The Will Not to Know

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-78

COVID-19 has been gradually fading from the headlines since summer’s end, and other news has moved into the lead. However, the pandemic has not gone away, nor have expectations of a second wave. Famous philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek refers to this tendency as “the will not to know” in opposition to the title of Michel Foucault’s Lectures on the Will to Know. Behind this phenomenon Žižek sees a tripartite structure at work along the lines of Freudian dream-work: there is “triangulation” between latent dream-thought, manifest dream-content, and the unconscious wish. The coronavirus itself corresponds to the “manifest dream text,” the focal point of our media, and is what we all talk (and dream) about. It is not merely an actual phenomenon, but also the object of fantasized connections, of dreams and fears. For that reason Žižek regards the switch to other news as fake, while the pandemic remains the true Master-Signifier. This Master-Signifier is overdetermined by a whole series of interconnected real-life facts and processes that form its dream-content, consisting not only of the reality of the health crisis, but also of ecological troubles and more. The hypothesis Žižek defends is that this interplay between the COVID-19 pandemic and the social causes that overdetermine it is not the whole story. There is a third level at work here (which corresponds to the true trauma, the unconscious wish of a dream), and this is the ontological catastrophe triggered by the pandemic, the undermining of the coordinates of our basic access to reality, which reaches far beyond a usual “mental crisis.”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihir R. Bhatt ◽  
Shilpi Srivastava ◽  
Megan Schmidt-Sane ◽  
Lyla Mehta

Since February 2021, countless lives have been lost in India, which has compounded the social and economic devastation caused by the second wave of COVID-19. The sharp surge in cases across the country overwhelmed the health infrastructure, with people left scrambling for hospital beds, critical drugs, and oxygen. As of May 2021, infections began to come down in urban areas. However, the effects of the second wave continued to be felt in rural areas. This is the worst humanitarian and public health crisis the country has witnessed since independence; while the continued spread of COVID-19 variants will have regional and global implications. With a slow vaccine rollout and overwhelmed health infrastructure, there is a critical need to examine India's response and recommend measures to further arrest the current spread of infection and to prevent and prepare against future waves. This brief is a rapid social science review and analysis of the second wave of COVID-19 in India. It draws on emerging reports, literature, and regional social science expertise to examine reasons for the second wave, explain its impact, and highlight the systemic issues that hindered the response. This brief puts forth vital considerations for local and national government, civil society, and humanitarian actors at global and national levels, with implications for future waves of COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries. This review is part of the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) series on the COVID-19 response in India. It was developed for SSHAP by Mihir R. Bhatt (AIDMI), Shilpi Srivastava (IDS), Megan Schmidt-Sane (IDS), and Lyla Mehta (IDS) with input and reviews from Deepak Sanan (Former Civil Servant; Senior Visiting Fellow, Centre for Policy Research), Subir Sinha (SOAS), Murad Banaji (Middlesex University London), Delhi Rose Angom (Oxfam India), Olivia Tulloch (Anthrologica) and Santiago Ripoll (IDS). It is the responsibility of SSHAP.


Two Homelands ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (54) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Della Puppa ◽  
Fabio Perocco

Deriving from multiple ecological-social causes, the novel coronavirus and, subsequently, the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected all spheres of societies of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered and amplified an economic crisis that existed before the health crisis. The combination of the two crises into a double “ecological-­healthcare” and “socio-economic” crisis has had multiple consequences for everyone on the economic, social, political, and cultural level; however, it has affected social classes, workers, genders, and territories in different ways, deepening social inequalities and worsening the social conditions of disadvantaged social groups: among the most affected social groups, we find migrants.


Author(s):  
Debdas Ganguly ◽  
Kaushik Kundu

The ideological aspects relating to the social framework of the Indian society have a tremendous appeal for the majority of the people. Some modifications occasionally have been the cause of unequal and uneven distribution of social causes, natural resources, national scopes, benefits, and opportunities. The population demography has a mixed nature of composition consisting of weaker to stronger in respect of education, affluence, cast construct, political and social status, etc., and consequently, it created two groups of people in the society – a group under the umbrella of exploitation, poverty, and insecurity, and the other being the reverse. This weaker section lying under the envelope of poverty developed because of this inequality, and it has been a permanent cause of adversities in Human Resource prospects in India. Human Resource is not an ordinary resource like money or material, but a resource to make all other resources usefully usable. This Human Resource needs to come through suitable scopes and opportunities so that they can develop themselves as required in the process of Human Resource planning. This chapter is an attempt to identify the real-life situation in this respect in India during the last three decades.


Author(s):  
Brigitte Holzinger ◽  
Franziska Nierwetberg ◽  
Larissa Cosentino ◽  
Lucille Mayer

Gestalt therapists believe that their task is to help their clients to experience repressed, ambivalent, and unpleasant things in order to accept and implement them in their whole self. To implement those ‘things’, those elements of the self, they need to be uncovered first, which is a process that often is achieved by dream work, as messages from the unconscious that are stuck in our dreams can be revealed by certain Gestalt-therapy methods. The method in focus is the newly developed DreamSenseMemory technique which is based on neurological findings on how the senses at play influence memory processing. Dream work with the DreamSenseMemory method has the advantage that by using this method on a regular basis, dream content will not only be remembered more often but also in more detail. Thus, effectively supporting dream work and its process of understanding the message of the unconscious, accepting the elements withing and implementing them in the self.


2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Ferguson ◽  
Stephanie M. Rueda

This article explores commonly discussed theories of violent video game effects: the social learning, mood management, and catharsis hypotheses. An experimental study was carried out to examine violent video game effects. In this study, 103 young adults were given a frustration task and then randomized to play no game, a nonviolent game, a violent game with good versus evil theme (i.e., playing as a good character taking on evil), or a violent game in which they played as a “bad guy.” Results indicated that randomized video game play had no effect on aggressive behavior; real-life violent video game-playing history, however, was predictive of decreased hostile feelings and decreased depression following the frustration task. Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 462-468
Author(s):  
Latika kothari ◽  
Sanskruti Wadatkar ◽  
Roshni Taori ◽  
Pavan Bajaj ◽  
Diksha Agrawal

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a communicable infection caused by the novel coronavirus resulting in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV). It was recognized to be a health crisis for the general population of international concern on 30th January 2020 and conceded as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. India is taking various measures to fight this invisible enemy by adopting different strategies and policies. To stop the COVID-19 from spreading, the Home Affairs Ministry and the health ministry, of India, has issued the nCoV 19 guidelines on travel. Screening for COVID-19 by asking questions about any symptoms, recent travel history, and exposure. India has been trying to get testing kits available. The government of India has enforced various laws like the social distancing, Janata curfew, strict lockdowns, screening door to door to control the spread of novel coronavirus. In this pandemic, innovative medical treatments are being explored, and a proper vaccine is being hunted to deal with the situation. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the current situation. Thus, this review illustrates and explains the criteria provided by the government of India to the awareness of the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 184
Author(s):  
Sari Herleni

This article describes about the figure of children world in a short story “Anggrek Rara” written by Ina Inong, by connecting the social structure in the text and in the real life. After analyzing the social structure in the story, it is found that the plot of this story was the progressive plot, the background was from the social fact that came from inner house and outer house, otherwise the central character were Rara and Bunda. By analyzing social structure of text, it was found that a family (home) is the serious and formal environment while outer house is free and non formal. The result of the research showed that the children short story “ Anggrek Rara” was expected to give the figure outlines of the children world.AbstrakPenelitian ini membahas tentang gambaran dunia anak dalam cerita pendek anak “Anggrek Rara” karya Ina Inong dengan menghubungkan struktur sosial teks dalam karya dan struktur sosial teks dengan realitas. Melalui analisis struktur sosial dalam karya terungkap bahwa alur cerita ini merupakan alur lurus, latar terdiri dari fakta sosial yang bersumber dari rumah dan di luar rumah, sedangkan tokoh Rara dan Bunda adalah tokoh sentral. Melalui analisis struktur sosial teks dengan realitas terungkap bahwa keluarga (rumah) merupakan lingkungan yang sifatnya serius dan formal, sedangkan di luar rumah bahkan bersifat bebas dan non formal. Hasil yang diperoleh dari analisis ini menunjukkan bahwa cerita pendek anak “Anggrek Rara” dianggap mampu memberikan garis-garis besar gambaran kehidupan dunia anak.


Author(s):  
Stephan Atzert

This chapter explores the gradual emergence of the notion of the unconscious as it pertains to the tradition that runs from Arthur Schopenhauer via Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer to Sabina Spielrein, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. A particular focus is put on the popularization of the term “unconscious” by von Hartmann and on the history of the death drive, which has Schopenhauer’s essay “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” as one of its precursors. In this essay, Schopenhauer develops speculatively the notion of a universal, intelligent, supraindividual unconscious—an unconscious with a purpose related to death. But the death drive also owes its origins to Schopenhauer’s “relative nothingness,” which Mainländer adopts into his philosophy as “absolute nothingness” resulting from the “will to death.” His philosophy emphasizes death as the goal of the world and its inhabitants. This central idea had a distinctive influence on the formation of the idea of the death drive, which features in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2261
Author(s):  
David Langlet ◽  
Aron Westholm

In the last 20 years, the EU has adopted some rather ambitious pieces of legislation with the aim to achieve a good environmental status in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Both the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) have a strong focus on the natural environment and biological criteria for assessing the status of the relevant ecosystems. In the same time period, much research on environmental governance has focused on the interconnectedness of social systems and ecosystems, so-called social-ecological systems (SES). While having high aspirations, the legal frameworks underpinning current EU water and marine management do not necessarily reflect the advances of contemporary science relating to SES. Using the geographical intersection of the two directives, i.e., coastal waters as a focal point, the paper explores the inchoate integration of social and ecological perspectives in the EU marine governance. What are the main challenges for the current EU legal regimes for managing coastal waters in a way that builds on the understanding of social and ecological systems as interconnected? Having explored the two directives, the paper introduces the possibility of using marine spatial planning (MSP), and the EU directive establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning (MSPD) as a bridge between the social and ecological dimensions and discusses what implications this would have for the current system for governing coastal waters in Europe.


Author(s):  
Isabel Aguilar-Palacio ◽  
Lina Maldonado ◽  
Sara Malo ◽  
Raquel Sánchez-Recio ◽  
Iván Marcos-Campos ◽  
...  

It is essential to understand the impact of social inequalities on the risk of COVID-19 infection in order to mitigate the social consequences of the pandemic. With this aim, the objective of our study was to analyze the effect of socioeconomic inequalities, both at the individual and area of residence levels, on the probability of COVID-19 confirmed infection, and its variations across three pandemic waves. We conducted a retrospective cohort study and included data from all individuals tested for COVID-19 during the three waves of the pandemic, from March to December 2020 (357,989 individuals) in Aragón (Spain). We studied the effect of inequalities on the risk of having a COVID-19 confirmed diagnosis after being tested using multilevel analyses with two levels of aggregation: individuals and basic healthcare area of residence (deprivation level and type of zone). Inequalities in the risk of COVID-19 confirmed infection were observed at both the individual and area level. There was a predominance of low-paid employees living in deprived areas. Workers with low salaries, unemployed and people on minimum integration income or who no longer receive the unemployment allowance, had a higher probability of COVID-19 infection than workers with salaries ≥ €18,000 per year. Inequalities were greater in women and in the second wave. The deprivation level of areas of residence influenced the risk of COVID-19 infection, especially in the second wave. It is necessary to develop individual and area coordinated measures by areas in the control, diagnosis and treatment of the epidemic, in order to avoid an increase in the already existing inequalities.


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