Notes Towards a Critical History of Musicalities: Philodemus on the Use of Musical Pleasures and the Care of the Self

Author(s):  
Élise Escalle
Author(s):  
Aaron S. Allen

Our experience of the environment relies on all the senses. In this chapter, Aaron Allen introduces non-musicologists to the relatively new field of ecomusicology. He argues that for musicology, the genre/idea of the symphony is laden with prestige; for ecocriticism, the pastoral has similar stature and is a genre/mode central to the discipline. In the concise juxtaposition of these two terms, Allen illustrates ecomusicology, which connects ecocritical and musicological scholarship, and further outlines a brief critical history of selected symphonies in relation to the pastoral. He makes the case that symphonies – ostensibly a textless genre of music conceived as abstract – can relate ideas about nature. Such connections between disciplines, approaches, and materials contribute to the larger effort in the environmental (post)humanities to break down humans’ problematic and the self-destructive nature-culture binary.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 158
Author(s):  
Ketlin Kroetz ◽  
José Luis Schifino Ferraro

RESUMOEste ensaio objetiva discutir o modo como Michel Foucault abordou a constituição do sujeito a partir de a História da Sexualidade em seus volumes (I) A vontade de saber, (II) O uso dos prazeres e (III) O cuidado de si. O trabalho utiliza aportes teóricos de autores que trabalham “com” o filósofo francês em torno dos processos de subjetivação. Sem querer fechar conclusões e/ou propor uma leitura unívoca sobre o tema, o texto que segue conduz o debate em torno da invenção do sujeito e dos distintos modos de constituir-se/devir-a-ser sujeito da experiência no interior dos estudos foucaultianos e seu entrecruzamento com a Educação.Palavras-chave: Constituição do sujeito. História da sexualidade. Michel Foucault.ABSTRACTThis essay aims to discuss how Michel Foucault approached the theme of the subject constitution from the History of Sexuality in its volumes (I) An Introduction, (II) the use of pleasure and (III) The care of the self. The work use a series of theoretical contributions from authors who works “with” the French philosopher around the subjectivation processes. Without any pretention of closing conclusions and/or propose a single reading about the theme, the following text lead us to the debate around the invention of the subject and the different ways to constitutes/becomes the subject of the experience in the field of the Foucauldian studies and its intersection with Education.Keywords: Subject constitution. History of sexuality. Michel Foucault.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 240-255
Author(s):  
Mukesh Kumar Bairva

Albert Camus’ The Plague articulates a new aesthetic of existence that resists biopolitical normalization. It means cultivating one’s self and not attempting to discover an authentic and hidden self because it entails a continual process of becoming.  The sudden eruption of plague in Oran, signifies a rupture in history of its people as the “bored populace is consumed by commercial habits aimed at making money”. In The Plague, if some people become more self-centred and insensitive, characters such as Rieux, Rambert, Peneloux and Joseph Grand show concern for the suffering people and stand in solidarity with them. Their characterization as ordinary individuals who assume responsibility for others’ existence in times of disaster reflects Camus’ hermeneutic of care of the self as an ethical project.  Camus aptly asserts that “ordinary acts of courage and kindness are more helpful than the illusion of superheroes”. Deriving a cue from Foucault, Heidegger and Levinas, the paper attempts to explore how care of the self is intertwined with ethics and politics. It is argued that without spiritual discipline and caring for others, the ethical transformation of self cannot take place. It indicates fashioning of the self more freely and self-reflexively and thus speaking truth to power and sacrificing for others. The paper examines this poetics of self which shares an ethical relationship with truth, freedom and kindness.


2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin

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.


2018 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin

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.


Author(s):  
John Hartigan

Chapter Four goes inside the lab, examining the genetic techniques by which the razas de maíz are broken down into mapping populations—more manageable samples of genetic structure and material. The initial focus is on the technique of selfing plants and the recent sexual history of maize, using these as the basis for transposing “care of the self” to “care of the species.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Daniele Lorenzini

On the Government of the Living plays a pivotal role in the evolution of Foucault’s thought because it constitutes a “laboratory” in which he forges the methodological and conceptual tools—such as the notions of anarcheology and alethurgy (or, better, what I call here the “alethurgic subject”)—necessary to carry on his study of governmentality independently from his History of Sexuality project. In this paper, I argue that Foucault’s projects of an anarcheology of the government of human beings through the manifestation of truth in the form of subjectivity and of a genealogy of the subject of desire, albeit essentially linked to one another, are conceptually autonomous. These projects are both part of a genealogy of the modern subject but should be treated independently insofar as it is the former, elaborated in On the Government of the Living, that provides us with the key to understanding Foucault’s interest in the care of the self and parrhesia as an integral part of his analyses of governmentality and the critical attitude from the late 1970s.


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