Alive or Undead? Biopolitics between Esposito's Vitalism and Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Paragraph ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-81
Author(s):  
Boštjan Nedoh
Keyword(s):  
Racial Difference ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Alternative Conception ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Logical Content ◽  
Psychoanalytic Approach ◽  
The Way

This article tries to establish a possible dialogue between the way in which two influential contemporary theories, Roberto Esposito's biopolitical theory and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, approach racism and the constitution of Otherness. After summing up key concepts in Esposito's theory, the article lays out the very deadlock in his work, represented by his assumption of racial difference or Otherness as inscribed in the bio-logical content of human life. However, by interpreting Jewishness under Nazism in terms of ‘undead’ ‘flesh without body’, Esposito himself crosses paths with the psychoanalytic approach, in so far as Lacan defined the Freudian death drive using the same term. The second part of the article is thus dedicated to the articulation of the relations between primal repression, trauma and jouissance, out of which can be derived an alternative conception of biopolitics, based on the discursive constitution of Otherness, rather than on the assumption that it is a biological fact.

Созависимость как проблема конфликтологической практики

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
E. N. Ivanova ◽  
E. I. Naumova ◽  
A. V. Makarin
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Psychoanalytic Approach ◽  
The One ◽  
Partnership Models ◽  
Basic Anxiety ◽  
Behavioral Attitudes ◽  
The Way

the article represents the analysis of such phenomenon as codependency. It is mentioned the lack of medical or psychological understanding of this problem. It is developed the psychoanalytic and evolution approaches in understanding the sense of codependency. Psychoanalytic approach is represented by the K. Horney’s theory and develop codependency as the way of overcoming of basic anxiety which emerges as the result of the oppression hostile impulse in relation to the close figure. Evolution approach is represented in B. and J. Weinhold’s theory and open codependency as a trauma of evolution connected with unsuccessful separation of the close figure what forms the infantile behavior and radical dependency on the others’ opinion in self-certification of man. On the base of these two approaches concludes that codependency is the common appearance, the symptom of contemporary culture which is connected with the social model of domination and inequality. The introduction in human life the models of partnership is the way of overcoming the problem of codependency. The practical conflictology is the concrete sphere of introduction and elaboration of the partnership models. In the research the co-dependency problem is concerned in two directions — in connection with clients’ specific and as the one defined by cognitive-emotional- behavioral attitudes of specialists-conflictologists. The special significance of awareness of this problem and overcoming it by mediators because of its counteraction with the basic mediation principles, first of all neutrality of a specialist is noted. The author’s investigation results conducted with the participation of mediators and consultants with different experience of work in the profession are presented. The results show widely spread codependent tendencies among practicing conflictologists especially among beginners. The connection of the syndrome of codependency and professional burning out and the problem growing along with the widening of conflictologists’ practice is shown. 5 types of specialists’ codependency dynamics in the process of gathering experience of work with clients are identified and corresponding consequences are shown. The significance of overcoming and profilaxy of codependency growth is noted and the ways of gaining the result are analyzed.

scholarly journals Articulations of the Real: from Lacan to Badiou

Paragraph ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Lucy Bell
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Political Force ◽  
The Real ◽  
Mathematical Ontology ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This article gives a comparative analysis of the way in which Lacanian psychoanalysis and Alain Badiou's mathematical ontology understand the category of the real, respectively, as the foundation of individual subjectivity or the name of being-as-being. A number of shifts in focus arise from the fundamental difference in the location of the void: from the individual act to the collective event; from death drive to immortal truth; from subjective destitution and cathartic purification to transformative interventions and constitutive thought. These shifts are exemplified, elaborated and analysed through a close reading of the thinkers' respective commentaries on Sophocles' Antigone. Foregrounding what is philosophically at stake in these differences, the article defends Badiou against Lacanian critics (most notably Slavoj Žižek and Eleanor Kaufman) by examining the ethical and political force of his innovation.

Un Dieu sadique : le rôle de l’image blasphématoire de Dieu dans Dolce agonia de Nancy Huston

2013 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Izabela Front
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Character Of God ◽  
Double Character ◽  
The Way

The present article seeks to analyze the way in which the blasphemous figure of God in Dolce agonia by Nancy Huston allows the author to describe the sacred element in human life, seen as deprived of transcendental character. This is possible thanks to the three aspects of the text dependent on the type of God’s figure, which are: the contrast between passages marked by the cynical God’s voice and passages focused on man’s life filled with suffering; the tone and the appropriation of time var-iations and, finally, the double character of God who, at the same time, is indifferent to man’s lot while touched by his capacity of love.

Beauty, Morality, and the Promise of Happiness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Iris Murdoch ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
The Way

This chapter takes up the themes of Chapter 3—loving beauty’s formative power—in a dialogue with contemporary philosophers Alexander Nehamas and Elaine Scarry, as well as with (to a lesser extent) Iris Murdoch. It explores the nature of love, beauty, and morality through a dialogue across historical–contemporary, theological–philosophical lines. A number of prominent modern criticisms of Augustine focus on a fundamental feature of his thought: that everything in human life is ordered towards the promise of heavenly happiness. This chapter shows some of the resources Augustine offers contemporary discussions of aesthetics by arguing that the way he links beauty and morality accounts for the ethical demands of love elicited by attraction to beauty.

scholarly journals The Enduring Greatness: The Mahāpuruşha Paradigm—An Indian Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110008
Author(s):  
Maharaj K. Raina
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Positive Direction ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Indian Perspective ◽  
Relative Concept ◽  
The Way

Greatness, a relative concept, has been historically approached in different ways. Considering greatness of character as different from greatness of talents, some cultures have conceptualized greatness as an expression of human spirit leading to transcending existing patterns and awakening inner selves to new levels of consciousness, rising above times and circumstances, and to change the direction of human tide. Individuals characterized by such greatness working with higher selves, guided by moral and ethical imperatives, and possessing noble impulses of human nature are considered to be manifesting spiritual greatness. Examining such greatness is the goal of this article. Keeping Indian tradition in focus, this article has studied how greatness has been conceptualized in that particular tradition and the way in which life and times have shaped great individuals called Mahāpuruşha who exhibited extraordinary moral responsibility relentlessly in pursuit of their visions of addressing contemporary major issues and changing the direction of human life. Four Mahāpuruşha, who possessed such enduring greatness and excelled in their thoughts and actions to give a new positive direction to human life, have been profiled in this article. Suggestions have also been made for studies on moral and spiritual excellence to help realize our true human path and purpose.

Can animals sing? On birdsong, music and meaning

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hektor KT Yan
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
A Value ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
To Come ◽  
Factual Issue ◽  
The Way

This article deals with conceptual questions regarding claims to the effect that humans and animals share artistic abilities such as the possession of music. Recent works focusing on animals, from such as Hollis Taylor and Dominique Lestel, are discussed. The attribution of artistic traits in human and animal contexts is examined by highlighting the importance of issues relating to categorization and evaluation in cross-species studies. An analogy between the denial of major attributes to animals and a form of racism is drawn in order to show how questions pertaining to meaning can impact on our understanding of animal abilities. One of the major theses presented is that the question of whether animals possess music cannot be answered by a methodology that is uninformed by the way concepts such as music or art function in the context of human life: the ascription of music to humans or non-humans is a value-laden act rather than a factual issue regarding how to represent an entity. In order to see how humans and animals share a life in common, it is necessary to come to the reflective realization that how human beings understand themselves can impact on their perception and experience of human and non-human animals.

Is God Really in History?

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.

Baptism and Justification: A Methodist Understanding

Ecclesiology ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-307
Author(s):  
Sarah Heaner Lancaster
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
Joint Declaration ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Conversion Experience ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe association of the Methodists with the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was a significant ecumenical event. The Methodist Statement that allowed this agreement, though, does not include a description of the connection between baptism and justification. This paper examines John Wesley's understandings of baptism and justification to suggest a way that they may be held together in Methodist theology. The Methodist practice of infant baptism stands in tension with an understanding of justification built on the model of adult conversion experience, and this tension is found in Wesley's own work. It is possible, though, to find in the way Wesley engaged certain questions some indications of how baptism and justification may be both connected and distinguished in order to display a flexible understanding of God's ongoing work in human life.

scholarly journals Trauma and Sacrifice in Divided Communities: The Sacralisation of the Victims of Terrorism in Spain

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
The State ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Public Demonstrations ◽  
The Way

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.

2. Speaking of God in the Post-Human Era: An Examination of Radical Life Extension in Relation to Key Theological Concepts and Narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlyn Barton
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Life Extension ◽  
The Core ◽  
Psychological Suffering ◽  
The Cross ◽  
And Function ◽  
Radical Life Extension ◽  
The Way ◽  
Changing World

Rapid advancements in radical life extension technologies contribute to humanity’s ever-changing world. The normalization of radical life extension technologies would signify that the present era in which biology and evolution act as dictators of human life and health would come to an end, thereby ushering in the age of the post-human. The purpose of this paper is to engage in a theological analysis of how and to what degree the ways in which humanity speaks about God could be changed or influenced if radical life extension becomes normative within society. . It is likely that this powerful technology would have a significant impact on many facets of culture, including the way in which humanity engages with religion, in particular Christianity. To accomplish this, the technology that could potentially support radical life extension, namely nanotechnology and cybernetic immortality, will be explained in terms of their relevance and function. Subsequently, the affects of radical life extension for human life will be addressed. Specifically, the implications of the partial or full eradication of human biological and psychological suffering and death through the use of cybernetic immortality and nanotechnology and will be considered. From there, the core theological concepts and narratives will be analyzed in the context of the potential actualization of radical life extension technology. A focus will be placed on the ethic of loving thy neighbour, Christ’s suffering on the cross, the hope of salvation and the Christian hope of entrance into heaven after death. 

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