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The content of this chapter unfolds along several lines of discussion. First, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sense of the entire history of the black church and how that institution had functioned in African American life and culture up to his time is discussed. Early images of the church as refuge, as comprehensive community, as exodus and exilic community, as chosen people, as unbroken tradition, as suffering servant, as messianic instrument, as counterculture, and as critic and transformer of culture are seriously considered. Second, King’s portrait of the civil rights movement as church-based and church-centered is stressed, with special attention to his view of the black church as “movement headquarters.” The chapter closes with reflections on King’s conflicts with other black leaders, especially conservatives and nationalists, over the meaning and proper role of the church in the personal and social lives of African Americans.

This chapter analyzes the conventional link between critique and work, which is less abrupt than the perspective on critique and life. It discusses critique and work in relation to the levels of its dispersion, its disaggregation, the lack of control of its hyperboles, the loss of its center, and the crisis of its dynamic. The criteria and possibilities according to which critique is exercised would depend upon the frames, categories, and regimes of understanding in which life is heterogeneously pre-comprehended. This chapter describes how these frames, modes of life, or the clashes between them precede critical behavior. A supposed “life in itself” emerges as a referential illusion or centering function in the clash, the tension, comparison, or encounter between regimes of life or work.

This chapter explores the role that the senses and the sensory experience play in the composition of poetry. The excerpts it shows note, for instance, note how Victorian scientists and physiologists understood how the sensory experience directly influences poets—and the process of sensory experience proves to be fundamentally important in George Meredith's poetry. Through his poetry, Meredith invites readers to make use of their senses; to see, hear, touch, and smell. This focus on sensory detail even prompted efforts to theorize the relationship between intellectual understanding and the body. In fact, in the extracts compiled in the chapter, scientists insist that comprehending poetry is not just an intellectual activity but also an experiential one. Alexander Bain, for instance, maps and explains the cerebral activity that supports this statement, while Alexander Bryan Johnson shows a concern with the difficulty of relating a sensory experience through language.

This chapter finds that Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients lack the ability to comprehend and use appropriate language when performing a task or engaging in conversations, and are unable to use the appropriate language needed to perform daily activities. These patients are also observed to forget or use constructive words, sentences, and language required to engage in conversations, and are unable to express, assert, and direct others when interacting or conversing with others. PD patients are unable to use those components of speech that are required to perform a task, and find it difficult to produce and comprehend speech acts. The speech act theory has been used to investigate this deformity in PD patients, revealing that they demonstrate significant language processing impairments.