Helena Michie
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195073874
- eISBN:
- 9780199855223
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195073874.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This book takes the notion of “otherness” as it has traditionally been used by Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists to designate the space between men and women, and transcribes it instead to the ...
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This book takes the notion of “otherness” as it has traditionally been used by Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists to designate the space between men and women, and transcribes it instead to the places between and among women. Its goal is to describe women's relations to each other and how these relations have been textually and culturally represented.Less
This book takes the notion of “otherness” as it has traditionally been used by Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists to designate the space between men and women, and transcribes it instead to the places between and among women. Its goal is to describe women's relations to each other and how these relations have been textually and culturally represented.
Sonya Stephens
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158776
- eISBN:
- 9780191673351
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158776.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Poetry
The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the ...
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The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the genre of the prose poem itself. The book considers Baudelaire's choice of this genre and the way in which he seeks to define it, both paratextually and textually. It examines the ways in which the prose poem depends on dualities and déboublements as forms of lyrical and narrative difference which, in their turn, reveal ideological otherness and declare the oppositionality of the prose poem. Finally, the book demonstrates a relationship between these forms of otherness and Baudelaire's theory of the popular comic arts and, in doing so, proposes that the prose poems should be read as literary caricature.Less
The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the genre of the prose poem itself. The book considers Baudelaire's choice of this genre and the way in which he seeks to define it, both paratextually and textually. It examines the ways in which the prose poem depends on dualities and déboublements as forms of lyrical and narrative difference which, in their turn, reveal ideological otherness and declare the oppositionality of the prose poem. Finally, the book demonstrates a relationship between these forms of otherness and Baudelaire's theory of the popular comic arts and, in doing so, proposes that the prose poems should be read as literary caricature.
Michael Sheringham
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158431
- eISBN:
- 9780191673306
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158431.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies ...
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This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.Less
This book studies French autobiography. Whereas earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, this book identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent theoretical debates, the book conceives autobiography as a distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with different forms of ‘otherness’. Manifestations of the Other in the autobiographical process — from the reader, who incarnates other people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted, to the potential otherness of memory itself — are traced through a scrutiny of the ‘devices and desires’ at work in a range of texts from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand, Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.
Charles Forsdick
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198160144
- eISBN:
- 9780191673795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198160144.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The Victor Segalen who has emerged from this reading is a complex, occasionally contradictory figure. His exoticism is a statement of the bipolarity of ...
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The Victor Segalen who has emerged from this reading is a complex, occasionally contradictory figure. His exoticism is a statement of the bipolarity of the experience of otherness, a precursory realization that in the meeting of self and other neither party has the guaranteed privilege of objectivity that description of the exotic is ultimately revelatory of the self. Segalen's aesthetics of exoticism is an early consideration of colonialism as a process of contact between cultures. Recent ascendancy of his status in the social sciences indicates Segalen's role as a precursory theorist of the exotic on whose distinction between difference and alterity current consideration of otherness increasingly draws. The figures of travel proposed in this study of Segalen remain those of his physical circumnavigation through Polynesia and China back to his native Brittany. The resultant Aesthetics of Diversity is one that stresses, however, the ultimate relativity not only of the exotic, but also of home itself.Less
The Victor Segalen who has emerged from this reading is a complex, occasionally contradictory figure. His exoticism is a statement of the bipolarity of the experience of otherness, a precursory realization that in the meeting of self and other neither party has the guaranteed privilege of objectivity that description of the exotic is ultimately revelatory of the self. Segalen's aesthetics of exoticism is an early consideration of colonialism as a process of contact between cultures. Recent ascendancy of his status in the social sciences indicates Segalen's role as a precursory theorist of the exotic on whose distinction between difference and alterity current consideration of otherness increasingly draws. The figures of travel proposed in this study of Segalen remain those of his physical circumnavigation through Polynesia and China back to his native Brittany. The resultant Aesthetics of Diversity is one that stresses, however, the ultimate relativity not only of the exotic, but also of home itself.
John L. Meech
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195306941
- eISBN:
- 9780199785018
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195306945.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
In his hermeneutics of the self, Ricoeur executes a series of detours to the self through several accounts of selfhood. Yet he refuses to grant the last word to any one of these accounts alone but ...
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In his hermeneutics of the self, Ricoeur executes a series of detours to the self through several accounts of selfhood. Yet he refuses to grant the last word to any one of these accounts alone but puts them all into play at once in a journey led by the question of who: Who speaks? Who acts (and who suffers)? Who tells her story? Who is responsible? While Ricoeur acknowledges the role of community in the constitution of the self, he never takes the explicit detour to the self through community. In a final detour to the self through community, the self can be glimpsed reflexively as the correlate of a community when ethical conflicts put the self and community at stake together. In such conflicts, the need to identify the community in a narrative attains the status of something attested, and constitutes a first aporia in Ricoeur’s account. A second aporia appears when imputation, responsibility, and recognition are affirmed of the self who is the correlate of a community. These aporias are overcome by letting the community appear as “person” through the metaphor of the “spirit” in the community.Less
In his hermeneutics of the self, Ricoeur executes a series of detours to the self through several accounts of selfhood. Yet he refuses to grant the last word to any one of these accounts alone but puts them all into play at once in a journey led by the question of who: Who speaks? Who acts (and who suffers)? Who tells her story? Who is responsible? While Ricoeur acknowledges the role of community in the constitution of the self, he never takes the explicit detour to the self through community. In a final detour to the self through community, the self can be glimpsed reflexively as the correlate of a community when ethical conflicts put the self and community at stake together. In such conflicts, the need to identify the community in a narrative attains the status of something attested, and constitutes a first aporia in Ricoeur’s account. A second aporia appears when imputation, responsibility, and recognition are affirmed of the self who is the correlate of a community. These aporias are overcome by letting the community appear as “person” through the metaphor of the “spirit” in the community.
John L. Meech
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195306941
- eISBN:
- 9780199785018
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195306945.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Narrative articulates the self, yet the self is not its narrative. Is there a discourse that is not just another narrative but that can articulate the being of the self? At the end of his ...
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Narrative articulates the self, yet the self is not its narrative. Is there a discourse that is not just another narrative but that can articulate the being of the self? At the end of his hermeneutics of the self, Ricoeur constructs a multi-layered ontology of the self whose fragmented nature reflects the halting path of the itinerary. Yet after certain extraordinary encounters (like Paul’s encounter with the crucified and resurrected Christ) the community’s story may have to be retold to let the suffering other come into phrases. How does an ontology of the self fare in such encounters? This chapter argues that an ontology of the self is the correlate of a conversation in a community. The real that resists being interpreted otherwise can only be articulated properly when one considers simultaneously the self, the other and the community in which they meet — a community that, correlatively, only appears where self and other meet. Such an ontology of the self in community could be superseded, but only at the expense of a profound challenge to the community’s self-understanding.Less
Narrative articulates the self, yet the self is not its narrative. Is there a discourse that is not just another narrative but that can articulate the being of the self? At the end of his hermeneutics of the self, Ricoeur constructs a multi-layered ontology of the self whose fragmented nature reflects the halting path of the itinerary. Yet after certain extraordinary encounters (like Paul’s encounter with the crucified and resurrected Christ) the community’s story may have to be retold to let the suffering other come into phrases. How does an ontology of the self fare in such encounters? This chapter argues that an ontology of the self is the correlate of a conversation in a community. The real that resists being interpreted otherwise can only be articulated properly when one considers simultaneously the self, the other and the community in which they meet — a community that, correlatively, only appears where self and other meet. Such an ontology of the self in community could be superseded, but only at the expense of a profound challenge to the community’s self-understanding.
Yrjö Haila
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198295099
- eISBN:
- 9780191599262
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019829509X.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Argues that the holistic notion of the ‘whole earth’ as a protectable entity is too insensitive to, and remote from, real human life‐worlds. It works as a poetic vision but not as a framework for ...
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Argues that the holistic notion of the ‘whole earth’ as a protectable entity is too insensitive to, and remote from, real human life‐worlds. It works as a poetic vision but not as a framework for sound environmental policy. The examples of Russian colonization of Yakutia in eastern Siberia and of Spanish colonization in Central and Latin America illustrate the conceptual dangers that attend such an ‘objectifying’ attitude. The chapter cites stages in Western philosophy depicting the ‘otherness’ of the natural world as a domain to be conquered, and suggests that a more sympathetic understanding of humanity's place in it is required. This in turn requires greater mutual respect between human beings.Less
Argues that the holistic notion of the ‘whole earth’ as a protectable entity is too insensitive to, and remote from, real human life‐worlds. It works as a poetic vision but not as a framework for sound environmental policy. The examples of Russian colonization of Yakutia in eastern Siberia and of Spanish colonization in Central and Latin America illustrate the conceptual dangers that attend such an ‘objectifying’ attitude. The chapter cites stages in Western philosophy depicting the ‘otherness’ of the natural world as a domain to be conquered, and suggests that a more sympathetic understanding of humanity's place in it is required. This in turn requires greater mutual respect between human beings.
Brian Treanor
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226849
- eISBN:
- 9780823235100
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
“Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other”. This is the claim that this book defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental ...
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“Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other”. This is the claim that this book defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental philosophy, this book asks what it means for something or someone to be other than the self. Emmanuel Levinas and those influenced by him point out that the philosophical tradition of the West has generally favored the self at the expense of the other. In response, postmodern thought insists on the absolute otherness of the other, epitomized by the deconstructive claim “every other is wholly other”. But absolute otherness generates problems and aporias of its own. This has led some thinkers to reevaluate the notion of relative otherness in light of the postmodern critique, arguing for a chiastic account that does justice to both the alterity and the similitude of the other. These latter two positions—absolute otherness and a rehabilitated account of relative otherness—are the main contenders in the contemporary debate. This book traces the transmission and development of these two conceptions of otherness by examining the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel. Levinas's version of otherness can be seen in the work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo, while Marcel's understanding of otherness influences the work of Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney. Ultimately, this book makes a case for a hermeneutic account of otherness. Otherness itself is not absolute, but is a chiasm of alterity and similitude.Less
“Every other is truly other, but no other is wholly other”. This is the claim that this book defends. Taking up the question of otherness that so fascinates contemporary continental philosophy, this book asks what it means for something or someone to be other than the self. Emmanuel Levinas and those influenced by him point out that the philosophical tradition of the West has generally favored the self at the expense of the other. In response, postmodern thought insists on the absolute otherness of the other, epitomized by the deconstructive claim “every other is wholly other”. But absolute otherness generates problems and aporias of its own. This has led some thinkers to reevaluate the notion of relative otherness in light of the postmodern critique, arguing for a chiastic account that does justice to both the alterity and the similitude of the other. These latter two positions—absolute otherness and a rehabilitated account of relative otherness—are the main contenders in the contemporary debate. This book traces the transmission and development of these two conceptions of otherness by examining the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel. Levinas's version of otherness can be seen in the work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo, while Marcel's understanding of otherness influences the work of Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney. Ultimately, this book makes a case for a hermeneutic account of otherness. Otherness itself is not absolute, but is a chiasm of alterity and similitude.
Antony Augoustakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199584413
- eISBN:
- 9780191723117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584413.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
While interest in the poets of the Flavian period has been steadily growing, the role of women in the epic poems of Silius Italicus and Statius has so far remained understudied. This book offers the ...
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While interest in the poets of the Flavian period has been steadily growing, the role of women in the epic poems of Silius Italicus and Statius has so far remained understudied. This book offers the studies of the role of motherhood and female foreign otherness in the Punica and the Thebaid. The book argues that the juxtaposition of Roman and foreign women as mothers expands our awareness of the poems' scope in relation to gender and ethnicity. By drawing on the theoretical apparatus of Julia Kristeva on motherhood and otherness, the book shows how the Flavian poets construct an idealized discourse on the empire's own identity that at once crystallizes but also destabilizes the role that women command within the epic genre. The portrayal of female figures in the epics of the first century ce allows us to witness a change of attitudes toward otherness: the periphery now defines the centre, as the poets highlight the notions of otherness and motherhood in the narrative in order to reshape Romanness through representations of the other.Less
While interest in the poets of the Flavian period has been steadily growing, the role of women in the epic poems of Silius Italicus and Statius has so far remained understudied. This book offers the studies of the role of motherhood and female foreign otherness in the Punica and the Thebaid. The book argues that the juxtaposition of Roman and foreign women as mothers expands our awareness of the poems' scope in relation to gender and ethnicity. By drawing on the theoretical apparatus of Julia Kristeva on motherhood and otherness, the book shows how the Flavian poets construct an idealized discourse on the empire's own identity that at once crystallizes but also destabilizes the role that women command within the epic genre. The portrayal of female figures in the epics of the first century ce allows us to witness a change of attitudes toward otherness: the periphery now defines the centre, as the poets highlight the notions of otherness and motherhood in the narrative in order to reshape Romanness through representations of the other.
Monica Germana
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637645
- eISBN:
- 9780748652259
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637645.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This book considers four thematic areas of the supernatural – quests, dangerous women, doubles and ghosts – each explored in one of the four main chapters. Bringing together contemporary women's ...
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This book considers four thematic areas of the supernatural – quests, dangerous women, doubles and ghosts – each explored in one of the four main chapters. Bringing together contemporary women's writing and the Scottish fantasy tradition, it investigates in-depth some previously neglected texts such as Ali Smith's Hotel World, Alice Thompson's Justine, Margaret Elphinstone's longer fiction, as well as offering readings of more popular texts including A.L. Kennedy's So I am glad, and Emma Tennant's The Bad Sister and Two Women of London. Underlying the broad scope of this survey are the links – both explicit and implicit – established between the examined texts and the Scottish supernatural tradition. Having established a connection with a distinctively Scottish canon, the author points to the ways in which the selected texts simultaneously break from past traditions and reveal points of departure through their exploration of otherness, as well as their engagement with feminist and postmodernist discourses in relation to the questions of identity and the interrogation of the real.Less
This book considers four thematic areas of the supernatural – quests, dangerous women, doubles and ghosts – each explored in one of the four main chapters. Bringing together contemporary women's writing and the Scottish fantasy tradition, it investigates in-depth some previously neglected texts such as Ali Smith's Hotel World, Alice Thompson's Justine, Margaret Elphinstone's longer fiction, as well as offering readings of more popular texts including A.L. Kennedy's So I am glad, and Emma Tennant's The Bad Sister and Two Women of London. Underlying the broad scope of this survey are the links – both explicit and implicit – established between the examined texts and the Scottish supernatural tradition. Having established a connection with a distinctively Scottish canon, the author points to the ways in which the selected texts simultaneously break from past traditions and reveal points of departure through their exploration of otherness, as well as their engagement with feminist and postmodernist discourses in relation to the questions of identity and the interrogation of the real.
Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780199270576
- eISBN:
- 9780191600883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199270570.003.0009
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, History of Economic Thought
The increasing intensification of Colombia's internal wars since 1990 has exacted a heavy toll in uprooting large segments of the country's rural population. As of 2002, it was estimated that 2.9 ...
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The increasing intensification of Colombia's internal wars since 1990 has exacted a heavy toll in uprooting large segments of the country's rural population. As of 2002, it was estimated that 2.9 million Colombians (of a total of 42 million) had become internally displaced. The lack of census variables that capture the dynamics and impact of such dramatic demographic flux has produced a statistical conundrum that hides the crisis from policy‐making spheres as well as from political debates, creating an ‘official invisibility’. Explores the way in which an official ‘narrative’ can obliterate the political standing of the forms of ‘otherness’ that it creates through such state classificatory devices as the census, vital statistics, laws, and maps.Less
The increasing intensification of Colombia's internal wars since 1990 has exacted a heavy toll in uprooting large segments of the country's rural population. As of 2002, it was estimated that 2.9 million Colombians (of a total of 42 million) had become internally displaced. The lack of census variables that capture the dynamics and impact of such dramatic demographic flux has produced a statistical conundrum that hides the crisis from policy‐making spheres as well as from political debates, creating an ‘official invisibility’. Explores the way in which an official ‘narrative’ can obliterate the political standing of the forms of ‘otherness’ that it creates through such state classificatory devices as the census, vital statistics, laws, and maps.
Paul Allen Miller
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199545544
- eISBN:
- 9780191720598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199545544.003.0013
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Derrida's reading of the Timaeus in Khôra is critical to our understanding first of Derrida, then Plato, and finally to the constitution of philosophy per se. The reading of the khôra in the Timaeus ...
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Derrida's reading of the Timaeus in Khôra is critical to our understanding first of Derrida, then Plato, and finally to the constitution of philosophy per se. The reading of the khôra in the Timaeus is critical to our understanding of Derrida because it contains certain clear homologies with his earlier readings of Plato as evidenced in ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’ and La Carte postale, among other texts. Second, to the same degree that Khôra reveals the centrality of the Platonic corpus to the Derridean project it also reveals the centrality of corpus/corpse in Plato. It discloses the presence of a constitutive otherness in the Platonic text that can neither be subsumed into the purely intelligible nor reduced to the unintelligible. Third, Khôra as such names that place that both exceeds philosophy and makes it possible. The place, which is no place, that is the khôra is in fact the space of irony, understood as a perpetual hinge point between a given statement's denotative content and its figurative undermining. Khôra names the non‐space that makes the joining of these two levels of signification possible and hence creates the space necessary for the construction and deployment of philosophical concepts.Less
Derrida's reading of the Timaeus in Khôra is critical to our understanding first of Derrida, then Plato, and finally to the constitution of philosophy per se. The reading of the khôra in the Timaeus is critical to our understanding of Derrida because it contains certain clear homologies with his earlier readings of Plato as evidenced in ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’ and La Carte postale, among other texts. Second, to the same degree that Khôra reveals the centrality of the Platonic corpus to the Derridean project it also reveals the centrality of corpus/corpse in Plato. It discloses the presence of a constitutive otherness in the Platonic text that can neither be subsumed into the purely intelligible nor reduced to the unintelligible. Third, Khôra as such names that place that both exceeds philosophy and makes it possible. The place, which is no place, that is the khôra is in fact the space of irony, understood as a perpetual hinge point between a given statement's denotative content and its figurative undermining. Khôra names the non‐space that makes the joining of these two levels of signification possible and hence creates the space necessary for the construction and deployment of philosophical concepts.
Filippo Del Lucchese
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474456203
- eISBN:
- 9781474476935
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474456203.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This volume is the first systematic investigation into the concept of monstrosity in ancient philosophy and culture. The Author suggests that far from being a peripheral problem, monstrosity is one ...
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This volume is the first systematic investigation into the concept of monstrosity in ancient philosophy and culture. The Author suggests that far from being a peripheral problem, monstrosity is one of the main conceptual challenges for every philosophical system. Ancient authors explores metaphysics, ontology, theology, politics attempting to respond to the threat presented by the radical alterity of monstrous manifestations, both in nature and in thought. Does order come from, and put an end to, chaos or is chaos the monstrous destiny of any supposed order? Is monstrosity a positive sign of the divine or is it its negation and perversion? Does everything, in nature have a meaning and a purpose and, if so, what is the purpose of monsters? Is monstrosity what we call the lowest level of nature's reassuring hierarchy or does it, more threateningly, speak about the absence of such a hierarchy and the illusion of axiology? These are only some of the questions that ancient authors discussed across the centuries, from the early mythical cosmogonies, through the classic and hellenistic period, up to late antiquity and early Christianism. This book offers a fundamental reading not only of the different answers to these questions, but also of the reasons why and the manners in which they have been asked in different cultural and intellectual contexts.Less
This volume is the first systematic investigation into the concept of monstrosity in ancient philosophy and culture. The Author suggests that far from being a peripheral problem, monstrosity is one of the main conceptual challenges for every philosophical system. Ancient authors explores metaphysics, ontology, theology, politics attempting to respond to the threat presented by the radical alterity of monstrous manifestations, both in nature and in thought. Does order come from, and put an end to, chaos or is chaos the monstrous destiny of any supposed order? Is monstrosity a positive sign of the divine or is it its negation and perversion? Does everything, in nature have a meaning and a purpose and, if so, what is the purpose of monsters? Is monstrosity what we call the lowest level of nature's reassuring hierarchy or does it, more threateningly, speak about the absence of such a hierarchy and the illusion of axiology? These are only some of the questions that ancient authors discussed across the centuries, from the early mythical cosmogonies, through the classic and hellenistic period, up to late antiquity and early Christianism. This book offers a fundamental reading not only of the different answers to these questions, but also of the reasons why and the manners in which they have been asked in different cultural and intellectual contexts.
John Wall
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195182569
- eISBN:
- 9780199835737
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195182561.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This book combines ancient, modern, and postmodern resources to argue that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created ...
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This book combines ancient, modern, and postmodern resources to argue that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation together of their world. This creative capability can be understood in its fullest dimensions only as a religious or mythological affirmation of humanity as an image of its Creator. This thesis challenges Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in fixed principles or preconstituted traditions. It instead recasts a range of mythic, prophetic, and tragic resources to uncover moral life’s poetics, tension, dynamism, catharsis, disruptiveness, excess, and impossible possibility for renewal. The book takes as its starting point a critical reading of the hermeneutical poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and from there enters into a range of conversations with Aristotle and contemporary Aristotelianism, Immanuel Kant and modernism, and current Continental, narrative, liberationist, and feminist ethics such as in Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Kearney, Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Luce Irigaray, and Sallie McFague. In the process, it develops a meta-ethical phenomenology of moral creativity along the lines of four increasingly complex dimensions: ontology (creativity of the self), teleology (positive creativity of narrative goods), deontology (negative creativity in response to otherness), and social practice (mixed creativity between plural others in society). Moral creativity is in the end an original and necessary religious capability for responding anew to the tensions within and between selves in the world by forming over time, in love and hope, an ever more radically inclusive humanity.Less
This book combines ancient, modern, and postmodern resources to argue that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation together of their world. This creative capability can be understood in its fullest dimensions only as a religious or mythological affirmation of humanity as an image of its Creator. This thesis challenges Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in fixed principles or preconstituted traditions. It instead recasts a range of mythic, prophetic, and tragic resources to uncover moral life’s poetics, tension, dynamism, catharsis, disruptiveness, excess, and impossible possibility for renewal. The book takes as its starting point a critical reading of the hermeneutical poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and from there enters into a range of conversations with Aristotle and contemporary Aristotelianism, Immanuel Kant and modernism, and current Continental, narrative, liberationist, and feminist ethics such as in Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Kearney, Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Luce Irigaray, and Sallie McFague. In the process, it develops a meta-ethical phenomenology of moral creativity along the lines of four increasingly complex dimensions: ontology (creativity of the self), teleology (positive creativity of narrative goods), deontology (negative creativity in response to otherness), and social practice (mixed creativity between plural others in society). Moral creativity is in the end an original and necessary religious capability for responding anew to the tensions within and between selves in the world by forming over time, in love and hope, an ever more radically inclusive humanity.
Antony Augoustakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199584413
- eISBN:
- 9780191723117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584413.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines the portrayal of Imilce, Hannibal's wife, and Masinissa's mother, i.e. of two women from the periphery of the empire, to demonstrate the significance of gendered otherness. ...
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This chapter examines the portrayal of Imilce, Hannibal's wife, and Masinissa's mother, i.e. of two women from the periphery of the empire, to demonstrate the significance of gendered otherness. Imilce is fashioned as a reasonable Roman matrona, who denounces child-sacrifice, yet she is marked as a hybridic, unclassified, other. By contrast, Masinissa's mother promotes alliance with the Romans and is placed within reach of the centre, as she preaches Roman ideals of fidelity and piety. At the end, Claudia Quinta's intervention for the arrival of Cybele, a foreign deity, proves that the conflation of Romanness and otherness is no longer a threat but a necessary condition for a prosperous future.Less
This chapter examines the portrayal of Imilce, Hannibal's wife, and Masinissa's mother, i.e. of two women from the periphery of the empire, to demonstrate the significance of gendered otherness. Imilce is fashioned as a reasonable Roman matrona, who denounces child-sacrifice, yet she is marked as a hybridic, unclassified, other. By contrast, Masinissa's mother promotes alliance with the Romans and is placed within reach of the centre, as she preaches Roman ideals of fidelity and piety. At the end, Claudia Quinta's intervention for the arrival of Cybele, a foreign deity, proves that the conflation of Romanness and otherness is no longer a threat but a necessary condition for a prosperous future.
Don Randall
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068324
- eISBN:
- 9781781701140
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068324.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This study situates Malouf within the field of contemporary international and postcolonial writing, but without losing sight of the author's affiliation with Australian contexts. It presents an ...
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This study situates Malouf within the field of contemporary international and postcolonial writing, but without losing sight of the author's affiliation with Australian contexts. It presents an original reading of Malouf, finding the unity of his work in the continuity of his ethical concerns: for Malouf, human lives find their value in transformations, specifically in instances of self-overcoming that encounters with difference or otherness provoke. However, the book is fully aware of, and informed by, the quite ample body of criticism on Malouf, and thus provides readers with a broad-based understanding of how his works have been received and assessed. It is an effective companion volume for studies in postcolonial or Australian literature.Less
This study situates Malouf within the field of contemporary international and postcolonial writing, but without losing sight of the author's affiliation with Australian contexts. It presents an original reading of Malouf, finding the unity of his work in the continuity of his ethical concerns: for Malouf, human lives find their value in transformations, specifically in instances of self-overcoming that encounters with difference or otherness provoke. However, the book is fully aware of, and informed by, the quite ample body of criticism on Malouf, and thus provides readers with a broad-based understanding of how his works have been received and assessed. It is an effective companion volume for studies in postcolonial or Australian literature.
John Wall
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195182569
- eISBN:
- 9780199835737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195182561.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
A more complex dimension of moral creativity is involved in the deontological problem of responsibility toward “the other” in the sense of otherness, alterity, or irreducibility to the self. Immanuel ...
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A more complex dimension of moral creativity is involved in the deontological problem of responsibility toward “the other” in the sense of otherness, alterity, or irreducibility to the self. Immanuel Kant’s obscuring of this problem of otherness can be attributed in part to his separation of ethics from poetics (or aesthetics) in his second and third critiques. Paul Ricoeur shows that Kantian moral freedom is always in poetic tension with the passivity of the command not to do violence to otherness. Beyond Ricoeur, however, the other should be understood more radically as not just another self like oneself but, as Emmanuel Levinas and others argue, itself the transcending origin of the moral command as an invisible face of the Wholly Other. Moral creativity in its deontological sense combines Ricoeur’s Christian and Levinas’ Jewish interpretations of “the other” in a more profoundly presupposed mythology of humanity as an image of its Creator, so that others in particular originate or create a love command to selves who are in turn called to a negative moral poetics of creating others an ever less violent and reductive response.Less
A more complex dimension of moral creativity is involved in the deontological problem of responsibility toward “the other” in the sense of otherness, alterity, or irreducibility to the self. Immanuel Kant’s obscuring of this problem of otherness can be attributed in part to his separation of ethics from poetics (or aesthetics) in his second and third critiques. Paul Ricoeur shows that Kantian moral freedom is always in poetic tension with the passivity of the command not to do violence to otherness. Beyond Ricoeur, however, the other should be understood more radically as not just another self like oneself but, as Emmanuel Levinas and others argue, itself the transcending origin of the moral command as an invisible face of the Wholly Other. Moral creativity in its deontological sense combines Ricoeur’s Christian and Levinas’ Jewish interpretations of “the other” in a more profoundly presupposed mythology of humanity as an image of its Creator, so that others in particular originate or create a love command to selves who are in turn called to a negative moral poetics of creating others an ever less violent and reductive response.
Charles K. Bellinger
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195134988
- eISBN:
- 9780199833986
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195134982.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Kierkegaard emphasizes that God is love; God desires the maximum of human flourishing. Therefore, if human beings perceive God as a threat to their immature egos, they are mistaken at the core of ...
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Kierkegaard emphasizes that God is love; God desires the maximum of human flourishing. Therefore, if human beings perceive God as a threat to their immature egos, they are mistaken at the core of their being. Human rejection of the divine call is seen most dramatically in the crucifixion of Christ. The root of ill will toward others is ill will toward the self that one is in the process of becoming.Less
Kierkegaard emphasizes that God is love; God desires the maximum of human flourishing. Therefore, if human beings perceive God as a threat to their immature egos, they are mistaken at the core of their being. Human rejection of the divine call is seen most dramatically in the crucifixion of Christ. The root of ill will toward others is ill will toward the self that one is in the process of becoming.
David N. Field
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195161199
- eISBN:
- 9780199835201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019516119X.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
While many theologians have turned from the preferential option to a postmodern emphasis on otherness and difference, the author contends that the discourse of postmodernity, which is linked to the ...
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While many theologians have turned from the preferential option to a postmodern emphasis on otherness and difference, the author contends that the discourse of postmodernity, which is linked to the shifts in global capitalism, has destructive and oppressive potential, particularly for Africans. The preferential option entails that God is partial to the marginalized and that God works from the margins. Thus, an orientation to the other is not theologically sufficient; what is required is orientation to the exploited, suffering, and abandoned other, gained through a kenotic pilgrimage to the margins. A liberative theology that respects otherness will be rooted in the sociocultural realities experienced by Africans as they resist the forces of death and struggle for liberation and life. African theologies offer an alternative vision of Christian faith and praxis that critiques and corrects North Atlantic theologies.Less
While many theologians have turned from the preferential option to a postmodern emphasis on otherness and difference, the author contends that the discourse of postmodernity, which is linked to the shifts in global capitalism, has destructive and oppressive potential, particularly for Africans. The preferential option entails that God is partial to the marginalized and that God works from the margins. Thus, an orientation to the other is not theologically sufficient; what is required is orientation to the exploited, suffering, and abandoned other, gained through a kenotic pilgrimage to the margins. A liberative theology that respects otherness will be rooted in the sociocultural realities experienced by Africans as they resist the forces of death and struggle for liberation and life. African theologies offer an alternative vision of Christian faith and praxis that critiques and corrects North Atlantic theologies.
Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic ...
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The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic stereotypes had become publicly intolerable? It discusses how the concepts of cultural space, the “white other” (a group both within and outside the broader racial and cultural category of “whiteness”), and the twin mythic personas of “mountaineer” and “hillbilly” help explain the image's staying power. The central argument is then introduced, that the representation's unique intersection of the past and present, normativeness and otherness, and reality and invention made it malleable enough to be interpreted in strikingly different ways by diverse audiences and individuals, and to endure despite dramatic social and cultural transformation.Less
The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic stereotypes had become publicly intolerable? It discusses how the concepts of cultural space, the “white other” (a group both within and outside the broader racial and cultural category of “whiteness”), and the twin mythic personas of “mountaineer” and “hillbilly” help explain the image's staying power. The central argument is then introduced, that the representation's unique intersection of the past and present, normativeness and otherness, and reality and invention made it malleable enough to be interpreted in strikingly different ways by diverse audiences and individuals, and to endure despite dramatic social and cultural transformation.
