A Disintegrating Lyric? – Henri Michaux and Chinese Lyricism

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-302
Author(s):  
Xiaofan Amy Li

This essay examines the perplexing triangular relation between Henri Michaux's ambiguous and attenuated lyricism, the French lyrical tradition, and Michaux's Chinese-inspired poems. I explore how Michaux's West-Eastern cross-cultural straddling relates to the way he renders the lyric problematic, and how this relation can help us re-read and perhaps unread the lyric (at least, its European understanding) in a comparative way. I first read some poems that are representative of Michaux's uneasy and disintegrating lyricism; then I consider how Michaux's poems that allude to Chinese and Far Eastern sources of inspiration reinstate his lyric voice, but in a new, ‘Asianised’ way. This raises the intriguing question of why there exists a coincidence between Michaux's ‘Chinese-style’ and his lyrical moments. Besides considering Michaux's Chinese influences and the Orientalist stereotyping of Chinese literary style, I argue that a stronger comparative approach to this question is to consider lyricism in the Chinese context and how shuqing (approximately translated as ‘lyrical’) writing – despite its very different conceptual framework – may shed light on Michaux's poetry and dislodge Eurocentric views of the lyric. Finally, I propose that Michaux's poetry marks the point of simultaneous lyric disintegration and reformulation. Although Michaux's Chinese-inspired dimension sustains certain lyrical moments, the transcultural aesthetics of his West-Eastern lyric in fact resists fusion and reconciliation, presenting instead a juxtapositional tension and splintering of poetics between Michaux's French and Chinese sides.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
John Fredy Gil Bonilla

Summary The main purpose of this paper is to analyze how culture is embedded in the way viewers from different language backgrounds conceptualize and interpret the same multimodal metaphors. Therefore, interaction between metaphor and culture is hence a crucial aspect of research in this study. Following Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) and Forceville’s (1996, 2009) approaches, this paper examines how a comparative study undertaken from a cross-cultural perspective can shed light on how culture is an influential factor that can trigger changes in interpretations and reactions in the viewers. Data for this research were gathered with the help of 240 participants taken from 8 different language backgrounds. The subjects of this study were supplied with a questionnaire which consisted of three multimodal metaphors and 8 questions. In particular, I want to focus on the following research questions: (1) Which figurative B-term do different cultures conceptualize in a multimodal metaphor? (2) How aggressive are these multimodal metaphors considered by the participants of the study? On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that not only the cultural background but also the personal has some influence on the way respondents interpret multimodal metaphors. The reactions identified in the responses of the subjects are influenced by different factors: religion, personal and societal experiences, beliefs, etc.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
June Gruber ◽  
Marc Bekoff

Recent discoveries stress the importance of studying positive emotion disturbances (PED) yet there remains little empirical work or integrative conceptual framework in this domain. We suggest that an ideally suited opportunity to advance the study of PED is to consider a cross-species evolutionary framework. We apply this framework—drawing from principles of stabilizing selection—to recent empirical findings in humans and nonhumans suggesting how positive emotion and associated play behaviors may lead to detrimental outcomes. This cross-species approach suggests a potential paradigm shift in the way psychologists and evolutionary biologists approach positive emotion functioning, opening the possibility for new conceptual opportunities and interdisciplinary dialogues and research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-517
Author(s):  
Yuk Hui ◽  
Louis Morelle

This article aims to clarify the question of speed and intensity in the thoughts of Simondon and Deleuze, in order to shed light on the recent debates regarding accelerationism and its politics. Instead of starting with speed, we propose to look into the notion of intensity and how it serves as a new ontological ground in Simondon's and Deleuze's philosophy and politics. Simondon mobilises the concept of intensity to criticise hylomorphism and substantialism; Deleuze, taking up Simondon's conceptual framework, repurposes it for his ontology of difference, elevating intensity to the rank of generic concept of being, thus bypassing notions of negativity and individuals as base, in favour of the productive and universal character of difference. In Deleuze, the correlation between intensity and speed is fraught with ambiguities, with each term threatening to subsume the other; this rampant tension becomes explicitly antagonistic when taken up by the diverse strands of contemporary accelerationism, resulting in two extreme cases in the posthuman discourse: either a pure becoming, achieved through destruction, or through abstraction that does away with intensity altogether; or an intensity without movement or speed, that remains a pure jouissance. Both cases appear to stumble over the problem of individuation, if not disindividuation. Hence, we wish to raise the following question: in what way can one think of an accelerationist politics with intensity, or an intensive politics without the fetishisation of speed? We consider this question central to the interrogation of the limits of acceleration and posthuman discourse, thus requiring a new philosophical thought on intensity and speed.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Currell

Showing how ‘modernist cosmopolitanism’ coexisted with an anti-cosmopolitan municipal control this essay looks at the way utopian ideals about breeding better humans entered into new town and city planning in the early twentieth century. An experiment in eugenic garden city planning which took place in Strasbourg, France, in the 1920s provided a model for modern planning that was keenly observed by the international eugenics movement as well as city planners. The comparative approach taken in this essay shows that while core beliefs about degeneration and the importance of eugenics to improve the national ‘body’ were often transnational and cosmopolitan, attempts to implement eugenic beliefs on a practical level were shaped by national and regional circumstances that were on many levels anti-cosmopolitan. As a way of assuaging the tensions between the local and the global, as well as the traditional with the modern, this unique and now forgotten experiment in eugenic city planning aimed to show that both preservation and progress could succeed at the same time.


Moreana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (Number 181- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 9-68
Author(s):  
Jean Du Verger

The philosophical and political aspects of Utopia have often shadowed the geographical and cartographical dimension of More’s work. Thus, I will try to shed light on this aspect of the book in order to lay emphasis on the links fostered between knowledge and space during the Renaissance. I shall try to show how More’s opusculum aureum, which is fraught with cartographical references, reifies what Germain Marc’hadour terms a “fictional archipelago” (“The Catalan World Atlas” (c. 1375) by Abraham Cresques ; Zuane Pizzigano’s portolano chart (1423); Martin Benhaim’s globe (1492); Martin Waldseemüller’s Cosmographiae Introductio (1507); Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia (1513) ; Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario (1528) ; Diogo Ribeiro’s world map (1529) ; the Grand Insulaire et Pilotage (c.1586) by André Thevet). I will, therefore, uncover the narrative strategies used by Thomas More in a text which lies on a complex network of geographical and cartographical references. Finally, I will examine the way in which the frontispiece of the editio princeps of 1516, as well as the frontispiece of the third edition published by Froben at Basle in 1518, clearly highlight the geographical and cartographical aspect of More’s narrative.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonatan N Gez ◽  
Yvan Droz ◽  
Jeanne Rey ◽  
Edio Soares

Based on comparative ethnographic research in four countries and three continents, Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility explores the notion of "religious butinage" as a conceptual framework intended to shed light on the dynamics of everyday religious practice. Derived from the French word butiner, which refers to the foraging activity of bees and other pollinating insects, this term is employed by the authors metaphorically to refer to the "to-ing and fro-ing" of believers between religious institutions.


Author(s):  
Sarah Paterson

This book is concerned with the way in which forces of change, from the fields of finance and non-financial corporates, cause participants in the corporate reorganization process to adapt the ways in which they mobilize corporate reorganization law. It argues that scholars, practitioners, judges, and the legislature must all take care to connect their conceptual frameworks to the specific adaptations which emerge from this process of change. It further argues that this need to connect theoretical and policy concepts with practical adaptations has posed particular challenges when US corporate reorganization law has been under examination in the decade since the financial crisis. At the same time, the book suggests that English scholars, practitioners, judges, and the legislature have been more successful, over the course of the past ten years, in choosing concepts to frame their analysis which are sensitive to the ways in which corporate reorganization law is currently used. Nonetheless, it suggests that new problems may be on the horizon for English corporate reorganization lawyers in adapting their conceptual framework in the decades to come.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-520
Author(s):  
Nicola Pozza

AbstractNumerous studies have dealt with the process of globalization and its various cultural products. Three such cultural products illustrate this process: Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A (2005), the TV quiz show Kaun banega crorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The novel, the TV show and the film have so far been studied separately. Juxtaposing and comparing Q and A, Kaun banega crorepati, and Slumdog Millionaire provides an effective means to shed light on the dialogic and interactive nature of the process of globalization. It is argued through this case study that an analysis of their place of production, language and content, helps clarify the derivative concepts of “glocalization” and “grobalization” with regard to the way(s) contemporary cultural products respond to globalization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 1298-1298
Author(s):  
M Forte ◽  
P Nestor

Abstract Objective Develop a cross-cultural conceptual framework for the validation of the Advanced Clinical Solutions (ACS) Social Perception subtest to effectively assess Latinx populations. Method The framework serves to examine and evaluate the composition of the normative sample of the ACS-SP using eight key variables taken from the ECLECTIC framework, specifically education (e.g., literacy), acculturation levels (e.g., race, ethnicity), language (e.g., proficiency), economics (e.g., SES), communication styles, testing comfort, intelligence conceptualization, and context of immigration (Fujii, 2018). In addition, the model assesses the normative sample in reference to the intersectionality of identities (Cole, 2009; Wadsworth et al., 2016) across cultural and demographic variables that may influence the expression of emotion, and consequently, the interpretation of ACS-SP results. The model applies an Etic-Emic approach to address the question of cross-cultural validity of the ACS-SP (Cheung, van de Vijver & Leong, 2011). Finally, the model can be applied to examine the ACS-SP in relation to cultural intelligence (CQ), a more recently established construct defined as an individual’s ability to function effectively inter-culturally (Ang, Rockstuhl, & Tan, 2015). Discussion A large body of research has shown that the expression and measurement of social cognitive abilities are greatly influenced by cultural factors (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002). For example, studies have shown that the expression of these abilities may be greatly influenced by cultural differences in display rules. Likewise, it is equally important to consider key cultural variables such as those related to socioeconomic status (SES), demographics, and identity in the neuropsychological assessment of social perception in Latinx populations. Therefore, the model conducts a cross-cultural analysis of the ACS-SP. References Ang, S., Rockstuhl, T., & Tan, M. L. (2015). Cultural intelligence and competencies. International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 433-439. Cheung, F. M., Leung, K., Fan, R. M., Song, W. Z., Zhang, J. X., & Zhang, J. P. (1996). Development of the Chinese personality assessment inventory. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 27(2), 181-199. Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American psychologist, 64(3), 170. Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 203. Fujii, D. E. M. (2018) Developing a cultural context for conducting a neuropsychological evaluation with a culturally diverse client: The ECLECTIC framework. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 32(8), 1356-1392, DOI: 10.1080/13854046.2018.1435826. Wadsworth, L. P., Morgan, L. P., Hayes-Skelton, S. A., Roemer, L., & Suyemoto, K. L. (2016). Ways to boost your research rigor through increasing your cultural competence (part 1 of 2). The Behavior Therapist.


Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boaz Miller ◽  
Isaac Record

AbstractPeople increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered internet sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users' reliance on internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns within standard theories of knowledge and justification. To shed light on the problem, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, action and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject's particular decision-taking circumstances, and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject's beliefs that are formed based on internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.


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