The Disappearance of the Other: A Note on the Distortion of Love

Against the backdrop of contemporary sociological theories of love, this article explores the disappearance of the other in contemporary love relationships by focusing on the relationship between love and depression. The aim of the article is twofold: first, to provide a theoretical framework to be able to grasp in what ways the other is threatened with erosion in contemporary love relationships and why this may cause depression; second, to exemplify it with empirical data consisting of human documents such as novels, interviews, sms- and messenger-correspondence. The first section, excluding the introduction, consists of methodological reflections. The second section introduces Hegel’s thinking on love and discusses the perception of it by thinkers such as Honneth, Sartre, and Beauvoir, as well as its parallels with Giddens’s idea on confluent love as a new egalitarian paradigm for equality in intimate relationships. The third section is mainly devoted to Kristeva’s theory of the melancholic-depressive composite, but also introduces Illouz’s concept of autotelic desire. In the fourth section, Han’s idea of “the erosion of difference” and Bauman’s thinking on “the broken structure of desire” are discussed in relation to the use of Tinder in contemporary culture. The fifth section consists of an analysis of excerpts from contemporary love novels and interviews that illustrates the disappearance of the other in contemporary love relationships. In the sixth section, a number of longer passages from a messenger conversation, ranging over a couple of months in duration, is reproduced and interpreted, mainly by help of Kristeva’s thinking, in order to make visible the relation between the erosion of the other and melancholic depression. The article ends with a short conclusion.

Ishi, Briet's Antelope, and the Documentality of Human Documents

Ishi, the “last wild Indian in North America,” was “discovered” in 1911 and spent the last years of his life living in an anthropology museum. There he was studied by anthropologists and viewed by the public as a living exhibit. In this paper, I take some initial steps in arguing that Ishi, the person, became a document to most people. The similarities between Ishi and Suzanne Briet’s hypothetical antelope, newly discovered and placed in a zoo, are eerie. Ishi, like the antelope, is brought into public knowledge as both an initial document and a wide variety of secondary documents derived from the original. Ishi, however, is also not a document, making the comparison to the antelope eerie. Bernd Frohmann’s concept of “documentality” helps us make sense of this fluctuation in Ishi’s status as a document. Ishi’s story, in turn, sheds light on the ethical implications of documentality for all humans.

The image of the time in the book of S. Alexievich “Second-hand Time”: the originality of the artistic conflict

Fictional conflict in prose of S. Aleksievich is one of the instruments for presenting general image of the XXth century in its’ most tragic features. Thanks to the targeted selection of “human documents”, confessions of ordinary people, as well as due to the cyclically built composition, the author embodies in the book “Second-hand Time” the conflict of two eras - the Past and the Present and the two spaces of the Soviet Union and Russia. The acuteness of the artistic conflict embodied in the book is due to the appeal to the fate of individuals seeking to understand their place in history, to find justification for their ideals, or, conversely, to justify their rejection of the past. The author is an artist who proves his right to use a living “human document” as a material, to expand the possibilities of the document, and as a result to draw objective images of Time and Man, infused with a living human feeling.

‘The Corporate University’ Training And Learning

The training and development of employees in the airline industry usually take place within a decentralized structure and may result in fragmented and costly initiatives. To improve the current practice a corporate university (CU) model to be implemented in the airline is proposed. For the purpose of the study qualitative interviews were held, human documents were studied and participant observation and the views of employees of the South African airline industry were sought regarding training in general and CUs in particular. The study revealed support for the CU concept because it would encourage continuous learning at all levels in the organisation and would place emphasis on both employee and organisational needs.

Putting “Cartography” into the History of Cartography: Arthur H. Robinson, David Woodward, and the Creation of a Discipline

Arthur Robinson and David Woodward significantly expanded the scope and nature of the history of cartography. Previously, cartographic historians had emphasized the study of map content. As practicing cartographers, Robinson and Woodward promoted the “internal” study of the history of cartographic techniques and design. Robinson used an historically minded rhetoric to define the proper nature of U.S. academic cartography after 1945 and he pursued important studies in the history of thematic mapping. Woodward pioneered the study of map printing. Moreover, he was crucial in transforming the “internal” approach to cartographic history into a discrete discipline focused on the study of maps as human documents. Woodward’s humanistic perspective ultimately formed the foundation of both the multi-volume History of Cartography and Brian Harley’s cartographic theorizing.