Living in a material world: object biography and transnational lives

I consider the effects of Henry VIII’s attempts to exert control over the intellectual activities of his articulate and argumentative subjects, whose free speculation he attempted radically to limit, while legitimising his own decisions by insisting that they were the result of discussion and the advice of others. I shall discuss the ways in which both Thomas More and John Fisher contrived to “converse” within a perilously maintained community of trust. I would also like briefly to consider the implications of an alternative Platonist stoicism that disputes, if not the reality, at least the significance of the material world.

Download Full-text

Unclean Truth

Fieldwork in Religion ◽

10.1558/firn.v8i2.175 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 175-187 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lucy Talbot

Keyword(s):

Human Remains ◽

Liminal Space ◽

Pedagogical Tool ◽

Victorian Era ◽

Museum Exhibits ◽

New Methods ◽

Object Biography ◽

Physical Form ◽

English Society ◽

Physical Objects

The Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum, famously known as the Black Museum, exhibits evidence from some of the most appalling crimes committed within English society from the late-Victorian era into modernity. Public admittance to this museum is strictly prohibited, preventing all but police staff from viewing the macabre exhibitions held within. The physical objects on display may vary, but whether the viewer is confronted with household items, weaponry or human remains, the evidence before them is undeniably associated with the immorality surrounding the performance of a socially bad death, of murder. These items have an object biography, they are both contextualized and contextualize the environment in which they reside. But one must question the purpose of such a museum, does it merely act as a Chamber of Horrors evoking the anomie of English society in physical form, or do these exhibits have an educational intent, restricted to their liminal space inside New Scotland Yard, to be used as a pedagogical tool in the development of new methods of murder investigation.

Download Full-text

The Hierophanic Facets of the Seraphic Hymns

Trictrac ◽

10.25159/1996-7330/2421 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

Author(s):

Petru Adrian Danciu

Keyword(s):

Mutual Recognition ◽

The Other ◽

Human Being ◽

Material World ◽

Face To Face ◽

The People ◽

Musical History ◽

The Face ◽

The One

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.

Download Full-text

Material World: Gender and the Bible in Evangelical Purity Culture

10.1093/oso/9780198722618.003.0034 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Sara Moslener

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Young People ◽

Gender Roles ◽

The United States ◽

Modern Life ◽

Material World ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Teenage Girls ◽

Traditional Gender Roles ◽

The Bible

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.

Download Full-text

Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780198802648.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Stephanie Downes ◽

Sally Holloway ◽

Sarah Randles

Keyword(s):

Material World ◽

The Past ◽

Over Time

This book is about the ways in which humans have been bound affectively to the material world in and over time; how they have made, commissioned, and used objects to facilitate their emotional lives; how they felt about their things; and the ways certain things from the past continue to make people feel today. The temporal and geographical focus of ...

Download Full-text

Natural Phenomena and the Primacy of Experiment

10.1093/oso/9780198825623.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Massimiliano Di Ventra

Keyword(s):

Objective Data ◽

Natural Phenomena ◽

Material World

This chapter defines what phenomena and objective data are and how the latter ones are obtained, and explains the fundamental role of experiments in obtaining information on the material world.

Download Full-text