In Shit We Stand United: Solidarity and Separation on the Lower Grounds

Robert Pfaller

doi:10.5617/jea.4827

In Shit We Stand United: Solidarity and Separation on the Lower Grounds

Journal of Extreme Anthropology ◽

10.5617/jea.4827 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 6-17

Author(s):

Robert Pfaller

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Heinrich Heine ◽

Human Communication ◽

Predominant Role ◽

Convertible Currency ◽

Human Autonomy

In his Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud quotes a poem by Heinrich Heine: "Selten habt Ihr mich verstanden/selten auch verstand ich Euch./Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden,/so verstanden wir uns gleich". ("Rarely did you understand me, and rarely did I understand you; Only when we found ourselves in the muck did we understand each other at once.")In my contribution, I want to examine this ability of the excrement to function as a kind of universal equivalent for understanding; a kind of perfectly convertible currency or primordial gift (according to Freud's account). What is it that makes this border-element between culture and nature so specifically useful when nothing else seems to help in human communication?This question shall be raised specifically with regard to the "scatological rituals" examined and analyzed by Stephen Greenblatt as well as with to the issue that D. A. F. de Sade makes of the excrement in his "120 days of Sodom", where it plays an astoundingly predominant role when it comes to finding unequivocal proofs of human autonomy.

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Bestiarium Judaicum

10.5422/fordham/9780823275595.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jay Geller

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Sigmund Freud ◽

Animal Studies ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Visual Images ◽

Heinrich Heine ◽

Critical Animal Studies ◽

Close Textual Analysis ◽

Nonhuman Animals ◽

Human Animal

Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals (pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes, etc.) disseminated for millennia to debase and bestialize Jews (the Bestiarium Judaicum), this work asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers employ such figures in their narratives and poems? Bringing together Jewish cultural studies (examining how Jews have negotiated Jew-Gentile difference) and critical animal studies (analyzing the functions served by asserting human-animal difference), this monograph focuses on the writings of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Gertrud Kolmar, H. Leivick, Felix Salten, and Curt Siodmak. It ferrets out of their nonhuman-animal constructions their responses to the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species “Jew” were depicted. Along with close textual analysis, it examines both personal and social contexts of each work. It explores how several writers attempted to subvert the identification of the Jew-animal by rendering indeterminable the human-animal “Great Divide” being played out on actual Jewish bodies and in Jewish-Gentile relations as well as how others endeavored to work-through identifications with those bestial figures differently: e.g., Salten’s Bambi novels posed the question of “whether a doe is sometimes just a female deer,” while Freud, in his case studies, manifestly disaggregated Jews and animals even as he, perhaps, animalized the human. This work also critically engages new-historical (M. Schmidt), postcolonial (J. Butler and J. Hanssen), and continental philosophic (G. Agamben) appropriations of the conjunction of Jew and animal.

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El uso de la lengua en los chistes. Ejemplificación de la teoría de Freud = The use of language in jokes. Exemplification of Freud's theory

Estudios Humanísticos Filología ◽

10.18002/ehf.v0i38.3391 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 195

Author(s):

Joaquin Serrano Serrano

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Spanish Language ◽

Human Communication

A través de la ejemplificación -con muchas decenas de chistes- de la teoría de Sigmund Freud sobre las técnicas del chiste, este trabajo es una muestra más de la riqueza de nuestra lengua. Unas veces, con los chistes verbales y otras, con los intelectuales, el lector puede reflexionar sobre cómo la lengua logra reflejar las mil caras de la comunicación humana: el humor, la ironía, la burla, la crítica, la guasa, el doble sentido, el juego fonético o morfológico. Facetas todas ellas que pretenden a veces el mero pasatiempo, a menudo la descarga de tensión o la crítica de situaciones sociales, políticas, humanas. Y al final, un pequeño apartado sobre la risa y el placer que produce el chiste, eje sobre el que gira todo el trabajo. By means of the exemplification -with a spate of examples- of Freud’s analysis of jokes, this article is further evidence of the richness of the Spanish language. With the inclusion of both verbal and intellectual jokes, the reader will come to realize how language succeeds in reflecting the numerous sides of human communication: sense of humour, irony, mockery, criticism, double entendres and puns. Jokes are sometimes used as a mere pastime but they often bring about a release of tension and involve the criticism of social, political and human situations. At the end of this article the reader will find a brief section devoted to laughter and the pleasure that jokes provide. The latter is the topic around which the whole article revolves.

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Enzo Traverso. Los judíos y Alemania. Ensayos sobre la “simbiosis judío-alemana”

Acta Poética ◽

10.19130/iifl.ap.2005.1-2.187 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 26 (1-2) ◽

Author(s):

Esther Cohen

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Karl Marx ◽

Edmund Husserl ◽

Franz Kafka ◽

Gustav Mahler ◽

Heinrich Heine ◽

Fritz Lang ◽

Theodor Adorno ◽

Siglo Xix ◽

No Man's Land

La tesis de Enzo Traverso en su libro Los judíos y Alemania. Ensayos sobre la “simbiosis judeo-alemana” viene a apoyar las palabras del estudioso de la cábala judía. De la misma manera en que Scholem negaba y negó siempre esa anhelada simbiosis, Traverso plantea justamente esta innegable realidad. Las voces que una vez parecieron dar vida a ese diálogo fueron innumerables. Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Walter Benjamin, Gustav Mahler, Fritz Lang, Joseph Roth, y muchísimos más, como sabemos, fueron acallados en el intento por sobrevivir esta vez como judíos y no, como pretendieron durante años, como alemanes. Otros, como Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer y Theodor Adorno, encontraron refugio en Estados Unidos y desde allí hicieron oír sus voces, pero ni siquiera ellos lograron hacer realidad ese diálogo tan deseado. En efecto, y visto con el lente de la historia, Traverso nos da la pauta: este diálogo nunca existió, lo que el pasado nos muestra es precisamente que se trató de un monólogo judío en el que los alemanes nunca fueron auténticos interlocutores. La aceptación de la alteridad radical nunca se dio, o si apareció en momentos, no fue sino un simulacro. El intento por verse incluidos en la esfera de la cultura y tradición alemanas, no fue más que eso: un mero intento, un sueño que tardó poco tiempo en derrumbarse. El hecho es que, en realidad, los judíos vivieron en una no man’s land y que su asombrosa producción literaria, filosófica y musical no tuvo nada que ver con esa deseada simbiosis. En realidad, los judíos alemanes estuvieron siempre solos como solo estuvo Franz Kafka al escribir su obra. A la pregunta de qué tan solo se sentía Kakfa, él mismo respondió “Solo como Franz Kafka”. Así estuvieron, aunque en el autoengaño, la gran mayoría de los intelectuales y no intelectuales judíos-alemanes desde mitad del siglo XIX hasta 1933.

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Investigating the Multimodal Nature of Human Communication

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803.23.2.63 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 63-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

Silke Paulmann ◽

Sarah Jessen ◽

Sonja A. Kotz

Keyword(s):

Visual Information ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Physical Property ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Accurate Information ◽

Human Communication ◽

Channel Condition ◽

Prosodic Cues ◽

Early Processing ◽

Related Potentials

The multimodal nature of human communication has been well established. Yet few empirical studies have systematically examined the widely held belief that this form of perception is facilitated in comparison to unimodal or bimodal perception. In the current experiment we first explored the processing of unimodally presented facial expressions. Furthermore, auditory (prosodic and/or lexical-semantic) information was presented together with the visual information to investigate the processing of bimodal (facial and prosodic cues) and multimodal (facial, lexic, and prosodic cues) human communication. Participants engaged in an identity identification task, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were being recorded to examine early processing mechanisms as reflected in the P200 and N300 component. While the former component has repeatedly been linked to physical property stimulus processing, the latter has been linked to more evaluative “meaning-related” processing. A direct relationship between P200 and N300 amplitude and the number of information channels present was found. The multimodal-channel condition elicited the smallest amplitude in the P200 and N300 components, followed by an increased amplitude in each component for the bimodal-channel condition. The largest amplitude was observed for the unimodal condition. These data suggest that multimodal information induces clear facilitation in comparison to unimodal or bimodal information. The advantage of multimodal perception as reflected in the P200 and N300 components may thus reflect one of the mechanisms allowing for fast and accurate information processing in human communication.

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Can a Theory of Suicide Predict All “Suicides” in the Elderly?

Crisis ◽

10.1027//0227-5910.24.1.7 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 7-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Antoon A. Leenaars

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Terminally Ill ◽

Later Life ◽

Psychological Theory ◽

The Elderly ◽

Theory Building ◽

Personality Factors ◽

Comprehensive Model ◽

Suicide Notes ◽

Psychiatric Study

Summary: Older adults consistently have the highest rates of suicide in most societies. Despite the paucity of studies until recently, research has shown that suicides in later life are best understood as a multidimensional event. An especially neglected area of research is the psychological/psychiatric study of personality factors in the event. This paper outlines one comprehensive model of suicide and then raises the question: Is such a psychiatric/psychological theory applicable to all suicides in the elderly? To address the question, I discuss the case of Sigmund Freud; raise the topic of suicide and/or dignified death in the terminally ill; and examine suicide notes of the both terminally ill and nonterminally ill elderly. I conclude that, indeed, greater study and theory building are needed into the “suicides” of the elderly, including those who are terminally ill.

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