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In this chapter, the coherence of the key rigid — nonrigid distinction as a distinction is maintained. Two objections are addressed. The first (sometimes called “overgeneralization”) is that the distinction allows even artificial-property designators like ‘bachelor’ to count as rigid, and not only designators like ‘white’ for natural properties or natural kinds, so there are no nonrigid designators, so there is no distinction. The second objection, the objection from shadowing (sometimes called “trivialization”), argues that for each allegedly nonrigid designator like ‘the color of Antarctica’ there is a candidate for rigid designation shadowing the candidate for nonrigid designation: in this case, the property of being Antarctica colored does the shadowing. So again, if the objection stands there is no genuine distinction between designators that are supposed to be rigid and those that are not. The authenticity of a distinction is maintained against these objections.

Digital attacks against women are rarely taken seriously. The US legal system and the major social media platforms (where the majority of the abuse transpires) each fail women as their attacker and attack-focused accountability systems are incapable of addressing the cumulative experience of identity-based attacks online. Meanwhile, victim blaming, the privileging of physical over nonphysical harm and the imposition of a false dichotomy between digital and “real” life all minimize women’s experiences with digital hate. Interviews with women who have been attacked online show that this trivialization is so pervasive that even victims internalize it: minimizing their own experiences, even as they vociferously reject others’ attempts to do so. Struggling with this internalized trivialization and aware that few legal or platform-based recourse options exist, women rarely report their abuse. When they do, it is seldom gratifying. In the end, targets are left with the perception that they enter digital publics at their own risk.

Symbolic representation is a relatively under-studied concept amongst feminist political scientists. Most existing research on women's symbolic representation in politics has tended to adopt a more wide-ranging approach to analyse the media's representation of women and the impact of women politicians as role models. This chapter illustrates various examples where, in common with both Labour and Conservative women MPs, Liberal Democrat women MPs have been subjected to trivialisation and objectification by the media. It also explores instances of representation where the descriptive and symbolic meet and questions whether the low number of women MPs impacts upon identification of role models. Prior to the 2010 election the Liberal Democrats had the youngest MPs in England, Scotland, and Wales, all of whom are women: this resulted in mixed press coverage. The women MPs had varying attitudes towards the media, some found it hurtful, whilst others identified it as a ‘necessary evil’. The intersection between women's symbolic and descriptive representation peaked during the infamous 2001 debate on the all-women shortlists. The most commonly identified role model was Baroness Shirley Williams.

This chapter assesses Gottfried Keller's Green Henry (Der grüne Heinrich, first version, 1854–1855) against the contemporary realist dilemma of how to integrate everyday triviality into the aesthetically unified representation of reality. It demonstrates that the main collections in the novel—from Margret's rummage shop to its titular protagonist's travel chest and art portfolio—become the sites of trivialization and transferral, the spaces that both “contain” junk (allowing it to be visible) but do not “contain” it (by fixing it in place) and that they thereby present another model of collecting in which gathering and preservation are dialectically informed by dispersal. Keller furthermore inscribes this dialectic into the novel's structural design as Bildungsroman so that the recognition of the trivial becomes the epistemic achievement of Heinrich's development. For only by realizing that his paintings are trivial and letting them go (by selling them to the junk man, who disperses them further) can he redeem them. His artistic works thus ultimately only become important for having led him to the key insight that they are of no real importance.

This chapter assesses the particular language quirks of Beowulf’s transmission. The failure of the scribes to comprehend the language of Beowulf would not be relevant to the transmission of the text if the task of the scribe were to reproduce the letters encountered in the exemplar without modification. However, for the Anglo-Saxon scribe, the task of the mechanical reproduction of the text was complicated by the imperative to modify its superficial, nonstructural features. Language change frequently induced the scribes to make minor alterations to the text that inadvertently deprived it of sense, grammar, alliteration, or meter. These alterations offer valuable insights into the history of the English language—particularly, into some specific ways that the language had changed between the period when Beowulf was composed and the period when its extant manuscript was produced.

The introduction invites the reader into the worlds of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It explains the purpose of the book and situates the book within the sociological literature on mental illness. It includes an explanation of how OCD is defined and an overview of the book’s methodology. The book is primarily based on interviews of those with the disorder, but it also draws from interviews with a few family members, interviews with a few healthcare professionals, a survey of undergraduates’ perceptions of OCD, and content analyses of online posts and media. The introduction presents the core themes of the book, including the concept of the “illness career,” and trivialization and stigma. It foreshadows the idea of perceiving mental health and illness on a continuum, and how OCD relates to living in a contemporary society characterized by risk, which are topics that will be developed as the book progresses. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the book’s organization.

Part I provides readers with a basic understanding of how OCD has been conceptualized and treated. Chapter 1 reviews how “obsessions” and “compulsions” have been viewed historically until the present day. It reveals gaps between professional conceptualizations of the disorder and public stereotypes, including how the latter facilitate trivialization. The chapter also provides a detailed discussion of what symptoms would lead to diagnosis. Overall, this chapter provides the reader with context for later chapters, including why many people with OCD do not immediately self-diagnose themselves with the disorder or seek professional help.

Chapter 5 tackles the next stage of the OCD “career,” more specifically, the shift from interviewees’ perceiving themselves as having a personality issue, spiritual problem, or some other type of difficulty to believing they a have mental disorder called “OCD.” Sometimes years passed between interviewees deciding they had a “problem” and their arriving at this label. Many happened upon information about OCD that led them to conclude they had the disorder, and some diagnosed themselves. This is partly the result of lack of information about OCD, including among healthcare professionals. This chapter reiterates how diagnosis is a double-edged sword, giving people with OCD an explanation for their thoughts and behaviors, but also labeling them with a disorder. Public perceptions of the disorder are now personal. The chapter uses the concept of stigma hierarchy to illustrate how all disorders are not perceived equally by the public. Because OCD is both stigmatized and trivialized, the chapter presents survey data from undergraduates to show how improving the public’s mental health literacy regarding OCD is tricky. Showing the public the potentially serious nature of the disorder may reduce trivialization but may inadvertently increase misunderstanding and stigma.

The book has demonstrated that to understand OCD, it is necessary to perceive people with the disorder as more than individuals with defective brains or as quirky people who like to clean. We have to consider them in their everyday lives. As the public becomes more educated about OCD, trivialization will likely diminish. While it is important that the public recognize how OCD can be serious and debilitating, it behooves us to consider mental health and illness on a continuum to reduce the potential for stigma to increase. This chapter develops theories about stigma and trivialization and also reviews research showing how a continuum perspective may improve empathy and social acceptance. The chapter considers ways that social institutions can support people with diverse abilities and illnesses. Moreover, it argues that our understanding of OCD should be seen in light of larger social changes. Contemporary society has been characterized as one of risk and potentially one of anxiety and increasing psychological distress. In this light, the thoughts and rituals of people with OCD do not appear so radically different from everyone else’s.

This chapter studies the displacement function dᵧ on X that is associated with a semisimple element γ‎ ∈ G. If φ‎″, t ∈ R denotes the geodesic flow on the total space X of the tangent bundle of X, the critical set X(γ‎) ⊂ X of dᵧ can be easily related to the fixed point set Fᵧ ⊂ X of the symplectic transformation γ‎⁻¹φ‎₁ of X. The chapter studies the nondegeneracy of γ‎⁻¹φ‎₁ − 1 along Fᵧ. More fundamentally, this chapter gives important quantitative estimates on how much φ‎_½ differs from φ‎_˗½γ‎ away from Fᵧ. These quantitative estimates are based on Toponogov's theorem.

This book explores how Jewish American literary study has alienated itself—in the form of insiderism, trivialization, and ghettoization—compared to American studies and ethnic American literary formations. It examines the lines of relation and mutuality between Jewish American literary study and those institutional establishments from which it persists in isolation, such as American studies, multicultural and multiethnic studies, critical theory, and Jewish studies. It also considers the Jewishness that anchors the field of Jewish American literature specifically and Jewish studies more generally, along with multiple and often discontinuous histories and agents accounting for the field's ghettoization. The book employs a literary critical concept of Jewishness to reveal the history, meaning, and power of Jewish identity and articulates a concept of particularity for the study of identity that is neither positivistically opposed to some ontological concept of universality nor grounded in what is inevitably nationalized and biologized ethnic self-evidence.

This chapter turns to the application of radical democracy to political theology. It poses the question of how radical democracy might affect a new and different understanding of political theology. Political theorist Carl Schmitt argues that democracy and political theology represent two equally compelling, but opposing, political options to confront the seemingly overwhelming force of the modern technocratic state. The chapter examines whether those who employ political theology harbor secret theocratic intentions; whether normative political theory is correct in assuming that the political must safeguard itself from the religious; and how radical democracy opens a pathway for a reconfiguration of the proper relationship between political theology and democracy. It also contrasts Charles Taylor's notion of religious autonomy with Stephen Carter's “trivialization of religion,” in an effort to determine the meaning of the postsecular.

The study of memory tourism to war sites should not exclude the study of tourism during wartime. Both are components of war tourism, imparting meaning to war for both victors and vanquished. Both reflect their eras, whether through the gazes of the curious individual or the political and economic configurations sustaining the tourism industry. Germans who described a newfound appreciation of their homeland after touring occupied France show how tourism worked in two directions, impacting not only on the sites visited but also the self-image of the visitor. Local governments in France now reach a larger tourism public with new technology. A powerful hold of Second World War imagery in France continues to face ethical issues of sustainability and trivialization.