Mapping Transformations

Scholars have thoroughly discussed the visual aspects of Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods, as well as his own emphasis on how sight functions and what contexts and conditions shape how we see and what we can see. Yet while some of the images and visual devices he uses are frequently discussed, like Las Meninas and the panopticon, his diagrams in The Order of Things have received little attention. Why does Foucault diagram historical ways of thinking? What are we supposed to see and understand through these diagrams? To examine the role of the diagram in Foucault’s archaeological method, this paper provides a close reading of how the classical quadrilateral visualizes the structure, function, content, principles, and underlying assumptions of language and thought. In analyzing the diagram as a way for visualizing history, this paper demonstrates how Foucault enacts a new visual language that emphasizes the contingency of thought.

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From Structuralism to Cognitive Science

Sentence First, Arguments Afterward ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199828098.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Jeffrey Lidz

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Cognitive Science ◽

Generative Linguistics ◽

Language And Thought ◽

Computational Cognitive Science ◽

Knowledge Of Language ◽

Ways Of Thinking ◽

The 1950S

This chapter traces the contribution of Lila R. Gleitman’s research over the course of 50 years. It situates her career relative to the structuralist and behaviorist paradigms of the 1950s and discusses how her work played a central role in replacing those paradigms with those of cognitive science and generative linguistics. It reviews her contributions to assessing children’s knowledge, the role of input in language acquisition, the role of innate structure in shaping language acquisition, and the relation between language and thought. Gleitman raised some of the most powerful arguments against the orthodoxies of her day and ushered in a computational cognitive science of language. Her work took the in-principle arguments of generative linguistics and showed how these could connect to the phenomenon of language acquisition in practice. She innovated new ways of probing children’s knowledge of language, new ways of thinking about that knowledge, and new ways of thinking about learning.

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Patrick Kavanagh and the Authentic ‘Dispensation’: Rereading the Role of Narrator in The Great Hunger

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2012.0010 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 86-104 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Catherine Kilcoyne

Keyword(s):

National Literature ◽

Close Reading ◽

Peasant Farmer ◽

Nineteen Forties ◽

Death Knell

This essay posits a challenge to the continued reading of The Great Hunger (1942) as a realist depiction of the Irish small-farming class in the nineteen forties. The widespread critical acceptance of the poem as a socio-historical ‘documentary’ both relies upon and propagates an outmoded notion of authenticity based upon the implicit fallacy that Kavanagh's body of work designates a quintessence of Irishness in contradistinction to his Revivalist predecessors. In 1959 Kavanagh referred to this delusion as constituting his ‘dispensation’, for indeed it did provide a poetic niche for the young poet. Kavanagh's acknowledgement of this dispensation came with his rejection of all prescriptive literary symbols. While this iconoclasm is widely recognised in his later career, the relevance of The Great Hunger to this question continues to be overlooked. In fact, this poem contains his strongest dialectic upon the use of symbols – such as the peasant farmer – in designating an authentic national literature. The close reading of The Great Hunger offered here explores the poem's central deconstruction of ruralism and authenticity. The final ‘apocalypse of clay’ is the poem's collapse under the stress of its own deconstructed symbolism; the final scream sounds the death knell to Kavanagh's adherence to his authentic dispensation.

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Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

Psychoanalysis and History ◽

10.3366/pah.2002.4.2.127 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 127-139 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ian Patterson

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Ordinary Language ◽

Close Reading ◽

Careful Attention ◽

Popular Approach ◽

English Reader ◽

Creative Writer ◽

The Many ◽

The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

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Gedanken zu Genesis 46,8–27

Biblische Zeitschrift ◽

10.30965/25890468-06301005 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 63 (1) ◽

pp. 93-104

Author(s):

Wilfried Warning

Keyword(s):

Close Reading ◽

Per Se ◽

Distinct Distribution

Abstract In general, commentators consider Gen 46:8–27 as a secondary addition. Close reading brings to light the structuring role of verses 18 and 25 („these were the sons of Zilpah / Bilhah … and these she bore to Jacob, sixteen souls / seven souls”). In a ten-part outline based on the personal name (PN) „Jacob” v. 18 takes the fourth and v.25 the fourth from last positions. In Genesis 37–50 the noun נפש „soul” occurs thirteen times – now v. 18 takes the sixth and v. 25 the sixth-from-last positions. The thirteen-part table based on the PN „Ruben” stands out for two reasons: Firstly, in Genesis the term „Ruben the first born of Jacob” shows up only twice, namely in the first (34,23) and last (46,8) texts. Secondly, as regards content 37,22 and 42,22 are correlated. In the 13-part outline they take the sixth and sixth-from-last positions respectively. The distinct distribution of these terms indicates that the passage per se is well structured and, what is more, at the same time it has been skillfully integrated in Gen 37–50 and in the Jacob-Joseph cycle.

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Theology and the Knowledge of Persons

10.1093/oso/9780198796732.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Eleonore Stump

Keyword(s):

Propositional Knowledge ◽

Ways Of Thinking ◽

Way Of Thinking ◽

The Difference ◽

Knowledge Of Persons

This chapter is concerned with the question of the difference between philosophy and theology. It rejects certain prevalent ways of thinking about this difference. It argues that a more promising way of thinking about these disciplines is to be found in their names: “philosophy” in its etymology means something like the love of wisdom; “theology” in its etymology means something like the word with regard to God. God, unlike wisdom, is not an abstract universal. Rather, and by virtue of being characterized by mind and will, God is more nearly a person. The chapter spells out the implications of this difference, arguing that the knowledge at issue when we do theology is irreducible to propositional knowledge. Rather, it is a knowledge of persons. The chapter illuminates the role of the knowledge of persons in theological discussion and draws some conclusions about the methodology which will be useful to theology.

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