Univocity, Exhaustion and Failing Better: Reading Beckett with Disability Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-174
Author(s):  
Yael Levin
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Physical Impairment ◽  
Physical Impairments ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
The One ◽  
Figurative Interpretation ◽  
Do So

The emergence of theories of disability in the last decades has rendered figurative interpretation suspect; neglect of literal and material truths has been hailed unethical, the exercising of an ableist bias that utilizes physical impairment as a rhetorical device. Any attempt to reconcile such critical concerns with Beckett's writing must take cognizance of an essential incongruity between the socially conscripted theoretical framework and aesthetic experimentation, between a mimetic fidelity to lived experience and an art of non-relation. The essay suggests that Beckett's poetics of exhaustion and its rejection of substitution and analogy in the interpretation of figures allows us to think beyond the interdisciplinary divide. The body is not imagined as a stand-in or receptacle for philosophical ideas but rather as the substrate upon and with which these ideas evolve and change. The text maintains the materiality of mental and physical impairments at the same time that it loads them with a variety of different metonymical connections. Such a stylization of excess and accumulation serves to release disability from existing stereotypes and predetermined moral judgment. It does so while sidestepping an impasse in disability studies, between the need to valorise overcoming, on the one hand, and the need to support the inability to do so, on the other. Neither extolling the supercrip nor championing inability, Beckett allows his readers to productively imagine what it might mean to fail better.

The Body in Theory

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.

Challenging Gender Hierarchies in Narratives of the Nation: Representations of Women in Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon and Hard Choice

Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Gender Differentiation ◽  
Hard Choice ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Gender Hierarchies ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Do So

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.

Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito

2019 ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
Hugh H. Benson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Virtuous Life ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

This chapter presents a reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. These dialogues, in which Plato depicts the weeks leading up to Socrates’s last day, are replete with various philosophical explorations. Among those explorations is the question of how to live our lives. On the one hand, Socrates is clear and straightforward. We should live the examined life—making logoi and examining ourselves and others in order to determine whether we are as wise as we think we are, and we should live the virtuous life. This is how Socrates lives his life. On the other hand, the examined life undercuts, or at least should undercut, the confidence with which he seeks to live the virtuous life. It may help bring some stability to the general principles by which he lives his life, but it can do so only defeasibly and without certainty.

SEEING AND HEARING DISABILITY IN MAURICIO KAGEL'S REPERTOIRE FROM STAATSTHEATER

Tempo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (296) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Bethany Younge
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Hearing Disability ◽  
Physical Action ◽  
The One ◽  
Traditional Roles

AbstractThis article adopts a disability studies perspective to evaluate the ways in which Mauricio Kagel's Repertoire from Staatstheater reimagines human bodies. Objects and bodies interact in myriad ways within the one hundred vignettes of Repertoire: some objects hinder or aid the bodies on stage, while others become incorporated within the body, acting as a single expressive unit. My analysis demonstrates the ways in which both objects and bodies transform their traditional roles as ascribed by society, rejecting procrustean physiques. Using disability studies concepts such as embodiment and experientialism I evaluate sound and physical action as inextricable expressions of imaginative corporealities. Reflecting upon Kagel's identity as an outsider of the European avant-garde, as well as his irreverence for oppressive social institutions, I evince that other forms of hierarchical disruptions are at play, namely that abled bodies do not preside over disabled ones and notions of beauty hold no clout.

scholarly journals Towards a Kenotic Identity Politics: Migration, Transformation and the Eucharist

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Eucharistic Theology ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Massive Influx ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The One

This paper will focus on one element of the pushback against the massive influx of immigrants taken in for humanitarian purposes, namely, an identity-based chauvinism which uses identity as the point of resistance to the perceived dilution of that identity, brought about by the transformation of culture induced by the incorporation of a foreign other. The solution to this perceived dilution is a simultaneous defence of that culture and a demand for a conformity to it. While those in the critical tradition have encouraged a counter-position of revolutionary transformation by the other through ethics, dialogue, or the multitude, such a transformation is arguably impeded by what is ultimately a repetition of the metaphysics of conformity. Drawing on the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the Eucharistic theology of Creston Davis and Aaron Riches, this paper submits an alternative identity politics position that completes the revolutionary impulse. Identity here is not the flashpoint of a self-serving conflict, but the launch-point of politics of self-emptying, whose hallmarks include, on the one hand, a never-ending reception of transformation by the other, and on the other hand, an anchoring in the Body of Christ that is at once ever-changing and never-changing.

The Nature of Truth

1952 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
B. De Kretser
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
The One

The consideration of this problem is important for at least two reasons. In many countries there are reports of an increasing decline in public morals and of growing dishonesty and corruption in the life of the body politic. This is taking place at a time when the established religious systems are being subjected to the pressure of pseudo-scientific secularism on the one hand and the claims of modern alternative faiths on the other. Clearly the two developments are interconnected. Yet, to judge from the burden of many public utterances of responsible leaders, including the now important and significant ‘Moral Re-armament’ Group, the close dependence of moral truth and the truth about the character of reality is not realised. Most people are content to mutter the usual platitudes—‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Do please try to be good and speak the truth’. But the problem of truth is more complicated than our naīve moralists would have us believe.

A Liberating Experience. On Becoming a Work of Art

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-430
Author(s):  
Maja Tabea Jerrentrup
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Film Clips ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Body Painting ◽  
Dimensional Surface

Abstract The art of bodypainting that is fairly unknown to a wider public turns the body into a canvas - it is a frequently used phrase in the field of bodypainting that illustrates the challenge it faces: it uses a three-dimensional surface and has to cope with its irregularities, but also with the model’s abilities and characteristics. This paper looks at individuals who are turned into art by bodypainting. Although body painting can be very challenging for them - they have to expose their bodies and to stand still for a long time while getting transformed - models report that they enjoy both the process and the result, even if they are not confident about their own bodies. Among the reasons there are physical aspects like the sensual enjoyment, but also the feeling of being part of something artistic. This is enhanced and preserved through double staging - becoming a threedimentional work of art and then being staged for photography or film clips. This process gives the model the chance to experience their own body in a detached way. On the one hand, bodypainting closely relates to the body and on the other hand, it can help to over-come the body.

scholarly journals Jewish fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ) in post-supersessionist water: Messianic Judaism within a post-supersessionistic paradigm

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Willitts
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
New Testament ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Messianic Judaism ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This article defines, explains and argues for the necessity of a post-supersessionistic hermeneutical posture towards the New Testament. The post-supersessionistic reading of the New Testament takes the Jewish nature of the apostolic documents seriously, and has as its goal the correction of the sin of supersessionism. While supersessionism theologically is repudiated in most corners of the contemporary church through official church documents, the practise of reading the New Testament continues to exhibit supersessionistic tendencies and outcomes. The consequence of this predominant reading of the New Testament is the continued exclusion of Jewish ethnic identity in the church. In light of the growing recognition of multiculturalism and contextualisation on the one hand, and the recent presence of a movement within the body of Messiah of Jewish believers in Jesus on the other, the church’s established approach to reading Scripture that leads to the elimination of ethnic identity must be repudiated alongside its post-supersessionist doctrinal statements. This article defines terms, explains consequences and argues for a renewed perspective on the New Testament as an ethnic document; such a perspective will promote the church’s cultivation of real embodied ethnic particularity rather than either a pseudo-interculturalism or the eraser full ethnicity.

scholarly journals The Monk by M. G. Lewis: Revolution, Religion and the Female Body

Text Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Łowczanin
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This paper reads The Monk by M. G. Lewis in the context of the literary and visual responses to the French Revolution, suggesting that its digestion of the horrors across the Channel is exhibited especially in its depictions of women. Lewis plays with public and domestic representations of femininity, steeped in social expectation and a rich cultural and religious imaginary. The novel’s ambivalence in the representation of femininity draws on the one hand on Catholic symbolism, especially its depictions of the Madonna and the virgin saints, and on the other, on the way the revolutionaries used the body of the queen, Marie Antoinette, to portray the corruption of the royal family. The Monk fictionalizes the ways in which the female body was exposed, both by the Church and by the Revolution, and appropriated to become a highly politicized entity, a tool in ideological argumentation.

scholarly journals Attention and the motion after effect: New measurements with visual search reveal important individual differences in adaptability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Morgan ◽  
Joshua A. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Times ◽  
Visual Pathway ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
The Other ◽  
Test Array ◽  
Mouse Click ◽  
Search Speed ◽  
After Effect ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

AbstractIt is usually assumed that sensory adaptation is a universal property of human vision. However, in two experiments designed to measure adaptation without bias, we have discovered a minority of participants who were unusual in the extent of their adaptation to motion. One experiment was designed so that targets would be invisible without adaptation; the other, so that adaptation would interfere with target detection. In the first, participants adapted to a spatial array of moving Gabor patches. On each trial the adapting array was followed by a test array in which but all of the test patches except one were identical to their spatially corresponding adaptors; the target moved in the opposite direction to its adaptor. Participants were required to identify the location of the changed target with a mouse click. The ability to do so increased with the number of adapting trials. Neither search speed nor accuracy was affected by an attentionally-demanding conjunction task at the fixation point during adaptation, suggesting low-level (pre-attentive) sites in the visual pathway for the adaptation. However, a minority of participants found the task virtually impossible. In the second experiment the same participants were required to identify the one element in the test array that was slowly moving: reaction times in this case were elevated following adaptation. The putatively weak adapters from the first experiment found this task easier than the strong adapters.

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