Angela S. Chiu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824858742
- eISBN:
- 9780824873684
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824858742.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This work is the first in-depth historical study of the Thai tradition of donation of that most iconic of Thai art objects, the Buddha image. The book introduces stories from tamnan(chronicles), ...
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This work is the first in-depth historical study of the Thai tradition of donation of that most iconic of Thai art objects, the Buddha image. The book introduces stories from tamnan(chronicles), monastic histories and legends from the Lanna region centered in today’s northern Thailand. Examination of themes, structures and motifs illuminates the conceptual and material aspects of Buddha images that influenced their functions in Lanna society. As agents and mediators of social agency, Buddha images were focal points of pan-regional political-religious lineages and rivalries, indeed, the very generators of history itself. Statues also unified the Buddha with the northern Thai landscape, integrating Buddhist and local significances of place. The book also compares Thai statues with Sri Lankan and Burmese-Mon Buddha relics and images, contributing to broader understanding of how materially different types of Buddhist representations mediated the Buddha’s ‘presence.’ Moreover, the book considers fundamental yet rarely critically deliberated questions such as how particular statues were selected as models to be copied. This involves the image’s aspect as an exchange of financial outlay for merit, ‘commoditized’ even as it is ‘singularized’ through enshrinement. Throughout its ‘life,’ the Thai Buddha image is always a part of wider society beyond monastery walls.Less
This work is the first in-depth historical study of the Thai tradition of donation of that most iconic of Thai art objects, the Buddha image. The book introduces stories from tamnan(chronicles), monastic histories and legends from the Lanna region centered in today’s northern Thailand. Examination of themes, structures and motifs illuminates the conceptual and material aspects of Buddha images that influenced their functions in Lanna society. As agents and mediators of social agency, Buddha images were focal points of pan-regional political-religious lineages and rivalries, indeed, the very generators of history itself. Statues also unified the Buddha with the northern Thai landscape, integrating Buddhist and local significances of place. The book also compares Thai statues with Sri Lankan and Burmese-Mon Buddha relics and images, contributing to broader understanding of how materially different types of Buddhist representations mediated the Buddha’s ‘presence.’ Moreover, the book considers fundamental yet rarely critically deliberated questions such as how particular statues were selected as models to be copied. This involves the image’s aspect as an exchange of financial outlay for merit, ‘commoditized’ even as it is ‘singularized’ through enshrinement. Throughout its ‘life,’ the Thai Buddha image is always a part of wider society beyond monastery walls.
Michael J. Barany and Donald MacKenzie
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262525381
- eISBN:
- 9780262319157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262525381.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter devotes close empirical attention to the social and material achievement of proofs, theorems, and other mathematical constructions. Mathematics is often treated as the most abstract and ...
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This chapter devotes close empirical attention to the social and material achievement of proofs, theorems, and other mathematical constructions. Mathematics is often treated as the most abstract and idealized of human practices, so that mathematicians’ words, gestures, handwriting, and chalkboard marking appear to be merely incidental and secondary ways of expressing and conveying mathematical truths. In contrast to that view, the chapter argues that mathematical concepts do not speak for themselves, and that mundane communicative practices and tools provide carefully circumscribed surrogates for idealized mathematical phenomena. Though blackboards are primarily used for teaching and seminars, their material, visual, and narrative features extend across all areas of mathematics pedagogy and research. These features, in many ways analogous to inscriptions and demonstrations in the natural science, also permit an account of the distinctive uses and meanings of formal representations in the mathematical sciences.Less
This chapter devotes close empirical attention to the social and material achievement of proofs, theorems, and other mathematical constructions. Mathematics is often treated as the most abstract and idealized of human practices, so that mathematicians’ words, gestures, handwriting, and chalkboard marking appear to be merely incidental and secondary ways of expressing and conveying mathematical truths. In contrast to that view, the chapter argues that mathematical concepts do not speak for themselves, and that mundane communicative practices and tools provide carefully circumscribed surrogates for idealized mathematical phenomena. Though blackboards are primarily used for teaching and seminars, their material, visual, and narrative features extend across all areas of mathematics pedagogy and research. These features, in many ways analogous to inscriptions and demonstrations in the natural science, also permit an account of the distinctive uses and meanings of formal representations in the mathematical sciences.
D. N. Rodowick
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226513058
- eISBN:
- 9780226513225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226513225.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The film and video works of Harun Farocki exemplify a critical media practice that pose the questions: What is an Image?, or better, What is a human image? Much of Farocki’s mature work examines in ...
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The film and video works of Harun Farocki exemplify a critical media practice that pose the questions: What is an Image?, or better, What is a human image? Much of Farocki’s mature work examines in fascinating ways the proliferation of nonhuman perspectives and spaces in the contemporary image environment, and in each case, Farocki asks viewers to reconsider how images provoke both an intelligence and ethics of seeing. Examples are drawn from three of Farocki’s best known works, Inextinguishable Fire, Images of the World and the Inscription of War, and the four-part video installation, Serious Games. The account then turns to the late writing of T. W. Adorno to argue that a deep engagement with the variety of Farocki’s work retroactively gives force and clarity to the style of emancipated cinema that Adorno was trying to imagine in essays like “Transparencies on Film.” The claim here is that Farocki’s work was an ongoing and open-ended experimentation of what a critical writing in images could look like under different media conditions, both historically and formally, especially in relation to his strategies of dissociative and recombinatory montage.Less
The film and video works of Harun Farocki exemplify a critical media practice that pose the questions: What is an Image?, or better, What is a human image? Much of Farocki’s mature work examines in fascinating ways the proliferation of nonhuman perspectives and spaces in the contemporary image environment, and in each case, Farocki asks viewers to reconsider how images provoke both an intelligence and ethics of seeing. Examples are drawn from three of Farocki’s best known works, Inextinguishable Fire, Images of the World and the Inscription of War, and the four-part video installation, Serious Games. The account then turns to the late writing of T. W. Adorno to argue that a deep engagement with the variety of Farocki’s work retroactively gives force and clarity to the style of emancipated cinema that Adorno was trying to imagine in essays like “Transparencies on Film.” The claim here is that Farocki’s work was an ongoing and open-ended experimentation of what a critical writing in images could look like under different media conditions, both historically and formally, especially in relation to his strategies of dissociative and recombinatory montage.
Christopher I. Beckwith
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691176321
- eISBN:
- 9781400866328
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691176321.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This chapter considers the relationship of Early Buddhism to Chinese thought during the Warring States period (ca. 450 BC–221 BC). Chinese thought was in a nearly constant state of flux, if not ...
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This chapter considers the relationship of Early Buddhism to Chinese thought during the Warring States period (ca. 450 BC–221 BC). Chinese thought was in a nearly constant state of flux, if not turmoil, during the Warring States period, which began shortly after the death of Confucius. Ideas related to the Early Buddhism attested in the fragments of Pyrrho and Megasthenes are clearly present in Warring States writings, especially Early Taoist texts, including the Laotzu, the Chuangtzu, as well as the anonymous Jade Yoga Inscription. Some of the Early Taoist material is approximately contemporaneous with Pyrrho and Megasthenes. It seems that this material's appearance in China is connected to the fact that Central Asia, including Bactria and Gandhāra, was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire down to Alexander's invasion and conquest of the region in 330–325 BC.Less
This chapter considers the relationship of Early Buddhism to Chinese thought during the Warring States period (ca. 450 BC–221 BC). Chinese thought was in a nearly constant state of flux, if not turmoil, during the Warring States period, which began shortly after the death of Confucius. Ideas related to the Early Buddhism attested in the fragments of Pyrrho and Megasthenes are clearly present in Warring States writings, especially Early Taoist texts, including the Laotzu, the Chuangtzu, as well as the anonymous Jade Yoga Inscription. Some of the Early Taoist material is approximately contemporaneous with Pyrrho and Megasthenes. It seems that this material's appearance in China is connected to the fact that Central Asia, including Bactria and Gandhāra, was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire down to Alexander's invasion and conquest of the region in 330–325 BC.
Henning Schmidgen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263691
- eISBN:
- 9780823266555
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263691.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Focusing on “Science in Action,” published in 1987, this chapter discusses the key concepts of Bruno Latour’s anthropology of science, e.g. “technoscience,” “inscription device,” “immutable mobiles,” ...
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Focusing on “Science in Action,” published in 1987, this chapter discusses the key concepts of Bruno Latour’s anthropology of science, e.g. “technoscience,” “inscription device,” “immutable mobiles,” and “centres of calculation.” It points out connections between Latour’s interest in scientific imagery and similar interests in media studies and the history of art. At the same time, it draws attention to important role played in this context by the criticism of linguistics in authors such as Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.Less
Focusing on “Science in Action,” published in 1987, this chapter discusses the key concepts of Bruno Latour’s anthropology of science, e.g. “technoscience,” “inscription device,” “immutable mobiles,” and “centres of calculation.” It points out connections between Latour’s interest in scientific imagery and similar interests in media studies and the history of art. At the same time, it draws attention to important role played in this context by the criticism of linguistics in authors such as Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
James McFarland
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245369
- eISBN:
- 9780823250684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245369.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores Nietzsche's archived posthumous papers (Nachlaß), characterizing the primal impetus of Nietzsche's writing and relating this to the discipline of philology and the institution ...
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This chapter explores Nietzsche's archived posthumous papers (Nachlaß), characterizing the primal impetus of Nietzsche's writing and relating this to the discipline of philology and the institution of the university. Walter Benjamin's ambivalent relation to philological discipline and its scholarly embodiment is shown in the development of One Way Street, the book that formally explodes his academic treatise on Trauerspiel. The chapter concludes by examining the undisciplined rift in Nietzsche's humanism that renders his philosophy a powerfully destructive transhistorical procedure.Less
This chapter explores Nietzsche's archived posthumous papers (Nachlaß), characterizing the primal impetus of Nietzsche's writing and relating this to the discipline of philology and the institution of the university. Walter Benjamin's ambivalent relation to philological discipline and its scholarly embodiment is shown in the development of One Way Street, the book that formally explodes his academic treatise on Trauerspiel. The chapter concludes by examining the undisciplined rift in Nietzsche's humanism that renders his philosophy a powerfully destructive transhistorical procedure.
T. M. Lemos
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190249588
- eISBN:
- 9780190249601
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190249588.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Drawing upon research from the field of genocide studies, this chapter argues that there is a connection between the genocidal violence described in some biblical texts and the marked population ...
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Drawing upon research from the field of genocide studies, this chapter argues that there is a connection between the genocidal violence described in some biblical texts and the marked population increases that occurred in Iron Age Palestine and the surrounding regions. It uses the Rwandan genocide as a case study for understanding multicausal frameworks for explicating genocide, demonstrating that a combination of factors is necessary for genocidal violence to occur. In both Rwanda and the ancient Levant, population increases, land scarcities, and the particular realities of ethnic identity formation were catalysts for extreme interethnic violence. The chapter examines archaeological evidence for population increases, as well as evidence from such texts as the Mesha Inscription, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Amos, paying special attention to passages discussing the practice of ḥērem and concludes with a reflection on materialist approaches to ritual violence.Less
Drawing upon research from the field of genocide studies, this chapter argues that there is a connection between the genocidal violence described in some biblical texts and the marked population increases that occurred in Iron Age Palestine and the surrounding regions. It uses the Rwandan genocide as a case study for understanding multicausal frameworks for explicating genocide, demonstrating that a combination of factors is necessary for genocidal violence to occur. In both Rwanda and the ancient Levant, population increases, land scarcities, and the particular realities of ethnic identity formation were catalysts for extreme interethnic violence. The chapter examines archaeological evidence for population increases, as well as evidence from such texts as the Mesha Inscription, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Amos, paying special attention to passages discussing the practice of ḥērem and concludes with a reflection on materialist approaches to ritual violence.
Jessica Priestley
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199653096
- eISBN:
- 9780191766459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199653096.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses interpretative possibilities and contexts for Herodotus' Homeric reputation. The appellation ‘Prose Homer of History’ in the second century Salmakis Inscription proves to be a ...
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This chapter discusses interpretative possibilities and contexts for Herodotus' Homeric reputation. The appellation ‘Prose Homer of History’ in the second century Salmakis Inscription proves to be a useful focus of reflection on the place of Herodotus in a variety of ongoing debates in antiquity about how to record the past. Herodotus' connection with Homer seems to reflect his perceived cultural importance: Herodotus' main subject matter of the Persian Wars was as proud and important a moment in the cultural memory of the Greeks as the Trojan War itself. The chapter argues that Herodotus' Homeric reputation is also related to (overlapping) interests in his prose style and Ionic dialect, in the relationship between poetry and history, and in the appropriateness of truth and ‘fiction’ in different types of literary works.Less
This chapter discusses interpretative possibilities and contexts for Herodotus' Homeric reputation. The appellation ‘Prose Homer of History’ in the second century Salmakis Inscription proves to be a useful focus of reflection on the place of Herodotus in a variety of ongoing debates in antiquity about how to record the past. Herodotus' connection with Homer seems to reflect his perceived cultural importance: Herodotus' main subject matter of the Persian Wars was as proud and important a moment in the cultural memory of the Greeks as the Trojan War itself. The chapter argues that Herodotus' Homeric reputation is also related to (overlapping) interests in his prose style and Ionic dialect, in the relationship between poetry and history, and in the appropriateness of truth and ‘fiction’ in different types of literary works.
