Louise Bourgeois’s Melancholy Objects to be Used

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-164
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Mental Process ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Louise Bourgeois ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual

Over a decade before the French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois underwent psychoanalysis in New York (1952–1985), her work mined territories of psyche, body, home, and exile. Bourgeois’s papers from 1940 onward reveal that she shared Freud’s description of neurotics, hysterics, and artists as suffering from reminiscences. Scottish psychoanalyst W. R. D. Fairbairn identified the last of these in 1943 as “war neuroses,” just six years before Bourgeois debuted her first mature sculptures. These abstract “personages” served as melancholy surrogates for lost objects, the friends and family Bourgeois left in 1938 in Occupied France. In the 1960s, she further reduced the body to ambivalent amalgams of part-objects made from plaster and latex, suggesting swollen nodes, skin, and sex organs. Of particular interest are two papers published by Fairbairn in 1938 that extend the inner world of the individual to the field of object relations via the transposition of the symbolically “restored object.” Fairbairn conceived the radical notion of restitution, the mental process of repairing damage in the artist’s inner object world. These principles resonate with Bourgeois’s métier and a postwar sculptural aesthetic that probed the phenomenal experience of anxiety, exile, and psychoanalysis on the Self and others.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.

Self, Indian theories of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.S. Rukmani
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Spiritual Energy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Ultimate Principle ◽  
Ultimate Nature

Hindu thought traces its different conceptions of the self to the earliest extant Vedic sources composed in the Sanskrit language. The words commonly used in Hindu thought and religion for the self are jīva (life), ātman (breath), jīvātman (life-breath), puruṣa (the essence that lies in the body), and kṣetrajña (one who knows the body). Each of these words was the culmination of a process of inquiry with the purpose of discovering the ultimate nature of the self. By the end of the ancient period, the personal self was regarded as something eternal which becomes connected to a body in order to exhaust the good and bad karma it has accumulated in its many lives. This self was supposed to be able to regain its purity by following different spiritual paths by means of which it can escape from the circle of births and deaths forever. There is one more important development in the ancient and classical period. The conception of Brahman as both immanent and transcendent led to Brahman being identified with the personal self. The habit of thought that tried to relate every aspect of the individual with its counterpart in the universe (Ṛg Veda X. 16) had already prepared the background for this identification process. When the ultimate principle in the subjective and objective spheres had arrived at their respective ends in the discovery of the ātman and Brahman, it was easy to equate the two as being the same spiritual ‘energy’ that informs both the outer world and the inner self. This equation had important implications for later philosophical growth. The above conceptions of the self-identity question find expression in the six systems of Hindu thought. These are known as āstikadarśanas or ways of seeing the self without rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Often, one system or the other may not explicitly state their allegiance to the Vedas, but unlike Buddhism or Jainism, they did not openly repudiate Vedic authority. Thus they were āstikadarśanas as opposed to the others who were nāstikadarśanas. The word darśana for philosophy is also significant if one realizes that philosophy does not end with only an intellectual knowing of one’s self-identity but also culminates in realizing it and truly becoming it.

Martha Graham's House of the Pelvic Truth: The Figuration of Sexual Identities and Female Empowerment

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Female Students ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Dance Training ◽  
To Come ◽  
The 1960S

Martha Graham writes in her autobiography Blood Memory that she was bewildered, or, as she puts it “bemused,” when she heard how dancers referred to her school as “the house of the pelvic truth” (Graham 1991, 211). We might perhaps agree with Graham that this is not the best description for a highly respected center of modern dance training; neither does it match Graham's image as an awe-inspiring and exacting teacher, nor does it suit the seriousness with which her tough technique is regarded. But the house of the pelvic truth does chime with stories about Graham's often frank method of addressing her students. She is reputed to have told one young woman not to come back to the studio until she had found herself a man. At other times she would tell her female students, “you are simply not moving your vagina” (211). Add to this other stories about the men in the company suffering from “vagina envy” (211), and it can be readily understood that the goings-on in the Graham studio gave rise to its nickname, “house of the pelvic truth.”In British dance circles of the 1960s, it was not rumors of the erotic that attracted most of us to Graham's work or persuaded us to travel to New York in search of the Graham technique. There was little in the way of contemporary dance training in Britain at this time, and we had been mesmerized by the beautiful and rather chaste film A Dancer's World (1957), in which Graham pronounces: a dancer is not a phenomenon … not a phenomenal creature.… I think he is a divine normal. He does what the human body is capable of doing. Now this takes time…it takes about ten years of study. This does not mean he won't be dancing before that time, but it does take the pressure of time, so that the house of the body can hold its divine tenant, the spirit. (1962, 24)

scholarly journals The Warren Commission, Postmodernity and the Rise of Conspiratorial Thinking in America

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Lobo
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Local Narratives

The era of post-modernity has completely changed the way that we see, recognize and question the world, and what we accept to be true. During and after the 1960s many witnessed the rise of a greater multiplicity of local narratives. Prior to this, the grand narratives of the past, such as religion, the Enlightenment, and science were taken as whole, singular truths. However, such metanarratives tend to ignore the individual experiences that do not fit neatly into categories constructed by major institutional authorities. This disconnection from the personal pushed more people to doubt, in favour of the narrative(s) where the Self is visible and heard. It can be argued that this revolution in thought, and meaning and narrative-making in America grew after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. By examining Jean-Francois Lyotard’s theory of postmodernity, and those who expanded on his ideas, we can highlight how the assassination of JFK marked the onset and rise of the postmodern conspiracy theory. This includes the deconstruction of trust, the breakdown of “objective” reality and identity markers as well as the use of new mass media technologies, such as the film camera and the television.

Maas, Willard (1906–71)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura E.B. Key
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The Body ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Art Scene ◽  
Group A ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1960S

Willard Maas (1906–71) was an American filmmaker and poet. He was known for his experimental style of filmmaking and was considered part of an avant-garde group of artists who worked in opposition to the commercial film industry. The types of films he made were sometimes referred to as "film poems" for their unconventional style, blurring the traditional distinction between the media of film and poetry. Maas was a literature professor by trade, working at Wagner College in New York City. Along with his wife, fellow filmmaker and artist Marie Menken, Maas was prominent in the New York art scene from the 1940s to the 1960s. Maas and Menken were founder members of the Gryphon Group, a set of like-minded artists who worked together on postwar experimental art and film projects. The couple was well-known for holding avant-garde salons at their Brooklyn apartment. Maas and Menken’s tempestuous relationship was well recorded, and they are cited as inspiration for the characters of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Maas’s film credits as director include Geography of the Body (1943, with Marie Menken and George Barker), The Mechanics of Love (1955, with Ben Moore), Image in the Snow (1943–8), and Narcissus (1956, with Ben Moore).

Self-cannibalism and cannibalism: a perverse defence against depression

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-51
Author(s):  
Ravi Lingam ◽  
Simon Mason
Keyword(s):  
Systems Of Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Developmental History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Increasing Risk ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personality Disordered ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Do So

This observational article describes three cases of self-cannibalism and cannibalism by patients in a secure setting. These are studies of severe personality disordered patients, each of whom have perpetrated terrible offences, usually on others. In our view, the inner world of the cannibalistic patient is committed to a narcissistic biting grip on his objects and is bent upon appropriating their good aspects. In our practice, we have observed a countertransference enactment that may be characterised as a roadblock to explore the past: to feel, to understand, and to repair. The aim of the perverse pact is to remain in a stuck state to protect the self from any awareness of feelings of depression. This is an enactment of the inherently deathly, inner relationship of the individual perpetrator. We believe it is essential to attempt to open up a space to explore the unthinkable act of cutting and eating flesh in the context of the person’s developmental history. Failure to do so within systems of care sets in motion a repeating cycle of a traumatic victim–victimiser dynamic associated with ever increasing risk.

Reception

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-220
Author(s):  
Joanna Paul
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Full Range ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
The 1960S

In American Arcadia, Peter Holliday offers readers a sumptuous and fascinating account of ‘California and the Classical Tradition’. Beautifully presented and illustrated, this book is not only a thought-provoking and pleasurable read but also a valuable addition to the body of scholarship that has explored classical receptions in the United States at some length in recent years. Much of that scholarship has focused on now familiar terrain, from the fixation on antiquity in Hollywood and popular culture more broadly, to the grandiose evocations of classical architecture in eastern cities such as Washington, DC, and New York. California, by contrast, for all its prominence on the world stage and in the cultural imagination, might not spring so readily to mind as a rich locus of classical receptions, but Holliday convincingly demonstrates ‘how Californians used classical antiquity as a metaphor for fashioning the Golden State and their own lives in it’ (355). Although well-known buildings such as the Getty Villa, Hearst Castle, and Caesar's Palace rightly receive lengthy discussion, there are a wealth of examples which are likely to be new to many readers, from the nineteenth-century Hungarian refugee building a Pompeian villa in a self-consciously Arcadian landscape, to the 1960s development of the CalArts campus, whose Modernist architects yet proclaimed their debt to Athens and Rome. Nor is the book solely concerned with architecture. Although the built environment is at its core, the full range of Californian identification with, and appropriation of, classical imagery and ideology is explored. The final chapter, for example, shows how pursuers of the quintessentially Californian healthy lifestyle and body beautiful knowingly looked to classical paradigms on multiple occasions. Resisting the temptation to frame all of this in a conventional ‘classical tradition’ approach, Holliday takes pains to show the full extent of the interaction and innovation that characterizes Californian classicism, and the resulting study is highly recommended.

Discipline and Excel: Techniques of the Self and Body and the Logic of Competing

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Heikkala
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Core ◽  
Independent Locus ◽  
The Individual

In the practical discourse of sport the focus is on the individual athlete as the autonomous and independent locus of action. This discourse is deconstructed from a, poststructuralist perspective. It is argued that in sport the disciplinary techniques of the body and self, as depicted by Michel Foucault, are both an instrument and an effect of competing. Disciplinary and normalizing practices such as bodily exercises or filling in a training diary are instruments for athletes to transcend their current performance, which is the core of the logic of competing. Furthermore, disciplining is the outcome of this “rationale” to excel. Giddens’s notion of structure is used to explicate the structure of competing. Yet his Cartesian conception of agents as knowledgeable is qualified, that is, within the practices of training and the structure of competing, some consequences of these practices escape athletes’ intention. The constitution of athletes’ subjectivity and even the consequences of the process of competing may be beyond their control.

To Resurrect a Ghost

1998 ◽  
pp. 186-191
Author(s):  
Donald V. Poochigian
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The Body ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Empirical Verification ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

Cartesian dualism has largely been replaced by empirical theories of the mind. Central to this development is Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of an immaterial ‘ghost’ inhabiting the material ‘machine’ of the body. A metaphysical self is incredible, and even if it is credible, both it and its manifestation in phenomenal experience are unknowable by others. Failure of this approach occurs when it is realized that existence of the physical is just as incredible as existence of the metaphysical. Free will is also inconceivable without the assumption of a metaphysical self, it being the ‘ghost in the machine’ after all. As for consciousness, it is presupposed by the empirical. What counts as physical manifestations of mind are the effects or causes of phenomenal experience. Without this criterion the individual is a unity, it being impossible to separate the psychological since effectively it encompasses every aspect of the individual. Additionally, it is in phenomenal experience that the empirical is observed, and observation is the basis of empirical verification. To advocate the scientific method of intersubjective verification while denying the existence or significance of the phenomenal is inconsistent. At root, the mental attributes are ontologically distinct. Limited to only one ontological substance, empiricists either redefine or exclude troublesome attributes, commiting the error of confusing distinct kinds of substances. Dualism can accommodate all of the properties of mind in a single coherent theory by acknowledging these kinds of substances.

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