a series of conceptions that defends or at least leaves enough room for essentialist conceptualization of the body.


2019 ◽  
pp. 115-127
Author(s):  
Michał Chaberek

This paper elaborates upon the status of the Theology of the Body (TOB) among the philosoph- ical and theological disciplines. The TOB is a relevant part of ecclesiastical reflection due to the modern cultural context. The genesis of the TOB is deeply rooted in social, political and econo- mic development of the Western civilization after the Enlightenment and Positivism of the 19th c. The TOB is a part of theology which is a valid and necessary part of the human knowledge. The justification for the TOB comes from its subject matter, which is the human body. The human body transcends physical reality through its actions and points towards the invisible realm of the soul and morality. The TOB needs to be recognized as one of the ontological disciplines rather than a deontological one, only. The TOB can be categorized as a part of fundamental theology within systematic theology.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Werneck Regina

RESUMOSão partilhadas reflexões acerca de uma pesquisa sobre quais as qualidades são destacadas pelas pessoas panará quando se reconhece o estatuto de sujeito dos humanos e não humanos. A partir de narrativas da origem da mulher e das práticas sociais a elas conectadas, é explicitado que a condição de humanidade é incompleta para abarcar a identificação de uma subjetividade. O que é associado à animalidade parece ser incluído na configuração de pessoa, incidindo nas formas corporais humana e animal do mesmo sujeito ou de pessoas que dele descenderam. Tornar inteligível a afirmativa de que gente alta descende de jaburu e baixa de anta entremeia o texto, contornando um antromorfismo heterogêneo e sugerindo que o comum entre humano e não humano inclui aspectos físicos, afetivos e performáticos. A relação entre alimento, divisão e multiplicação com o corpo é enfática e problematizada, paralelamente. Palavras-chave: Panará. Jê. Corpo. Humano. Não Humano. ABSTRACT Reflections are shared about a research on what qualities are highlighted by people Panará when it recognizes the status of subject of human and non human. From narratives of women's origin and social practices connected to them, it is explained that the human condition is incomplete to include the identification of a subjectivity. What is associated with animality seems to be included in one configuration, focusing the human body shapes and animals of the same subject or who it descended. Make intelligible the assertion that high people descended from jaburu and low tapir intersperses text, bypassing a heterogeneous anthropomorphism and suggesting that the common between human and non human includes physical, emotional and performative. The relationship between food, divide and multiply in the body is emphatic and problematized in parallel. Keywords: Panará. Gê. Body. Human. Not human.


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