scholarly journals Rupture, Suture, Nietzsche: Impossible Intersubjectivity in Alien

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Dominic Lash
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Human Recognition ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Controversial Concept ◽  
The Way

The concept of suture has long been an important and controversial concept in investigations of the relationships between narrative, diegesis, character, and spectator. The dominant understanding of suture has paid more attention to its Lacanian derivation – and to the account given by Daniel Dayan – than to the work of Jean-Pierre Oudart which first introduced suture into Film Studies. This article, however, follows the recent work of George Butte, who argues that the way Oudart understands suture is very illuminating for the study of the complex forms of intersubjectivity that cinema so readily, and so richly, dramatises – famously (but by no means exclusively) by means of shot/reverse shot figures. It argues that certain key moments in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) activate ideas of corporeality, desire, and intersubjectivity in ways that contribute to a wider thematic and figurative nexus at work in the film directed at the exploration of impossible intersubjectivities. The article also proposes that, via this nexus, the film offers an intriguing instantiation of Nietzsche's notion of the “human, all too human”, thereby demonstrating that there is much more in Nietzsche of relevance to Alien than the xenomorph's superhuman “will-to-power”. The android Ash's admiration for the alien's lack both of conscience and consciousness ironically indicates his own all-too-human recognition of the superfluity but inescapability of his own consciousness. The article concludes by drawing briefly on the work of Stanley Cavell on acknowledgment, proposing that much of the horror of Alien lies not only in how bodies are ruptured but in the fact that some subjectivities cannot even be sutured.

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR ALPHABET-SWITCHING IN THE WORKS OF CICERO: COMMON NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Reliable Transmission ◽  
Accurate Record ◽  
The Way

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.

Church Discipline in the Later Middle Ages: the Priors of Durham as Archdeacons

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Margaret Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

It is often forgotten that the medieval Church imposed public penance and reconciliation by law. The discipline was administered by the church courts, among which one of the most important, because it acted at local level, was that of the archdeacon. In the later Middle Ages and certainly by 1435, the priors of Durham were archdeacons in all the churches appropriated to the monastery. The priors had established their rights in Durham County by the early fourteenth century and in Northumberland slightly later. Although the origins of this peculiar jurisdiction were long ago unravelled by Barlow, there is no full account of how it worked in practice. Yet it is not difficult from the Durham archives to elicit a coherent account, with examples, of the way penance and ecclesiastical justice were administered from day to day in the Durham area in this period. The picture that emerges from these documents, though not in itself unusual, is nevertheless valuable and affords an extraordinary degree of detail which is missing from other places, where the evidence no longer exists. This study should complement the recent work by Larry Poos for Lincoln and Wisbech, drawing attention to an institution which would reward further research. It is only possible here to outline what the court did and how and why it was used.

scholarly journals The Development of Expressive Drawing Abilities during Childhood and into Adolescence

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delphine Picard ◽  
Christophe Gauthier
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Sample Size ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Developmental Shift ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Age Related Changes ◽  
The Way

The way children portray emotions in their drawings of human and nonhuman topics is assumed to reflect their artistic, emotional, and cognitive development. This study was designed to investigate the development of expressive drawings during childhood and into adolescence, using a large age range (5–15 years) and sample size (N=480), so as to provide a precise and comprehensive view of age-related changes in children’s ability to produce expressive drawings. More specifically, we focused on children’s developing ability to use the techniques of literal and metaphorical expression, either alone or in combination. We also examined the effects of sex, topics (house, tree, or person), and the depicted emotion (happiness or sadness) on the use of each expressive technique. The main findings were that there is a developmental shift between childhood (5–10 years) and adolescence (11–15 years) in the use of expressive techniques, from simple (literal) to more complex forms of expression (metaphorical).

The Toccatas of Bach

1912 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
J. A. Fuller-Maitland
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
General Character ◽  
Valuable Book ◽  
The Way

There are no fewer than twelve complete works of Sebastian Bach to which the name Toccata is applied, and in nearly all cases the title seems to have come from the composer himself. It is always worth while to trace, if we can, the reasons which led a great man to choose one name rather than another for his creations; and in the case of Bach, I think we are justified in supposing that the names he gave were not purely arbitrary, but were chosen for some good reason. Certain modern composers, notably Brahms, have shown a strange indifference to the effect wrought by a well-chosen name for their music. His later works for pianoforte, often grouped under the heading of “Fantasias,” are divided into “Intermezzi” and “‘Capricci” according to whether they are slow movements or fast. But Bach, with his methodical habits, never showed that kind of almost perverse nonchalance in regard to the names his works were to bear. Remember the “Partitas,” and how each of the six introductory movements had a different designation from all the rest. As a matter of fact, there is not much indication of any inner variety of structure among the six, for all are preludial in general character, and it is evidently only a whim of the composer to give the six different titles. One of these, the sixth by the way, is styled “Toccata,” but has none of the distinguishing marks which, I hope to persuade you, Bach had in his mind when he used the title for independent compositions. Mr. Albert Schweitzer in his exceedingly valuable book on Bach (I am speaking of the recent work in two volumes, translated from the French by Mr. Ernest Newman) says that these Toccatas might just as well have been called Sonatas, or by any other name. Here I cannot agree with him, and the main object of my remarks on the present occasion.is to examine into the structure and style of the pieces, and see if we cannot discern some characteristic common to them all, and not shared by any other compositions of Bach.

The Sentimental Chaplin: Comedy and Classical Narrative

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Burnetts
Keyword(s):  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
Classical Hollywood ◽  
The Way ◽  
Film Comedy

Chapter Three focuses on the critical functions of comedy in relation to sentimental narrative structures in the early and classical Hollywood eras, focusing on how humour is both celebrated and critiqued in terms of its counter-balancing, compensation for, or even negation of the sentimental in film. Charles Chaplin’s early work is analysed with reference to the critical opposition to his features on the part of intellectuals wedded to a more ‘naturalistic’ cinema or to Chaplin’s more ‘anarchic’ deployment of slapstick, such as the American writer Gilbert Seldes and the early work of Siegfried Kracauer. The discussion turns to the classical genres of Hollywood’s 1930s and 1940s period, using sequences from John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) as an exemplary negotiation of sentiment and slapstick. Focus is maintained on the way that such categories are influenced by sentimental codes, particularly in terms of the persistence of genteel sensibilities and/or moralistic narrative structures. The chapter draws in such respects on key theorists of film comedy of that era, such as Stanley Cavell, Henry Jenkins and Lea Jacobs.

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Theory Of Value

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell has held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University since 1963. The range, diversity and distinctiveness of his writings are unparalleled in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. As well as publishing essays on modernist painting and music, he has created a substantial body of work in film studies, literary theory and literary criticism; he has introduced new and fruitful ways of thinking about psychoanalysis and its relationship with philosophy; and his work on Heidegger and Derrida, taken together with his attempts to revitalize the tradition of Emersonian Transcendentalism, have defined new possibilities for a distinctively American contribution to philosophical culture. This complex oeuvre is unified by a set of thematic concerns – relating to scepticism and moral perfectionism – which are rooted in Cavell’s commitment to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, as represented in the work of J.L. Austin and Wittgenstein.

Co-constructing referential space in multimodal narratives

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kashmiri Stec ◽  
Mike Huiskes
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Multimodal Communication ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Multimodal Process ◽  
Spatial Locations ◽  
The Way

Abstract Meaning-making is a situated, multimodal process. Although most research has focused on conceptualization in individuals, recent work points to the way dynamic processes can affect both conceptualization and expression in multiple individuals (e.g. Özyürek 2002; Fusaroli and Tylén 2012; Narayan 2012). In light of this, we investigate the co-construction of referential space in dyadic multimodal communication. Referential space is the association of a referent with a particular spatial location (McNeill and Pedelty 1995). We focus on the multimodal means by which dyads collaboratively co-construct or co-use referential space, and use it to answer questions related to its use and stability in communication. Whereas previous work has focused on an individual's use of referential space (So et al. 2009), our data suggest that spatial locations are salient to both speakers and addressees: referents assigned to particular spatial locations can be mutually accessible to both participants, as well as stable across longer stretches of discourse.

scholarly journals Senses of Echo Lake: Michael Palmer, Stanley Cavell, and the Moods of an American Philosophical Tradition

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Richard Deming
Keyword(s):  
Ralph Waldo Emerson ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Active Reading ◽  
Moral Perfectionism ◽  
The Way

This essay explores a philosophical tradition that Stanley Cavell has traced out and which he emphasizes as being American inasmuch as it is arises out of the thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It then investigates how the poems of the avant-garde poet Michael Palmer link with, overlap with, this strain of American philosophy in terms of how it enacts an understanding of what we might call “philosophical mood,” on outlook based on the navigation of representation, generative self-consciousness, and doubt that amounts to a form of epistemology. The essay does not trace the influence—direct or otherwise of Cavell and his arguments for philosophy on the poems, despite a biographical connection between Cavell and Palmer, his former student. Instead it brings out the way that one might fruitfully locate Palmer’s work within an American literary/philosophical continuum. The article shows how that context opens up the work to a range of important existential and ethical implications. I endeavor to show that Notes for Echo Lake, Palmer’s most important collection, locates itself, its language, within such a frame so as to provide a place for readerly encounters with the limitations of language. These encounters then are presented as an opportunity for a deeper understanding of subjectivity and for attuning oneself to the role that active reading and interpretation might play in moral perfectionism.

The Byzantine Church: a bibliographical note on recent work

1950 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-113
Author(s):  
Norman H. Baynes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Bibliographical Note ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
The Way ◽  
Byzantine History

In these days the compilation of a bibliography of the publications of recent years is an exasperating occupation: if a book or journal has not been destroyed by bombing, it will probably be out of print, and it is not easy to understand why so many obstacles are set in the way of a free commerce in books. The result has been that students have tended to limit themselves to recording the works published in their own country. Take, for example, the field of Byzantine studies: A. Grabar has reported on ‘La Byzantinologie française pendant la Guerre 1940–45”, Byzantion, 17 (1944–5), 431–8; Wilhelm Ensslin has written a valuable critical report on German work on Byzantine history for the years 1939–47, Byzantion, 17 (1946–8), 261–302, cf. Klio 33 (1940), 349–68, 35 (1942), 164–77; in Byzantinoslavica there has appeared a series of bibliographical reports: Grabar for France in 9 (1947), 126–32, Ostrogorsky and Radolchich for Yugoslavia, ibid., 133–42; Lebedev for Russia (1936 to 1946), ibid., 97–112; M. Paulova for Czechoslovakia, ibid., 144–7; Runciman for Turkey, ibid., 143–4; A. Elian for Roumania, ibid., 393–405; Anguélov and Dimitrov for Bulgaria, ibid., 355–78; Moravcsik for Hungary, ibid., 379–92; Charanis for the United States, ibid., 342–54; for the British Isles Hussey and Baynes, ibid., 113ñ26, while Soloviev has written on Byzantine work published in Yugoslavia (1937 to 1947) in Byzantion 17 (1946–8), 303–10 and Delvoye has reported on Travaux récents sur les Monuments byzantins de la Grèce (1938ñ47), ibid., 229–60 and has studied L'Ecole Française d'Athènes et les Etudes Byzantines, R.E.B., 6 (1948), 86–93.

Initiation of archaeal DNA replication

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.R. Jenkinson ◽  
J.P.J. Chong
Keyword(s):  
Dna Replication ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Genetic Information ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
Biological Concepts ◽  
Archaeal Dna Replication ◽  
The Way

The identification of DNA as the genetic material and the elucidation of its structure by Watson and Crick [Watson and Crick, (1953) Nature (London) 171, 737–738], which has its 50th anniversary this year, first suggested the simple elegance with which the problem of passing on precise genetic information from one generation to the next could be solved. Semi-conservative replication is perhaps one of the simplest biological concepts to explain and understand. However, despite an enormous amount of effort in the intervening years, details of the way in which this process is regulated and performed are still unclear in many organisms. Recent work suggests that, due to their simplicity, the Archaea may make a good model for understanding some of the aspects of eukaryotic replication that still elude us.

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