Frederick Neuhouser
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199542673
- eISBN:
- 9780191715402
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542673.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book studies Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour propre) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and beasts. Amour-propre is the passion that ...
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This book studies Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour propre) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and beasts. Amour-propre is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love — the recognition — of their fellow beings. This book reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour-propre in its corrupted, manifestations — pride or vanity — is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom — subjectivity itself — would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour-propre and the relations to others it impels us to establish.Less
This book studies Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour propre) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and beasts. Amour-propre is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love — the recognition — of their fellow beings. This book reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour-propre in its corrupted, manifestations — pride or vanity — is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom — subjectivity itself — would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour-propre and the relations to others it impels us to establish.
Debbora Battaglia (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520087989
- eISBN:
- 9780520915251
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520087989.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological ...
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Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.Less
Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.
M. Whitney Kelting
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195389647
- eISBN:
- 9780199866434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389647.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This chapter contextualizes the book by introducing the materials examined, the key terms, the relevant background in Jainism, and the frames of analysis. Research materials span medieval and ...
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This chapter contextualizes the book by introducing the materials examined, the key terms, the relevant background in Jainism, and the frames of analysis. Research materials span medieval and contemporary Jain literature, interviews with Jain women, observation of Jain rituals associated with wifehood, and the observation of and conversations about the sociopolitics of Jain family life. The chapter introduces the ideologies of wifehood—the dedicated wife (pativrata), the state of auspicious wifehood (saubhagya) and the true woman (sati). In particular, the Jain use of the term sati is set in the context of Hindu traditional, British colonial, and feminist discussions of this highly contested term. Gender studies discourse on agency is used as a frame for the larger claim in the volume about the importance of the perception of choice and the ways that Jain women's religious practices contribute to their selfhood.Less
This chapter contextualizes the book by introducing the materials examined, the key terms, the relevant background in Jainism, and the frames of analysis. Research materials span medieval and contemporary Jain literature, interviews with Jain women, observation of Jain rituals associated with wifehood, and the observation of and conversations about the sociopolitics of Jain family life. The chapter introduces the ideologies of wifehood—the dedicated wife (pativrata), the state of auspicious wifehood (saubhagya) and the true woman (sati). In particular, the Jain use of the term sati is set in the context of Hindu traditional, British colonial, and feminist discussions of this highly contested term. Gender studies discourse on agency is used as a frame for the larger claim in the volume about the importance of the perception of choice and the ways that Jain women's religious practices contribute to their selfhood.
Nikolas Rose and Joelle M. Abi-Rached
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149608
- eISBN:
- 9781400846337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149608.003.0008
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Development
This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific understandings of selfhood are unlikely to efface modern human beings' understanding of themselves as ...
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This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific understandings of selfhood are unlikely to efface modern human beings' understanding of themselves as persons equipped with a deep interior world of mental states that have a causal relation to their action. Rather, they are likely to add a neurobiological dimension to human beings' self-understanding and their practices of self-management. In this sense, the “somatic individuality” which was once the province of the psy- sciences, is spreading to the neuro- sciences. Yet psy is not being displaced by neuro: neurobiological conceptions of the self are being construed alongside psychological ones.Less
This chapter explores the neurobiological self. It argues that the emerging neuroscientific understandings of selfhood are unlikely to efface modern human beings' understanding of themselves as persons equipped with a deep interior world of mental states that have a causal relation to their action. Rather, they are likely to add a neurobiological dimension to human beings' self-understanding and their practices of self-management. In this sense, the “somatic individuality” which was once the province of the psy- sciences, is spreading to the neuro- sciences. Yet psy is not being displaced by neuro: neurobiological conceptions of the self are being construed alongside psychological ones.
Ingrid Wassenaar
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198160045
- eISBN:
- 9780191673757
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198160045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
A la recherche du temps perdu occupies an undisputed place in the unfolding intellectual history of the ‘moi’ in France. There is, however, a general tendency in writing on this novel to ...
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A la recherche du temps perdu occupies an undisputed place in the unfolding intellectual history of the ‘moi’ in France. There is, however, a general tendency in writing on this novel to celebrate the wonders of the moi sensible uncritically. This effaces all that is morally dubious or frankly experimental about Proust’s account of selfhood. It denies the rigour with which Proust tries to understand exactly why it is so difficult to explain one’s own actions to another. The great party scenes, for example, or the countless digressions, read like manuals on how acts of self-justification take place. Proust, however, is not merely interested in some kind of taxonomy of excuses, hypocrisy, disingenuousness, and Schadenfreude. He wants to know why self-justification tends to be interpreted as indicative of moral or psychological weakness. He asks himself whether self-justification informs isolated moments of everyday existence or whether it endures in an overall conception of self that lasts an individual’s lifetime. He investigates whether it dictates the functioning of an entire social group. Can we decide, he asks, whether justifying one’s self should be written off as morally repugnant, or taken seriously as evidence of moral probity?Less
A la recherche du temps perdu occupies an undisputed place in the unfolding intellectual history of the ‘moi’ in France. There is, however, a general tendency in writing on this novel to celebrate the wonders of the moi sensible uncritically. This effaces all that is morally dubious or frankly experimental about Proust’s account of selfhood. It denies the rigour with which Proust tries to understand exactly why it is so difficult to explain one’s own actions to another. The great party scenes, for example, or the countless digressions, read like manuals on how acts of self-justification take place. Proust, however, is not merely interested in some kind of taxonomy of excuses, hypocrisy, disingenuousness, and Schadenfreude. He wants to know why self-justification tends to be interpreted as indicative of moral or psychological weakness. He asks himself whether self-justification informs isolated moments of everyday existence or whether it endures in an overall conception of self that lasts an individual’s lifetime. He investigates whether it dictates the functioning of an entire social group. Can we decide, he asks, whether justifying one’s self should be written off as morally repugnant, or taken seriously as evidence of moral probity?
Paul Hammond
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199572601
- eISBN:
- 9780191702099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572601.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and ...
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In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and Macbeth, death occupies a pre-existing off-stage space into which they are summoned: a form of Heimat. These are all instances of der eigne Tod: completed tragedy. The journey which the tragic protagonist makes is one which takes him out of the shared Heimat, the common home with its agreed structures of thought, into a form of the unheimlich where the usual relations of time and space, signifier and signified, are deformed into strange shapes. In this dimension the individual may appear strong, may seem to have a Hegelian stature and solidity, but the work of tragedy is to estrange such a selfhood from the world around it and from itself. The foreign through which the tragic figure moves is a foreign which relates to the return home.Less
In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and Macbeth, death occupies a pre-existing off-stage space into which they are summoned: a form of Heimat. These are all instances of der eigne Tod: completed tragedy. The journey which the tragic protagonist makes is one which takes him out of the shared Heimat, the common home with its agreed structures of thought, into a form of the unheimlich where the usual relations of time and space, signifier and signified, are deformed into strange shapes. In this dimension the individual may appear strong, may seem to have a Hegelian stature and solidity, but the work of tragedy is to estrange such a selfhood from the world around it and from itself. The foreign through which the tragic figure moves is a foreign which relates to the return home.
Peter Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151588
- eISBN:
- 9781400839698
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151588.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
“We know that it matters crucially to be able to say who we are, why we are here, and where we are going,” this book claims. Many of us are also uncomfortably aware that we cannot provide a ...
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“We know that it matters crucially to be able to say who we are, why we are here, and where we are going,” this book claims. Many of us are also uncomfortably aware that we cannot provide a convincing account of our identity to others or even ourselves. Despite, or because of that failure, we keep searching for identity, making it up, trying to authenticate it, and inventing excuses for our unpersuasive stories about it. This wide-ranging book draws on literature, law, and psychoanalysis to examine important aspects of the emergence of identity as a peculiarly modern preoccupation. In particular, the book addresses the social, legal, and personal anxieties provoked by the rise of individualism and selfhood in modern culture. Paying special attention to Rousseau, Freud, and Proust, the book also looks at the intersection of individual life stories with the law, and considers the creation of an introspective project that culminates in psychoanalysis. In doing so, it offers new insights into the questions and clues about who we think we are.Less
“We know that it matters crucially to be able to say who we are, why we are here, and where we are going,” this book claims. Many of us are also uncomfortably aware that we cannot provide a convincing account of our identity to others or even ourselves. Despite, or because of that failure, we keep searching for identity, making it up, trying to authenticate it, and inventing excuses for our unpersuasive stories about it. This wide-ranging book draws on literature, law, and psychoanalysis to examine important aspects of the emergence of identity as a peculiarly modern preoccupation. In particular, the book addresses the social, legal, and personal anxieties provoked by the rise of individualism and selfhood in modern culture. Paying special attention to Rousseau, Freud, and Proust, the book also looks at the intersection of individual life stories with the law, and considers the creation of an introspective project that culminates in psychoanalysis. In doing so, it offers new insights into the questions and clues about who we think we are.
Simon Gikandi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691140667
- eISBN:
- 9781400840113
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691140667.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery and the culture of taste—the world of politeness, manners, and aesthetics—existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in the ...
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It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery and the culture of taste—the world of politeness, manners, and aesthetics—existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, this book demonstrates that these two areas of modernity were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum South, and the West Indies, the book illustrates how the violence and ugliness of enslavement actually shaped theories of taste, notions of beauty, and practices of high culture, and how slavery's impurity informed and haunted the rarified customs of the time. The book focuses on the ways that the enslavement of Africans and the profits derived from this exploitation enabled the moment of taste in European—mainly British—life, leading to a transformation of bourgeois ideas regarding freedom and selfhood. It explores how these connections played out in the immense fortunes made in the West Indies sugar colonies, supporting the lavish lives of English barons and altering the ideals that defined middle-class subjects. Discussing how the ownership of slaves turned the American planter class into a new aristocracy, the book engages with the slaves' own response to the strange interplay of modern notions of freedom and the realities of bondage, and it emphasizes the aesthetic and cultural processes developed by slaves to create spaces of freedom outside the regimen of enforced labor and truncated leisure. Through a close look at the eighteenth century's many remarkable documents and artworks, the book sets forth the tensions and contradictions entangling a brutal practice and the distinctions of civility.Less
It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery and the culture of taste—the world of politeness, manners, and aesthetics—existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, this book demonstrates that these two areas of modernity were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum South, and the West Indies, the book illustrates how the violence and ugliness of enslavement actually shaped theories of taste, notions of beauty, and practices of high culture, and how slavery's impurity informed and haunted the rarified customs of the time. The book focuses on the ways that the enslavement of Africans and the profits derived from this exploitation enabled the moment of taste in European—mainly British—life, leading to a transformation of bourgeois ideas regarding freedom and selfhood. It explores how these connections played out in the immense fortunes made in the West Indies sugar colonies, supporting the lavish lives of English barons and altering the ideals that defined middle-class subjects. Discussing how the ownership of slaves turned the American planter class into a new aristocracy, the book engages with the slaves' own response to the strange interplay of modern notions of freedom and the realities of bondage, and it emphasizes the aesthetic and cultural processes developed by slaves to create spaces of freedom outside the regimen of enforced labor and truncated leisure. Through a close look at the eighteenth century's many remarkable documents and artworks, the book sets forth the tensions and contradictions entangling a brutal practice and the distinctions of civility.
Joy Connolly
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162591
- eISBN:
- 9781400852475
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162591.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
In recent years, Roman political thought has attracted increased attention as intellectual historians and political theorists have explored the influence of the Roman republic on major thinkers from ...
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In recent years, Roman political thought has attracted increased attention as intellectual historians and political theorists have explored the influence of the Roman republic on major thinkers from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Held up as a “third way” between liberalism and communitarianism, neo-Roman republicanism promises useful, persuasive accounts of civic virtue, justice, civility, and the ties that bind citizens. But republican revivalists, embedded in modern liberal, democratic, and constitutional concerns, almost never engage closely with Roman texts. This book takes up that challenge. With an original combination of close reading and political theory, the book argues that Cicero, Sallust, and Horace inspire fresh thinking about central concerns of contemporary political thought and action. These include the role of conflict in the political community, especially as it emerges from class differences; the necessity of recognition for an equal and just society; the corporeal and passionate aspects of civic experience; citizens' interdependence on one another for senses of selfhood; and the uses and dangers of self-sovereignty and the bodyfantasy. Putting classicists and political theorists in dialogue, the book also addresses a range of modern thinkers, including Kant, Hannah Arendt, Stanley Cavell, and Philip Pettit. Together, the book's readings construct a new civic ethos of advocacy, self-criticism, embodied awareness, imagination, and irony.Less
In recent years, Roman political thought has attracted increased attention as intellectual historians and political theorists have explored the influence of the Roman republic on major thinkers from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Held up as a “third way” between liberalism and communitarianism, neo-Roman republicanism promises useful, persuasive accounts of civic virtue, justice, civility, and the ties that bind citizens. But republican revivalists, embedded in modern liberal, democratic, and constitutional concerns, almost never engage closely with Roman texts. This book takes up that challenge. With an original combination of close reading and political theory, the book argues that Cicero, Sallust, and Horace inspire fresh thinking about central concerns of contemporary political thought and action. These include the role of conflict in the political community, especially as it emerges from class differences; the necessity of recognition for an equal and just society; the corporeal and passionate aspects of civic experience; citizens' interdependence on one another for senses of selfhood; and the uses and dangers of self-sovereignty and the bodyfantasy. Putting classicists and political theorists in dialogue, the book also addresses a range of modern thinkers, including Kant, Hannah Arendt, Stanley Cavell, and Philip Pettit. Together, the book's readings construct a new civic ethos of advocacy, self-criticism, embodied awareness, imagination, and irony.
Cathrine Degnen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719083082
- eISBN:
- 9781781706244
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719083082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over ...
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Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over selfhood and people’s relationships with time. Based on research conducted in an English former coal mining village, the book focuses on the everyday experiences of older people living there. It explores how the category of old age comes to be assigned and experienced in daily life through multiple registers of interaction. These include ‘memory work’ about people, places and webs of relations in a postindustrial setting that has undergone profound social transformation. Challenging both the notion of a homogenous relationship with time across generations and the idea of a universalised middle-aged self, the author argues that the complex interplay of social, cultural and physical attributes of ageing means that older people can come to occupy a different position in relation to time and to the self than younger people. This account provides fascinating insight into what is at stake for the ageing self in regards to how people come to know, experience and dwell in the world. It describes the ways in which these distinctive forms of temporality and narrativity also come to be used against older people, denigrated socially in some contexts as ‘less-than-fully adult’. This text will be of great interest to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, human geography and social gerontology working on interests in selfhood, time, memory, the anthropology of Britain and the lived experience of social change.Less
Seeking to better understand what it means to grow older in contemporary Britain from the perspective of older people themselves, this richly detailed ethnographic study engages in debates over selfhood and people’s relationships with time. Based on research conducted in an English former coal mining village, the book focuses on the everyday experiences of older people living there. It explores how the category of old age comes to be assigned and experienced in daily life through multiple registers of interaction. These include ‘memory work’ about people, places and webs of relations in a postindustrial setting that has undergone profound social transformation. Challenging both the notion of a homogenous relationship with time across generations and the idea of a universalised middle-aged self, the author argues that the complex interplay of social, cultural and physical attributes of ageing means that older people can come to occupy a different position in relation to time and to the self than younger people. This account provides fascinating insight into what is at stake for the ageing self in regards to how people come to know, experience and dwell in the world. It describes the ways in which these distinctive forms of temporality and narrativity also come to be used against older people, denigrated socially in some contexts as ‘less-than-fully adult’. This text will be of great interest to researchers and students in anthropology, sociology, human geography and social gerontology working on interests in selfhood, time, memory, the anthropology of Britain and the lived experience of social change.
Hans Tao-Ming Huang
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083077
- eISBN:
- 9789882209817
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083077.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Examining the deployments of gender and sexuality over the past five decades in Taiwan, this book chronicles a queer historiography that illuminates the production of sexual identities and the ...
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Examining the deployments of gender and sexuality over the past five decades in Taiwan, this book chronicles a queer historiography that illuminates the production of sexual identities and the formation of sexual modernity. Through primary research and historical investigation, this book offers a contextualised study of Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys, one of Taiwan's first recognized gay novels, as it critically engages disparate discursive fields of dominant legal and medical discourses of sex, lesbian and gay activism, as well as mainstream feminist politics. The book shows that the construction of male homosexuality as a term of social exclusion is historically linked to the state's banning of prostitution, further delineating a moral-sexual order that has come to be buttressed by the hegemonic rise of anti-prostitution state feminism since the 1990s. In exploring the imbrications of male homosexuality, prostitution and feminism in Taiwanese national culture, this book boldly ventures a politics of sexual dissidence that contests state-inspired heteronormativity.Less
Examining the deployments of gender and sexuality over the past five decades in Taiwan, this book chronicles a queer historiography that illuminates the production of sexual identities and the formation of sexual modernity. Through primary research and historical investigation, this book offers a contextualised study of Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys, one of Taiwan's first recognized gay novels, as it critically engages disparate discursive fields of dominant legal and medical discourses of sex, lesbian and gay activism, as well as mainstream feminist politics. The book shows that the construction of male homosexuality as a term of social exclusion is historically linked to the state's banning of prostitution, further delineating a moral-sexual order that has come to be buttressed by the hegemonic rise of anti-prostitution state feminism since the 1990s. In exploring the imbrications of male homosexuality, prostitution and feminism in Taiwanese national culture, this book boldly ventures a politics of sexual dissidence that contests state-inspired heteronormativity.
Paul Ricoeur
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226713496
- eISBN:
- 9780226713502
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226713502.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
When French philosopher Paul Ricoeur died in 2005, he bequeathed to the world a highly regarded, widely influential body of work which established him as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He ...
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When French philosopher Paul Ricoeur died in 2005, he bequeathed to the world a highly regarded, widely influential body of work which established him as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He also left behind a number of unfinished projects that are gathered here and translated into English for the first time. This book consists of one major essay and nine fragments. Composed in 1996, the essay is the kernel of an unrealized book on the subject of mortality. Likely inspired by his wife's approaching death, it examines not one's own passing but one's experience of others dying. Ricoeur notes that when thinking about death the imagination is paramount, since we cannot truly experience our own passing. But those we leave behind do, and Ricoeur posits that the idea of life after death originated in the awareness of our own end posthumously resonating with our survivors. The fragments in this volume were written over the course of the last few months of Ricoeur's life as his health failed, and they represent his very last work. They cover a range of topics, touching on biblical scholarship, the philosophy of language, and the idea of selfhood he first addressed in Oneself as Another. And while they contain numerous philosophical insights, these fragments are perhaps most significant for providing an invaluable look at Ricoeur's mind at work. As poignant as it is perceptive, this book is a moving testimony to Ricoeur's willingness to confront his own mortality with serious questions, a touching insouciance, and hope for the future.Less
When French philosopher Paul Ricoeur died in 2005, he bequeathed to the world a highly regarded, widely influential body of work which established him as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He also left behind a number of unfinished projects that are gathered here and translated into English for the first time. This book consists of one major essay and nine fragments. Composed in 1996, the essay is the kernel of an unrealized book on the subject of mortality. Likely inspired by his wife's approaching death, it examines not one's own passing but one's experience of others dying. Ricoeur notes that when thinking about death the imagination is paramount, since we cannot truly experience our own passing. But those we leave behind do, and Ricoeur posits that the idea of life after death originated in the awareness of our own end posthumously resonating with our survivors. The fragments in this volume were written over the course of the last few months of Ricoeur's life as his health failed, and they represent his very last work. They cover a range of topics, touching on biblical scholarship, the philosophy of language, and the idea of selfhood he first addressed in Oneself as Another. And while they contain numerous philosophical insights, these fragments are perhaps most significant for providing an invaluable look at Ricoeur's mind at work. As poignant as it is perceptive, this book is a moving testimony to Ricoeur's willingness to confront his own mortality with serious questions, a touching insouciance, and hope for the future.
John T. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157528
- eISBN:
- 9781400846474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157528.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers ancient conceptions of securitas. It argues that Although Cicero never provided a sustained, comprehensive account of securitas, one can nevertheless determine the term's ...
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This chapter considers ancient conceptions of securitas. It argues that Although Cicero never provided a sustained, comprehensive account of securitas, one can nevertheless determine the term's import by attending to its functions within the context of his arguments, explanations, and illustrations. Essentially, securitas numbers among those technical terms that Cicero selected to transmit Greek concepts for a Roman audience. Its initial significance, therefore, cannot be considered apart from a highly complex network of philosophical speculation and schemas, above all, Stoic theories of selfhood. In order to ascertain what the term securitas denotes in this early usage, one must consider the inner core of one's being that moral precepts attempt to secure. That is, one must interrogate the constitution of the self: its composition, its relation to an individual's physiology, emotions, or passions; its performative roles in society, and so forth—questions that are far from simple to resolve.Less
This chapter considers ancient conceptions of securitas. It argues that Although Cicero never provided a sustained, comprehensive account of securitas, one can nevertheless determine the term's import by attending to its functions within the context of his arguments, explanations, and illustrations. Essentially, securitas numbers among those technical terms that Cicero selected to transmit Greek concepts for a Roman audience. Its initial significance, therefore, cannot be considered apart from a highly complex network of philosophical speculation and schemas, above all, Stoic theories of selfhood. In order to ascertain what the term securitas denotes in this early usage, one must consider the inner core of one's being that moral precepts attempt to secure. That is, one must interrogate the constitution of the self: its composition, its relation to an individual's physiology, emotions, or passions; its performative roles in society, and so forth—questions that are far from simple to resolve.
Ruthann Knechel Johansen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520231146
- eISBN:
- 9780520927766
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520231146.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of ...
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Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of massive trauma to his brain, she and her family know only that his story has not ended. Their efforts, Erik's own efforts, and those of everyone who helps bring him from deep coma to new life make up an inspiring story for us all, one that invites us to reconsider the very nature of “self” and selfhood. The author, who teaches literature and narrative theory, is a particularly eloquent witness to the silent space in which her son, confronted with life-shattering injury and surrounded by conflicting narratives about his viability, is somehow reborn. She describes the time of crisis and medical intervention as an hour-by-hour struggle to communicate with the medical world on the one hand and the everyday world of family and friends on the other. None of them knows how much, or even whether, they can communicate with the wounded child who is lost from himself and everything he knew. Through this experience of utter disintegration, the author comes to realize that self-identity is molded and sustained by stories.Less
Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of massive trauma to his brain, she and her family know only that his story has not ended. Their efforts, Erik's own efforts, and those of everyone who helps bring him from deep coma to new life make up an inspiring story for us all, one that invites us to reconsider the very nature of “self” and selfhood. The author, who teaches literature and narrative theory, is a particularly eloquent witness to the silent space in which her son, confronted with life-shattering injury and surrounded by conflicting narratives about his viability, is somehow reborn. She describes the time of crisis and medical intervention as an hour-by-hour struggle to communicate with the medical world on the one hand and the everyday world of family and friends on the other. None of them knows how much, or even whether, they can communicate with the wounded child who is lost from himself and everything he knew. Through this experience of utter disintegration, the author comes to realize that self-identity is molded and sustained by stories.
Dave Boothroyd
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719055980
- eISBN:
- 9781781700921
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719055980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Never has a reconsideration of the place of drugs in our culture been more urgent than it is today. Drugs are seen as both panaceas and panapathogens, and the apparent irreconcilability of these ...
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Never has a reconsideration of the place of drugs in our culture been more urgent than it is today. Drugs are seen as both panaceas and panapathogens, and the apparent irreconcilability of these alternatives lies at the heart of the cultural crises they are perceived to engender. Yet the meanings attached to drugs are always a function of the places they come to occupy in culture. This book investigates the resources for a re-evaluation of the drugs and culture relation in several key areas of twentieth-century cultural and philosophical theory. Addressing themes such as the nature of consciousness, language and the body, alienation, selfhood, the image and virtuality, the nature/culture dyad and everyday life – as these are expressed in the work of such key figures as Freud, Benjamin, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze – it argues that the ideas and concepts by which modernity has attained its measure of self-understanding are themselves, in various ways, the products of encounters with drugs and their effects. In each case, the reader is directed to the points at which drugs figure in the formulations of ‘high theory’, and it is revealed how such thinking is never itself a drug-free zone. Consequently, there is no ground on which to distinguish ‘culture’ from ‘drug culture’ in the first place.Less
Never has a reconsideration of the place of drugs in our culture been more urgent than it is today. Drugs are seen as both panaceas and panapathogens, and the apparent irreconcilability of these alternatives lies at the heart of the cultural crises they are perceived to engender. Yet the meanings attached to drugs are always a function of the places they come to occupy in culture. This book investigates the resources for a re-evaluation of the drugs and culture relation in several key areas of twentieth-century cultural and philosophical theory. Addressing themes such as the nature of consciousness, language and the body, alienation, selfhood, the image and virtuality, the nature/culture dyad and everyday life – as these are expressed in the work of such key figures as Freud, Benjamin, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze – it argues that the ideas and concepts by which modernity has attained its measure of self-understanding are themselves, in various ways, the products of encounters with drugs and their effects. In each case, the reader is directed to the points at which drugs figure in the formulations of ‘high theory’, and it is revealed how such thinking is never itself a drug-free zone. Consequently, there is no ground on which to distinguish ‘culture’ from ‘drug culture’ in the first place.
Valentina Napolitano
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520233188
- eISBN:
- 9780520928473
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520233188.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it ...
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This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it paints a picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. The book portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community identity as well as the tensions of modernity and its discontents in Mexican society.Less
This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it paints a picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. The book portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community identity as well as the tensions of modernity and its discontents in Mexican society.
Leah Price
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691114170
- eISBN:
- 9781400842186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691114170.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter contends that while the verbal content of novels forces readers to empathize with other minds, the material heft of the book allows them to block each other out. Moreover, the ...
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This chapter contends that while the verbal content of novels forces readers to empathize with other minds, the material heft of the book allows them to block each other out. Moreover, the unrepresentability of reading becomes a proxy for the incredibility of selfhood. The wedge that novels drive between the outside of books and the interiority of readers, or between material cover and verbal content, forces the genre to choose between describing the look of reading and its feel. In coding the handling of books as authentic and the reading of texts as a front, Anthony Trollope's comedies of manners upstage textually occasioned absorption by bibliographically assisted repulsion; but, more crucially, they abdicate any attempt to plumb psychological depths. Whenever the novel juxtaposes competing vocabularies in which to describe a printed object, it stages questions about the relation of the inner life to the object world.Less
This chapter contends that while the verbal content of novels forces readers to empathize with other minds, the material heft of the book allows them to block each other out. Moreover, the unrepresentability of reading becomes a proxy for the incredibility of selfhood. The wedge that novels drive between the outside of books and the interiority of readers, or between material cover and verbal content, forces the genre to choose between describing the look of reading and its feel. In coding the handling of books as authentic and the reading of texts as a front, Anthony Trollope's comedies of manners upstage textually occasioned absorption by bibliographically assisted repulsion; but, more crucially, they abdicate any attempt to plumb psychological depths. Whenever the novel juxtaposes competing vocabularies in which to describe a printed object, it stages questions about the relation of the inner life to the object world.
Leah Price
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691114170
- eISBN:
- 9781400842186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691114170.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted ...
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This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted consists not of reading, but rather of using an unread book as a material prompt or alibi for inwardness and abstraction. The bait and switch that structures the midcentury bildungsroman sets readers up to expect a novel about an agent shaped by books, only to reveal the protagonist instead as an object compared to books. As the plot of David Copperfield turns a child who is acted upon into an adult who acts, its trope shifts from metaphor to metonymy. As a result, it turns only belatedly into a proto-Smilesian account of self-help. Its first debt is to an older genre that associates selfhood with helplessness and passivity—more specifically, that locates consciousness not in a person marked by books, but in a book marked by readers.Less
This chapter assesses what makes the novel associate printed matter with interruption in particular. It also asks what difference does it make that the act in which the characters are interrupted consists not of reading, but rather of using an unread book as a material prompt or alibi for inwardness and abstraction. The bait and switch that structures the midcentury bildungsroman sets readers up to expect a novel about an agent shaped by books, only to reveal the protagonist instead as an object compared to books. As the plot of David Copperfield turns a child who is acted upon into an adult who acts, its trope shifts from metaphor to metonymy. As a result, it turns only belatedly into a proto-Smilesian account of self-help. Its first debt is to an older genre that associates selfhood with helplessness and passivity—more specifically, that locates consciousness not in a person marked by books, but in a book marked by readers.
Simon Gikandi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691140667
- eISBN:
- 9781400840113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691140667.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter moves beyond the critical debates raised in Chapter 1 to provide a more concrete narrative of the coexistence of taste and slavery as aesthetic objects and products of everyday life in ...
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This chapter moves beyond the critical debates raised in Chapter 1 to provide a more concrete narrative of the coexistence of taste and slavery as aesthetic objects and products of everyday life in the modern world. It explores the link between slavery, consumption, and the culture of taste, all-important conduits for understanding modern identity. With a particular emphasis on changing theories of taste in eighteenth-century Britain, it provides an analysis or reading of the troubled relation between race, ideologies of taste, and the culture of consumption. It examines how slavery enabled the moment of taste; led to fundamental transformations in the self-understanding of modern subjects; and, consequently, resulted in a redefinition of notions of freedom, selfhood, and representation.Less
This chapter moves beyond the critical debates raised in Chapter 1 to provide a more concrete narrative of the coexistence of taste and slavery as aesthetic objects and products of everyday life in the modern world. It explores the link between slavery, consumption, and the culture of taste, all-important conduits for understanding modern identity. With a particular emphasis on changing theories of taste in eighteenth-century Britain, it provides an analysis or reading of the troubled relation between race, ideologies of taste, and the culture of consumption. It examines how slavery enabled the moment of taste; led to fundamental transformations in the self-understanding of modern subjects; and, consequently, resulted in a redefinition of notions of freedom, selfhood, and representation.
Veit Erlmann
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195123678
- eISBN:
- 9780199868797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195123678.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter focuses on the life stories of key members of the African Choir, such as Paul Xiniwe and Charlotte Manye. Written by the subjects themselves, these autobiographical sketches illustrate ...
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This chapter focuses on the life stories of key members of the African Choir, such as Paul Xiniwe and Charlotte Manye. Written by the subjects themselves, these autobiographical sketches illustrate the fact that the making of modern colonial subjects was primarily a matter of self-authorization and self-stylization. By narrating their own selves, the choristers drew on modern templates of self-making provided by the bourgeois nation-state, and on more traditional models inspired by heroic poetry.Less
This chapter focuses on the life stories of key members of the African Choir, such as Paul Xiniwe and Charlotte Manye. Written by the subjects themselves, these autobiographical sketches illustrate the fact that the making of modern colonial subjects was primarily a matter of self-authorization and self-stylization. By narrating their own selves, the choristers drew on modern templates of self-making provided by the bourgeois nation-state, and on more traditional models inspired by heroic poetry.
