scholarly journals Identity and Writing in the Diaries of Plath and Woolf: Defining, Abjectifying, and Recovering the Self

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 82-102
Author(s):  
Christie Mills Jeansonne
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
The Self ◽  
Range Of Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Diary Writing

The ordering, de-abjectifying function of language is often harnessed by the diary writer: re-living and re-writing a fictive self through diary writing allows the writer control and understanding of the self which has experienced and then changed in the interval of time between the event, the recording, and the rereading. The diaries of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf lend credence to this possibility of recovering abject identity through language. Their diary accounts of mental illness wield mastery over their experiences and emotional responses by choosing to recount them (or not). My paper seeks to reveal how Plath’s and Woolf’s distancing and retelling does not simply divide their selves (the pre- and post- trauma selves, the physical and textual selves), but allows them a greater range of movement, enabling mediation and reconciliation of many self-identities from the past, present, and future, and granting the authority to narrate their own continuums of becoming. This article was submitted to the EJLW on 13 October 2013 and  published on 13 October 2014.

scholarly journals Role-taking, Emotion and the Two Selves

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Scheff
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Safe Zone ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Role Taking ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Everyday

This note links three hitherto separate subjects: role-taking, meditation, and theories of emotion, in order to conceptualize the makeup of the self. The idea of role-taking plays a central part in sociological theories of the self. Meditation implies the same process in terms of a deep self able to witness itself. Drama theories also depend upon a deep self that establishes a safe zone for resolving intense emotions. All three approaches imply both a creative deep self and the everyday self (ego) that is largely automated. The creativity of the deep self is illustrated with a real life example: an extraordinary psychotherapy experiment appears to have succeeded because it was based entirely on the intuitions of the therapist. At the other end from intuition, in one of her novels, Virginia Woolf suggested three crucial points about automated thought: incredible speed, role-taking, and by implication, the presence of a deep self. This essay goes on to explain how the ego is repetitive to the extent that it becomes mostly, and in unusual cases, completely automated (as in most dreams and all hallucinations). The rapidity of ordinary discourse and thought usually means that it is superficial, leading to greater and greater dysfunction, and less and less emotion. This idea suggests a new approach to the basis of ‘mental illness’ and of modern alienation.

Moving Figures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sixth Generation ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Raymond Williams

This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.

scholarly journals Self-exciting multifractional processes

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-41
Author(s):  
Fabian A. Harang ◽  
Marc Lagunas-Merino ◽  
Salvador Ortiz-Latorre
Keyword(s):  
Stochastic Process ◽  
Brownian Motion ◽  
Rate Of Convergence ◽  
Existence And Uniqueness ◽  
Volterra Equation ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stochastic Volterra Equation ◽  
Multifractional Brownian Motion ◽  
Self Organizing

AbstractWe propose a new multifractional stochastic process which allows for self-exciting behavior, similar to what can be seen for example in earthquakes and other self-organizing phenomena. The process can be seen as an extension of a multifractional Brownian motion, where the Hurst function is dependent on the past of the process. We define this by means of a stochastic Volterra equation, and we prove existence and uniqueness of this equation, as well as giving bounds on the p-order moments, for all $p\geq1$. We show convergence of an Euler–Maruyama scheme for the process, and also give the rate of convergence, which is dependent on the self-exciting dynamics of the process. Moreover, we discuss various applications of this process, and give examples of different functions to model self-exciting behavior.

scholarly journals Asexuals negotiate the ‘onslaught of the heteronormative’

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072199338
Author(s):  
Tiina Vares
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Research Gap

Although theorizing and research about asexuality have increased in the past decade, there has been minimal attention given to the emotional impact that living in a hetero- and amato-normative cultural context has on those who identify as asexual. In this paper, I address this research gap through an exploration of the ‘work that emotions do’ (Sara Ahmed) in the everyday lives of asexuals. The study is based on 15 individual interviews with self-identified asexuals living in Aotearoa New Zealand. One participant in the study used the phrase, ‘the onslaught of the heteronormative’ to describe how he experienced living as an aromantic identified asexual in a hetero- and amato-normative society. In this paper I consider what it means and feels like to experience aspects of everyday life as an ‘onslaught’. In particular, I look at some participants’ talk about experiencing sadness, loss, anger and/or shame as responses to/effects of hetero- and amato-normativity. However, I suggest that these are not only ‘negative’ emotional responses but that they might also be productive in terms of rethinking and disrupting hetero- and amato-normativity.

scholarly journals The Effects of Self-Compassion and Self-Esteem Writing Interventions on Women’s Valuation of Weight Management Goals, Body Appreciation, and Eating Behaviors

2021 ◽  
pp. 036168432110134
Author(s):  
Kheana Barbeau ◽  
Camille Guertin ◽  
Kayla Boileau ◽  
Luc Pelletier
Keyword(s):  
Weight Management ◽  
Expressive Writing ◽  
Eating Behaviors ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
Body Appreciation ◽  
Writing Interventions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Bulimic Symptoms

In this study, we examined the effects of body-focused daily self-compassion and self-esteem expressive writing activities on women’s valuation of weight management goals, body appreciation, bulimic symptoms, and healthy and unhealthy eating behaviors. One-hundred twenty-six women, recruited from the community and a university participant pool ( Mage = 29.3, SD = 13.6), were randomly allocated to one of the three writing conditions: body-focused self-compassion, body-focused self-esteem, or control. Women reflected on a moment within the past 24 hours that made them feel self-conscious about their bodies, eating, or exercise habits (self-compassion and self-esteem conditions) or on a particular situation or feeling that occurred in the past 24 hours (control condition) for 4–7 days. At post-treatment (24 hours after the intervention), women in the self-compassion group demonstrated decreased bulimic symptoms, while women in the self-esteem and control conditions did not. Furthermore, clinically significant changes in bulimic symptoms were associated with being in the self-compassion condition but not in the self-esteem or control conditions. Results suggest that body-focused writing interventions may be more effective in temporarily reducing eating disorder symptoms in women if they focus on harnessing self-compassion. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211013465

Drafted into a Foreign War?

Rhizomata ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-217
Author(s):  
Matthew Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Analytic Tradition ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Abstract This paper examines the central criticisms that come, broadly, from the modern, ‘analytic’ tradition, of Pierre Hadot’s idea of ancient philosophy as a way of life.: Firstly, ancient philosophy just did not or could not have involved anything like the ‘spiritual practices’ or ‘technologies of the self’, aiming at curing subjects’ unnecessary desires or bettering their lives, contra Hadot and Foucault et al. Secondly, any such metaphilosophical account of putative ‘philosophy’ must unacceptably downplay the role of ‘serious philosophical reasoning’ or ‘rigorous argument’ in philosophy. Thirdly, claims that ancient philosophy aimed at securing wisdom by a variety of means including but not restricted to rational inquiry are accordingly false also as historical claims about the ancient philosophers. Fourthly, to the extent that we must (despite (3)) admit that some ancient thinkers did engage in or recommend extra-cognitive forms of transformative practice, these thinkers were not true or ‘mainline’ philosophers. I contend that the historical claims (3) and (4) are highly contestable, risking erroneously projecting a later modern conception of philosophy back onto the past. Of the theoretical or metaphilosophical claims (1) and (2), I argue that the second claim, as framed here, points to real, hard questions that surround the conception(s) of philosophy as a way of life.

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

Modernist Dante

2021 ◽  
pp. 633-650
Author(s):  
Daniela Caselli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
First Century ◽  
Djuna Barnes ◽  
Dorothy Richardson ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter traces a history of Dante’s reception in anglophone literature between the 1870s and the 1950s. It acknowledges his importance in Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce, but engages more closely with Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes, and Virginia Woolf. It shows that the modernist Dante that emerges from these authors’ work is both a formal and political one: recruited as an anti-authoritarian voice from the past and seen anew from feminist and queer perspectives, this is not a twenty-first century Dante forced against his will to virtue-signal, however; on the contrary, this is a Dante anachronistically familiar with key ‘vices’ of twentieth-century authors, readers and commentators. Focusing on sullenness, resistance, and fatigue, the chapter argues for a new understanding of modernist experiments with Dante’s political and formal complexity that refuse to use him as a ‘code or a weapon […] to crush someone’, as Dorothy Richardson put it.

Mentalising and Epistemic Trust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbie Duschinsky ◽  
Sarah Foster
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Self ◽  
Disorganized Attachment ◽  
Mental Health And Illness ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
P Factor

The theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust introduced by Peter Fonagy and colleagues at the Anna Freud Centre has been an important perspective on mental health and illness. This book is the first comprehensive account and evaluation of this perspective. The book explores 20 primary concepts that organize the contributions of Fonagy and colleagues: adaptation, aggression, the alien self, culture, disorganized attachment, epistemic trust, hypermentalizing, reflective function, the p-factor, pretend mode, the primary unconscious, psychic equivalence, mental illness, mentalizing, mentalization-based therapy, non-mentalizing, the self, sexuality, the social environment, and teleological mode. The biographical and social context of the development of these ideas is examined. The book also specifies the current strengths and limitations of the theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust, with attention to the implications for both clinicians and researchers.

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