scholarly journals Objects Reconfiguring the Present and the Presence. Routes of Displacement for Humans: Yoko Ogawa, Han Kang, Olga Tokarczuk

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 246-260
Author(s):  
Lavinia Tache ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Complementary Relation ◽  
The Past

The materiality of the human body is to be understood in a complementary relation with the objects that produce an extension of life and the privation of it. The Memory Police (Yoko Ogawa) and Human Acts (Han Kang) reassemble the past through the instrumentalization of objects, thus creating life in the present. The question that arises is whether this certain present can preserve the integrity of the human. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk suggests the body as a locus of conversion and tackles contemporary interests regarding plastic, for instance. These texts authored by Ogawa, Kang and Tokarczuk allow for a repositioning of the standpoint from which the consequences of subject-object relation are approached in literature, because they tap into human experience by addressing the essentiality of objects as repositories of memories. The essay attempts to analyse how objects having either a beneficial or a lethal meaning can be seen as deeply encapsulated in human existence.

Listening to the Musicking Body

2018 ◽  
pp. 417-436
Author(s):  
Youn Kim
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
The Body ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Shed Light

Listening is generally discussed in connection with auditory perception, with the ear as the primary perceptual organ. Recently, however, more comprehensive approaches are being emphasized along with the need to understand listening in the context of cultural and historical changes. This chapter investigates the plasticity of the idea of listening, both across disciplines and across historical contexts. By engaging with various discourses on seeing, hearing, and kinesthetics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the present chapter examines how a holistic conceptualization of listening that goes beyond the ear and functions in the context of the whole human body emerged and argues how understanding the past can shed light on the current understanding of music and the body.

scholarly journals The Thinking Body: a Study of the Architectural Ramifications of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Rendering of the Human Body's Capacities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Karan August
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Phenomenological Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

<p>Phenomenology offers a conceptual framework that connects and strengthens the architect' s intuitive understanding of the human experience of space with the theorist's more critical approach. Phenomenology is an ideal vehicle for architectural theorists to avoid the friction between first-hand or subjective experience and generalised or abstracted accounts of experience. In this thesis I extract an account of the human experience of space that is implicit in the Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Pontys work. I consider how this understanding has been employed in architectural scholarship and practice. In particular, I argue that the human body renders the richness of space through deliberate engagement with the indeterminate and independent possibilities of the world. In other words, as the body intentionally engages with the world, it synthesises objects that create determinate spatial situations. I account for Merleau-Ponty's depiction of the body' s non-rule governed, non-reflective, normative directiveness towards spaces and elements, and label it the thinking body. Furthermore I examine how the philosophical theory of Merleau-Ponty is represented in the explicitly theoretical works of Juhani Pallasmaa. In turn I then consider how the thinking body is physically and conceptually realised in the buildings of Carlo Scarpa. Finally I find that Juhani Pallasmaa's description of the phenomenological experience of space is incompatible with Merleau-Ponty's. The strategic importance of these different accounts emerges when projecting their implications for designed space. Pallasmaa' s account points towards an architecture that prioritises sensory experiences synthesised by the mind. The design focus of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy leads to spatial practices in line with Carlo Scarpa, that are sympathetic to the causal qualities of an intentional bodily engagement with spatial situations. In accord with Merleau-Ponty I argue that human body is our medium for the world and as such creates the spatial situation we engage with from a formless manifold of possibilities.</p>

THE Theology of the Body

2018 ◽  
pp. 862-876
Author(s):  
José Granados
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Core ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Theology Of The Body ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Vision Of God

This chapter outlines and defends the theology of the body that has been developed following the famous series of Wednesday catecheses offered by Pope St John Paul II. The chapter emphasizes three themes at the heart of the Theology of the Body. First, a vision, following Gaudium et Spes 22 that places Christ and the Incarnation at the core of the interpretation of humanity and society. Second, a vision of the human body that makes it possible to describe human existence in the light of love and to recover the theological significance of the notion of ‘experience’. Third, a corresponding anthropology of love that offers the key to the Christian vision of God, humanity, and the world; this anthropology of love is centred in the family relationships, as the privileged place where God reveals himself.

scholarly journals Review of stomach-related eye diseasesfrom traditional medicine perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Moeini ◽  
Ali Akbar Jafarian ◽  
Mohammad Kamalinejad ◽  
Nadjmeh Ale Taha ◽  
Mohammad Ali Yazdian
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Visual Hallucinations ◽  
The Past

Ancient physicians deemedthe human body as a set of various interrelatedorgans. They believed that in dealing with patients a particular afflicted organ should not be consideredin isolation and treated exclusivelysincethe illnessmight occasionally originate from another organ’s dysfunction, which should be cured beforehand. Stomach is one of the organs that the physicians were very concerned about in the past. Since the first stage of digestion occurs in the stomach, gastric dysfunction will impair digestion and various organs of the body will not be well nourished and get sick afterwards. Among the organs affected by the stomach function is the eye the diseases of which may occur asnyctalopia, poor eyesight, visual hallucinations, and periorbital puffiness secondary to gastric dysfunction. This is a descriptive review of gastrointestinal procedures which can improve vision and treatsome eye diseases.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijls.v9i2.12057 International Journal of Life Sciences 9 (2) : 2015; 14-17 

scholarly journals The Thinking Body: a Study of the Architectural Ramifications of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Rendering of the Human Body's Capacities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Karan August
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Phenomenological Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

<p>Phenomenology offers a conceptual framework that connects and strengthens the architect' s intuitive understanding of the human experience of space with the theorist's more critical approach. Phenomenology is an ideal vehicle for architectural theorists to avoid the friction between first-hand or subjective experience and generalised or abstracted accounts of experience. In this thesis I extract an account of the human experience of space that is implicit in the Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Pontys work. I consider how this understanding has been employed in architectural scholarship and practice. In particular, I argue that the human body renders the richness of space through deliberate engagement with the indeterminate and independent possibilities of the world. In other words, as the body intentionally engages with the world, it synthesises objects that create determinate spatial situations. I account for Merleau-Ponty's depiction of the body' s non-rule governed, non-reflective, normative directiveness towards spaces and elements, and label it the thinking body. Furthermore I examine how the philosophical theory of Merleau-Ponty is represented in the explicitly theoretical works of Juhani Pallasmaa. In turn I then consider how the thinking body is physically and conceptually realised in the buildings of Carlo Scarpa. Finally I find that Juhani Pallasmaa's description of the phenomenological experience of space is incompatible with Merleau-Ponty's. The strategic importance of these different accounts emerges when projecting their implications for designed space. Pallasmaa' s account points towards an architecture that prioritises sensory experiences synthesised by the mind. The design focus of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy leads to spatial practices in line with Carlo Scarpa, that are sympathetic to the causal qualities of an intentional bodily engagement with spatial situations. In accord with Merleau-Ponty I argue that human body is our medium for the world and as such creates the spatial situation we engage with from a formless manifold of possibilities.</p>

scholarly journals Human corporeality in Georges Bataille’s heterology

2020 ◽  
pp. 375-383
Author(s):  
Svetlana A. Gorchakova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
Affirmation Of Life ◽  
Nature Awareness ◽  
Extreme Edge

In the heterology of G. Bataille, a person appears as a being doomed to death and revealing gaps in the depths of himself. That is why the idea of human corporeality turns out to be connected with the idea of inner experience, which represents a movement to the «edge of the possible» and through which death is revealed. It is death and the ability to discover it that makes a person who he is, affirming the transgressiveness of the human body and human being. Death, being absolutely heterogeneous, constitutes a person as a self-that-dies, revealing the gap that comprises its nature. Awareness of death leads to a feeling of eroticism, which contains the simultaneous affirmation of life in combination with the acceptance of death. Moreover, death is the semantic core of eroticism. The human is a «gaping hole» opening wide to the other, and all his being presupposes discontinuity and ecstasy, which means that only excess puts a man on the edge, allowing him to transcend all boundaries. In this case, the inner experience turns out to be in many ways a body experience, because the heterogeneous is constantly manifested in the ultimate experiences of the body and the ultimate manifestations of the human corporeality, where horror and lust, attractiveness and disgust are fused together. Human experience is the experience of the limits and gaps in which a person seeks to get beyond his limits, to surpass his anthropomorphic and body boundaries in an act of self-waste. Thus, being on the extreme edge, the human discovers death through transgression, but exactly in the understanding and acceptance of death he acquires true being and overcomes his own corporeality.

Deformation of the Human Body

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 351-366
Author(s):  
Haruka Okui ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Body Schema ◽  
Object Manipulation ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Techniques ◽  
Fundamental Insight ◽  
Psychological Inquiry

In the Sorbonne lectures on the philosophical and psychological inquiry of child development, Merleau-Ponty offers a fundamental insight about imitation. Denying the representation-based explanation of imitation, he proposes that gestures occur without representation through the body-object relation, such as “precommunication” based on the works of body schema. Merleau-Ponty’s thought could be examined by way of more practical examples of body techniques. This paper describes the experience of object manipulation, in particular, Bunraku puppetry. Because three puppeteers manipulate a single puppet together in Bunraku, this example might be a challenge to an ordinary assumption that a body is owned by an individual and that inner thoughts control the body. Merleau-Ponty’s insight suggests that the puppeteers share another type of body schema that is not internalized to their individual bodies but emerges afresh in each performance through collaborative movement.

Material Interiority in Charlotte Brontëë's The Professor

2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Voice ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Human Embodiment

In The Professor (1845–– 46) Charlotte Brontëë dwells on the paradox of a material human body containing immaterial essences, such as mind, self, and soul. The novel at once dramatizes and estranges the condition of human embodiment by portraying these ethereal inner qualities with images of enclosure in a rigid carapace. Paying particular attention to sensory experiences, The Professor presents the body as the vehicle through which the exterior world and human interiors come into contact. By construing interiority in material terms, Brontëë emphasizes aspects of human experience ordinarily considered dirty and degrading, involving debased bodily functions, including masochistic sexuality. The novel invites a rethinking of prevailing approaches to masochism because it insists on the fleshy materiality of psychological entities (such as desire and conflict) that psychoanalysis usually treats as abstractions. For Brontëë relations between people are embodied even before they are gendered; the male first-person narrative voice she adopts in this work affords her the opportunity to consider the strangeness of the idea of inhabiting any body at all. The novel's vaunted attention to surveillance is consequently better understood as bodily penetration than as subjective domination.

scholarly journals The Paleolithic imagination:Nature, science, and race in Anthropocene fitness cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110043
Author(s):  
Gavin Weedon ◽  
Paige Marie Patchin
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Paleo Diet ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
The Relationship

The widespread uptake of the Anthropocene concept over the past two decades has seen a concomitant rise in cultural forms that trade on nostalgia for Paleolithic life. Mud running, CrossFit, and the Paleo diet exemplify this trend, with the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer at the center of their popular prescriptions for healthy living. In this article, we identify these practices as embodying the anxieties of the Anthropocene as well as its historical and racial elisions. By focusing on the oblique and subtle racializations of Anthropocene health and fitness cultures, we contribute to understandings of the cultural significance of the human body in the Anthropocene and the relationship between the biopolitics of health and geological life, arguing that the body is a key site through which the tensions and inequalities of the Anthropocene are played out. And by unraveling how the Paleolithic imagination is rooted in a distinctly capitalist, Euro-American attitude to the body in nature, we show the Anthropocene to be defined by uneven distributions of health as self-optimization, and health as environmental risk. The Paleolithic imagination demonstrates the tangled politics of race, science, and nature in the twenty-first century, in which global ecological instability, the biopolitics of health, the shadows of colonialism, and consumer capitalism converge.

scholarly journals Physicality as a possible key to understanding human nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Zulfiya Z. Ibragimova
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Primitive Form ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Rationality

The statement about human nature is the subject of numerous discussions, which, however, does not negate the presence of the substrate of its origin, manifestations, specificity, and real dynamics in space and time. In the process of analysis, we find a lot of arguments that confirm this fact, as well as a decent number of counterarguments. In this article, a priori, we proceed from the validity of the existence of the term "human nature", recognizing its ambiguity. Of course, our stated physicality as an aspect of human nature does not exhaust the idea of his nature. The nominal division into soul, spirit, etc. gives us some methodological tools. No more than that. Physicality, in its turn, requires problematization. "Physicality "is a category that denotes what a given human body naturally becomes in the course of its social modifications, so this category can certainly not be considered outside of conjunction with another very important category - "spirituality". These concepts, as well as the phenomena they denote, are interrelated (MORGAN 2006). In our review, there are three main ways to interpret "Physicality". Firstly, it is the only factuality that initially claims the ontological status. Secondly, it is part of a harmonious whole that includes all non-corporeal things. I would like to focus on the third aspect, which includes at least three principles. Thirdly, physicality changes its seemingly simple "fate" dramatically, turning into a problem as a way of human existence. This can be interpreted "as a creative act of overcoming oneself". Only this overcoming of the present self presupposes a reliance on its relevance and reality. This ontologically conditioned event is always self-based. In this sense, the body as a creative phenomenon " never appears just by its own. Yet it is precisely overcoming that is the constitutive feature of human existence. A man is bigger than himself. We can say that the problem is a way of human existence. The problem in the most primitive form can be expressed as "I already want to, but I can't yet". Where does the desire come from if the object of desire (the desired situation) is not yet available? How can you want something that doesn't exist yet and never has? The man himself is a few steps ahead (BUBLIK, 2006). Human rationality is based not only on reflectivity, but also on the ability of a person to operate with ideas that do not have objective visibility (for example, the ultimate category of being). Thus, man proves his metaphysicality: "man's metaphysics expresses not only the presence of the supernatural dimension in man but also his ability to determine himself, to be his own creation". The main methods used in writing the article: the unity of historical and logical, the method of reflection.

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