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Epilogue: “Appointments to Keep in the Past”

Thomas S. Davis

in The Extinct Scene: Late Modernism and Everyday Life

In these closing pages I look at W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and consider the possible afterlife of the outward turn, of the prolonged existence of a technique after its period of emergence and ... More

In these closing pages I look at W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and consider the possible afterlife of the outward turn, of the prolonged existence of a technique after its period of emergence and relevance would seem to have closed.Less

Everyday Acknowledgments

John D. Caputo

in On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self

The chapter begins with Lucian's second-century account of a slip of the tongue, which understood a mistake to be an occurrence through which individuals could discover something as yet unknown about ... More

The chapter begins with Lucian's second-century account of a slip of the tongue, which understood a mistake to be an occurrence through which individuals could discover something as yet unknown about the interaction they were involved in, and take responsibility for it by making it meaningful. Freud's approach to blunders is also to make them meaningful, but the comparison with Lucian highlights the degree to which he tends to make mistakes private rather than situate them in a wider cultural context. Nevertheless, the slips Freud collects can be placed in the context of conversations about culture by educated Viennese circa 1900. They can then be understood as ways of negotiating togetherness. Freud's Psychopathology is shown to contain, alongside the arguments which serve primarily to vindicate Freud's theory, a different model of the unconscious: namely that of a longing to be aligned with the situation we are involved in. Situated as it is in a context of everyday encounters, this model offers a fruitful starting place for the acknowledgement of, and alignment with, the shared unfolding process in which we are always already involved. In the fourteenth century, this striving for alignment went by the name of “becoming God”.Less

On Psychotheology

Tyler Roberts

in Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism After Secularism

This chapter discusses Eric Santner's On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, which contains a reading of Franz Rosenzweig's theology that characterizes religion as a disruption that withdraws ... More

This chapter discusses Eric Santner's On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, which contains a reading of Franz Rosenzweig's theology that characterizes religion as a disruption that withdraws mankind from the ordering of the world. Santner elaborates this idea in a way that speaks directly not only to questions of order and incongruity, but also to issues of responsibility, singularity, and secularism. As the term “psychotheology” suggests, Santner examines a region where conceptual maps clearly opposing the secular to the religious are considered insufficient and demand some form of what Rosenzweig describes as “new thinking.” This new thinking is a manner of attentiveness that guides mankind to the “midst of life.” The chapter argues that this attentiveness—which Santner develops into an “ethics of singularity” that leads to the “blessings of more life”—allows for a critical thinking about the existential thematics of responsibility found in Hent de Vries' work.Less

Introduction: Doing Domesticity

Susan Fraiman

in Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins

Stages my argument over against left critiques of domesticity, which tend to privilege domestic ideology while overlooking non-conforming versions of “home.” Introduces the idea of “extreme” ... More

Stages my argument over against left critiques of domesticity, which tend to privilege domestic ideology while overlooking non-conforming versions of “home.” Introduces the idea of “extreme” domesticities: the non-normative households of gender rebels; the marginal households of those dealing with dislocation and economic insecurity. Offers an extensive analysis of Luce Giard’s neglected study, “Doing-Cooking,” a model for appreciating the devalued, everyday domestic lives of women. Argues for Giard’s importance as a pioneer of everyday life studies alongside her more celebrated collaborator, Michel de Certeau.Less

Michel de Certeau: Anthropological Spaces

in Spatial Ecologies: Urban Sites, State and World-Space in French Cultural Theory

This chapter describes Michel de Certeau's anthropology of mixed and indeterminate space. Certeau writes a cultural anthropology that discerns the unconscious religious tenor of everyday life. His ... More

This chapter describes Michel de Certeau's anthropology of mixed and indeterminate space. Certeau writes a cultural anthropology that discerns the unconscious religious tenor of everyday life. His The Practice of Everyday Life develops a different concept of the body, closer to language and psychoanalysis. He believes that Azouz Begag's immigrant experience can be strongly associated to the experience of space and time. For Certeau and Begag, space is less produced than developed through dynamic movement and practice among ordinary people who reinvent the everyday to ‘make’ the city from heteroclite ways of living and from the encounter between immigrants and natives.Less

Is There Such a Thing as a Psychical Accident?

Elizabeth Rottenberg

in For the Love of Psychoanalysis: The Play of Chance in Freud and Derrida

This chapter addresses the question of psychical determinism in the work of Sigmund Freud. As Freud tells us in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and The Introductory Lectures, nothing in the mind ... More

This chapter addresses the question of psychical determinism in the work of Sigmund Freud. As Freud tells us in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and The Introductory Lectures, nothing in the mind is arbitrary or undetermined. As Freud demonstrates again and again in hundreds of examples of parapraxes (slips of the tongue, slips of the pen, misreadings, mishearings, bungled actions, etc.), the accident (Unfall) is no accident for the analyst who is able to recognize and interpret an unconscious purpose behind an apparently random event. So how does chance (Zufall, Zufälligkeit) operate in an economy of psychical determinism? How are we to think chance together with analysis’s hermeneutic drive—that is to say, together with its compulsion to make the accident unhappen?Less

Sociological Art

Michael F. Leruth

in Fred Forest's Utopia: Media Art and Activism

Chapter 1 traces the early development of Forest’s artistic vocation beginning with his production as a self-taught painter while still working for the French postal service in Algeria and focuses on ... More

Chapter 1 traces the early development of Forest’s artistic vocation beginning with his production as a self-taught painter while still working for the French postal service in Algeria and focuses on his work in the 1970s. It places particular emphasis on projects undertaken in the name of Sociological Art (defined as “sociological praxis in the guise of art”) using video, the press, and different modes of public intervention. Works discussed in Chapter 1 include Family Portrait (1967), Senior Citizen Video (1973), Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud (1974), Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time (1974), Biennial of the Year 2000 (1975), and The Video Family (1976). Chapter 1 also examines different categories of Forest’s diverse work in video and discusses the aesthetic and epistemological ramifications of Sociological Art as theorized by Forest and Vilém Flusser.Less

The Daily Life of an Organist

Andrew Talle

in Beyond Bach: Music and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century

Chapter eleven presents a case study of a professional organist named Carl August Hartung whose everyday life is unusually well documented by an account book he kept for thirteen years, from the age ... More

Chapter eleven presents a case study of a professional organist named Carl August Hartung whose everyday life is unusually well documented by an account book he kept for thirteen years, from the age of twenty-nine to the age of forty-two. Analysis of his financial transactions reveals the minutiæ of his everyday life. It documents not only the food, clothing, furniture, books, and music that he purchased but also the subtlety of his social network of students, colleagues, patrons, family members, and friends. Hartung’s account book illuminates how professional musicians of Bach’s time achieved financial stability by performing, composing, copying music, selling instruments, and teaching both musical and non-musical subjects.Less

Little Things Mean a Lot: The Everyday Material of Palestine

Ann D’Orazio

in The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World

Using Bill Brown’s “thing theory” and Jane Bennett’s materialist theory, Ann D’Orazio analyzes how objects such as tea, tomatoes, trees, and the hijab function as nonhuman agents in Sacco’s ... More

Using Bill Brown’s “thing theory” and Jane Bennett’s materialist theory, Ann D’Orazio analyzes how objects such as tea, tomatoes, trees, and the hijab function as nonhuman agents in Sacco’s Palestine, endowing the text with a powerful depth and resonance.Less

Mexican Workers and Life in South Chicago

Michael Innis-Jiménez

in The Latina/o Midwest Reader

By recognizing and not underestimating the significance of everyday forms of resistance and the politics of culture, as well as institutions and organizations not normally seen as vehicles for ... More

By recognizing and not underestimating the significance of everyday forms of resistance and the politics of culture, as well as institutions and organizations not normally seen as vehicles for everyday and working class change, we can delve into the strategies that helped Mexicans in interwar South Chicago cope with the oppressive environment that surrounded them. Individual Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in interwar South Chicago, including steel workers, shop owners, union organizers, and social workers, formed a community that was able to change its physical and cultural environment to help its members and create a degree of resistance that helped Mexicans persevere against intimidation and prejudice. These individual and community histories—the stories of people, organizations, and their physical surroundings—shed light on Mexicano life in a place far from the border and at the industrial heart of the United States.Less

No More Red Lines: Networking around the State in Jordan

Deborah L. Wheeler

in Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life

Ch. 3 seeks explanations to Jillian Schwedler’s observation that in Jordan, “There are no more red lines” (Schwedler, 2012). Why did King Abdullah and his wife Queen Rania in 2012 become sources of ... More

Ch. 3 seeks explanations to Jillian Schwedler’s observation that in Jordan, “There are no more red lines” (Schwedler, 2012). Why did King Abdullah and his wife Queen Rania in 2012 become sources of increasingly public critiques by members of Jordanian society. Specifically, what role did Internet use play in promoting new levels of social and political awareness, and collective demands for change. These questions are considered in light of ethnographic insights and Internet user testimonials, which reveal subtle forms of empowerment and enhanced voice among citizens in the practice of everyday life.Less

The Micro-demise of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Working around the State in Comparative Perspective

Deborah L. Wheeler

in Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life

Chapter 5 illustrates the core argument of this book, that ordinary people can create change in small ways by networking around the state. In the service of this argument, the chapter highlights ... More

Chapter 5 illustrates the core argument of this book, that ordinary people can create change in small ways by networking around the state. In the service of this argument, the chapter highlights everyday forms of digital resistance in authoritarian political contexts in the Middle East. The three forms of new media empowerment analysed in the chapter include: 1. Digital disclosure to confront bad governance. 2. People to people diplomacy. 3. Social media for social change. These examples of “digital resistance” are based upon public media campaigns against the Egyptian, Turkish, Israeli, Iranian and Saudi states.Less

Citizenship and security

Lee Jarvis and Michael Lister

in Anti-terrorism, citizenship and security

This chapter explores contemporary debate around security and citizenship, situating our understanding of each within these. It argues that both are, fundamentally, experiences rooted in everyday ... More

This chapter explores contemporary debate around security and citizenship, situating our understanding of each within these. It argues that both are, fundamentally, experiences rooted in everyday life, rather than abstract or formal statuses or conditions. The chapter concludes by discussing the methodology underpinning the book’s empirical research.Less