Haunted by the Other: Levinas, Derrida and the Persecutory Phantom

In this article, I explore what I call the persecutory trope – which underscores the alterity of the phantom and its relentless haunting and spectral oppression of the protagonists – in recent American ghost films, connecting it to the ethical thought of the continental philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Films like The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002), The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2004), It Follows (Robert Mitchell, 2014), and Sinister (Scott Derrickson, 2012) depict terrifying spectral antagonists whose relentless persecution of the protagonists often defies comprehension and narrative closure. I suggest that these films comprise a specific supernatural subgenre due to the particular way in which their specters haunt the victims. The relentlessness of the spectral assailant, and the foreclosure of actions by which the specter is either expelled from or reintegrated into symbolic understanding of its victim, can be construed in terms of the ethical relationship between the other and the self in the work of Levinas and Derrida. Their focus on the moral agent's responsibility to an other, an obligation that the agent does not undertake voluntarily, entails the spectralization of ethical responsibility insofar as it does not rest on solid, evidential grounds. This article shows how the spectralization of the ethical resonates in recent American ghost films through the disruptive effects of the specter's haunting and responsive mourning enacted by protagonists.

Receptive and expressive language ability differentially scaffold symbolic understanding over time: picture comprehension in late talking and typically developing children

Symbols are a hallmark of human communication, and a key question is how children’s emerging language skills relate to their ability to comprehend symbols. In particular, receptive and expressive vocabulary may have related, but distinct roles across early development. In a longitudinal study of late talking (LT) and typically developing (TD) children, we differentiated the extent to which expressive and receptive language skills predicted symbolic understanding as reflected in picture comprehension, and how language skills inter-related with social skills. LT and TD children were tested on a picture comprehension task that manipulated the availability of verbal labels at 2.0 – 2.4 years and 3.5 – 3.9 years. While all children improved in accuracy over time as expected, TD children exhibited an advantage over LT children, despite both groups utilising verbal labels to inform their mapping of picture-object relationships. Receptive and expressive vocabulary also differed in their contribution at different ages: receptive vocabulary predicted performance at ~2-years-old, and expressive vocabulary predicted performance at ~3.5-years-old. Task performance at 3.5-years-old was predicted by earlier receptive vocabulary, but this effect was largely mediated by concurrent expressive vocabulary. Social ability across the whole sample at ~2-years-old also predicted and mediated the effect of receptive vocabulary on concurrent task performance. These findings suggest that LT children may have delays in developing picture comprehension over time, and also that social ability and language skills may differentially relate to symbolic understanding at key moments across development.

The sovereign seeress

The South Scandinavian chair pendants of the late Viking Age form a famous and much debated find category. They have been associated with the cult of Odin as well as female seeresses. However, their find contexts clearly link the amulets intimately to a female use-sphere and their condition shows that they have been worn intensely. With a new pendant emerging from the detector finds from Gudme, Denmark, the connection between chair amulets and dominant settlements is further strengthened. The female prerogative, the locational aristocratic reference in combination with the chairs association with royal privileges lead to the argument that the amulets must be connected with the deep historical presence of the seeress as a sovereign power across Northern Europe. Her position is explained as a triangulation of Seeress, Odin and King which are all represented as being seated. Consequently, seating is regarded as a main attribute and a recurring and noticeable privilege for all three characters. Thus, the chair en miniature is argued to function as a material anchoring of the socio-symbolic understanding of the seated sovereign seeress.

The Intelligible Beauty of Creation

The divine ideas tradition offers powerful conceptual tools by which Christian theologians and mystics recognized and revered the intelligible beauty of creation, and the hidden presence of the divine in all beings. For thinkers like Origen, Augustine, Maximus, and Eckhart, the eternal Word in which God knows Godself perfectly thereby includes God’s knowing of all possible finite beings, and the intimate presence of the Word at the heart of every creature calls it towards its truest reality. This perspective reaches an apex in the symbolic understanding of the universe prominent in medieval thinkers, and the waning of this tradition (in part as a result of Nominalist thought) is explored by various narratives of disenchantment. The Trinitarian and Christological grounding of the divine ideas becomes obscured by the time of the later Renaissance, and the divine ideas are deployed within discourses such as alchemy, guaranteeing their apparent obsolescence.

El impacto de la secuencia visual en la comprensión simbólica de acciones en imágenes

ResumenLa comprensión simbólica de imágenes que representan acciones constituye un desafío cognitivo a edades tempranas. Esta investigación indaga el impacto de la presentación de la secuencia visual de acciones dirigidas hacia un fin en la comprensión simbólica de las imágenes que las representan. Niños/as de 30 a 36 meses de edad fueron asignados/as a dos condiciones en las que se manipuló la presencia o ausencia de la secuencia. Los niños/as observaron por medio de una tableta imágenes de distintas acciones; luego, debían escoger un objeto real que mostraba el resultado de cada acción. Se encontró que la presencia de la secuencia constituyó un factor clave en la comprensión de las imágenes como representaciones acciones.Palabras clave: secuencia, acciones, imágenes, comprensión simbólica temprana The impact of the visual sequence on the symbolic understanding of actions on imagesAbstract The symbolic understanding of images that represent actions constitutes a cognitive challenge at early ages. This research investigates the impact of the presentation of the visual sequence of goal directed actions on the symbolic understanding of the images representing them. Thirty-to-36 months-old children were assigned to two conditions in which the presence or absence of the sequence was manipulated. Children observed on a tablet images of different actions; afterwards they had to choose a real object that showed the result of each action. It was found that the presence of the sequence constituted a key factor on the early symbolic comprehension of the images as representations of actions.Keywords: sequence, actions, images, early symbolic understanding

The influence of labelling on symbolic understanding and dual representation in autism spectrum condition

Background and aims Children with autism spectrum condition often have specific difficulties understanding that pictorial symbols refer to real-world objects in the environment. We investigated the influence of labelling on the symbolic understanding and dual representation of children with autism spectrum condition. Methods Children with autism spectrum condition and typically developing children were shown four coloured photographs of objects that had different functions across four separate trials. The participants were given either a novel label alongside a description of the object’s function or a description of the object’s function without a label. Children were then given 30 seconds to interact with an array of stimuli (pictures and objects) in a mapping test and in a generalisation test for each trial. This exploration phase allowed for spontaneous word–picture–referent mapping through free-play, providing an implicit measure of symbolic understanding. Results We found no significant difference in word–picture–referent mapping between groups and conditions. Both groups more often performed the described action on the target object in the exploration phase regardless of condition. Conclusions and implications Our results suggest that a spontaneous measure of symbolic understanding (such as free-play) may reveal competencies in word–picture–referent mapping in autism spectrum condition.