scholarly journals The sacredness of the self, of society and of the human body: the case of a Finnish transgender pastor Marja-Sisko Aalto

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Veikko Anttonen

In 2008 the change of sex of a Finnish transgender pastor attracted media attention to Lutheran Christianity on a worldwide scale, which compared to other religious traditions seldom makes it to the world news. This article­ discusses the sex reassignment undergone by Marja-Sisko Aalto, a Lutheran pastor from the town of Imatra, in south eastern Finland, who in 2008, at the age of 54, was transformed into a woman. First some remarks on the relation between religion and the body are made and terminological issues are discussed briefly. The second part of the article presents Aalto's life story based on the author's interview with her in April 2010. In the last section the author discusses the Finnish cognitive scholar Ilkka Pyysiäinen’s reflection on folk biology as an explanation for making sense of the public image regarding a priest’s gender. The article concludes by looking at Marja-Sisko Aalto’s case from the perspective of marking boundaries between the categories of the self, the society and the human body. 

Wielogłos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 85-122
Author(s):  
Marian Bielecki
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  

[Rehearsing the World and the Self – Montaigne and Gombrowicz] The article discusses intertextual, intellectual and poetological relations between Michel de Montaigne’s Essais and Witold Gombrowicz’s autobiographical project. The author shows that the Polish writer was inspired by the French classic’s open poetics and his concept of processual and interactional subject. Gombrowicz was also interested in more specific matters present in Montaigne’s work: philosophical praise of the body, criticism of scholasticism, opposition of the private to the public.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Carlos Rios Llamas

ABSTRACTFoucault conceived the human being as defined by biopower forces. After that, the industrial society treated the body as an element of the production process, and the care of the self was derived to healthcare institutions. Recently, Paula Sibilia studied the industrial human being from the capitalism on his transformation through technology and digital hybrids. She thinks that the human body could be at the end in the form we know it. But in the perspectives of both Foucault and Sibilia, the body projects could be at their own obsolescence because they leave a key element aside: the obesogenic environment which is implicit into the current modern technological society. This abstract pretends to visualize how body projects and modernity are interconnected and confronted, from their assumptions and fundamentals, against obesity. RESUMENDe acuerdo con Faucault el cuerpo humano es modelado a partir de dispositivos que corresponden con las formas de poder y con las funciones que se le asignan en una sociedad y en una situación espaciotemporal específica. En esta lógica, el cuidado del cuerpo frente a la obesidad como amenaza, se habría de estudiar desde el entorno social y su evolución en las últimas décadas. Así, mientras que a mediados del siglo XX, las sociedades industriales definieron el cuerpo por su utilidad en los procesos de producción, y el cuidado de uno mismo se derivó a las instituciones como garantes del bienestar, en las últimas décadas las hibridaciones tecnológicas y digitales amenazan el cuerpo biológico y cultural en la forma que lo conocemos. Algunos autores indican que esta forma de cuerpo podría llegar a su fin ante la imbricación de nuevos aditamentos como prótesis, dopaje y alteraciones quirúrgicas. En una lectura desde el margen de los avances en el campo tecnocientífico y biopolítico, todos los proyectos de corporeidad encontrarían hoy su propia obsolescencia ante la obesidad que se instituye como pandemia y que amenaza al cuerpo desde la cultura, la medicina, la economía, la política y los estudios ambientales. Es oportuno, entonces, develar los vínculos entre el cuidado del cuerpo y la contemporaneidad, y desde la obesidad como amenaza de los supuestos avances tecnocientíficos. Por eso, en la conceptualización de “ambientes obesogénicos” se abre una posibilidad para analizar el proyecto contemporáneo de cuerpo desde los espacios donde se construye y se modela su cuidado, y a partir de sus formas de resistencia ante los cambios tecnocientíficos.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-140
Author(s):  
Umi Salamah ◽  
◽  
Asna Nur Izziyah ◽  
Arifan Arif Raharjo ◽  
◽  
...  

The level of oxygen saturation in the blood is important to know the health condition of the body. If the human body lacks or excess oxygen, it will cause illness and other bodily system work disorders. One of the tools to detect the oxygen saturation level is the Pulse oximeter. Previous research has successfully designed a Pulse oximeter based on Arduino. The pulse oximeter produces a photoplethysmograph (PPG) signal that corresponds to the standard PPG signals in 20 test samples. PPG signals can be processed to provide information on oxygen saturation (SpO2) levels in the blood. In this research, validation of the Pulse oximeter is compared with a commercial pulse oximeter, the digital oximeter JZK-301. The results obtained from this validation are the smallest deviation errors are 4.83% while the largest errata is 22.51%. The greatest accuracy of 95.17%, of respondents number 16 and the smallest accuracy is 77, 49%, that is the number of respondents 12. The average deviation of 20 data is 12.82% with the resulting accuracy is 87, 18%. This indicates that the self-designed pulse oximeter has good efficiency and can be developed further


1868 ◽  
Vol 13 (64) ◽  
pp. 548-549
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Poor ◽  

The Alton murderer certainly did no credit to his art. His crime was conceived without ingenuity, and executed in the coarsest manner; the only remarkable features in it being its simplicity and atrocity. On a fine afternoon a clerk in a solicitor's office takes a walk outside the town; he sees some children playing in a field by the roadside; one of these, a lively little girl, between eight and nine years of age, he persuades to go with him into an adjoining hop-garden, and the others he gets rid of by giving them a few halfpennies to go home. In a little while he is met walking home alone, and he returns to his office, where he makes an entry in his diary. But what has become of the little girl? Noone has seen her since she was taken from her playfellows into the hop-field. Her parents become alarmed; they arouse their neighbours, and an anxious search is made for the missing child. It is ascertained that she was last seen on her way to the hop-field, and when the searchers hurriedly proceed there, they find the dismembered fragments of her body scattered here and there. A foot is in one place, a hand in another, the heart and the eyes are picked up after a long search; and some parts of the body cannot be found at all. The poor child had clearly been murdered, and her body cut into pieces; but what she underwent before she was butchered may be suspected but cannot be discovered, because the “vagina was missing.” Suspicion fell directly upon the prisoner, and he was arrested. In his desk was found a diary, and in the diary the following entry just made: “Killed a little girl: it was fine and hot.” Such are the main facts, briefly told, of the murder; it is not surprising that they excited horror and disgust in the public mind, and that the prisoner was denounced as a brutal and unnatural scoundrel, for whom, if he were found guilty, hanging was too good.


Curationis ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
F. De Villiers

Two aspects are involved in the image of the nursing profession - the public image and the self-image. The public image has been improving but is negatively influenced by the image presented in the media which does not usually reflect professionalism. The self-image held by the profession is even more important than the public image as this determines the profession’s influence in health services. The profession’s group image is determined by the self-image of individuals in the group. The self-image is influenced by external factors, such as support and encouragement by other nurses, and by internal factors such as the nurse regarding her work as a calling.


2021 ◽  
pp. 205030322098698
Author(s):  
André Chappatte
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Mind ◽  

In the town of Odienné (Ivory Coast), Madou forges his faith in God by performing long sessions of solo zikr (recollection of God) after midnight. This article ethnographically explores the theme of light in this Sufi practice of concentration as an experiential form of being. It first describes how the light and darkness of the penumbra of the night co-initiate what I call “the devotional place” of zikr. Following a phenomenological writing, it then describes how, as hours go by, Madou’s concentration navigates towards “ yeelen” (spiritual light) through the silence of the deep night. In doing so, this article elaborates the “corporeal mind” as synesthetic instants in this journey when the body becomes the mind and the mind faith, as the penumbra becomes silence and silence light. In other words, it explores the sensuous unboundedness of the self that happens in regular and long practice of nocturnal solo zikr. This article therefore offers a corporeal understanding of the light of God among practitioners of prolonged nocturnal solo zikr in West Africa.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goran Kardum ◽  
Žanu Kralj

Background: The aim of our study was to investigate the differences in beliefs, attitudes toward CAM, beliefs in afterlife and religiosity among the sample of psychiatrists, psychologists, and theologists. Relationship among these constructs could have impact on the concept of mental health.Subjects and methods: Research was conducted in the Split urban area, Croatia, during 2017 on a sample of psychiatrists (n=51), psychologists (n=55), and theologists (n=25). Participants were presented a figure of the human body, which contained numbers identifying eight different regions of the body. Participants were asked to select which region best represents the location of the self, soul, and mind in the body. We used CAIMAQ (The Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine Attitudes Questionnaire) which contains five subscales. The Afterdeath Beliefs Scale was used to measure the varieties of afterlife beliefs. Analyses showed that applied questionnaires have appropriate reliability and expected factor structure.Results: The most frequent locations of the Soul were 9 (37%, Not located in any centralized region in the body) and 5 (31% chest), whereas Self and Mind were mostly located in the head (43% and 73%). Psychiatrists and psychologists have average scores on positive pole of CAIMAQ but did not differ significantly (p>0.05). There were statistical differences between theologists and psychologists/psychiatrists on two subscales: “nutritional counseling and dietary/food supplements can be effective in the treatment of pathology” and “attitudes toward a holistic understanding of the disease” (p<0.05). There were significant correlations between religion and three CAIMAQ subscales. Although they were mostly religious, psychiatrists and psychologists had a higher averagescore on Annihilation than theologists. They also did not believe in body resurrection and connection between behavior during life and after death.Conclusion: The results of our study could have impact on the concept of mental health and in the future must be deeper evaluated within qualitative research methodology.


2020 ◽  
pp. 217-262
Author(s):  
Charlotte Epstein

This chapter analyses a crucible of the state’s making in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the public anatomy lesson. The body, this piece of ‘natural’ property that every human ‘has’, was being increasingly opened up and peered into for the purposes of finally seeing human nature itself. Bringing together visual studies and international relations, the chapter charts the scopic regime that established vision as modernity’s primary ordered instrument and that was honed upon the body dissected in public. To map its contours, it begins with the writings of anatomist William Harvey and scientist-statesman Francis Bacon. The chapter then tracks how this scopic regime was institutionalised by the spread of the highly popular public anatomy lesson across early modern Europe. It then analyses Renaissance and early modern representations of the public anatomy lesson, notably the frontispiece of the first manual of modern medicine, Andrea Vesalius’s On the Fabric of the Human Body (1943), and Dutch painter Rembrandt’s anatomy lesson paintings. The chapter examines the work of boundary-drawing and state-building wrought by these public performances by tracking the roles of the female and the poor body in their crafting.


Author(s):  
Liz Wilson

This chapter investigates the place of destructive acts against oneself—such as starvation and self-mutilation—in the spectrum of violent actions performed in the name of religion. Self-starvation and self-mutilation share some of the ideological and performative features of violence in the name of religion. The self-sacrifice of Quang Duc was demonstrative of a time-tested Buddhist form of bodily practice known in Buddhist studies in the West as self-immolation. It is revealed that self-directed violence can be both an act of devotion and an act of protest. Self-immolation and hunger-striking employ the body as a means of resistance. Like self-conflagration, the hunger strike has become a global phenomenon used on every continent of the world.


Daphnis ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-513
Author(s):  
Marie-Thérèse Mourey

Among the highly varied vehicles of communication in early modern German an European courts, the human body was both a crucial medium and symbolic form. The body of the prince was strategically used and glorified as a site of political representation, espexially in central German courts. This paper explores the performative functions of the ballets de cour as aestheticized, ritual expressions of power as well as the self-fashioning of the participating princes. Taking the representation of the prince in a ballet from 1687 as a case study, it focuses on the distinctive situation in the Court of Saxony-Gotha.


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