The body economic: why austerity kills: recessions, budget battles, and the politics of life and death

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (04) ◽  
pp. 51-2201-51-2201 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Politics Of Life

How Dead Can You Be?

1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Van Till-D'Aulnis de Bourouill
Keyword(s):  
Brain Function ◽  
Blood Circulation ◽  
Artificial Respiration ◽  
The Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current Usage ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Legal Security ◽  
Carotid And Vertebral Arteries

Life and death are defined in terms of function. Four groups of abnormal cases of death are specified and differentiated from normal cases. Murder, active euthanasia and cessation of artificial respiration are differentiated on the basis of the interested party, the cause of death and the purpose of the act. Juridical acceptance of this differentiation and terminology makes cessation of artificial respiration lawful, provided the patient had validly refused this treatment or is irreversibly comatose and also respirator-dependent. This would make it unnecessary to redefine death in terms of coma in order to solve legal and practical problems. Such a redefinition is against current usage (coma presumes life) and is the first step on an extremely slippery road; it is only admissible if done by the legislator after extensive public discussion. Disagreement among doctors about the definition and diagnosis of death causes distrust among the public, aggravates the shortage of donor organs and makes legal security an illusion. Three diagnostic ‘schools’ are compared: the Anglo-American (using Harvard's criteria), the French (using Mollaret's coma dépassé) and the Austro-German (using absence of intracranial blood circulation). On grounds of logic only the Austro-German diagnosis is reliable; it is not based on a statistically irreversible absence of outwardly perceptible manifestations of brain function, but proves and documents with certainty the total and irreversible impossibility of brain function. At present this has to be done by bilateral angiography of both carotid and vertebral arteries; if negative concerning the intracranial part, this proves death. In normal cases the traditional criteria may be used; in abnormal cases where no infringement of the body is foreseeable death need not be a certainty in order to stop therapy, provided the patient is irreversibly comatose and also respirator-dependent; in abnormal cases where an infringement is foreseeable death should be proved and documented to make the infringement lawful, apart from other conditions such as consent. Proof can be obtained by the Austro-German method or by discontinuing resuscitation during at least 15 consecutive minutes where this is legally permissible. Most German and Dutch lawyers concerned share this view.

scholarly journals The disorderly body: considerations of The Book of Numbers, 19 and ritual impurity after contact with a corpse

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Sandra Junker
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Creature

This article deals with the idea of ritual bodily impurity after coming into contact with a corpse in the Hebrew Bible. The evanescence and impermanence of the human body testifies to the mortality of the human being. In that way, the human body symbolizes both life and death at the same time; both conditions are perceivable in it. In Judaism, the dead body is considered as ritually impure. Although, in this context it might be better to substitute the term ‘ritually damaged’ for ‘ritually impure’: ritual impurity does not refer to hygienic or moral impurity, but rather to an incapability of exercising—and living—religion. Ritual purity is considered as a prerequisite for the execution of ritual acts and obligations. The dead body depends on a sphere which causes the greatest uncertainty because it is not accessible for the living. According to Mary Douglas’s concepts, the dead body is considered ritually impure because it does not answer to the imagined order anymore, or rather because it cannot take part in this order anymore. This is impurity imagined as a kind of contagious illness, which is carried by the body. This article deals with the ritual of the red heifer in Numbers 19. Here we find the description of the preparation of a fluid that is to help clear the ritual impurity out of a living body after it has come into contact with a corpse. For the preparation of this fluid a living creature – a faultless red heifer – must be killed. According to the description, the people who are involved in the preparation of the fluid will be ritually impure until the end of the day. The ritual impurity acquired after coming into contact with a corpse continues as long as the ritual of the Red Heifer remains unexecuted, but at least for seven days. 

scholarly journals Human Machines Petrified: Play's Mineral Mechanics and Les statues meurent aussi

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Olga Beloborodova ◽  
Pim Verhulst
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Translation ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Mechanical Devices ◽  
Sentient Beings

Play is usually regarded as the starting point of Beckett's late theatre, introducing a radically new approach to the body and language that set a benchmark for subsequent plays such as Not I, That Time and Footfalls. Building on Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Play dehumanizes its characters by means of the audiovisual technologies that Beckett was experimenting with at the time. In this process, his human subjects are increasingly reduced to mechanical devices or mouthpieces for the conveyance of speech, instead of represented as recognizable and sentient beings of flesh and blood. The nonhuman aspect of Play is enhanced by its foregrounding of Beckett's long-standing fascination with the mineral, with the characters' faces being ‘so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns’. Whereas, separately, the influence of radio, television and cinema on Play has received some critical attention, and James Knowlson, Claire Lozier, Mark Nixon, Jean-Michel Rabaté and Conor Carville, among others, have noted Beckett's fascination with the sculptural arts and the inorganic, this paper aims to merge those two strands by discussing the docufilm Les statues meurent aussi (1953) as a potential but overlooked source of inspiration. By combining the technological and the sculptural in Play, Beckett stages a ‘mineral mechanics’ verging closely on the nonhuman without being fully dehumanized, as characters continue to laugh and hiccup, barely retaining a trace of their humanity. This oscillation from the human to the nonhuman and vice versa is clearly traceable in the genesis of the text, as well as its French translation (Comédie). The result, Play's iconic stage image, is marked by the familiar Beckettian trope of in-betweenness: between life and death, between the organic and the mineral, between the natural and the technological.

Excerpt from “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Walker Bynum
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Imitatio Christi ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The World ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
Women Mystics

In this chapter the renowned medievalist scholar Caroline Walker Bynum brings our attention to a striking historical occurrence: in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe the concern with and attachment to Eucharistic devotion was overwhelmingly female. Why this gender bias, and at that time? Christian women were predominantly “inspired, compelled, comforted and troubled by the Eucharist” and in many different forms—from miraculous apparitions, to experiences of ecstasy connected to the attendance and ingestion of the Eucharist, to the showing of sensorial excesses in its presence. Bynum shows how material and physical receptions of the body of Christ were expressed not only as forms of ecstasy but also as gendered modes of living the Imitatio Christi. This thirteenth-century corporeal, female experience of the Eucharist is connected to a particular moment in the life of Christ—the transition between life and death. Positioned as “brides” and hence as the erotic counterparts of Christ, women and female mystics exploited the full potential of Christ’s own corporeality rather than his otherworldly nature. Bynum’s work constitutes a formative reference point for scholars of Catholicism across a range of disciplines for the obvious reason that it deals so elegantly with themes of substance, gender, bodies, and devotional forms of Catholic practice. Her work continues to be an original source of inspiration for anthropologists because of its remarkable sensitivity to religion as an embodied, practice-generative engagement with the world. Bynum should also be considered as important for the “new” anthropology of Catholicism for her pioneering work on the gymnasticity of gender and for the attention it draws to the sublimated erotic tension that exists between institutional doxa and mystical aesthetics.2 In Bynum’s work, gender is not presented as merely one among a number of potential analytical foci for elaboration of Catholicism; rather, it is the very ontological architecture of the religious, and hence an essential topic for scholars seeking to understand Catholicism as a translocal force.

The Politics of Life and Death

Red Brigades ◽  
1990 ◽  
pp. 146-173
Author(s):  
Robert C. Meade
Keyword(s):  
Life And Death ◽  
Politics Of Life

VII. Note on the effect of various substances in destroying the activity of cobra poison

1878 ◽  
Vol 27 (185-189) ◽  
pp. 465-474 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Similar Action ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Future Paper ◽  
Mercury Nitrate ◽  
Metallic Salts ◽  
Perfect Contact ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Carbolic Acid ◽  
Made In

In a paper, read some time ago before this Society, by Mr. Pedler, he mentioned his discovery of the fact that the activity of cobra poison was completely destroyed by admixture with perchloride of platinum. This substance, however, could only be regarded as a chemical and not as a physiological antidote to the poison, inasmuch as it had no power to modify or prevent the action of the venom after its absorption into the blood. Mr. Pedler expressed his opinion that the proper method of pursuing the investigation was to investigate separately the action of platinum salts and of cobra poison upon the animal body. In the discussion which followed we stated that the method proposed by Mr. Pedler was in the present instance not likely to lead to any results, and that as the action of the substance em­ployed by him was in all probability due to its simply forming an insoluble compound with the cobra poison and not to any action of the platinum per se , certain other metallic salts would have a similar action to the perchloride of platinum. Experiments have confirmed the opinion we then expressed, and we find the action of chloride of gold is precisely similar to that of perchloride of platinum, the cobra venom being rendered entirely inert by admixture with the gold salt before its injection into the body. Chloride of gold, however, like perchloride of platinum, is merely a chemical antidote, and does not modify the action of the venom after its absorption into the circulation. Permanganate of potash, which has been recommended as an anti­dote, also destroys its activity completely. Chloride of zinc, chloride of mercury, nitrate of silver, and carbolic acid all diminish the activity of the poison, and prolong life when mixed with it before its injection; but they do not prevent death, nor do they pro­ long life to any great extent. Perchloride of iron has very much less action upon the poison than one would expect, and it prolongs life to a very slight extent. Liquor potassæ impairs the activity of the poison very considerably, and prolongs life for several hours. When a large dose of cobra poison is injected, none of these substances prevent death even when applied immediately to the wound. The reason of this probably is that they do not come into such perfect contact with the poison as to destroy the whole of it, and the portion which escapes destruction is sufficient to kill. It is possible, however, that when minimum doses only are injected, the local application of one or other substance may turn the balance between life and death, but this point we must reserve for a future paper. Our first. experiment was made in order to compare the action of chloride of platinum alone with that of cobra poison alone, and of chloride of platinum injected after cobra poison.

scholarly journals Kristi Genkomst og kødets opstandelse. Det eskatogiske hos Grundtvig

1950 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-56
Author(s):  
C. I. Scharling
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Body ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Personal Understanding ◽  
The Church ◽  
Second Coming

The Second Coming of Christ and the Resurrection of the Body. Grundtvigs Eschatology. By C. I. Scharling. This essay shows how Grundtvig, in contrast to his contemporaries in the Church, laid great stress upon the eschatological hope of the future. He may have been partly inspired by Scandinavian mythology (the myth of Ragnarok) and partly by Schellings theories about the great drama of existence (the coming forth of ideas from the Absolute and their returning thither). But the essential point is that the eschatological hope grew forth naturally from his personal understanding of life and death, of the meaning and object of human life, and from his faith in the living, risen Christ as Lord and victor over the powers of darkness and death. It is remarkable that while after 1825 Grundtvig lived with such intensity in the experience of the realisation of the Kingdom of God here and now in the Church’s fellowship with the risen, present Saviour, at the same time, both in his hymns and in his preaching, he gives such powerful expression to the eschatological hope of the future. The author finds the explanation of this in the fact that for Grundtvig (unlike many others) it was not the need and distress of the time that gave life to the Biblical promises of the Second Coming of Christ and the setting*up of the Kingdom of Glory at the Last Day, but his very joy in God’s great Salvation, experienced in the Church. Thus the peculiar thing about Grundtvig’s eschatological expectation is that the tidings of the Second Coming of the Lord are for him an evangel in the full sense of the word; his feelings about the Last Day are far removed from the feeling of fear and horror which meets us in many of the mediaeval frescoes of the Lord’s Return to Judgment or in the old hymn, “Dies irae, dies ilia”. Characteristic of him, too, is his stress on the contin uity between the present world, which came into being at the Creation, and the world to come; the old world shall not be destroyed, but reborn and transfigured; its for this reason that he lays so much stress on faith in the resurrection of the body. On the other hand the author rejects the theory put forward by the Norwegian writer, Paulus Svendsen, that Grundtvig was a Chiliast and “believed in an external, perfect Kingdom of God on earth” ; he refutes it by reference to the fact that Grundtvig explicitly rejected Edward Irving’s conception of the millennium.

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