scholarly journals A More Proximate Form of Theory: Tracing New Interdisciplinary Ground through Discourses of Diaspora and Haptic Aesthetics

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Nicole Birch-Bayley

Cultural geographers Nigel Thrift and Stephen Pile have asked, “how is it possible to make sense of our selves, if the boundaries that tell us who ‘we’ are are incoherent, or fragmented, or fuzzy[?]” (1995: 179). One promising answer to this question has been to deconstruct the otherwise stable sense of identity that has marked the body in discourses of culture and transnational geography. The emerging interdisciplinary field of haptics (referring to the study of the sense of touch) offers a new way of investigating the boundaries that mark the body in the contexts of culture and literature, specifically exploring who is touched, who touches, when touch begins, and when it ends, in order to creatively examine boundaries of culture, which although fragmented, shifting, topographically uneven, offer unique and productive ways of re-conceptualizing transnational identity. Tracing the expanding the field of haptics to the discourses of diaspora and cultural studies, this paper will discuss haptic aesthetics in the shifting terrain of cultural studies and diasporic theory, for what this emerging field suggests about the incoherent nature of cultural boundaries and alternative possibilities for transnational community formation.

Derrida Today ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morris

Over the past thirty years, academic debate over pornography in the discourses of feminism and cultural studies has foundered on questions of the performative and of the word's definition. In the polylogue of Droit de regards, pornography is defined as la mise en vente that is taking place in the act of exegesis in progress. (Wills's idiomatic English translation includes an ‘it’ that is absent in the French original). The definition in Droit de regards alludes to the word's etymology (writing by or about prostitutes) but leaves the referent of the ‘sale’ suspended. Pornography as la mise en vente boldly restates the necessary iterability of the sign and anticipates two of Derrida's late arguments: that there is no ‘the’ body and that performatives may be powerless. Deriving a definition of pornography from a truncated etymology exemplifies the prosthesis of origin and challenges other critical discourses to explain how pornography can be understood as anything more than ‘putting (it) up for sale’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110045
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gross

COVID-19 has loosened neoliberalism’s hegemonic grip on the future. Amid the enormous suffering experienced internationally, there is much discussion of how to ‘Build Back Better’, and hope for a more caring, just and sustainable world. But competing futures are being imagined and planned. Hope is never politically neutral, and the content of collective hope is a key site of political struggle. This is partly a question of space: who has the literal and discursive space in which to develop visions of the future? The following article considers the role that cultural studies can play in this struggle. ‘Conjunctural analysis’ has a key task, making visible the competing futures contained within the present. But cultural studies should go further: combining conjunctural analysis with methods drawn from a range of scholarly and activist traditions – including critical pedagogy, devised theatre and the interdisciplinary field of futures studies – that deliberately create spaces for imagining new futures.


2019 ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
B. E. Nosenok

Cultural studies as a humanities researcher takes the place of an expert. The relevance of this topic is due to the lack of development of the issues of “culture-based studies” in Ukrainian culturology. There is a lack of translated into French or Ukrainian languages of French sources published since 1975. French culturological science, which developed after 1975, is almost not represented in Ukrainian culturology. The present stage of the development of French historiography, which lies at the heart of cultural history, and cultural studies, is associated with increased attention to social knowledge. This stage is characterized by the deployment of a “critical turn”, which proceeds from the following principles: the interdisciplinary approach, the significance of cultural expertise, the severity of publications and the multiplicity of their forms, multidisciplinarity. The “critical turn” affects the following spheres of knowledge: la Culturologie, les Études culturelles, les Sciences de la Culture. The article substantiates the relevance of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” to the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanities and are associated exclusively with the theoretical formations in the context of the social sciences. The purpose of the article is to outline a map of culture-based studies in the field of French humanitaristics. The methodology of the article is based on the application of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to research in the field of culturology. Also, methodological developments in the field of “critical turn” and the achievements of the sociological circle and the interdisciplinary discussion club “Eranos” were applied. The scientific novelty of the article is to substantiate the appropriateness of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” on the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanitaristics and relate exclusively to theoretical formations in the context of social sciences. This concept to the field of Ukrainian culturology is introduced for the first time. Also, for the first time, the place and forms of culturology in French humanities were clarified. Conclusions. Working with a source base and methodology is one of the points that are compulsory on the way to the solution of the tasks, the main of which is the formation of the body of fundamental works for French history (including the history of culture) and historiography of the period since 1975 year to the present day. On the basis of this building, there is the prospect of building an alternative national cultural history project addressed to the vector of the French historiographical, historical-anthropological and cultural-related issues in the field of social knowledge. The article presents the arguments why it is appropriate to use the concept of “culture-based studies” in the context of conducting research in relation to French humanitaristics, in particular, the modern period of its development.


Author(s):  
Stephen Katz

This chapter introduces the book and the historical background of and current relationship between ageing and everyday studies. It reviews relevant literature leading up to the explanation of the book’s organization on materialities and embodiments and outlines how the book’s chapters address and innovate research in the authors’ respective areas. The introduction claims everyday ageing, with its roots in sociology, is today an expansive interdisciplinary field that includes cultural studies, the Humanities, media and cinema, spatial and consumer fields, and health and technology areas, which in their combination emphasize the extent to which experience and identity for older people are represented, mediated and activated in local contexts.


Author(s):  
Carl Knappett ◽  
Lambros Malafouris ◽  
Peter Tomkins

This article focuses on the importance of ceramics in material cultural studies. It proceeds to say that ceramics are considered a key feature of human material culture because of what they are taken to represent in economic, technological, and evolutionary terms. The innovation of taking the plastic medium of clay and marrying it with pyrotechnology to create irreversibly a resilient object — usually in the form of a container, has frequently been assumed to mark a revolutionary stage in the development of modern human thought and practice, forming with agriculture and sedentism a trinity of epoch-changing innovations. This article talks about the idea of the body as being used as a container. It says that ‘Containment’ may well be the ‘function’ offering archaeology one of the most important sources of archaeological data and windows into society, and culture; but very little is known about the cognitive, experiential, and evolutionary grounding of the concepts embodied in each and every container.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Friedner ◽  
Annelies Kusters

Deaf anthropology is a field that exists in conversation with but is not reducible to the interdisciplinary field of deaf studies. Deaf anthropology is predicated upon a commitment to understanding deafnesses across time and space while holding on to “deaf” as a category that does something socially, politically, morally, and methodologically. In doing so, deaf anthropology moves beyond compartmentalizing the body, the senses, and disciplinary boundaries. We analyze the close relationship between anthropology writ large and deaf studies: Deaf studies scholars have found analytics and categories from anthropology, such as the concept of culture, to be productive in analyzing deaf peoples’ experiences and the sociocultural meanings of deafness. As we note, however, scholarship on deaf peoples’ experiences is increasingly variegated. This review is arranged into four overlapping sections titled Socialities and Similitudes; Mobilities, Spaces, and Networks; Modalities and the Sensorium; and Technologies and Futures.


1917 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tokuzo Ohira ◽  
Hideyo Noguchi

Trichomonades from the mouth were studied by Steinberg who proposed to group them into three distinct types; namely, Trichomonas elongata, Trichomonas caudata, and Trichomonas flagellata. Doflein (3) regards them as probably identical with Trichomonas hominis. Opinions differ as to whether or not Trichomonas vaginalis Donné and Trichomonas hominis Grassi are the same species. Lynch, for instance, believes that they are the same species, while von Prowazek (4), Bensen (5), and others (6, 7) insist that they are different types. Bensen's view seems to be well supported by the difference alleged to be found between the mode of encystment in the two trichomonades, were it not for the fact that our knowledge about the so called cyst of trichomonades is still obscure. According to Alexeieff (8) many of the so called cysts were evidently blastomyces contained in the cell body of the trichomonas. An autogamy alleged to take place in cysts as described by Bohne and von Prowazek (9) has not been confirmed by Dobell (10). And Wenyon (11) contends that it has never been found possible to produce any development of these cysts outside the body on the warm stage as can be done with the cysts of Entamœba coli. Therefore, it is still premature to take the process of encystment into consideration as far as the classification of trichomonas is concerned. On the other hand, Rodenwaldt (12) seems to think that there are many species of trichomonas in the human intestines, and Wenyon has described a new trichomonas from the human intestines (Macrostoma mesnili Wenyon). Further cultural studies in the morphology and biology of these organisms must be carried out in order to solve these problems. In the light of modern investigations there are five subgenera to be included under the genus Trichomonas Donné. They are as follows: (1) Protrichomonas Alexeieff, with three anterior flagella, without an undulating membrane. (2) Trichomastix Biitschli) with three anterior flagella and a trailing flagellum (Schleppgeissel) without an undulating membrane. (3) Trichomonas Donné, with three anterior flagella and an undulating membrane. (4) Macrostoma Alexeieff, Amend, Wenyon (11), with three anterior flagella and an undulating membrane wedged in a deep groove (peristome). (5) Tetratrichomonas Parisi (13), with four anterior flagella and an undulating membrane. As far as our culture trichomonas from the human mouth is concerned, it has been shown that it is not strictly a trichomonas and that it should be classed under the subgenus Tetratrichomonas.


Author(s):  
Constance Classen

This chapter discusses how humans dealt with animals through the sense of touch. After all, intimate contact with animals was part of daily life in the premodern world. They were everywhere; and although zoological symbolism associated the sense of touch with the tortoise and the spider, all animals had a general association with touch. This was due to touch being considered the primary sense of the body and animals being considered virtually all body. Furthermore, many familiar animals were eminently touchable (furry, sleek and warm)—and their speechlessness made touch an essential medium for human–animal interaction. Thus, the chapter looks at the ways in which humans interacted with and perceived animals—through companionship, through distinctions between the human and the bestial, through the capacity for reason, and through suffering.


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