scholarly journals Doubling, Decay and Discontinuity: Pathology and the (post)human body in Marie Darrieussecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francoise Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Cloning Technology ◽  
The Human Condition

@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:swiss;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}This article focusses on the portrayal of corporal and textual embodiment in Marie Darrieussecq’s 2017 novel Notre vie dans les forêts, a science-fiction dystopia in which all bodily diseases have been cured through advancements in cloning technology. In doing so, this article explores how the novel’s paradigm of bodily enhancement questions both the physical limits of the human body and the ways in which corporeal changes redefine contemporary notions of subjectivity, life and death. Drawing posthumanist theory and critical theories of the body, the analysis begins with a reading of human doubling and the portrayal of cloning, before considering the text’s depiction of bodily decay and dissection as a decentring of Darrieussecq’s human subjects. This concludes with an exploration of textual discontinuity and its significance for the interpretation of this work. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how Notrevie dans les forêts encourages its readers to contemplate the innate pathologies of the human condition, allowing them to find new life in the forces of decay and disorder that connect all living subjects.

scholarly journals Gente alta é parente do tuiuiú, baixa é da anta: alteridades antropomórficas

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Werneck Regina
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Body Shapes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Human Condition

RESUMOSão partilhadas reflexões acerca de uma pesquisa sobre quais as qualidades são destacadas pelas pessoas panará quando se reconhece o estatuto de sujeito dos humanos e não humanos. A partir de narrativas da origem da mulher e das práticas sociais a elas conectadas, é explicitado que a condição de humanidade é incompleta para abarcar a identificação de uma subjetividade. O que é associado à animalidade parece ser incluído na configuração de pessoa, incidindo nas formas corporais humana e animal do mesmo sujeito ou de pessoas que dele descenderam. Tornar inteligível a afirmativa de que gente alta descende de jaburu e baixa de anta entremeia o texto, contornando um antromorfismo heterogêneo e sugerindo que o comum entre humano e não humano inclui aspectos físicos, afetivos e performáticos. A relação entre alimento, divisão e multiplicação com o corpo é enfática e problematizada, paralelamente. Palavras-chave: Panará. Jê. Corpo. Humano. Não Humano. ABSTRACT Reflections are shared about a research on what qualities are highlighted by people Panará when it recognizes the status of subject of human and non human. From narratives of women's origin and social practices connected to them, it is explained that the human condition is incomplete to include the identification of a subjectivity. What is associated with animality seems to be included in one configuration, focusing the human body shapes and animals of the same subject or who it descended. Make intelligible the assertion that high people descended from jaburu and low tapir intersperses text, bypassing a heterogeneous anthropomorphism and suggesting that the common between human and non human includes physical, emotional and performative. The relationship between food, divide and multiply in the body is emphatic and problematized in parallel. Keywords: Panará. Gê. Body. Human. Not human.

Living machines in our cultural imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Public perceptions of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)—both positive and negative—are hopelessly misinformed, based far too much on science fiction rather than science fact. However, these fictions can be instructive, and reveal to us important anxieties that exist in the public imagination, both towards robots and AI and about the human condition more generally. These anxieties are based on little-understood processes (such as anthropomorphization and projection), but cannot be dismissed merely as inaccuracies in need of correction. Our demonization of robots and AI illustrate two-hundred-year-old fears about the consequences of the Enlightenment and industrialization. Idealistic hopes projected onto robots and AI, in contrast, reveal other anxieties, about our mortality—and the transhumanist desire to transcend the limitations of our physical bodies—and about the future of our species. This chapter reviews these issues and considers some of their broader implications for our future lives with living machines.

Women's Bodies Between National Hospitality and Domestic Biopolitics

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSALYN DIPROSE
Keyword(s):  
Government Regulation ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Human Condition

This paper develops a political ontology of hospitality from the philosophies of Arendt, Derrida and Levinas, paying particular attention to the gendered, temporal, and corporeal dimensions of hospitality. Arendt's claim, that central to the human condition and democratic plurality is the welcome of ‘natality’ (innovation or the birth of the new), is used to argue that the more that this hospitality becomes conditional under conservative political forces, the more that the time that it takes is given by women without acknowledgement or support. Women's bodies are thus caught within the dual poles of conservative government: regulation of the unpredictable expressions of ‘natality’ in the ‘home’ and management of the uniformity and ‘security’ of the nation. The limitations in Arendt's political ontology of hospitality are addressed by adding consideration of the operation of biopolitics and of the body as bios.

scholarly journals The disorderly body: considerations of The Book of Numbers, 19 and ritual impurity after contact with a corpse

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Sandra Junker
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Creature

This article deals with the idea of ritual bodily impurity after coming into contact with a corpse in the Hebrew Bible. The evanescence and impermanence of the human body testifies to the mortality of the human being. In that way, the human body symbolizes both life and death at the same time; both conditions are perceivable in it. In Judaism, the dead body is considered as ritually impure. Although, in this context it might be better to substitute the term ‘ritually damaged’ for ‘ritually impure’: ritual impurity does not refer to hygienic or moral impurity, but rather to an incapability of exercising—and living—religion. Ritual purity is considered as a prerequisite for the execution of ritual acts and obligations. The dead body depends on a sphere which causes the greatest uncertainty because it is not accessible for the living. According to Mary Douglas’s concepts, the dead body is considered ritually impure because it does not answer to the imagined order anymore, or rather because it cannot take part in this order anymore. This is impurity imagined as a kind of contagious illness, which is carried by the body. This article deals with the ritual of the red heifer in Numbers 19. Here we find the description of the preparation of a fluid that is to help clear the ritual impurity out of a living body after it has come into contact with a corpse. For the preparation of this fluid a living creature – a faultless red heifer – must be killed. According to the description, the people who are involved in the preparation of the fluid will be ritually impure until the end of the day. The ritual impurity acquired after coming into contact with a corpse continues as long as the ritual of the Red Heifer remains unexecuted, but at least for seven days. 

scholarly journals Human Machines Petrified: Play's Mineral Mechanics and Les statues meurent aussi

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Olga Beloborodova ◽  
Pim Verhulst
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Translation ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Mechanical Devices ◽  
Sentient Beings

Play is usually regarded as the starting point of Beckett's late theatre, introducing a radically new approach to the body and language that set a benchmark for subsequent plays such as Not I, That Time and Footfalls. Building on Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Play dehumanizes its characters by means of the audiovisual technologies that Beckett was experimenting with at the time. In this process, his human subjects are increasingly reduced to mechanical devices or mouthpieces for the conveyance of speech, instead of represented as recognizable and sentient beings of flesh and blood. The nonhuman aspect of Play is enhanced by its foregrounding of Beckett's long-standing fascination with the mineral, with the characters' faces being ‘so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns’. Whereas, separately, the influence of radio, television and cinema on Play has received some critical attention, and James Knowlson, Claire Lozier, Mark Nixon, Jean-Michel Rabaté and Conor Carville, among others, have noted Beckett's fascination with the sculptural arts and the inorganic, this paper aims to merge those two strands by discussing the docufilm Les statues meurent aussi (1953) as a potential but overlooked source of inspiration. By combining the technological and the sculptural in Play, Beckett stages a ‘mineral mechanics’ verging closely on the nonhuman without being fully dehumanized, as characters continue to laugh and hiccup, barely retaining a trace of their humanity. This oscillation from the human to the nonhuman and vice versa is clearly traceable in the genesis of the text, as well as its French translation (Comédie). The result, Play's iconic stage image, is marked by the familiar Beckettian trope of in-betweenness: between life and death, between the organic and the mineral, between the natural and the technological.

Embodied and Existential Wisdom in Architecture

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Pallasmaa
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Sexual Appeal ◽  
Pedagogic Practices ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Human Embodiment ◽  
The Human Condition

In our culture, intelligence, emotions and embodied intuitions continue to be seen as separate categories. The body is regarded as a medium of identity as well as social and sexual appeal, but neglected as the ground of embodied existence and silent knowledge, or the full understanding of the human condition. Prevailing educational and pedagogic practices also still separate the mental and intellectual capacities from emotions and the senses, and the multifarious dimensions of human embodiment.

Dynamic ease evaluation for 3D garment design

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Fangfang Zhang ◽  
Trevor John Little
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
The Body ◽  
Upper Arm ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Comfort Evaluation ◽  
Garment Design

Purpose 3D garment design technology is developing rapidly thereby creating a need for different approaches to developing the patterns. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the 3D dynamic ease distribution for a 3D garment design. Design/methodology/approach Standard garments were created from Size 2 to Size 14 for ten human subjects. Landmarks location on both human body and the standard garment under dynamic postures are recorded, and he fit and comfort evaluation of the standard garment were collected from the ten human subjects. Finally, these data were used to evaluate the 3D dynamic ease distribution for a 3D garment design. Findings 3D dynamic ease evaluation is challenging and the findings showed that the upper-arm design is a core element of the whole 3D garment design. The upper arm is not only a connecting part for both front and back pieces of the garment, but is also the main active part of the body, so it is the essential element to affect the comfort and fit of the garment under dynamic postures. Originality/value This research provides a novel 3D ease evaluation by analyzing the landmarks location of both human body and standard garment, and fit and comfort evaluation of the standard garment, which are all carried under dynamic postures.

scholarly journals Jewish Doctors’ Challenges in the Death Camps: Ethical Dilemmas? Choiceless Choices? The Human Condition?

Conatus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 341
Author(s):  
Ross Halpin
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Personal Traits ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Will To Live ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Significant Factors ◽  
The Human Condition

Most commentators have focused on ethical dilemmas and the idea that they were core to the actions of and decisions by Jewish doctors in SS concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. While I recognize Jewish doctors did face ethical dilemmas, in this article, I shift my attention to include two other significant factors: choiceless choices, defined by the eminent Holocaust historian Lawrence Langer as “crucial decisions [that] did not reflect options between life and death, but between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victim’s own choosing,”  and the human condition, whereby decisions and actions were triggered by personal traits and past experiences in response to particular situations and circumstances. Inherent in all three factors is the tenaciousness of reality and how the abhorrent conditions, immorality, inhumanity and evilness cast a shadow over every moment of the Jewish doctor’s life. My thesis is that decision-making was not one-dimensional but multi-dimensional. For the Jewish doctor every incident became a source of dread and tragedy. They were often not trained to treat some diseases or perform surgery and lacked experience to work in such conditions and cope emotionally and psychologically. I will attempt to show that how a person responds to an ethical dilemma is based on his or her own experiences and reasoning, and how they reacted to sudden and inexplicable incidents that threatened life or impacted survival induced abnormal actions and decisions. As Jewish doctors they were driven to be healers, to be normal, but they were forced by circumstances to kill or become perpetrators, acting abnormally. Tragically the abnormal became the norm. The Jewish doctors were professionally trained and culturally socialized to continue their roles as doctors. Nevertheless, they were human and were driven by the innate will to live.

scholarly journals Hamlet, or about Death: A Romanian Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur (2001)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (35) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Monica Matei-Chesnoiu
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The World ◽  
Existential Issues ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay looks at the 2001 Romanian production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theatre (Romania) from the perspective of geocriticism and spatial literary studies, analysing the stage space opened in front of the audiences. While the bare stage suggests asceticism and alienation, the production distances the twenty-first century audiences from what might have seemed difficult to understand from their postmodern perspectives. The production abbreviates the topic to its bare essence, just as a map condenses space, in the form of “literary cartography” (Tally 20). There is no room in this production for baroque ornaments and theatrical flourishing; instead, the production explores the exposed depth of human existence. The production is an exploration of theatre and art, of what dramatists and directors can do with artful language, of the theatre as an exploration of human experience and potential. It is about the human condition and the artist’s place in the world, about old and new, about life and death, while everything happens on the edge of nothingness. The director’s own death before the opening night of the production ties Shakespeare’s Hamlet with existential issues in an even deeper way than the play itself allows us to expose.

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