Joan E. Cashin (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643205
- eISBN:
- 9781469643229
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643205.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Material objects lie at the crux of understanding individual and social relationships throughout history, and the Civil War generation is no exception. Before, during, and after the war, Americans ...
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Material objects lie at the crux of understanding individual and social relationships throughout history, and the Civil War generation is no exception. Before, during, and after the war, Americans from all walks of life created, used, revered, exploited, discarded, mocked, and destroyed objects for countless reasons. These objects had symbolic significance for millions of people. The essays in this volume consider a wide range of material objects, including weapons, Revolutionary artifacts, landscapes, books, vaccine matter, human bodies, houses, clothing, and documents. Together, the contributors argue that material objects can shed new light on the social, economic, and cultural history of the conflict. This book will fundamentally reshape our understanding of the war.Less
Material objects lie at the crux of understanding individual and social relationships throughout history, and the Civil War generation is no exception. Before, during, and after the war, Americans from all walks of life created, used, revered, exploited, discarded, mocked, and destroyed objects for countless reasons. These objects had symbolic significance for millions of people. The essays in this volume consider a wide range of material objects, including weapons, Revolutionary artifacts, landscapes, books, vaccine matter, human bodies, houses, clothing, and documents. Together, the contributors argue that material objects can shed new light on the social, economic, and cultural history of the conflict. This book will fundamentally reshape our understanding of the war.
Simon Mussell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105707
- eISBN:
- 9781526132253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105707.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
The book provides a new perspective on the early work of the Frankfurt School, by focusing on the vital role that affect and feeling play in the development of critical theory. Building on ...
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The book provides a new perspective on the early work of the Frankfurt School, by focusing on the vital role that affect and feeling play in the development of critical theory. Building on contemporary theories of affect, the author argues that any renewal of critical theory today must have an affective politics at its core. If one’s aim is to effectively theorize, criticize, and ultimately transform existing social relations, then a strictly rationalist model of political thought remains inadequate. In many respects, this flies in the face of predominant forms of political philosophy, which have long upheld reason and rationality as sole proprietors of political legitimacy. Critical theory and feeling shows how the work of the early Frankfurt School offers a dynamic and necessary corrective to the excesses of formalized reason. Studying a range of themes – from melancholia, unhappiness, and hope, to mimesis, affect, and objects – this book provides a radical rethinking of critical theory for our times.Less
The book provides a new perspective on the early work of the Frankfurt School, by focusing on the vital role that affect and feeling play in the development of critical theory. Building on contemporary theories of affect, the author argues that any renewal of critical theory today must have an affective politics at its core. If one’s aim is to effectively theorize, criticize, and ultimately transform existing social relations, then a strictly rationalist model of political thought remains inadequate. In many respects, this flies in the face of predominant forms of political philosophy, which have long upheld reason and rationality as sole proprietors of political legitimacy. Critical theory and feeling shows how the work of the early Frankfurt School offers a dynamic and necessary corrective to the excesses of formalized reason. Studying a range of themes – from melancholia, unhappiness, and hope, to mimesis, affect, and objects – this book provides a radical rethinking of critical theory for our times.
Howard Chiang (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719096006
- eISBN:
- 9781781708460
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096006.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This collection expands the history of Chinese medicine by bridging the philosophical concerns of epistemology and the history and cultural politics of transregional medical formations. Topics range ...
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This collection expands the history of Chinese medicine by bridging the philosophical concerns of epistemology and the history and cultural politics of transregional medical formations. Topics range from the spread of gingko’s popularity from East Asia to the West to the appeal of acupuncture for complementing in-vitro fertilization regimens, from the modernization of Chinese anatomy and forensic science to the evolving perceptions of the clinical efficacy of Chinese medicine. The individual essays cohere around the powerful theoretical-methodological approach, “historical epistemology,” with which scholars in science studies have already challenged the seemingly constant and timeless status of such rudimentary but pivotal dimensions of scientific process as knowledge, reason, argument, objectivity, evidence, fact, and truth. Yet given that landmark studies in historical epistemology rarely navigate outside the intellectual landscape of Western science and medicine, this book broadens our understanding of its application and significance by drawing on and exploring the rich cultures of Chinese medicine. In studying the globalizing role of medical objects, the contested premise of medical authority and legitimacy, and the syncretic transformations of metaphysical and ontological knowledge, contributors illuminate how the breadth of the historical study of Chinese medicine and its practices of knowledge-making in the modern period must be at once philosophical and transnational in scope. This book will appeal to students and scholars working in science studies and medical humanities as well as readers who are interested in the broader problems of translation, material culture, and the global circulation of knowledge.Less
This collection expands the history of Chinese medicine by bridging the philosophical concerns of epistemology and the history and cultural politics of transregional medical formations. Topics range from the spread of gingko’s popularity from East Asia to the West to the appeal of acupuncture for complementing in-vitro fertilization regimens, from the modernization of Chinese anatomy and forensic science to the evolving perceptions of the clinical efficacy of Chinese medicine. The individual essays cohere around the powerful theoretical-methodological approach, “historical epistemology,” with which scholars in science studies have already challenged the seemingly constant and timeless status of such rudimentary but pivotal dimensions of scientific process as knowledge, reason, argument, objectivity, evidence, fact, and truth. Yet given that landmark studies in historical epistemology rarely navigate outside the intellectual landscape of Western science and medicine, this book broadens our understanding of its application and significance by drawing on and exploring the rich cultures of Chinese medicine. In studying the globalizing role of medical objects, the contested premise of medical authority and legitimacy, and the syncretic transformations of metaphysical and ontological knowledge, contributors illuminate how the breadth of the historical study of Chinese medicine and its practices of knowledge-making in the modern period must be at once philosophical and transnational in scope. This book will appeal to students and scholars working in science studies and medical humanities as well as readers who are interested in the broader problems of translation, material culture, and the global circulation of knowledge.
Barry Stroud
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195151886
- eISBN:
- 9780199867189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151887.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Examines psychological facts such as colour, focusing on thoughts, beliefs and perceptions, while analysing how they relate to physical facts. Perceptions of colour need to be acknowledged separately ...
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Examines psychological facts such as colour, focusing on thoughts, beliefs and perceptions, while analysing how they relate to physical facts. Perceptions of colour need to be acknowledged separately from objects before they can be philosophically unmasked, because the idea that humans experience sensations does not explain predicational seeing, which assigns certain properties to an object. Two strategies are identified to prove the unreality of colour, one stating that perceptions of colour are not true, the other arguing that, according to subjectivism, colours depend on perceived sensations.Less
Examines psychological facts such as colour, focusing on thoughts, beliefs and perceptions, while analysing how they relate to physical facts. Perceptions of colour need to be acknowledged separately from objects before they can be philosophically unmasked, because the idea that humans experience sensations does not explain predicational seeing, which assigns certain properties to an object. Two strategies are identified to prove the unreality of colour, one stating that perceptions of colour are not true, the other arguing that, according to subjectivism, colours depend on perceived sensations.
Jennifer Van Horn
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629568
- eISBN:
- 9781469629582
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629568.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. This book investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to ...
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Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. This book investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and, eventually, of American citizenship. Interweaving analysis of paintings and prints with furniture, architecture, textiles, and literary works, the book reconstructs the networks of goods that bound together consumers in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston, S.C. Moving beyond emulation and the desire for social status as the primary motivators for consumption, this work illuminates that Anglo-Americans’ material choices were intimately bound up with their efforts to institute civility and to distance themselves from native Americans and African Americans. It also traces colonial women’s contested place in forging provincial culture in British America. As encountered through a woman’s application of makeup at her dressing table or an amputee’s donning of a wooden leg after the Revolutionary War, material artifacts were far from passive markers of rank or political identification. Instead, they actively participated in making Anglo-American society.Less
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. This book investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and, eventually, of American citizenship. Interweaving analysis of paintings and prints with furniture, architecture, textiles, and literary works, the book reconstructs the networks of goods that bound together consumers in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charleston, S.C. Moving beyond emulation and the desire for social status as the primary motivators for consumption, this work illuminates that Anglo-Americans’ material choices were intimately bound up with their efforts to institute civility and to distance themselves from native Americans and African Americans. It also traces colonial women’s contested place in forging provincial culture in British America. As encountered through a woman’s application of makeup at her dressing table or an amputee’s donning of a wooden leg after the Revolutionary War, material artifacts were far from passive markers of rank or political identification. Instead, they actively participated in making Anglo-American society.
Joan E. Cashin (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643205
- eISBN:
- 9781469643229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643205.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Most historians of the Civil War era have neglected material culture studies, but the field has a great deal to offer to scholars. Numerous relics survive from the time period, and they can be found ...
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Most historians of the Civil War era have neglected material culture studies, but the field has a great deal to offer to scholars. Numerous relics survive from the time period, and they can be found in museums, historical societies, and state archives; they are also mentioned frequently in the manuscripts. People who lived through the war used objects to convey a host of powerful cultural messages about their experiences.Less
Most historians of the Civil War era have neglected material culture studies, but the field has a great deal to offer to scholars. Numerous relics survive from the time period, and they can be found in museums, historical societies, and state archives; they are also mentioned frequently in the manuscripts. People who lived through the war used objects to convey a host of powerful cultural messages about their experiences.
Lars Spuybroek
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474420570
- eISBN:
- 9781474453905
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420570.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In his chapter, Lars Spuybroek criticises the doctrine of emergence for hindering the reversal that allows wholes to connect to parts of other wholes and only done with beauty; beauty as inherent of ...
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In his chapter, Lars Spuybroek criticises the doctrine of emergence for hindering the reversal that allows wholes to connect to parts of other wholes and only done with beauty; beauty as inherent of things without which they cannot exist make a claim on their environment only by being beautiful. The chapter tries to deal with the question of how beauty constructs this intersection between the two states. He calls this intersection the middle and goes on to sketching its historical transformations and its subsequent variations, combining the two main agents of variability, smoothness and roughness. Things and feelings are both constructed in the same system. That forces subjectivism out of the scene and materialism prevailing as matter is simply what matters. For Whitehead beauty is about both mutual adaptation and patterned contrasts, about massiveness and intensity, about smoothness and roughness. These things have a consciousness of their own, a nonhuman thought. The essay develops a bi-axial structure into a genuine fourfold, and from there into a circular system where aesthetic feelings are equated with material objects.Less
In his chapter, Lars Spuybroek criticises the doctrine of emergence for hindering the reversal that allows wholes to connect to parts of other wholes and only done with beauty; beauty as inherent of things without which they cannot exist make a claim on their environment only by being beautiful. The chapter tries to deal with the question of how beauty constructs this intersection between the two states. He calls this intersection the middle and goes on to sketching its historical transformations and its subsequent variations, combining the two main agents of variability, smoothness and roughness. Things and feelings are both constructed in the same system. That forces subjectivism out of the scene and materialism prevailing as matter is simply what matters. For Whitehead beauty is about both mutual adaptation and patterned contrasts, about massiveness and intensity, about smoothness and roughness. These things have a consciousness of their own, a nonhuman thought. The essay develops a bi-axial structure into a genuine fourfold, and from there into a circular system where aesthetic feelings are equated with material objects.
Vera Bühlmann
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474420570
- eISBN:
- 9781474453905
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420570.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Vera Bühlmann in this chapter inhabits Serres’s position on philosophy for architecture, suggesting that chance and necessity are not in conflict as necessity originates in chance and chance ...
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Vera Bühlmann in this chapter inhabits Serres’s position on philosophy for architecture, suggesting that chance and necessity are not in conflict as necessity originates in chance and chance comprehends necessity. Matter in its quantum physical character is controlled by computational and chance bound calculation, but how can knowledge be new if it is rule-based. Serres’s exodic knowledge is capitalised in the case of this chapter as a way of looking at elements as coded, discretised and distributed while unaccountable and inaccessible, allowing building as an autonomous entity to be a function of rarity that is compatibility with the totality of economic and political power without dominating or being harnessed by them. Paris Hermitage project by Pa.La.Ce studio is the vehicle to discuss materiality, as this is initiated in the field of recent architectural theory, that incorporates code and a formality that is computational.Less
Vera Bühlmann in this chapter inhabits Serres’s position on philosophy for architecture, suggesting that chance and necessity are not in conflict as necessity originates in chance and chance comprehends necessity. Matter in its quantum physical character is controlled by computational and chance bound calculation, but how can knowledge be new if it is rule-based. Serres’s exodic knowledge is capitalised in the case of this chapter as a way of looking at elements as coded, discretised and distributed while unaccountable and inaccessible, allowing building as an autonomous entity to be a function of rarity that is compatibility with the totality of economic and political power without dominating or being harnessed by them. Paris Hermitage project by Pa.La.Ce studio is the vehicle to discuss materiality, as this is initiated in the field of recent architectural theory, that incorporates code and a formality that is computational.
Danielle Sands
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474439039
- eISBN:
- 9781474476881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s ...
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This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.Less
This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.
Ulrika Maude
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474458641
- eISBN:
- 9781474477147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458641.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter compares Bowen’s depictions of habit to contemporary psychological discourses and its presentation in other works (by, for example, Samuel Beckett), The significance of objects, places ...
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This chapter compares Bowen’s depictions of habit to contemporary psychological discourses and its presentation in other works (by, for example, Samuel Beckett), The significance of objects, places and habits in Bowen’s work, she argues, reveals how the narratives present objects and places as so integral to the self that they acquire near sentience, with the capacity to console, pierce or wound. Although Bowen’s ‘characters fasten their fears and desires’ onto objects (Inglesby 312-13), it shows that the objects also have a hold over these emotions, as if they have scarred her characters, leaving their own inscriptions on the nerves and the senses. Bowen’s writing seems to suggest that we bury our intentions in objects, which, although they exist externally, exist for us only to the extent to which they arouse in us volitions, thoughts or emotions.Less
This chapter compares Bowen’s depictions of habit to contemporary psychological discourses and its presentation in other works (by, for example, Samuel Beckett), The significance of objects, places and habits in Bowen’s work, she argues, reveals how the narratives present objects and places as so integral to the self that they acquire near sentience, with the capacity to console, pierce or wound. Although Bowen’s ‘characters fasten their fears and desires’ onto objects (Inglesby 312-13), it shows that the objects also have a hold over these emotions, as if they have scarred her characters, leaving their own inscriptions on the nerves and the senses. Bowen’s writing seems to suggest that we bury our intentions in objects, which, although they exist externally, exist for us only to the extent to which they arouse in us volitions, thoughts or emotions.
Patricia Juliana Smith
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474458641
- eISBN:
- 9781474477147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458641.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter shows that many of Bowen’s female characters have curious relationships with inanimate objects, endowing them with special powers or personal attributes. The pattern of these relations, ...
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This chapter shows that many of Bowen’s female characters have curious relationships with inanimate objects, endowing them with special powers or personal attributes. The pattern of these relations, in which certain objects obtain an unusual significance to their possessors, even, in some cases, to the extent of being preferred over relationships with other people, is obvious in Bowen’s works, yet it eludes the usual definitions of fetishism. Critics attempting to theorize female fetishism have tended to rely on paradigms articulated by Freud (ie erotic) or Marx (ie consumerist). Neither of these constructs, however, adequately describe the relationships with objects that possess overwhelming importance to many of Bowen’s characters and, through these attachments, lead often lead to perverse consequences. Recently, however, German theorist Hartmut Böhme has postulated that fetishism is an entirely European concept, one crucial to our understanding of Modernism. Using Böhme’s axioms of fetishism and Modernism as well as insights from anthropological and theological sources, this chapter explores female characters’ ‘object relations’ (not necessarily in the Freudian sense of the term) in Bowen’s works.Less
This chapter shows that many of Bowen’s female characters have curious relationships with inanimate objects, endowing them with special powers or personal attributes. The pattern of these relations, in which certain objects obtain an unusual significance to their possessors, even, in some cases, to the extent of being preferred over relationships with other people, is obvious in Bowen’s works, yet it eludes the usual definitions of fetishism. Critics attempting to theorize female fetishism have tended to rely on paradigms articulated by Freud (ie erotic) or Marx (ie consumerist). Neither of these constructs, however, adequately describe the relationships with objects that possess overwhelming importance to many of Bowen’s characters and, through these attachments, lead often lead to perverse consequences. Recently, however, German theorist Hartmut Böhme has postulated that fetishism is an entirely European concept, one crucial to our understanding of Modernism. Using Böhme’s axioms of fetishism and Modernism as well as insights from anthropological and theological sources, this chapter explores female characters’ ‘object relations’ (not necessarily in the Freudian sense of the term) in Bowen’s works.
Jasmin Kelaita
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474458641
- eISBN:
- 9781474477147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458641.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines how Bowen’s final novel, Eva Trout, amplifies the issue of the domestic and the ‘things’ that build subjective containment and betray non-normative, unstable and difficult ...
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This chapter examines how Bowen’s final novel, Eva Trout, amplifies the issue of the domestic and the ‘things’ that build subjective containment and betray non-normative, unstable and difficult narrative subjects, by claiming that Eva Trout is such a subject: difficult and utterly indeterminate. In order to draw on the value-laden potency of ‘home’ for women in fiction the chapter calls upon Bowen’s contemporary, one who might be described as the quintessential author of homelessness, Jean Rhys. Rhys’s novel Good Morning, Midnight (1939) to show how the issue of domestic space becomes paramount to the workings of narrative for women writers and their female protagonists. Unlike Rhys’s protagonist Sasha Jensen, who does not attempt to make any specific space her home but rather moves between rented rooms in a hope for nominal protection, Eva Trout repeatedly attempts to make herself in relation to domestic spaces. Eva is unable to establish a stable domestic existence in accordance with conventional gender expectations. The way that women make homes and, in very material and embodied ways, occupy space is significant in Bowen’s fiction, where objects, ephemera and domestic stability are crucial to the development of character and narrative.Less
This chapter examines how Bowen’s final novel, Eva Trout, amplifies the issue of the domestic and the ‘things’ that build subjective containment and betray non-normative, unstable and difficult narrative subjects, by claiming that Eva Trout is such a subject: difficult and utterly indeterminate. In order to draw on the value-laden potency of ‘home’ for women in fiction the chapter calls upon Bowen’s contemporary, one who might be described as the quintessential author of homelessness, Jean Rhys. Rhys’s novel Good Morning, Midnight (1939) to show how the issue of domestic space becomes paramount to the workings of narrative for women writers and their female protagonists. Unlike Rhys’s protagonist Sasha Jensen, who does not attempt to make any specific space her home but rather moves between rented rooms in a hope for nominal protection, Eva Trout repeatedly attempts to make herself in relation to domestic spaces. Eva is unable to establish a stable domestic existence in accordance with conventional gender expectations. The way that women make homes and, in very material and embodied ways, occupy space is significant in Bowen’s fiction, where objects, ephemera and domestic stability are crucial to the development of character and narrative.
Andrew Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474458641
- eISBN:
- 9781474477147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458641.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter proposes that telephones are critical in the plotting of most of Bowen’s novels, as well as in some of her stories. Bowen’s plots are often organized around the telephone and around ...
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This chapter proposes that telephones are critical in the plotting of most of Bowen’s novels, as well as in some of her stories. Bowen’s plots are often organized around the telephone and around telephone calls in a way that would have been inconceivable at the start of the twentieth century. Making a telephone call in Bowen can be seen as an ideal version of speech and even as an ideal model for literature itself, precisely because the telephone generates a sense of immediacy and unmediated presence while at the same time marking absence. At the same time simple object and eerily human, the uncanny telephone in Bowen suggests that communication is what her writing, and what literature more generally offers while at the same time contesting, displacing, and resisting it. Bowen’s work thereby challenges our very understanding of how literature as a form of communication between author and reader can be said to work.Less
This chapter proposes that telephones are critical in the plotting of most of Bowen’s novels, as well as in some of her stories. Bowen’s plots are often organized around the telephone and around telephone calls in a way that would have been inconceivable at the start of the twentieth century. Making a telephone call in Bowen can be seen as an ideal version of speech and even as an ideal model for literature itself, precisely because the telephone generates a sense of immediacy and unmediated presence while at the same time marking absence. At the same time simple object and eerily human, the uncanny telephone in Bowen suggests that communication is what her writing, and what literature more generally offers while at the same time contesting, displacing, and resisting it. Bowen’s work thereby challenges our very understanding of how literature as a form of communication between author and reader can be said to work.
Helena Michie and Robyn Warhol
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474406635
- eISBN:
- 9781474416221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474406635.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The album is huge. Depending on which librarian brings it to the circulation desk, you might be offered a cart to carry it to your seat in the British Library Reading Room or you might have to tote ...
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The album is huge. Depending on which librarian brings it to the circulation desk, you might be offered a cart to carry it to your seat in the British Library Reading Room or you might have to tote it yourself. Its vertical length is at least two feet; its width nearly as great. The covers are a dusty red-brown, faded and scratched, and the binding is broken so that the album must be tied with a flat cord to keep it from falling open when lifted. Inside, musty pages of heavy paper require you to stretch out your whole arm to turn them. Neatly affixed to the pages in rough chronological order are a variety of items in card stock: calling cards with the names of English dukes and duchesses in elaborate scripted fonts; handwritten menus for French meals served in grand country houses; seating charts for dinners large and small; printed bills of fare for restaurant banquets. The pages, despite their slight yellowing and a faint but perceptible yellowish smell, have an aura of faded opulence.Less
The album is huge. Depending on which librarian brings it to the circulation desk, you might be offered a cart to carry it to your seat in the British Library Reading Room or you might have to tote it yourself. Its vertical length is at least two feet; its width nearly as great. The covers are a dusty red-brown, faded and scratched, and the binding is broken so that the album must be tied with a flat cord to keep it from falling open when lifted. Inside, musty pages of heavy paper require you to stretch out your whole arm to turn them. Neatly affixed to the pages in rough chronological order are a variety of items in card stock: calling cards with the names of English dukes and duchesses in elaborate scripted fonts; handwritten menus for French meals served in grand country houses; seating charts for dinners large and small; printed bills of fare for restaurant banquets. The pages, despite their slight yellowing and a faint but perceptible yellowish smell, have an aura of faded opulence.
Gena R. Greher and Jesse M. Heines
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199826179
- eISBN:
- 9780197563182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199826179.003.0007
- Subject:
- Computer Science, Audio Processing
People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes ...
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People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes of our educational system is the strange fact that it does little to encourage a child’s imaginative and subsequent creative potential. As discussed by Judith Groch in her book The Right to Create, one reason might be a strongly held belief that creativity is innate and something one is born with. You either have it or you don’t. Another reason might be the difficulty in assessing creativity objectively. Unlike questions and problems with only one right answer, how can you make an objective value judgment on a student’s creative output? But imagine a young Pablo Picasso growing up in 21st-century America and attending a public school dominated by high-stakes testing. According to a case study by Howard Gardner in Creating Minds, our young Picasso had great difficulty mastering his numbers. Other than his artistic inclinations, which were nurtured by his family, he was an unremarkable student. In most of today’s public schools, Picasso would be force-fed a fairly prescribed curriculum that would ensure mastery of test-taking techniques but would be mostly devoid of opportunities for personal self-expression. In fact, in a climate focused on high-stakes testing, little attention would even be given to the arts. Picasso’s unique and imaginative vision of the world would probably be squelched for not conforming to the accepted adult views of how one draws the sun, trees, or sky. According to Feldman, Csikszentmihlayi, and Gardner, in Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity, creative people are shaped as much by their early experiences as by the natural abilities they are born with. Absent a home life where artistic insights are valued and nurtured, how many future Picassos are walking around America’s schools right now who will never know their potential because they will never come into contact with those experiences? Consider the following scenario. If Gena and Jesse walked into a cocktail party, who would be considered the more “creative” of the two? Why, certainly you would pick Gena.
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People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes of our educational system is the strange fact that it does little to encourage a child’s imaginative and subsequent creative potential. As discussed by Judith Groch in her book The Right to Create, one reason might be a strongly held belief that creativity is innate and something one is born with. You either have it or you don’t. Another reason might be the difficulty in assessing creativity objectively. Unlike questions and problems with only one right answer, how can you make an objective value judgment on a student’s creative output? But imagine a young Pablo Picasso growing up in 21st-century America and attending a public school dominated by high-stakes testing. According to a case study by Howard Gardner in Creating Minds, our young Picasso had great difficulty mastering his numbers. Other than his artistic inclinations, which were nurtured by his family, he was an unremarkable student. In most of today’s public schools, Picasso would be force-fed a fairly prescribed curriculum that would ensure mastery of test-taking techniques but would be mostly devoid of opportunities for personal self-expression. In fact, in a climate focused on high-stakes testing, little attention would even be given to the arts. Picasso’s unique and imaginative vision of the world would probably be squelched for not conforming to the accepted adult views of how one draws the sun, trees, or sky. According to Feldman, Csikszentmihlayi, and Gardner, in Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity, creative people are shaped as much by their early experiences as by the natural abilities they are born with. Absent a home life where artistic insights are valued and nurtured, how many future Picassos are walking around America’s schools right now who will never know their potential because they will never come into contact with those experiences? Consider the following scenario. If Gena and Jesse walked into a cocktail party, who would be considered the more “creative” of the two? Why, certainly you would pick Gena.
Gena R. Greher and Jesse M. Heines
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199826179
- eISBN:
- 9780197563182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199826179.003.0012
- Subject:
- Computer Science, Audio Processing
The Sondheim and Lapine song “Putting It Together” refers to the many challenges facing an artist trying to produce an artistic product and overcome the myriad ...
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The Sondheim and Lapine song “Putting It Together” refers to the many challenges facing an artist trying to produce an artistic product and overcome the myriad obstacles to getting funding and recognition. Most people involved in the arts as creators and performers can certainly identify with the many logistical issues highlighted by the song. As the lyric so aptly states, “The art of making art, is putting it together”. Creating or producing the “product” can result in a physical work of art, a performance piece, or, for the purposes of this book, a new software application. Although some may claim divine intervention or inspiration as the muse, it is generally the result of numerous fits and starts, multiple stages of development, attention to minute details, and more hours than one would care to think about. And that is just the beginning. Getting the work “out there” requires just as much attention. The goal of this chapter is to bring you into the process of “putting together” an interdisciplinary project or course, putting together a project team, and getting it and them off the ground. Logistics is one of the many challenges in this kind of collaborative endeavor. It becomes particularly problematic at the college level for both professors and students. Professors’ schedules are difficult to synchronize, but students’ schedules are, too, especially when students have different majors. Gena’s previous experiences with attempting interdisciplinary projects with colleagues from different disciplines, along with her experiences developing partnerships with local music teachers, informs much of how we structure our projects and negotiate our collaboration, both with each other and within the parameters of our individual departments. It is difficult enough to attempt a project with a colleague from your own disciplinary area, so it might seem even more daunting to attempt this with someone outside your department. Perhaps as you are reading this book you are formulating an idea for the type of interdisciplinary project or class you would like to create.
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The Sondheim and Lapine song “Putting It Together” refers to the many challenges facing an artist trying to produce an artistic product and overcome the myriad obstacles to getting funding and recognition. Most people involved in the arts as creators and performers can certainly identify with the many logistical issues highlighted by the song. As the lyric so aptly states, “The art of making art, is putting it together”. Creating or producing the “product” can result in a physical work of art, a performance piece, or, for the purposes of this book, a new software application. Although some may claim divine intervention or inspiration as the muse, it is generally the result of numerous fits and starts, multiple stages of development, attention to minute details, and more hours than one would care to think about. And that is just the beginning. Getting the work “out there” requires just as much attention. The goal of this chapter is to bring you into the process of “putting together” an interdisciplinary project or course, putting together a project team, and getting it and them off the ground. Logistics is one of the many challenges in this kind of collaborative endeavor. It becomes particularly problematic at the college level for both professors and students. Professors’ schedules are difficult to synchronize, but students’ schedules are, too, especially when students have different majors. Gena’s previous experiences with attempting interdisciplinary projects with colleagues from different disciplines, along with her experiences developing partnerships with local music teachers, informs much of how we structure our projects and negotiate our collaboration, both with each other and within the parameters of our individual departments. It is difficult enough to attempt a project with a colleague from your own disciplinary area, so it might seem even more daunting to attempt this with someone outside your department. Perhaps as you are reading this book you are formulating an idea for the type of interdisciplinary project or class you would like to create.
Robb Hernández
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479845309
- eISBN:
- 9781479822720
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479845309.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Galvanized by Terrill’s speculative art practice, This chapter proposes an addition to the archival body/archival space study model in the form of the virtual queer archival laboratory. Taking a page ...
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Galvanized by Terrill’s speculative art practice, This chapter proposes an addition to the archival body/archival space study model in the form of the virtual queer archival laboratory. Taking a page from feminist art history and AIDS art activism’s institutional critique, this study concludes through a virtual shuttling across vignettes and variant strands of time and space, reimagining alternative afterlives for the collections it has surveyed. From a book fair, to a haberdashery, toa colossal pre-Columbian ruin, each site represents speculative encounters through a failed project from the museum’s past: the cast collection. Through the language of the reprint, replica, and revisitation, another engagement with the museum and archive emerges grasping Chicanx art’s queer future through a virtual key.Less
Galvanized by Terrill’s speculative art practice, This chapter proposes an addition to the archival body/archival space study model in the form of the virtual queer archival laboratory. Taking a page from feminist art history and AIDS art activism’s institutional critique, this study concludes through a virtual shuttling across vignettes and variant strands of time and space, reimagining alternative afterlives for the collections it has surveyed. From a book fair, to a haberdashery, toa colossal pre-Columbian ruin, each site represents speculative encounters through a failed project from the museum’s past: the cast collection. Through the language of the reprint, replica, and revisitation, another engagement with the museum and archive emerges grasping Chicanx art’s queer future through a virtual key.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The chapter elaborates how the Object Oriented Ontology’s universe of things works too closely with financial capitalism, as both generate a posthuman reality. The OOO seems too preoccupied with the ...
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The chapter elaborates how the Object Oriented Ontology’s universe of things works too closely with financial capitalism, as both generate a posthuman reality. The OOO seems too preoccupied with the industrial capital of modernity and its production of stuff (objects and services) to mark its postanthropocentric ontology to consider how financial capitalism, now accounting for over 33% of the profits in the economy despite 7% of the real economy and 4% of the jobs, operates ontologically not through physical objects but through leveraging debt and hoarding value. Indeed, the immaterial objects that the OOO celebrate may include derivatives and hedge funds (themselves often pools of immaterial value). The shift from industrial capitalism’s organization around the production of objects and capture of labor to financial capital’s debt and leveraging marks what I call a movement from the logic of the object and capture of labor to the logic of the derivative and hedging of debt/value. I discuss how the reification of life works in both these contexts, and show how reification is a necessary term for thinking humans rendered into a field of assets and shares of value.Less
The chapter elaborates how the Object Oriented Ontology’s universe of things works too closely with financial capitalism, as both generate a posthuman reality. The OOO seems too preoccupied with the industrial capital of modernity and its production of stuff (objects and services) to mark its postanthropocentric ontology to consider how financial capitalism, now accounting for over 33% of the profits in the economy despite 7% of the real economy and 4% of the jobs, operates ontologically not through physical objects but through leveraging debt and hoarding value. Indeed, the immaterial objects that the OOO celebrate may include derivatives and hedge funds (themselves often pools of immaterial value). The shift from industrial capitalism’s organization around the production of objects and capture of labor to financial capital’s debt and leveraging marks what I call a movement from the logic of the object and capture of labor to the logic of the derivative and hedging of debt/value. I discuss how the reification of life works in both these contexts, and show how reification is a necessary term for thinking humans rendered into a field of assets and shares of value.
Matilda Mroz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748643462
- eISBN:
- 9780748676514
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748643462.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Interpretations of the Decalogue series have largely focused upon symbolism and the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the individual films, seeking to attribute symbolic attachments to ...
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Interpretations of the Decalogue series have largely focused upon symbolism and the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the individual films, seeking to attribute symbolic attachments to particular images. This chapter, by contrast, attempts to bring out those moments in between those that seem to be significant or symbolically meaningful, using David Trotter's formulation of the ‘hermeneutic threshold’ to explore moments which do not seem particularly concerned with meaning at all, but are, instead, affective. The films continually suggest the presence of an ordered system of meaning, through omens, significant objects, and patterns, while ultimately deferring a full explication of significance. Disjunctive chronologies and the slow unfolding of the films continually resist attempts to fasten meaning onto their images, resonating instead with uncertainty and indeterminacy. The chapter also analyses the significance of music in the films (Zbigniew Preisner's score) and discusses the distinction between affect and emotion posited by Brian Massumi.Less
Interpretations of the Decalogue series have largely focused upon symbolism and the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the individual films, seeking to attribute symbolic attachments to particular images. This chapter, by contrast, attempts to bring out those moments in between those that seem to be significant or symbolically meaningful, using David Trotter's formulation of the ‘hermeneutic threshold’ to explore moments which do not seem particularly concerned with meaning at all, but are, instead, affective. The films continually suggest the presence of an ordered system of meaning, through omens, significant objects, and patterns, while ultimately deferring a full explication of significance. Disjunctive chronologies and the slow unfolding of the films continually resist attempts to fasten meaning onto their images, resonating instead with uncertainty and indeterminacy. The chapter also analyses the significance of music in the films (Zbigniew Preisner's score) and discusses the distinction between affect and emotion posited by Brian Massumi.
Jessica Allsop
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526124340
- eISBN:
- 9781526136206
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526124340.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyses a selection of Marsh’s diamond fictions in order to show how his curious stones are active in narratives expressing anxieties over masculine mastery of imperial objects and the ...
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This chapter analyses a selection of Marsh’s diamond fictions in order to show how his curious stones are active in narratives expressing anxieties over masculine mastery of imperial objects and the viability of overseas commodities and global trade. The curiously animate, materially unstable and malevolently metamorphic stones pose questions as to the consequences of the exploitation of Empire. They challenge the expertise of collectors, dealers, and jewellers, indicating the perils of speculation, and of the return of the exotic to the heart of the Empire. The chapter analyses how Marsh’s diamond narratives generate anxiety over a fin-de-siècle market economy and concepts of value, contributing to the fin-de-siècle imaginary an impression of beleaguered masculinity, problematic objects, and an unstable global market.Less
This chapter analyses a selection of Marsh’s diamond fictions in order to show how his curious stones are active in narratives expressing anxieties over masculine mastery of imperial objects and the viability of overseas commodities and global trade. The curiously animate, materially unstable and malevolently metamorphic stones pose questions as to the consequences of the exploitation of Empire. They challenge the expertise of collectors, dealers, and jewellers, indicating the perils of speculation, and of the return of the exotic to the heart of the Empire. The chapter analyses how Marsh’s diamond narratives generate anxiety over a fin-de-siècle market economy and concepts of value, contributing to the fin-de-siècle imaginary an impression of beleaguered masculinity, problematic objects, and an unstable global market.