Lynne Pearce
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690848
- eISBN:
- 9781474426817
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690848.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the ...
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What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the motoring century’ (1900-2000), paying particular attention to the way in which the practice of driving shapes and structures our thinking. While recent sociological and psychological research has helped explain how drivers are able to think about ‘other things’ while performing such a complex task, little attention has, as yet, been paid to the form these cognitive and affective journeys take. Pearce uses her close readings of literary texts – ranging from early twentieth-century motoring periodicals, Modernist and inter-war fiction, American ‘road-trip’ classics, and autobiography – in order to model different types of ‘driving-event’ and, by extension, the car’s use as a means of phenomenological encounter, escape from memory, meditation, problem-solving and daydreaming. The textual case-studies include: H.V. Morton and Edwin Muir; Jack Kerouac and Patricia Highsmith; Neil Young and Joan Didion; Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamund Lehmann.Less
What sorts of things do we think about when we’re driving – or being driven – in a car? Drivetime seeks to answer this question by drawing upon a rich archive of British and American texts from ‘the motoring century’ (1900-2000), paying particular attention to the way in which the practice of driving shapes and structures our thinking. While recent sociological and psychological research has helped explain how drivers are able to think about ‘other things’ while performing such a complex task, little attention has, as yet, been paid to the form these cognitive and affective journeys take. Pearce uses her close readings of literary texts – ranging from early twentieth-century motoring periodicals, Modernist and inter-war fiction, American ‘road-trip’ classics, and autobiography – in order to model different types of ‘driving-event’ and, by extension, the car’s use as a means of phenomenological encounter, escape from memory, meditation, problem-solving and daydreaming. The textual case-studies include: H.V. Morton and Edwin Muir; Jack Kerouac and Patricia Highsmith; Neil Young and Joan Didion; Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamund Lehmann.
David Chidester
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520297654
- eISBN:
- 9780520969933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520297654.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in modern American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, the discussion ...
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This chapter undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in modern American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, the discussion considers the usefulness of the work of two theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin, in recovering the sense of touch—the intimate caress, the violent shock—as deep background for tracking basic modes of religious tactility. By paying attention to sensory media and metaphors, the chapter proceeds from cutaneous binding and burning to kinaesthetic moving and to haptic handling in order to enter this field of tactile meaning and power. Specific cases of tactility are quickly considered, including binding covenants, firewalking, flag burning, alien abduction, global capitalism, and cellular microbiology. By exploring the religious dynamics of the sense of touch, this chapter points to the presence of a tactile politics of perception circulating through religion and popular culture.Less
This chapter undertakes a tactile exploration of the sense of touch in modern American culture and religion. After briefly recalling the denigration of tactility in Western thought, the discussion considers the usefulness of the work of two theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin, in recovering the sense of touch—the intimate caress, the violent shock—as deep background for tracking basic modes of religious tactility. By paying attention to sensory media and metaphors, the chapter proceeds from cutaneous binding and burning to kinaesthetic moving and to haptic handling in order to enter this field of tactile meaning and power. Specific cases of tactility are quickly considered, including binding covenants, firewalking, flag burning, alien abduction, global capitalism, and cellular microbiology. By exploring the religious dynamics of the sense of touch, this chapter points to the presence of a tactile politics of perception circulating through religion and popular culture.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199565320
- eISBN:
- 9780191765995
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565320.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The American writer Ezra Pound explored a range of genres, disciplines, and cultural contexts throughout his career. The chapter focuses on a neglected area of interest—his engagement with movement ...
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The American writer Ezra Pound explored a range of genres, disciplines, and cultural contexts throughout his career. The chapter focuses on a neglected area of interest—his engagement with movement and dance, both in the formation of his poetics and in his essays on ballet, music, and sculpture. Although critical of aspects of Diaghilev's ‘orientalism’, his role as arts reviewer for the New Age and the Athenaeum provoked his interest in the relationship between human and machine movement. His praise for Massine's ‘impersonal’ choreographic style for the puppets of La Boutique fantasque leads to a re-evaluation of the Ballets Russes and to later enquiries into the human interaction with machines in industrial production. Pound's explorations intriguingly match the innovative dance theories of the expressionist Rudolf Laban, and show the extent to which dance and writing of the twentieth century inform the discourses of modernity.Less
The American writer Ezra Pound explored a range of genres, disciplines, and cultural contexts throughout his career. The chapter focuses on a neglected area of interest—his engagement with movement and dance, both in the formation of his poetics and in his essays on ballet, music, and sculpture. Although critical of aspects of Diaghilev's ‘orientalism’, his role as arts reviewer for the New Age and the Athenaeum provoked his interest in the relationship between human and machine movement. His praise for Massine's ‘impersonal’ choreographic style for the puppets of La Boutique fantasque leads to a re-evaluation of the Ballets Russes and to later enquiries into the human interaction with machines in industrial production. Pound's explorations intriguingly match the innovative dance theories of the expressionist Rudolf Laban, and show the extent to which dance and writing of the twentieth century inform the discourses of modernity.
Philipa Rothfield
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474429344
- eISBN:
- 9781474438568
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429344.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, ...
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This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.Less
This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.
