scholarly journals British and Roman Names from the Sulis-Minerva Temple: Two Solutions to an Old Problem

2015 ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Tatyana Mikhailova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hot Spring ◽  
The Body ◽  
Considerable Proportion ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Potential Victim ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The One

Any personal name found within a charm fits into one of two categories: background name (a name of a deity/saint, referring to the author’s confessional identity) or subject name (the particular name of a person for/against whom the charm is intended). By the ‘subject name’ we understand any proper name in the text of a charm, which transforms a ‘recipe’ (the term of J. G. Gager) of a potentially magical text into a real magical performance. According to the observation of V. N. Toporov, introducing a personal name into a charm is mandatory: “A text of a charm is a mere text and nothing more, until a name is incorporated into its large immutable body. It is only adding the name, uttering it turns a verbal text into a ritual performance, that is, into an actual charm that works as such.” However, in many cases putting a name (subject name) into the charm is impossible, because it is not known either to the charmer or to his/her customer, the charm not being intended against a particular person. This is exactly the case with charms against thieves, which are quite widespread. Charms of this type are generally referred to as ‘Justice Prayers’. Tablets of that type were found in abundance during the excavations at the Bath site of the Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva. This site, with its natural hot spring that has been believed to have healing properties up to now, had already been worshipped in the pre-Roman era and was associated with the goddess Sulis whom the Romans would later identify with Minerva. Among the multiple archaeological findings made at the site (such as coins or votive images of body parts allegedly healed by the goddess), there are 130 lead tablets of diverse contents. Along with name lists and commendations addressed to the goddess, there is a considerable proportion of tablets that can also be categorized as Justice Prayers. Their authors address Sulis in order to return stolen things. The explainable absence of subject names in these texts seems to indicate that they were replaced in the charms (Graeco-Roman defixiones being indeed charms) by the formula identifying the potential victim as ‘the one who has stolen my property’. Therefore, the invariable rule of introducing a personal name into the body of the charm, predicted by Toporov, seems to be fulfilled: we can suggest that the formula the man who took it might be classified as a substitute for the unknown subject name and is functionally aimed at creating the kind of uniqueness a charm needs to be actualized. But it is to note, that Justice Prayers, unlike conventional defixiones, contain, as a rule, the name of the aggrieved party. Conceivably, it is their name that stands for the subject name of the charm. The analysis of the use of verbal tenses in the tablets discovered a strange tendency: people with Roman names use the perfect of the verb involare ‘to steal’ (involavit), but persons with Brittonic names prefer to use the second future of the same verb – involaverit. We could suggest, the Brittons used to write their tablets not post factum, but ante factum and transformed Roman curse tablets into a kind of protective amulets. Their use of Latin letters wasn’t a real ‘writing’, but rather an ‘iconic’ use of symbols characteristic to the stage of epigraphic. In this context, the tablet N 18 (with supposed Brittonic words) deserves a special attention.

Bodily Dasein and Chinese Script Components

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwan Tze-wan
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Chinese Script ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Constitutive Principle ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractIn the Shuowen, one of the earliest comprehensive character dictionaries of ancient China, when discussing where the Chinese characters derive their structural components, Xu Shen proposed the dual constitutive principle of “adopting proximally from the human body, and distally from things around.” This dual emphasis of “body” and “things around” corresponds largely to the phenomenological issues of body or corporeality on the one hand, and lifeworld on the other. If we borrow Heidegger’s definition of Dasein as Being-in-the world, we can easily arrive at a reformulation of Xu Shen’s constitutive principle of the Chinese script as one that concerns “bodily Dasein.” By looking into various examples of script tokens we can further elaborate on how the Chinese make use not only of the body in general but various body parts, and how they differentiate their life world into material nature, living things, and a multifaceted world of equipment in forming a core basis of Chinese characters/components, upon which further symbolic manipulation such as “indication”, “phonetic borrowing”, semantic combination, and “annotative derivation”, etc. can be based. Finally, examples will be cited to show how in the Chinese scripts the human body (and its parts) might interact with other’s bodies (and their parts) or with “things around” (whether nature, living creatures, or artifacts) in various ways to cover the social, environmental, ritual, technical, economical, and even intellectual aspects of human experience. Bodily Dasein, so to speak, provides us with a new perspective of understanding and appreciating the entire scope of the Chinese script.

scholarly journals Idrott och genus: Kroppens materialisering

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Håkan Larsson
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Track And Field ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biological Entity ◽  
Male Body ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Male Discourse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Effect

Håkan Larsson: Sport and gender This article concerns bodily materialisation as it occurs in youth sport. It is based on interviews with teenagers 16 to 19 years of age doing track and field athletics. The purpose of the article is to elucidate how the notion of a “natural body“ can be seen as a cultural effect of sports practice and sports discourse. On the one hand, the body is materialised as a performing body, and on the other as a beautiful body. The “performing body“ is a single-sexed biological entity. The “beautiful body“ is a double-sexed and distinctly heterosexually appealing body. As these bodies collide in teenager track and field, the female body materialises as a problematic body, a body that is at the same time the subject of the girl’s personality. The male body materialises as an unproblematic body, a body that is the object of the boy’s personality. However, the body as “(a problematic) subject“ or as “(an unproblematic) object“ is not in itself a gendered body. Rather, these are positions on a cultural grid of power-knowledge relations. A girl might position herself in a male discourse, and a boy might position himself in a female discourse, but in doing so, they seem to have to pay a certain price in order not to be seen as queer.

scholarly journals El Cuerpo como Fábrica y el Cirujano como su Arquitecto / The Body as a Factory and the Surgeon as its Architect

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristóbal Pera
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Body ◽  
Human Body ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Expiration Date ◽  
Internal Organs ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTIf the human body is really a fabric, should surgeons be considered architects, as some surgeons describe themselves today? The author raises and analyzes this question, and he concludes that vsurgeons cannot be considered as such: the architect is the creator of his work —fabric or building—, but the surgeon is not the creator of this complex biological fabric —vulnerable and subject to deterioration and with an expiration date— which is the human body. This body is the object upon which his hands and instruments operate. The surgeon cures and heals wounds, immobilizes and aligns fractured bones in order to facilitate their good and timely repair, and cuts open the body’s surface in order to reach its internal organs. He also explores the body with his hands or instruments, destroys and reconstructs its ailing parts, substitutes vital organs taken from a donor’s foreign body, designs devices or prostheses, and replaces body parts, such as arteries and joints, that are damaged or worn out. In today’s culture, dominated by the desire to perfect the body, other surgeons keep retouching its aging façade, looking for an iconic and timeless beauty. This longing can drive, sometimes, to surgical madness. The surgeon is not capable of putting into motion, from scratch, a biological fabric such as the human body. Thus, he can’t create the subject of his work in the way that an architect can create a building. In contrast, the surgeon restores the body’s deteriorated or damaged parts and modifies the appearance of the body’s façade.RESUMEN¿Si el cuerpo humano fuera realmente una fábrica, podría el cirujano ser considerado su arquitecto, como algunos se pregonan en estos tiempos? Esta es la cuestión planteada por el autor y, a tenor de lo discurrido, su respuesta es negativa: porque así como el arquitecto es el artífice de su obra —fábrica o edificio— el cirujano no es el artífice de la complejísima fábrica biológica —vulnerable, deteriorable y caducable— que es el cuerpo humano, la cual le es dada como objeto de las acciones de sus manos y de sus instrumentos. El cirujano cura y restaña sus heridas, alinea e inmoviliza sus huesos fracturados para que su reparación llegue a buen término, penetra por sus orificios naturales o dibuja sobre la superficie corporal incisiones que le permitan llegar a sus entrañas, las explora con sus manos o mediante instrumentos, destruye y reconstruye sus partes enfermas, sustituye órganos vitales que no le ayudan a vivir por los extraídos de cuerpos donantes, y concibe, diseña y hace fabricar artefactos o prótesis, como recambio fragmentos corporales deteriorados o desgastados, como arterias o articulaciones. Otros cirujanos, en la predominante cultura de la modificación del cuerpo, retocan una y otra vez su fachada envejecida ineludiblemente por el paso del tiempo, empeñados en la búsqueda incesante de una belleza icónica y mediática e intemporal, una pretensión que puede conducir, y a veces conduce, al desvarío quirúrgico. En definitiva, el cirujano es incapaz de poner de pie, ex novo, una fábrica biológica como la del cuerpo humano y, por lo tanto, no puede ser su artífice, como lo es el arquitecto de su edificio. A lo sumo, es el restaurador de sus entrañas deterioradas y el modificador de su fachada, de su apariencia.

Factor Structure of the Italian Version of the Body Satisfaction Scale: A Multisample Analysis

1998 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 1083-1088 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Riva ◽  
Enrico Molinari
Keyword(s):  
Body Satisfaction ◽  
Cross Validation ◽  
Clinical Sample ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Factorial Structure ◽  
Italian Version ◽  
Satisfaction Scale ◽  
The One

The paper describes the factorial structure of the Italian version of the Body Satisfaction Scale, a simple self-report questionnaire designed to assess satisfaction with 16 body parts. The results suggest that the structure of the questionnaire can be adequately represented by three different factors. Even if this solution is different from the one obtained in the original English samples, this interpretation was confirmed by a cross-validation on 806 subjects, a clinical sample and two normal samples. This result may be useful for the screening of subjects at risk for eating-disorders because it makes possible prediction of targeted areas of dissatisfaction which is not generally possible with other inventories. The analysis of the factor loadings also suggested that three items should be removed (teeth, eyes, and ears) from the Italian version

The ‘Great Antrum’ at Baiae: A Preliminary Report

1967 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 102-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. F. Paget
Keyword(s):  
United States Navy ◽  
Hot Spring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Kind Permission ◽  
Phlegrean Fields ◽  
British School ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Short Tunnel ◽  
Made In

The complex of tunnels and buildings described in this article was discovered by Keith W. Jones of the United States Navy and myself in the course of our general exploration of the underground antiquities of the Phlegrean Fields, made with the kind permission of Professor Alfonso de Franciscis, the Superintendent of Antiquities for Campania. They are the subject of a book recently published by myself (In the Footsteps of Orpheus, Hale, London 1967), but in view of their very unusual nature I have gladly accepted an invitation by the Director of the British School to contribute to the Papers a short factual account, together with the plans we made in the course of our survey (fig. 1).When the terraced structures overlooking the bay and port of Baia were excavated in 1956–58, many tunnel entrances were uncovered. With the exception of the one short tunnel leading to the hot spring at the rear of the so-called Temple of Mercury, and a few obvious drainage ducts, the tunnels are all concentrated in the areas marked III and IV on the plans in the guide book, The Phlegrean Fields by A. Maiuri (3rd ed., 1958).

scholarly journals Genes and Spleens: Property, Contract, or Privacy Rights in the Human Body?

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Rao
Keyword(s):  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Human Genes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

The legal status of the human body is hotly contested, yet the law of the body remains in a state of confusion and chaos. Sometimes the body is treated as an object of property, sometimes it is dealt with under the rubric of contract, and sometimes it is not conceived as property at all, but rather as the subject of privacy rights. Which body of law should become the law of the body? This question is even more pressing in the context of current biomedical research, which permits commodification and commercialization of the body by everyone except the person who provides the “raw materials.” The lack of property protection for tangible parts of the human body is in stark contrast to the extensive protection granted to intellectual property in the body in the form of patents upon human genes and cell lines. Moreover, even courts that reject ownership claims on the part of those who supply body parts appear willing to grant property rights to scientists, universities, and others who use those body parts to conduct research and create products.

scholarly journals Posthumanizm i „syntezoidalny mimetyzm” w komiksie „Vision” Toma Kinga i Gabriela Hernandeza Walty

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 467-479
Author(s):  
Oskar Meller
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Cultural texts on the subject of posthuman can be found long before the post-anthropocentric turn in humanistic research. Literary explanations of posthumanism have entered the conventional canon not only in terms of the science-fiction classics. However, a different line follows the tradition of presenting posthumanist existence in the comic book medium. Scott Jeffrey accurately notes that most comic superheroes are post- or trans-human. Therefore, the transgression of human existence into a posthumanoid being is presented. However, in the case of the less culturally recognizable character of Vision, a synthezoid from the Marvel’s Avengers team, combining the body of the android and human consciousness, the vector of transgression is reversed. This article is an attempt to analyze the way the humanization process of this hero is narrative in the Vision series of screenwriter Tom King and cartoonist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. On the one hand, King mimetic reproduces the sociological panorama of American suburbs, showing the process of adaptation of the synthesoid family to the realities of full-time work and neighborly intercourse, on the other, he emphasizes the robotic limits of Vision humanization. Ultimately, the narrative line follows the cracks between these two plans, allowing King to present, with the help of inhuman heroes, one of the most human stories in the Marvel superhero universe.

scholarly journals Considerations on General Methodological Assumptions of the Sciences of Sport

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Considerable Proportion ◽  
General Methodology ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Abstract The considerations included in the article are the result of several years of teaching general methodology for doctoral studies at Josef Pilsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw.The presented text consists of two basic parts. The first includes reminiscences and associated methodological resentment. The second presents a wide panorama of standpoints concerning functions and kinds of hypotheses, their role and significance in contemporary research programs of formal, empirical (connected with natural sciences and biology), and humanities nature. Sketchy and encyclopaedic interpretations, presented in the context of commentaries by the author of this paper, thereby dominate.The aim of the first part is to draw attention to some methodological mistakes which often appear and which have become common in some academic milieus to such a degree that some intervention and postulatory correction, referring to Polish and Western methodological literature, is advisable. These shortcomings are connected, among other things, with the structure of the scientific work, with the formulation and application of hypotheses, with relations taking place between the general methodology and specialized methodologies, kinds and types of research work, with reliability of information on sources of creative information, as well with the category of verification in its relation, on the one hand, to confirmation and corroboration, and on the other hand, to testing, checking, falsification, and terms close in meaning to the last one.The abovementioned resentment results, first of all, from the fact that the authors discussed in the first part usually insist on erroneous solutions, negating a priori, without becoming acquainted with the literature on the subject or making attempts to explain or initiate a methodological argument referring to sources and studies.That resentment is significant, among other things, in the causal sense - that is, because of the fact that, firstly, it justifies and substantiates the need for a statement presenting controversial questions in a content-related and formal way. Secondly, because thanks to such (that is, cognitive-emotional) introduction, the whole argument - not only in the first, but also in the second part - is much more interesting. It is saturated with authenticity. Many readers know the figures mentioned and are familiar with their - sometimes too insouciant (sometimes not very reliable) - attitudes to important issues from the field of research methods. It is also interesting why the people cited make mistakes. Hence, it is also advisable to look at a wider methodological context of justification (included in the much longer second part) dedicated to perhaps the most thorough characteristics of the hypothesis in the literature on the subject, which is available to the author. Without presentation of the controversial issues in the first part, the second part, more important from the methodological viewpoint, might be omitted by a considerable proportion of readers. In that part attention is paid mainly to issues concerning working, initial, zero, primary, introductory, directing, gradual, auxiliary, ad hoc auxiliary, bridge, futile and true, dangerous and safe, quite natural and neutral, individual and general, complete and incomplete, deep, strong, probabilistic and non-probabilistic (that is, deterministic), related, falsifying, basic, psychological, metaphysical and materialist hypotheses, as well as those concluding ones - that is, those constituting the final effect of definite (concluded here and now) research; hence, those which have undergone verification, confirmation, corroboration or modification as those which predict and explain a given research problem in the best possible way.

scholarly journals The Idea of the Posthuman: A Comparative Analysis of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. Kriman
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Vitruvian Man ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to itself or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”

Egocentric Performance Capture: A Review

2020 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Shivam Grover ◽  
◽  
◽  
◽  
Kshitij Sidana ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Wearable Cameras ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Performance Capture ◽  
Traditional Performance

Performance capture of human beings have been used to animate 3D characters for movies and games for several decades now. Traditional performance capture methods require a dedicated costly setup which usually consists of more than one sensor placed at a distance from the subject, hence requiring a large amount of budget and space to accomodate. This lowers its feasibility and portability by a huge amount. Egocentric (first-person/wearable) cameras, however, are attached to the body and hence are mobile. With a rise of acceptance of wearable technology by the general public, wearable cameras have gotten cheaper too. We can make use of their excessive portability in the performance capture domain. However working with egocentric images is a mammoth task as the views are severely distorted due to the first-person perspective and the body parts farther from the camera are highly prone to being occluded. In this paper, we review the existing state-of-the-art methods about performance capture using egocentric based views.

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