The Robe of Corporeality: Sensual Aspects of Medieval Representations of Crucified Christ in the Tunica Manicata

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Ika Matyjaszkiewicz

This paper explores the iconography of the Volto Santo – a crucifix worshiped at the cathedral of Lucca, Italy, and the reception of this iconographic type in the medieval art. The aim is to investigate the role of robes covering the body of crucified Christ in the scenes of the Passion. First of all, the origins and meaning of different Christ’s garments are discussed in relation to the debates on the nature of Christ and around the Eucharist. Still, as the Volto Santo is usually dated to the 12th century and it presents Christ in the tunica manicata with the cingulum, which can be identified as a clerical costume, the meaning of Christ’s garments in the context of the Gregorian Reform, celibacy, and the concept of the third gender is also presented. Afterwards the practices of dressing the Volto Santo in the ceremonial vestments as a manifestation of its worship are analyzed. These vestments along with the altar, where the Volto Santo was presented to the faithful, are the most important elements of the iconography of the representations of the Volto Santo in the mural paintings. What draws attention in these images is the ambiguous position of Christ nailed to the cross and standing on the altar at the same time. That produces ambivalent sensual experience: the impression of uncourting Christ turns into a recognition of the particular cult object and vice versa. Moreover, the robe covering the body contributes to a fluid gender identity of the figure. It may be concluded that the robes of the crucified Christ play several roles: they cover the suffered body, they are an attribute of the ruler or priest, but above all, they manifest Christ’s corporality. The faithful confronted with these images found his or her somatic identity with Christ.

1975 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE M. POND

1. The hydrodynamic drag acting on the crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes is measured and it is concluded that, in the range of velocities used in walking, the drag is independent of the posture of the limbs and the direction of motion of the body. At swimming velocities the streamlining caused by promotion of the legs reduces the drag losses to half that of a crayfish moving in the forwards walking posture at the same speed. 2. The forwards walking of intact crayfish is compared with that of the same animal after amputation of one or more pairs of legs. It is concluded that the third and fourth pair of legs provide most of the propulsion under water and the second pair is not essential to locomotion under any of the conditions tried.


Author(s):  
David W. Kling

The concluding chapter provides summary observations of the book’s themes that highlight the complex, multifaceted dimension of conversion throughout twenty centuries of Christian history. These include the convert’s cognizance of divine presence; the crucial importance of historical context (political, religious, institutional, and socioeconomic factors); continuity and discontinuity (how much of the new displaces the old in conversion?); nominal, incomplete, and “true” conversions; personal testimonies and narratives (the autobiographical impulse attests to the converted life); the role of gender; identity and the self; agency (are converts actors or are they being acted upon?); the mechanisms behind and the motivations for conversion; the body as a site of conversion; the role of music; conversion as event and process; coercive practices; and forms of communication in the converting process.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Andrew Reilly ◽  
Jory Catalpa ◽  
Jenifer McGuire

As many as nine million people identify as a transperson in the United States, yet mass clothing designing and manufacturing do not meet the needs of this consumer group. This research examines the role of fit in ready-to-wear (RTW) clothing using qualitative research methods. 90 transpeople from the United States, Canada, and Ireland participated in interviews and data from interviews were analyzed using line-by-line analysis, resulting in three themes. Theme 1 explored current fit problems with RTW clothing, Theme 2 explored the desire to use clothing to hide parts of the body that did not align with one’s gender identity, and Theme 3 explored the desire to use clothing to highlight parts of the body that did align with one’s gender identity. Findings from this research confirm the assumption that current RTW clothing does not meet the needs of the transperson population and offers areas where designers and manufactures can reassess their methods relative to this consumer group.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Alanna Beroiza

This article examines the visual dynamics underlying wrong-body narratives of gender through Lacanian psychoanalytic readings of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs of Caitlyn Jenner for Vanity Fair (2015) and Pedro Almodóvar’s film La piel que habito (Spain/France, 2011). Leibovitz’s photographs, seen as the public culmination of Jenner’s gender transition, and Almodóvar’s fictional film, centered on the forced surgical sex reassignment of one of its characters, both comment on the role of technically produced images in constructing visually articulated bodily materiality as central to gender. Staged in Jenner’s domestic space, often before mirrors that reflect the camera alongside its subject, Lei-bovitz’s photos portray Jenner at the center of complex scenarios of mastery over her image. These images demonstrate an awareness of their constructed nature at the same time as they offer themselves as the optical proof of Jenner’s transition; they reveal and, ostensibly, dominate what Lacan refers to as the fundamental misrecognition at the heart of all scopic scenarios of recognition. Almodóvar’s film imagines the reverse scenario in which the body-as-image exerts violent control over the individual, not only erasing the apparent sex of one of its characters, Vicente, but also, and less tolerably, attempting to erase the absence, or misrecognition, of his body in its status as what Lacan calls “objet a,” or object of desire. The distinct ways in which Leibovitz’s images and Almodóvar’s film theorize the relationship between bodies and images with regard to misrecognition and absence point to the continued necessity of considering the influence of scopic relations in formations of gender identity.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Michał Kieling

The article discusses the most important premises which deal with Christian penance from the VI to the XI century. The main sources for the above article are the Penitential Books (Libri Poenitentiales), published as part of the series of Źródła Myśli Teologicznej (ŻMT 58), collected and edited by A. Baron and H. Pietras in 2011. The article consists of three parts. The first part examines the meaning of penance in the life of Christians as a medicine for sin which is an illness of the soul and the body. The second part presents the teaching of peniten­tials on the twelve ways of absolving from sins. The third part provides practical suggestions for confessors and penitents. The Penitential Books, as a witness to the development of penitential practices, confirm the role of individual spiritual therapy in the life of the Christian. This process of regaining of one’s spiritual health takes place, on one hand, through the grace of God’s Mercy, and, on the other hand, through penitential practices whose aim was internal conversion and outward change in one’s way of life.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirkko Markula

This paper argues for a performative methodology that uses body's affect to create change in the current subjectivation to femininity. It locates this discussion into a context of fitness instruction to explore how a researcher can assume a role of a public intellectual through performative pedagogy. It is divided into four parts. The first part examines how critical pedagogy has been utilized previously within physical cultural studies to find ways to further understand how physical activity can be used for purposes of social change. The second part focuses on how physical education can inform critical body practices. The third part aims to link this discussion with feminist readings of critical pedagogy to further understand how femininity can be linked with practices of fitness instruction. It also introduces Deleuze's concept of affect. The final part discusses the implications of this literature for creating a performative pedagogy of the body through fitness instruction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1005-1033
Author(s):  
Tara Gonsalves

In this article, I argue that the medical conceptualization of gender identity in the United States has entered a “new regime of truth.” Drawing from a mixed-methods analysis of medical journals, I illuminate a shift in the locus of gender identity from external genitalia and pathologization of families to genes and brain structure and individualized self-conception. The sexed body itself has also undergone a transformation: Sex no longer resides solely in genitalia but has traveled to more visible parts of the body, implicating racialized aesthetic ideals in its new formulation. The re-imagining of gender identity as genetically and neurologically inscribed and the expanding locus of sex correspond to an inversion of the relationship between gender identity and the sexed body as well as shifts in medical jurisdiction. Whereas psychiatrists in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s understood gender as stemming from genital sex, the less popular idea that gender identity precedes the sexed body has gained traction in recent decades. If gender identity once derived from the sexed body, the sexed body must now be brought into alignment with gender identity. The increasing legitimacy of self-defined gender identity, the expanding definition of racialized sex, and the inversion of the sex–gender identity relationship elevates the role of surgeons in producing racialized and sexed bodies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Ahmed Alwishah

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive and systematic study of Avicenna's account of animal self-awareness and cognition. In the first part, I explain how, for Avicenna, in contrast to human self-awareness, animal self-awareness is taken to be indirect, mixed-up (makhlūṭ), and an intermittent awareness. In his view, animal self-awareness is provided by the faculty of estimation (wahm); hence, in the second part, I explore the cognitive role of the faculty of estimation in animals, and how that relates to self-awareness. The faculty of estimation, according to Avicenna, serves to distinguish one's body and its parts from external objects, and plays a role in connecting the self to its perceptual activities. It follows that animal self-awareness, unlike human self-awareness, is essentially connected to the body. In the third part of the paper, I show that, while Avicenna denies animals awareness of their self-awareness, he explicitly affirms that animals can grasp their individual identity, but, unlike humans, do so incidentally, as part of their perceptual awareness.


2020 ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Sonja Jankov

The paper is a case study of Jasmina Cibic's film The Pavilion (2015) in relation to the theory of screendance. The first part of the paper discusses the definitions of the term screendance by various researchers, and its position to related terms choreocinema, cine-dance, dance cinema, dance for the camera, dance on screen, dancefilm, and video dance. The second part of the paper is a close analysis of the film, synchronously focused on three key aspects: the choreography of the five female performers, the cinematic techniques, and the narration. The third part of the paper examines the role of the dancer Josephine Baker, to whom the film makes a reference. The paper concludes that the central choreography in the film is not that of the five female performers, but actually of the model of the pavilion which they animate. The choreography of the architectural model and the spatial reference to the body of Josephine Baker are as important semantic layers of the film as the choreography of the five performers.


1930 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-222
Author(s):  
Editorial Board

The annual meeting of the Island took place on January 9, 1930 under the chairmanship of prof. N.E. Kusheva. The first speech was delivered by Assoc. Sarat. of GA Lapidus University on the topic: Philosophy and Medicine. The second speech was delivered by Dr. II. I. Lintvarev: The role of hemoglobin in the body. The third report was made by Prof. N. Ye. Kushev: The fate of the Saratov medical institutions. The speaker stated the crisis of medical organizations in Saratov in recent years, which resulted in low attendance at meetings, a small number of Even societies such as the Surgical Society and the Society of Internal Medicine and Pathology, which used to gather a huge number of members, visitors and students, now barely have a quorum.


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