Revisiting Demeter and Persephone Paper A - Revisiting Demeter: towards reconceptualising maternal subjectivity and erotics

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Mayo ◽  
Christina Moutsou

These conjoint papers discuss critically Nancy Chodorow’s understanding of mother–daughter separation as an important milestone in psychic development, as well as subsequent psychoanalytic work on female and maternal subjectivity through revisiting the myth of Demeter and Persephone. In Paper A, we are looking at the figure of Demeter. Our reading of Demeter in the myth questions the usual interpretations of this maternal figure particularly those from a psychoanalytic perspective, drawing the conclusion that Demeter, according to the myth, is the silent container for her child, the mother with no voice or subjectivity, or desire, she is the one who is to be left behind. Through a clinical vignette, we illustrate how in one clinical context, a mother and daughter relationship was perceived and “interpreted”, leading to the mother being seen as the problem, and cause of her daughter’s difficulties. The BBC film, The Mother, received many negative comments and even condemnation for its portrayal of a mother and grandmother as still sexually active, and wishing to be the subject of another’s desire. We suggest that the film illustrated some of our most uncomfortable and complex questions about the mother and the maternal. We conclude by looking at the film and the questions and fears it raises about female sexuality, desire, and ageing when applied to the “older” woman–mother.

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Mayo ◽  
Christina Moutsou

In Paper B, we focus on the figure of Persephone in the myth, as the daughter, but also, as “the silent object of desire” of male imagination. We question whether Persephone’s forceful abduction is a representation of the emergence of female sexuality, as it has often been argued within psychoanalysis (Chodorow, 2012), or in fact, a symbolic representation of female subordination and objectification. We discuss a clinical vignette illustrating how a mother who is unable to face up to her own and her daughter’s vulnerability, unlike Demeter, can result in a daughter who is unable to protect herself from violation, and who cannot find her way up from the underworld so to speak. We then discuss the film, The Handmaiden, where the question of mother–daughter separation is a central theme. We argue that a strong mother–daughter bond is in fact central to the ability of women to find a healthy place for sexual desire and a close relationship in adult life, and that the nature of the mother–daughter bond is such that both mother and daughter seek out each other’s love and care throughout the lifespan.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Stephen Braude

This issue of the JSE includes a retraction of a paper by Alejandro Parra that we published in 2017. As far as I can determine, it’s the journal’s first official retraction of a published paper. The reason for this action is the author’s extensive plagiarism, both in that paper and in other published work (including a recent book whose publisher has since recalled all copies). It’s a sad state of affairs, of course—and perhaps the first of its kind in this particular and admittedly minor scientific domain.             But it reminds me that six years ago, in Volume 29(2), we published a paper on retractions in science, and in that issue I seized the opportunity to editorialize further on the subject. I recycle that Editorial below. But before that, I must note that careful examination has found no additional evidence of plagiarism in the one other research article (in 2018) and the one book review we’ve published by Parra. I must also mention that, henceforth, the JSE will run routine plagiarism tests on papers accepted for publication. I thought this was a chore I’d left behind when I retired from teaching. However, I don’t want the JSE to emulate the person who said “I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’m certain I can repeat them exactly.” EDITORIAL FROM JSE VOLUME 29(2), 189–192


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.


Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

Today, worldview, spiritual and moral problems that have always been reflected in education and upbringing come to the fore in society. In this situation, there is a demand for philosophical categories. One of the priority goals of education in modern conditions is the formation of a reasonable, reflexive person who is able to analyze their actions and the actions of other people. Modern science is characterized by an understanding of the absolute value and significance of childhood in the development of the individual, which implies the need for its multilateral study. In the conditions of democratization of all spheres of life, the child ceases to be a passive object of education and training, and becomes an active carrier of their own meanings of being and the subject of world creation. One of the realities of childhood is philosophizing, so it is extremely timely to address the identification of its place and role in the world of childhood. Children's philosophizing is extremely poorly studied, although the need for its analysis is becoming more obvious. Children's philosophizing is one of the forms of philosophical reflection, which has its own qualitative specificity, on the one hand, and commonality with all other forms of philosophizing, on the other. The social relevance of the proposed research lies in the fact that children's philosophizing can be considered as an intellectual indicator of a child's socialization, since the process of reflection involves the adoption and development of culture. Modern society, in contrast to the traditional one, is ready to "accept" a philosophizing child, which means that it is necessary to determine the main characteristics and conditions of children's philosophizing.


Author(s):  
Iryna Rusnak

The author of the article analyses the problem of the female emancipation in the little-known feuilleton “Amazonia: A Very Inept Story” (1924) by Mykola Chirsky. The author determines the genre affiliation of the work and examines its compositional structure. Three parts are distinguished in the architectonics of associative feuilleton: associative conception; deployment of a “small” topic; conclusion. The author of the article clarifies the role of intertextual elements and the method of constantly switching the tone from serious to comic to reveal the thematic direction of the work. Mykola Chirsky’s interest in the problem of female emancipation is corresponded to the general mood of the era. The subject of ridicule in provocative feuilleton is the woman’s radical metamorphoses, since repulsive manifestations of emancipation becomes commonplace. At the same time, the writer shows respect for the woman, appreciates her femininity, internal and external beauty, personality. He associates the positive in women with the functions of a faithful wife, a caring mother, and a skilled housewife. In feuilleton, the writer does not bypass the problem of the modern man role in a family, but analyses the value and moral and ethical guidelines of his character. The husband’s bad habits receive a caricatured interpretation in the strange behaviour of relatives. On the one hand, the writer does not perceive the extremes brought by female emancipation, and on the other, he mercilessly criticises the male “virtues” of contemporaries far from the standard. The artistic heritage of Mykola Chirsky remains little studied. The urgent task of modern literary studies is the introduction of Mykola Chirsky’s unknown works into the scientific circulation and their thorough scientific understanding.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


Author(s):  
Frank S. Levin

Quantum tunneling, wherein a quanject has a non-zero probability of tunneling into and then exiting a barrier of finite width and height, is the subject of Chapter 13. The description for the one-dimensional case is extended to the barrier being inverted, which forms an attractive potential well. The first application of this analysis is to the emission of alpha particles from the decay of radioactive nuclei, where the alpha-nucleus attraction is modeled by a potential well and the barrier is the repulsive Coulomb potential. Excellent results are obtained. Ditto for the similar analysis of proton burning in stars and yet a different analysis that explains tunneling through a Josephson junction, the connector between two superconductors. The final application is to the scanning tunneling microscope, a device that allows the microscopic surfaces of solids to be mapped via electrons from the surface molecules tunneling into the tip of the STM probe.


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario S. Staller ◽  
Swen Koerner

AbstractGamification is regularly defined as the use of game elements in non-gaming contexts. However, discussions in the context of the pedagogical value of gamification suggest controversies on various levels. While on the one hand, the potential is seen in the design of joyful learning environments, critics point out the pedagogical dangers or the problems related to optimizing working life. It becomes apparent that the assumptions guiding action on the subject matter of gamification in educational contexts differ, which leads to different derivations for pedagogical practice—but also allows for different perspectives on initially controversial positions. Being aware of these assumptions is the claim of a reflexive pedagogy. With regard to the pedagogical use of gamifying elements and their empirical investigation, there are three main anchor points to consider from a reflexive stance: (a) the high context-specificity of the teaching undertaken and (b) the (non-)visibility of the design elements and (c) the (non-)acceptance of the gamified elements by the students. We start by providing a discussion of the definitional discourse on what is understood as gamification leading to our argument for a non-definition of gamification. We describe the potential of this non-definition of gamification and exemplify its use in a gamified concept of teaching police recruits professional reflexivity. The concept features the narrative of a potential crime that has been undertaken and that students decide for themselves if they want to engage with it.


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