Search Results

Socrates 1

C. C. W. Taylor

in Pleasure, Mind, and Soul: Selected Papers in Ancient Philosophy

This chapter contains a brief account of Socrates' life, including his trial and death, Socratic literature, Socrates' thought, including ethics and religion, and Socrates' later influence. It ... More

This chapter contains a brief account of Socrates' life, including his trial and death, Socratic literature, Socrates' thought, including ethics and religion, and Socrates' later influence. It concludes with a selective bibliography.Less

Dismembering the Ducat in The Merchant of Venice

David Landreth

in The Face of Mammon: The Matter of Money in English Renaissance Literature

Everyone knows that The Merchant of Venice is all about money, but if the characters of the play know it too, they do their best to avoid saying so. This chapter examines the variety of ways in which ... More

Everyone knows that The Merchant of Venice is all about money, but if the characters of the play know it too, they do their best to avoid saying so. This chapter examines the variety of ways in which the play's characters seek to articulate extramonetary values for the objects of their desires, and so disavow the centrality of the three thousand ducats through which their desires contend. The mechanism of disavowal is that of dividing and regrouping the play's central problematic into not only different problems, but different kinds of problem: the twofold dilemma (as between justice and mercy, or Jew and Christian), the unitary mystery of the self to the self, the triplicate riddle of the three caskets. In the play's cynical assessment of the relation of its individuals to its society, self-knowledge is willfully mystified in order to validate the institution that, by its own consensual disavowal, holds the Venetian commonwealth together: its money.Less

The violence of ideology

Anthony Lloyd

in The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy

This chapter asks a simple question – if we know the problematic nature of capitalism and its attendant harms and inequalities, why can’t we fix it? The answer lies in an account of ideology which ... More

This chapter asks a simple question – if we know the problematic nature of capitalism and its attendant harms and inequalities, why can’t we fix it? The answer lies in an account of ideology which lies in action, not thought – we know there are problems but act as if we do not. The disavowal of problematic working conditions – and other significant issues such as environmental harm, migration and automation – makes it difficult to challenge the status quo and enact meaningful change. The search for human recognition and flourishing is hampered by the progressive search for change within the existing system rather than contemplating a different set of social relations and structures. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for ‘fixing the harms of work’ which centre around the need for social science to reconnect with analysis of political economy and problematise capitalism in a way that demands consideration of alternatives.Less

Little Black Sambo, I’m Going to Eat You Up!

Ian Bogost

in How To Talk About Videogames

This chapter looks at the controversial appearance of a racial slur in a game about language and how that teaches one about our expectations for language, and games. The focuse of this chapter is on ... More

This chapter looks at the controversial appearance of a racial slur in a game about language and how that teaches one about our expectations for language, and games. The focuse of this chapter is on the 5th Cell’s Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which features an enormous dictionary of terms, any of which can be written to summon objects to solve puzzles in the game. Including, the word “sambo”, which is a racial slur for a derogatory way to refer to a black man. This chapter looks at the origins of the racial slur and its connections to the book Little Black Sambo. This chapter emphasizes the fact that it is not the inclusion of this word that is troubling, since the game developers did not recognize it as a racial slur, but rather people’s reaction to the inclusion of this word into the game. On the one hand, it is tempting to celebrate this new ignorance, as some players suggest. If a more accepting and less bigoted society is one we want to live in, then there is some sign of cultural success when a racial slur obsolesces. But on the other hand, this very neglect points to a social ill even worse than racism itself: disavowal. We must strive for more than the destruction of stereotype, slur, and other visible signs of bigotry, as if eliminating the symptoms also cures the cause.Less

Neoliberal Disavowal and the Politics of the Impossible

Grace Kyungwon Hong

in Death Beyond Disavowal: The Impossible Politics of Difference

The Introduction begins by looking at the meaning of the word “difference” in relation to Audre Lorde’s essay called “Learning from the 60s,” which demanded that everyone regardless of their race ... More

The Introduction begins by looking at the meaning of the word “difference” in relation to Audre Lorde’s essay called “Learning from the 60s,” which demanded that everyone regardless of their race take into account their own complicities with power over and against others. In this book “difference” references a cultural and epistemological practice that holds in suspension (without requiring resolution) contradictory, mutually exclusive, and negating impulses. “Difference” names an epistemological position, ontological condition, and political strategy that reckon with the shift in the technologies of power that one might as well call “neoliberal.” The Introduction goes on to look at how the term “neoliberal” has been used historically and how it is used in this book. It defines neoliberalism foremost as an epistemological structure of disavowal, a means of claiming that racial and gendered violence are things of the past. It does so by affirming certain modes of racialized, gendered, and sexualized life, particularly through invitation into reproductive respectability, so as to disavow its exacerbated production of premature death. The introduction concludes by explaining that the author takes inspiration from Lorde and bends toward the project of pursuing a complex liberation without any guarantee of a certain or knowable future.Less

Neoliberal Autocracy and Its Unmaking

Lisa Wedeen

in Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria

Chapter one explores the uneven saturation of ideology and, in particular, the role of ambivalence in status quo conventionality by investigating the marked absence of large-scale protest in Syria’s ... More

Chapter one explores the uneven saturation of ideology and, in particular, the role of ambivalence in status quo conventionality by investigating the marked absence of large-scale protest in Syria’s two most important cities during the first, predominantly peaceful year of the uprising. Whereas accounts of dictatorship take the task to be describing the role of staunch loyalists or highlighting opportunism in the operations of regime maintenance, my privileging of ambivalence in the Syrian context reveals how an ideological structure of disavowal can work politically to stifle transformation. And it allows us to examine the ways in which citizens flatten out the complexities and horrors of civil war to render the present world-shattering reality bearable.Less

Žižekian ‘Perversions’: The Lure of Antigone and the Fetishism of the Act

Yannis Stavrakakis

in The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics

Zizek's thoughts on capitalism, ‘the radical act’, and the ethico-political example of Antigone, are often presented as integral parts of a Lacan-inspired radical political philosophy. Hence, the ... More

Zizek's thoughts on capitalism, ‘the radical act’, and the ethico-political example of Antigone, are often presented as integral parts of a Lacan-inspired radical political philosophy. Hence, the main theme examined in the third chapter is the relation between negativity (the negative ontology of Lacanian theory) and the more positive, utopian and heroic political attitude implied by Zizek. The central hypothesis explored is that in Zizek's recent work Lacanian negativity is ultimately disavowed and a positive politics of the act as miracle takes its place. Thus, the problem here is symmetrically opposite to the one associated with discourse theory (ch. 2) and analogous with the one encountered in the work of Castoriadis (ch. 1). We reach then a full circle in this theoretical exploration of the Lacanian Left. The question, of course, is whether the circle is vicious or not. Does such an orientation have a place within the Lacanian Left? How does it relate to Lacan's teaching and to Zizek's earlier work?Less

The Time of Our Melancholy: Zola's Débâcle

Peter Starr

in Commemorating Trauma: The Paris Commune and Its Cultural Aftermath

The aim of this chapter is to use the concept of “confusion” in the wide range of its manifestations in La Débâcle—military, historical, ideological, sexual, and so on—to unpack the several forms of ... More

The aim of this chapter is to use the concept of “confusion” in the wide range of its manifestations in La Débâcle—military, historical, ideological, sexual, and so on—to unpack the several forms of ideological ambivalence at the heart of Zola's novel. No other text of Zola's uses the term “confusion” as often or to such patently critical effect, yet that critical thrust is curiously undercut by the novel's deployment of confusion to specific aesthetic ends. In the first section of this chapter, the author explores the tension between Zola's critique of confusion and his recourse there to in terms of a larger pattern of disavowal typical of Zola's plotting. This focus on disavowal leads, in the chapter's middle section, to an analysis of the melancholic ambivalence inherent in Zola's take on Republican ideology.Less

Foreclosing God: Heidegger, Lacan, and Kristeva

Clayton Crockett

in Interstices of the Sublime: Theology and Psychoanalytic Theory

This chapter considers the complex topic of foreclosure and combines a reading of Freud and Lacan with a consideration of Heidegger and Julia Kristeva. Foreclosure is not the same as disavowal. The ... More

This chapter considers the complex topic of foreclosure and combines a reading of Freud and Lacan with a consideration of Heidegger and Julia Kristeva. Foreclosure is not the same as disavowal. The chapter concludes that if people foreclose God in a certain way, people do not shut down, but rather open up theological thinking.Less

Homosexuality in the action film

Lisa Purse

in Contemporary Action Cinema

Using Bad Boys II, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Alexander, Spider-Man 3 and 300 as illustrative case studies, this chapter maps out homosexuality's status as both structuring presence and structuring ... More

Using Bad Boys II, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Alexander, Spider-Man 3 and 300 as illustrative case studies, this chapter maps out homosexuality's status as both structuring presence and structuring absence in contemporary action cinema, as well as documenting how action movies speak to this presence/absence. After a brief history of homosexual screen representations, the chapter argues that the imposition or regulation of a straight-gay binary remains readable in contemporary action cinema, and that as a violent, risk-filled homosocial space the action ?lm provides a fertile ground for the anxieties about losing one's proper gender that Judith Butler has described. Representation of and performance of homosexuality, current practices of presenting and policing homosocial space, and patterns of knowing avaowal and disavowal, are historicized and analysed. The chapter explores how homosexuality operates as metaphor in the superhero action cycle, and as an indicator of villainy in films like Gamer, 300 and Watchmen, and also points up the persistent invisibility of female homosexuality in contemporary action cinema.Less

The Empire Whisperer: Niall Ferguson’s Misdirection, Disavowal, and the Perilousness of Neoliberal Time

Jeanne Morefield

in Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection

This chapter examines the metanarrative histories of Harvard historian and media personality Niall Ferguson. It begins by analyzing Ferguson’s growing influence on political culture and discusses the ... More

This chapter examines the metanarrative histories of Harvard historian and media personality Niall Ferguson. It begins by analyzing Ferguson’s growing influence on political culture and discusses the relationship between his neoliberal economic agenda, his conception of time, and his counterfactual approach to history. It argues that to fully understand Ferguson’s imperial vision, it is important to look not only at those historical facts that he omits from his stories of British and American imperial development, but also at the way he uses misdirection to both acknowledge and then dismiss political violence. Similarly, Ferguson’s histories reflect a complicated form of rhetorical disavowal that works to reinforce the liberal identity of the imperial state. The chapter concludes by arguing that the primary purpose of Ferguson’s work is to bolster the faith of Americans in their empire in the face of its potential decline.Less

The Disavowal of Slave Agency

Neil Roberts

in Freedom as Marronage

This chapter begins with an analysis of two republican notions of freedom, the first articulated by Hannah Arendt: freedom in the founding of non-sovereign human action; and the second developed by ... More

This chapter begins with an analysis of two republican notions of freedom, the first articulated by Hannah Arendt: freedom in the founding of non-sovereign human action; and the second developed by Philip Pettit: the concept of freedom as non-domination. It outlines the claims of each while highlighting the locus of their respective disavowals of slavery and slave agency. Disavowal herein refers to a simultaneous double movement with traumatic consequences: an acknowledgment and a denial of an event. The second republican ideal does not hide the importance of slavery to freedom in the Roman tradition it seeks to revive. It makes a point to address slavery explicitly in a manner the first notion fails to articulate. Strict doctrinaire adherents of these two systems nevertheless disavow the experiences, thoughts, and agency of slaves, and this act unites them. After explaining the adverse effects of disavowal, the next section turns to the meaning of slave agency and employs the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. More than the rest of the book, chapter one is theme-centered with authors invoked insofar as they describe the role of political language and problem of disavowal that we must eliminate to explain sufficiently the idea of freedom.Less

Introduction

Christopher Peterson

in Bestial Traces: Race, Sexuality, Animality

This introductory chapter asks how speciesism engenders the bestialization of racial and sexual others. How does the stereotype of the black ape work to disavow the Darwinian principle of a ... More

This introductory chapter asks how speciesism engenders the bestialization of racial and sexual others. How does the stereotype of the black ape work to disavow the Darwinian principle of a universally shared human apehood? To what extent are both racist and antiracist discourses predicated on a shared repudiation of animality? How might we comprehend animality in nonpejorative terms? Analogous to the racialization of animality, the homophobic claim that granting civil rights such as marriage to gays and lesbians would also require the state to sanction bestiality denies the animality inherent in all sexuality by portraying homosexuality as a bestial act. If negative stereotypes about nonhuman animals are the condition of possibility for negative stereotypes about social and political minorities, then avowing human animality would seem to hold much political promise. Against some recent trends in “posthumanism,” however, this chapter asserts that an anti-discriminatory politics cannot be founded on a simple reversal of humanism. Human animality cannot be fully avowed. Rather, we must cultivate a weaker disavowal of difference that resonates with what Jacques Derrida characterizes as a “lesser violence,” which acknowledges our unavoidable implication in systems of exclusion.Less

Conclusion

Jane Anna Gordon

in Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon

This conclusion explains how creolizing political theory is different from the comparative political theory of Fred Dallmayr, Roxanne Euben, Michaelle Browers, Leigh Jenco, Farah Godrej, and Andrew ... More

This conclusion explains how creolizing political theory is different from the comparative political theory of Fred Dallmayr, Roxanne Euben, Michaelle Browers, Leigh Jenco, Farah Godrej, and Andrew March, on the one hand, and work on processes of disavowal by Sibylle Fischer and on moments of universal history by Susan Buck-Morss, on the other. While creating professional space to study political thought beyond the U.S. and Western Europe, focus in comparative political theory has been monopolized by East Asia, East India, and Muslim worlds to the exclusion of African, Caribbean, Latin and Native American ones. Work on disavowal and universal history has illuminated the larger historical patterns of such exclusions but often with some skepticism about the possibility of forging more viable, inclusive political collectivities. Creolization then draws on both academic developments while being far less reluctant about how we can forge new creolizing alternatives. Finally, creolized approaches are compared with problem-driven research within political science.Less

I Wish the Hour Were Over: Elements of a Moral Dilemma

in Moral Stealth: How "Correct Behavior" Insinuates Itself into Psychotherapeutic Practice

A patient in psychoanalysis, shortly after contemplating and then voicing agreement with an interpretation that had been offered, announced an intense urge to get up and leave—that is, wishing the ... More

A patient in psychoanalysis, shortly after contemplating and then voicing agreement with an interpretation that had been offered, announced an intense urge to get up and leave—that is, wishing the not-yet-terminated analytic hour were at an end. Yet no sooner had this thought been uttered than there followed another wish of possibly equal intensity: that the hour not soon end. One might readily say that this patient was ambivalent about staying versus leaving, and surely it could also be said that he was in conflict about these two impulses or feelings. In “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety,” Sigmund Freud presents his prototypical version of a conflict due to ambivalence. The significance of his presentation was to underscore the presence of opposition in the form of love versus hate. This chapter examines a form of moral dilemma represented by the narcissistic behavior disorders, which range from cross-dressing to thievery to all manner of substance abuse, and discusses the connection between psychoanalysis and morality, as well as the contribution of disavowal to superego explanations.Less

Prospero’s Humiliation

Harry Berger

in The Perils of Uglytown: Studies in Structural Misanthropology from Plato to Rembrandt

This chapter offers a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with particular emphasis on the humiliation of Prospero, the play’s protagonist. Prospero was the duke of Milan who was forced to ... More

This chapter offers a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with particular emphasis on the humiliation of Prospero, the play’s protagonist. Prospero was the duke of Milan who was forced to flee with his daughter Miranda and spent twelve years on an island. But he sees a way to get back after the honest lord Gonzalo helps him to escape. He uses magic to get his revenge and punish and forgive his enemies. This chapter analyzes the subtext that Prospero’s narrative labors to disavow: the disavowal is reinforced by his interpretation of Gonzalo’s complicity in his forced exile. It also considers the play’s casual depiction of louche behavior as well as the world Prospero showed Miranda.Less