Face to Facelessness: Imagined Intimacies and Socially Distant Desires

This paper revisits a performance titled Falling in Love Again - and Again which was first performed in 2014 as part of a series of works I created questioning relational intimacy and proximity in public space. During Falling in Love Again - and Again participants were invited to explore public space with the intention of anonymously falling in love with strangers. The details of these encounters were shared with me as the leader of the piece via mobile phone text messages, but never with the subjects of the participants' desires.  Understanding the dynamics of intimacy and proximity in 2014 was a very different experience to how I understand them in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing, and two periods of lockdown has drastically influenced how relationality and physically being in the world with others is performed.  This paper is concerned both with the intimate and proximate dynamics of relational bodies during that performance as I understood it then, and, as a consequence, how we might understand relational proximity and intimacy now.Critical points of departure for the paper include art historian Grant Kester's writing on conversational art practices and his framing of dialogic encounters through the use of Jeffrey T. Nealon's Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (1998).  Models of 'dialogical' experience and 'responsibility', as situated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas respectively (Nealon, 1998, cited in Kester, 2004, 118) are used in this article to frame a rethinking of the dynamics and ethics of face to face contact and physical proximity, as bodies in space maintain distance from one another, connected only by our digital devices and our imaginations.  The voyeuristic practices of Sophie Calle and Vito Acconci converge with theatre makers Forced Entertainment's 'writing over' of place (Kaye, 2000) to explore imaginary relational connectivity.  The writing of geographer Doreen Massey supports this framing through the use of Massey's thoughts on the fictional poetics of social interactions and 'stories so far' (Massey, 2005).  Ultimately the paper asks what happens when we are required to imagine being with others in physically distant and imaginary ways with only our mobile devices as depositories for our fictional desires. 

Cyrus’ Beehive: Ruling Eros and with Eros in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia

This paper examines the role of love in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. I argue that an essential aspect of Cyrus’ knowledgeable rule is a specific understanding of eros and a corresponding strategy to cope with the power of love. Specifically, I contend that by exploiting a common Greek distinction between the beloved and the lover, he articulates the view that lovers are subjects or even slaves to their beloved who deceive themselves into thinking that their attraction and the ensuing behaviors are voluntary. Accordingly, Cyrus attempts to avoid falling in love and to rule as a universally beloved leader. Reflecting on the implications of this solution, I finally suggest that Xenophon wishes to show the limits of Cyrus’ solution.

THE URGE TO ASSIMILATE NEW IDEAS ARE EXPERIENCES EQUIVALENT TO FALLING IN LOVE

ENTREVISTA A/INTERVIEW WITH DONALD MELTZER JOÃO SOUSA MONTEIRO 18 JULHO/JULY 1985

Cinta, kematian, dan perempuan, dalam kumpulan cerpen Jatuh cinta adalah cara terbaik untuk bunuh diri karya Bernard Batubara

This research is intended to describe the relationship between love, death, and women, which is displayed in four short stories in a collection of “Falling in Love is the Best Way to Suicide” by Bernard Batubara. Data collected by a literature study and analyzed using descriptive analysis method. The study was conducted with the approach of literary psychology and feminist literary criticism. The theoretical basis for death and suicide used in this study comes from Durkheim, Freud, and Camus. The results of this study indicate that love is the cause or motive for suicide (physical or mental) committed by the protagonists. Suicides committed by the protagonists are categorized as egoistic and fatalistic suicides. The figure of the women in the shorts stories are imaged as a loyal woman and has a negative character (femme fatale).Women are shown to have power in love relations. Overall, the love that Bernard Batubara displays in these short stories is dark, unpleasant, and even deadly.

Repeated Pleasure: Reading the Threesome Ménage Romance as Digital Literature

In this chapter, Elina Valovirta discusses a type of romantic love explored by recent New Adult literature; the polyamorous romance. Titles, such as Two Close for Comfort (2015) and Two Billionaires for Christmas (2017) are examples of the 'reverse harem' or 'MFM menage' e-romance bracket, which capitalizes on the erotic and exotic obstacle of two male friends falling in love with - and, ultimately, sharing - the same woman. The polyamorous romance's particular way of eliciting pleasure in readers is tied with specific stylistic strategies, such as alternating first-person narrators and using the plural form in dialogue. The chapter interrogates, how these elements are repeated throughout the genre to titillate and arouse readers.

For Some Phraseological Units in the Tao Dialect

The Tao dialect is one of the southern dialects. The remnants of a dialect, spread across once extensive territory, are now preserved in a number of minor villages of Tao (Eliaskhevi, Tsitleqari, Khevai, Quabagi, Phishnarkhevi, Baslekari, Balkhi, Qvenobani, Balkhibari, Gaghmaqobai, Chevreli), as well as in the village, bordering Tao and Klarjeti – Binati.The Tao Georgian is noteworthy due to many aspects.The abstract looks upon some phraseological units, spread in the Tao Georgian dialect.The phraseological units of the Tao Georgian are diverse both from the semantic and structural point of view.The first component of a phraseological unit in Tao dialect is usually the word ‘eye’, the next ones are mostly often the verbs ‘hold (keep)’ or ‘have’, the meaning of the phrase being ‘appealing, taking to or falling in love’: is aqevr vinme gogoze t’vali k’onebia ki. In addition to the mentioned meanings of ‘keep/hold an eye’, more variations are realized through this expression in Tao dialect, such as ‘jinx or overlook in an evil way’: nonas t’valma dimicira.Somatic phraseological units express pain, having as their second consistent component the verb ‘inflamate’: ik’ kar gevdet’, ak’ t’avi ement’o; clikebi ent’eba. Fainting, connected with grief and distress is expressed by phrases, which have brain as their essential component: esa cevda, c’em kac’ma ckva dimilia, cevda ert’i t’ve ar vxedavdi, imaze imaze ckva cevda; aman ckva dimilia.