scholarly journals Sonority, Difference and the Schwarzenegger Star Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Gábor Gergely
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Star Body ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Space ◽  
European Women ◽  
The Way

Discussions of the exilic body in Hollywood cinema have tended to focus on the personal trajectories of émigré actors in the context of the broader history of the industry in which they achieved star status. Significant work has been done in particular on the fate of European women stars in Hollywood but what has been rarely addressed, however, is the way in which Hollywood films imagine the exilic experience via the narratives built around specific stars. This article focuses on Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the dominant stars of the 1980s–1990s, whose foreignness, accent and body are used in a remarkably consistent set of aesthetic, generic and narrative practices. The article uses Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of sonority to argue that the sonorous presence of the foreign other in the “host” space produces a new space; it produces the space of the host anew as one in which the foreign other is present despite the discursive denial of the possibility of that presence whilst at the same time producing a new self as distinct from the self before displacement. The article's aim is to highlight the ways in which Hollywood films produce and reproduce foreignness as an impossibility, a presence that cannot be. The use of the foreign star, I argue, is to perform the permeability of the boundary between outside and inside, while also policing it.

The Missing Piece

Divine Bodies ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Candida R. Moss
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship ◽  
The Way

The resurrection of the body is a key place to think about who we are and which facets of ourselves are integral to ourselves. The introduction to this book places the resurrection of the body within the context of ancient anxieties about the self: What makes us who we are? It also reviews the history of scholarship on this question and traces the way that ideas about resurrection have been divorced from broader thinking about the self.

Foucault, Weber et l'histoire du sujet économique

Dialogue ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 537-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Behaviour ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTThis article deals with Michel Foucault's 1977–79 lectures on political economy. In the first part, we highlight his views on the market, which is equated to a social device instrumental in governing individuals so that they are induced to allow the ruler to reach his goal, which is providing security to the population. In the second part, we consider together Foucault's and Weber's views on the economy, since Foucault's concept of technique of the self is similar to Weber's concept of life conduct, which is central in his sociology of religion. This opens the way to a history of the modern economic behaviour considered as a form of ascetism.

scholarly journals Soul searching: a brief history of the mind/body debate in the neurosciences

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of Neuroscience ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Way

✓Anatomical and physiological understandings of the structure and function of the brain have worked to establish it as the “seat of the soul.” As an organ of reflection, meditation, and memory, the brain becomes synonymous with what defines the “self” through the existence of consciousness—of mind. Thus, the brain has been associated with a range of transcendent concepts—the soul, spirit, mind, and consciousness—that all relate in fundamental ways to each other both in terms of their perceived location within the brain and because of the way each works ultimately to define the person to whom the brain belongs. In this article, the author provides a brief exploration of how interrelated these categories have been when seen in the context of ancient, Renaissance, early modern, and modern philosophical and medical concerns; how the brain has variously been perceived as home to these intimate states of being; and how practitioners from the neurosciences have reflected on these questions. The author provides novel insights into the interrelationships of philosophy, theology, and medicine by examining these issues through the lens of the history of neuroscience.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

scholarly journals Meditative Revolutions? A Preliminary Approach to US Buddhist Anarchist Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-179
Author(s):  
Enrique Galvan-Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary Praxis ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the various shapes, inner structures and roles given to transformative and liberative practices in the work of US Buddhist anarchist authors (1960-2010). Unlike their Chinese and Japanese predecessors, who focused more on discursive parallelisms between Buddhism and anarchism or on historical instances of antiauthoritarianism within the Buddhist tradition(s), US Buddhist anarchists seem to favour practice and experience. This emphasis, characteristic of the way Buddhism has been introduced to the West,sometimes masks the way meditative techniques were used in traditional Buddhist contexts as oppressive technologies of the self. Whereas the emphasis on the inherently revolutionary nature of Buddhist practice represents a radical departure from the way those practices have been conceptualised throughout Buddhist history, it also involves the danger of considering Buddhist practice as an ahistorical sine qua non for social transformation. This is due to the fact that most early Buddhist anarchist writers based their ideas on a highly idealised, Orientalist imagination of Zen Buddhism(s). However, recent contributions based on other traditions have offered a more nuanced, albeit still developing picture. By assessing a number of instances from different US Buddhist anarchist writers, the article traces the brief history of the idea that meditation is revolutionary praxis, while also deconstructing and complicating it through historical and textual analysis.

scholarly journals Journal of the History of Economic Thought Preprints – The Pleasure of Exchange: Adam Smith's Third Kind of Self-Love

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Bee
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Self ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Relationship ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Way

This article argues that the self-love that motivates exchange in The Wealth of Nations (WN) can be seen as the desire for deserved approval discussed by Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). This often overlooked desire appears in TMS as the most representative kind of self-love. Exchange motivated by this desire emerges as the way to find confirmation through others’ appraisal of one’s own self-assessment, and thus to find an agreed measure for respective deserved praise. The target in this economic relationship is the equivalence which signals mutual recognition of deserved esteem. Equivalence here is the aim and not the result of exchange, unlike a tug-of-war, where both parties try to give as little and gain as much as possible regardless of the recognition each deserves.

Virtual Reality’s New Synesthetic Possibilities

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Ross
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Optical Illusion ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Optical Illusions ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Space ◽  
Live Action ◽  
The Way

In its current, popular manifestation, Virtual Reality (VR) represents the culmination of more than two centuries of screen practice aimed at creating greater immersion. VR’s optical illusions produce an expanded multisensory immersive experience that enhances the viewer’s interior position within new space. This article questions where embodiment and disembodiment lie in VR’s multisensory optical illusion and whether there is a difference produced by the digital environment versus the photographic, live-action environment? It takes into account our present moment in the history of VR during which the fantasy of total bodily engagement and transference into the “machine” has not yet occurred. In doing so, this article considers the way VR uses synesthetic modes rather than direct sensory stimuli to engage more of the senses.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

Netta Syrett, Nobody’s Fault, and Female Decadence: The Story of a Wagnerite

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-199
Author(s):  
Crescent Rainwater
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
The Way

Abstract Scholars have traditionally associated decadence with misogyny, and therefore it has typically been perceived as antithetical to feminism. Nobody’s Fault (1896), Netta Syrett’s first novel, complicates this perception through the way in which the self-assertive protagonist, Bridget Ruan, finds in the decadent music of Richard Wagner a liberating form of aesthetic experience. In this essay, I argue that encountering Wagner’s music marks Bridget’s immersion into a form of decadent culture that affirms her aesthetic longings and awakens her erotic desires. At the same time, the novel condemns an antifeminist form of decadence that is associated with elitist male artists who indulge in a superficial manipulation of language and treat women as art objects. The novel’s resistance to exclusionary forms of aesthetic experience is modelled in its straightforward narrative style and strategic engagement with familiar New Woman themes. This middlebrow narrative thus made Syrett’s intervention into debates about women and decadence accessible to a middle-class female audience. When we recognize that the history of decadence includes its appeal to feminist writers such as Syrett rather than an exclusively antifeminist legacy, we can begin to uncover a more nuanced history of feminism and decadence in England at the fin de siècle.

scholarly journals Shot Transitions and Narrative Logic in Hitchcock's Rope

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Mather
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Technological Factors ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shot Transitions ◽  
Classical Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Classical Hollywood ◽  
The Way

SHOT TRANSITIONS AND NARRATIVE LOGIC IN HITCHCOCK'S ROPE Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock) belongs to a group of films including Lady in the Lake (1947, Robert Montgomery) which, in the history of classical Hollywood cinema, have experimented with the conventions of the continuity editing system, hoping perhaps to achieve a heightened spectatorial identification with the narrative, through a consistent use of the point-of-view shot for instance, or a seemingly uninterrupted long take with camera movement. These experiments are informative in that they tend rather to confirm the established system's apparent neutrality, its ability at "invisible" narration. I will argue that Rope's attempts at creating "hidden" cuts, chiefly through camera movement and close-ups of a jacket, result in defamiliarizing classical découpage: the "hidden" cuts become much more noticeable than those involving eyeline matches, for example. Firstly, there are technological factors which play a role in determining the way in which a...

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