Other

This paper examines transhuman technologies that seek to eradicate disability - primarily prostheses and implants. While most would agree that disability denies individuals the same quality of life as those deemed “abled,” this eradication ultimately relies upon secular humanist notions of the perfect human. Transhuman technologies hold obvious implications for the human body, however they also hold implications for what it means to be an acceptable body; ultimately these technologies aim to create the perfect human by eradicating the disabled Other. This paper uses these notions to question concepts of “hierarchies of life,” at which disabled individuals are most commonly moved towards the bottom, or at the very least considered nonhuman. This article seeks to provide alternative theory to the eradication of disability, which states that these individuals may not have the same mode of existence, but that their mode/s are just as valid as those lived by “abled” individuals through an examination of Braille

How is it that tattoos can be thought of as both a mark of social deviance and fashionable piece of artwork at the same time? This thesis examines shifting cultural attitudes toward the practice of tattooing in the United States, Japan, and Tahiti. The crosscultural and historical perspectives engaged in this study consider the ways in which these cultures have viewed the practice independently as well as how they have influenced each other, resulting in modern and often conflicting conceptions of tattoos. Tattooing as a deviant or celebratory act is examined in terms of the anthropological “other” and through the lens of Merton’s strain 
theory. From this perspective, the assessment of tattooing is dependent on the individual’s adaptation to culture goals, specifically the goal of meeting the cultural definition of attractiveness. Tattoos are distinguishing marks, and while in traditional Western and Japanese culture they can be understood in terms of the accepta ce or rejection of values, modern conceptions are most similar to traditional Tahitian tattoos because they reflect the terms of 
physical and social interactions among members of a society. 

Cet ouvrage invite à une lecture critique de la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze en reconstituant le système perspectiviste qui le sous-tend. La thèse qui est défendue est qu'on ne peut comprendre le « perspectivisme » deleuzien qu'au regard de sa théorie de la « structure Autrui », c'est-à-dire de son analyse des interactions avec l'autre. C'est le cas des premiers écrits de Deleuze, marqués par l'influence de Sartre et de Ferdinand Alquié, jusqu'à des textes plus tardifs, coécrits avec Félix Guattari. Chaque fois, l'autre est défini comme « l'expression d'un monde possible », c'est-à-dire comme celui qui perçoit ce que je ne perçois pas moi-même. C'est ce qui justifie une redéfinition d'autrui en termes de « disjonction de perspectives » ou de « perspective alternative ». Afin d'évaluer l'intérêt d'une telle redéfinition, l'auteur présente d'abord le système perspectiviste deleuzien à partir de la théorie de la « structure Autrui » qui le sous-tend. Puis il évalue les apports théoriques de ce modèle-que ce soit par rapport à un certain nombre de références canoniques ou en discutant les principaux commentateurs du corpus deleuzien, dans le champ francophone et anglosaxon. Enfin, il articule la théorie deleuzienne aux différentes approches contemporaines qui se revendiquent de la notion de « perspectivisme » pour en indiquer à la fois les points de contact et d'incompatibilité.

André Bazin, un grand ami des bêtes, attire notre attention sur des films où l’animal figure en tant qu’« autre » ontologique le plus remarquable de l’homme. Dans ces films de fiction, l’animal apparaît comme une métonymie pour la minorité sociale qu’une communité devrait accepter ou abandonner. Cette socio-ontologie de l’animal diégétique s’étend à l’esthétique bazinienne du ‘montage interdit,’ quand il aborde l’énonciation filmique semi-documentaire où la différence ou l’altérité de l’animal doit être préservée à travers la continuité transparente. Bazin y voit une série de chiasmes entre le réel et l’imaginaire, entre le savoir de l’artifice et la croyance en l’illusion, en transférant son intérêt ontologique de l’image photographique vers le découpage cinématographique. En outre, il envisage la question radicalisée dans des documentaires d’aventure pure : le metteur en scène se situant dans l’environnement peuplé d’animaux souvent invisibles, un témoinage objectif du danger peut devenir inséparable d’une participation subjective au même danger, qui rend ce reportage si difficile que des images finales ne montrent presque rien. Donc, le cinéma ne peut pas être un index de la présence d’un objet ; cet échec même prouve toutefois son essence en tant que ‘para-indexicalité,’ indiquant le réel inreprésentable, la jouissance, la mort. L’animal, alors, ne se distingue pas de l’environement, comme un ‘phasme’ dont l’apparence n’est qu’apparition fantôme, avec le potentiel d’attaquer l’homme et de l’incorporer à l’abîme ontologique. Pour Bazin, les films d’aventure poursuivent cet animal entre le néant et la subjectivité humaine.

Dialog człowieka z Innym jest budowaniem. Nie jest nam dany, nie staje się sam z siebie. Dialog jest rzemiosłem. Czyniący go od wieków porównywany był do budowniczego mostów. Na Bałkanach nazywano go neimarem i otaczano szacunkiem należnym architektowi znającemu tajniki natury i potrafiącemu zapanować nad mocami bezładu.

This text examines the contemporary conceptualisation of the term 'Outsider art' with reference to an exhibition at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne and the international conference 'Contemporary Outsider Art: The Global Context', 23-26th October that took place at The University of Melbourne.

Este conjunto de trabajos examina la representación del otro en distintas expresiones de la literatura hispánica: novela, cuento, poesía, teatro, zarzuela, memoria, relato de viajes, entre otras. Asimismo, se sigue una perspectiva diacrónica que abarca desde la literatura del Siglo de Oro español hasta la literatura latinoamericana más actual.

In her 1990 text “homeplace (a site of resistance),” bell hooks argues that for black women throughout history, the making of home cannot be extricated from the struggle against racism and forging of community. This paper explores how artists who occupy tenuous subject positions as immigrants, people of color, and female engage with home-making. Instead of examining home as an object, I engage with home-making as an action that is shifting and provisional. Using philosophical, sociological, and anthropological constructs of “home” as points of departure, I turn toward the domestic projects of visual artists Amanda Williams, Mona Hatoum, and Doris Salcedo. In Color(ed) Theory (2015), Amanda Williams repaints and reconstructs vacant urban homes in such a way that demonstrates the persistent presence of the human even beyond its bodily inhabitation of home’s hallowed halls. Mona Hatoum’s installations Homebound (2001) and Mobile Home (2005) fold the alien and violent into domestic objects that defy being fixed to domestic architectures. Doris Salcedo’s La Casa Viuda (1995) and other untitled sculptures transform doors, dressers, and wardrobes with concrete, dust and bone in response to the flights of Colombian women from their homes and vacillate between tracing memories of the past and
being haunted by premonitions of violence, evacuation, and ruination with the ongoing passage of time. In the works of these three artists, the binary between homely and unhomely comes apart, and homemaking becomes the act of inhabiting or embodying something that shifts, accommodating for a wider range of experiences in how one constitutes self in relation to one's environments.

On the Miracle of Understanding. Hermeneutical Investigations II ‒ This book of studies is the second volume of my series entitled Hermeneutical Investigations, focusing on the hermeneutic problems of understanding.
x  x  x
Ez a tanulmánykötet a filozófiai hermeneutika tárgykörében keletkezett tanulmányaimat egybegyűjtő Hermeneutikai vizsgálódások kötetsorozat második kötete; a megértés hermeneutikai kérdéseire összpontosít.

Through the vehicle of Nicolas Sarkozy’s so-called “Dakar Address,” we will analyze the West’s persisting lack of insight into the need for Western decolonization. We will attempt to identify the dangers that come from this refusal, such as the continued adherence to colonial patterns, the enduring self-understanding as being superior compared to Africa, and the persisting unwillingness to accept colonial guilt. Decolonization must be understood as a two-fold business. Decolonization means overcoming endured and perpetrated violence. It is not only important that the colonially oppressed regain strength, it is equally important that the perpetrators of colonial violence understand their excess of violence and work on rendering its return impossible. We explain how Western thinking remains dangerous and untrustworthy if it rejects its own decolonization. Finally, we will draw attention to a fundamental pattern of Western thought that clashes with the fundamental values of the West: contempt. In a final step, we suggest how this contempt can be overcome through desuperiorization and the establishment of elative ethics.

One of the first full-length academic projects on the television series Smallville, this collection of new essays explains why the WB/CW series is important to understanding contemporary popular culture. The essays are presented in four sections covering broad categories: Clark’s metamorphosis to Superman and the influence of his parents and the home; the role of the series’ noteworthy female characters; the series’ representations of the Other, explorations of identity, and the ways in which characters speak to Clark’s own struggles; and audience reception of the series and its position within the Superman narrative universe.

Bu tezde, içinde bulunduğu edebi gelenek açısından önem arz eden; Erebê Şemo'nun Şivanê Kurmanca (Kürt Çoban-1935), Mahmut Baksi'nin Gundikê Dono (Dono Köyü-1988), Mehmed Uzun'un Bîra Qederê (Kader Kuyusu-1995), Abbas Abbas’ın Şivanê Berxan (Kuzu Çobanı-2004), Bavê Nazê'nin Miriyê Heram (Necis Ölü-2009) ve Rênas Jiyan’ın Bacanên Pelçiqî (Ezilmiş Domatesler-2017) adlı Kürt romanlarında Türk karakterlerin nasıl ele alındığı ve öteki olarak Türk imajının nasıl oluşturulduğu incelenmiştir.

"הזמן והאחר" הוא הצעד הפילוסופי הראשון של לוינס: בספר זה נקבעים הצירים המרכזיים והתמות העיקריות שיאפינו את הגותו לכל עורך הדרך. בספר זה, פורץ לעצמו לוינס דרך חדשה. 

לפרוץ דרך משמע להיפרד מהעבר. הזמן והאחר נכתב כולו בסימן הרצח-אב: לוינס מנסח בו לראשונה את הביקורת שלו על הפילוסופיה המערבית, מפרמנידס ואפלטון עד ברגסון היידגר וסארטר. להבין את פריצת הדרך של הזמן והאחר משמע קודם כל לעקוב אחר האופן בו לוינס נפרד מן הפילוסופיה המערבית הלכה למעשה. אולם לפרוץ דרך משמע גם לפלס דרך חדשה. להבין את פריצת הדרך של לוינס, משמע גם להתחקות אחר האופק החדש שזה פותח, מעבר לביקורת. משימה זו דורשת חריגה אל מעבר לגבולותיו הגלויים של הטקסט. שכן הקטסט של לוינס הוא טקסט מורכב, מרובד, מתוח. זהו טקסט המתקיים מכוח דיאלוג מתמיד עם ההיסטוריה של הפילוסופיה ועם המקור ההתגלותי (הטקסט הדתי). אך בעוד ב"הזמן והאחר" הדיאלוג עם הפילוסופיה נוכח וגלוי לכל אורך הדרך, ההתכתבות עם היסוד הדתי, ההתגלותי, נסתר. ההיפותזה המנחה אותי בקריאה שאני מציע כאן ל"הזמן והאחר" היא שהטקסט ההתגלותי פועל בתוך כתיבתו הפילוסופית של לוינס כרובד נסתר המפרה את המהלכים הנועזים והתיאורים הפנומנולוגיים החדשניים ביותר של ספר זה. על הפרשן לעורר את הכוח הסמנטי החבוי ברבדים העמוקים של "הזמן והאחר". על עבודת הקריאה לחשוף את המקור הנסתר המאפשר את רצח-האב הגלוי. זה מה שאני מבקש לעשות כאן.

This paper investigates the relationship between self-esteem, body-image and sexual desire within gay men. It looks at the gay male body as a site of ‘performativity’, the body ‘citationality’ quoting the ‘norms’ of gay society in order not to be labelled ‘other.’ If you do not fit the ‘ideal’ of what a gay male should look like this can lead gay men to transgress taboos to achieve their idealised body desires, a trans(a)gression against the self through the practicing of unsafe sex to obtain possession of an ideal body.

The paper examines Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County from the perspective of the Indian heritage and how it cohabits with the Weston family, arguing that they both belong to the same chronotope of the Plains. We explain what " the Plains " is and how its " virus " affects the Weston family which is virtually falling apart after Beverly's suicide which sets the plot in motion. The colonial history of the Osage county is important for the present of all its inhabitants. The local Indians can be perceived as the Other, but the character of Johnna, the Cheyenne housemaid, shows that she can tacitly influence the lives of the Westons and is more close to them as originally believed. The fact is that they share the same chronotope and it is precisely this time-space trait of their lives that brings them together, symbolized in the final scene when Johnna and the family's matriarch, Violet sing together.

The book deconstructs Abe Shinzo's narrative of a beautiful Japan in order to show the way the Prime Minister aims to change Japan's national identity. It then identifies constraints on societal and institutional level that prevent him from achieving it. Doing that, the book tries to understand why the change to Japanese identity and foreign policy, although so heavily promoted by Japan's political elite, is so difficult and slow.

This e-book is a collection of papers focussing on the discursive dimension of the 'eastern enlargement' of the European Union, relying on lessons from post-colonial scholarship, world-systems analysis and critical race studies. The empirical material comes from discourse of 'eastern enlargement' process in the late 1990s-early 2000s .

From the biblical Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II, who roamed for seven years as an ox, to the shapeshifting witches that abound in Early Modern trial records, accounts of humans behaving like other animals, tales and testimonies of those who could shift form, and stories of people who did not identify as part of mankind, have been present in history. After their death certificate had been issued by an Enlightenment proud of leaving behind all irrational obscurities, people who belonged to a kind other than the human sprung from the blind spots of modernity, and have grown strong and visible for the last four decades.  In fact, with postmodernity the narratives of those who share the rejection of their full humanity and an entangled sympathy with other beings have taken a new critical role: they pose a simply, uncomfortable question: what does it mean to be human?

Affection is one of the areas where the crisis of today’s society is observed, as shown, for example, in the confusion between sexual desire, friendship and love. The article’s thesis is that this affective disorder hides something more profound: the fear of others, particularly towards the establishment of a last longing bond with them. To prove it, the author first examines how the separation between affection and love depends on judging bonds as contrary to reason, rendering one incapable of opening up to otherness and learning how to be open. Secondly, the author indicates the need to overcome the dialectic idea of love in order to think of it as a choice of affection for others and as a union of two identities that transcend each other through the asymmetric relationship of the gift of self. From here, he goes on to the final conclusion: the fear of bonds can be overcome when fidelity is lived as a complete synthesis of a, humanly sustainable, affection-love relationship.

Domingo, día del sol; diviso desde mi ventana dos cerros medio talados y un sembradío envejecido de maíz: entre verde y amarillo, se pinta un día cálido. Es domingo, día del sol, y de iglesia para algunos habitantes del universo. Día de canonización de un gran defensor de los derechos humanos en El Salvador. Fiesta para los feligreses católicos y personas afines a los principios de vida proclamados por San Romero de América.
A lo lejos se divisa la mansión de unos pajarillos, que con su cantar alegran mi despertar matutino. Esa mansión es pronta a desaparecer, puesto que en un futuro próximo el escenario que pinta entre verde y amarillo, será el policromado de paredes pintadas, disfrazando el grisáceo color del cemento y hierro. La colonia de aves tendrá que migrar o desaparecer, y por supuesto, el árbol quedará en el recuerdo.

Magnus, a novel from Sylvie Germain published in 2005, is a narration made up of several marks of hybridity – structural, generic and discursive hybridity. Those marks are not simply formal but emphasize the necessity of a true presence towards the world and others. The itinerary of the character is a spiritual one, and the novel reveals the part played by reading and writing in the reconsideration of our relationship towards the world and the other people.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

This article elucidates the complex ethical paradigm at the heart of Chantal Akerman's work and thought, arguing first that her ethics are as concerned with the figure of the self as they are with the figure of the other and that, second, these ethics exist as much in the spatial and durational structures of her work as in the content of her images. In this way, this article contends that approaching Akerman's work through the question of ethics allows one to see consistencies across her film and installation work, even as her aesthetic strategies shift across the different dispositifs of the cinema and the gallery or museum. Addressing these shifts, I offer the concept of Akerman's 'ethical pedagogy of the image'-a term that implies both a method and a site of instruction. Drawing on these two meanings, this article ultimately reveals that Akerman's pedagogical aim involves turning viewers' ethical attention back on to themselves-to offer a prompt and a space for reconsideration of their own ethos.

The article describes the problem of constructing a comic superhero's body. The author has suggested that the superheroic character's physicality (in comic books, movies, TV series) is based on the subject's views of otherness (including the ideas about the clothing, food and sexuality). The purpose of this study is to analyze the mechanisms involved in the construction of a superhero image in contemporary mass culture.

In the course of the research, the author comes to the following results: 1) the most important patterns of comic book characters' physicality formation are their clothing and sexuality. Superhero bodies can be classified into three main groups - Theriamorphic, Anthropomorphic and Xenomorphic; 2) Superhero physicality is constructed on the border between a suit and its carrier. The costume itself metaphorically and visually "deprives" its owner of a number of organs (eyes, mouth, nose, etc.); 3) The sexual aspect of superhero physicality is mainly manifested in the different categories of otherness and behavior. Thus, the hypothesis that the body of a comic superhero is formed according to the same laws as the body of the Other is confirmed.

Volume curato nell'ambito del progetto "Stranierità - Foreignness - Fremdheit" (finanziato dal Bando dell’Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna "Accordi di Cooperazione Internazionale con Istituzioni di Istruzione Superiore", disp. dirigenziale 434/2017, prot. 11875 del 03/02/2017). Si vale del contributo di studiosi provenienti da università italiane, europee e nordamericane, e affronta con metodo interdisciplinare la definizione dell'idea di "straniero" nelle culture classiche, nelle lingue e letterature europee moderne e in campo sociologico e giurisprudenziale. Tutti i contributi sono stati sottoposti a double blind peer review.

https://www2.classics.unibo.it/eikasmos/index.php?page=doc_pdf/studi_online/03_alvbatcol