The Knotted Subject

The Knotted Subject
Author: Elisabeth Bronfen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400864739

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Surrealist writer André Breton praised hysteria for being the greatest poetic discovery of the nineteenth century, but many physicians have since viewed it as the "wastebasket of medicine," a psychosomatic state that defies attempts at definition and cure and that can be easily mistaken for other pathological conditions. In light of a resurgence of critical interest in hysteria, leading feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen reinvestigates medical writings and cultural performance to reveal the continued relevance of a disorder widely thought to be a romantic formulation of the past. Through a critical rereading, she develops a new concept of hysteria, one that challenges traditional gender-based theories linking it to dissatisfied feminine sexual desire. Bronfen turns instead to hysteria's traumatic causes, particularly the fear of violation, and shows how the conversion of psychic anguish into somatic symptoms can be interpreted today as the enactment of personal and cultural discontent. Tracing the development of cultural formations of hysteria from the 1800s to the present, this book explores the writings of Freud, Charcot, and Janet together with fictional texts (Radcliffe, Stoker, Anne Sexton), opera (Mozart, Wagner), cinema (Cronenberg, Hitchcock, Woody Allen), and visual art (Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Cindy Sherman). Each of these creative works attests to a particular relationship between hysteria and self-fashioning, and enables us to read hysteria quite literally as a language of discontent. The message broadcasted by the hysteric is one of vulnerability: vulnerability of the symbolic, of identity, and of the human body itself. Throughout this work, Bronfen not only offers fresh approaches to understanding hysteria in our culture, but also introduces a new metaphor to serve as a theoretical tool. Whereas the phallus has long dominated psychoanalytical discourse, the image of the navel--a knotted originary wound common to both genders--facilitates discussion of topics relevant to hysteria, such as trauma, mortality, and infinity. Bronfen's insights make for a lively, innovative work sure to interest readers across the fields of art and literature, feminism, and psychology. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Knotted Subject

Knotted Subject
Author: BRONFEN
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 1997-12-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780719047145

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Critical Dialogues

Critical Dialogues
Author: Isobel Armstrong
Publisher: Gunter Narr Verlag
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1995
Genre: English literature
ISBN: 9783823341437

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The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Fiction

The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Author: E. König
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2014-05-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1137382023

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The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Fiction explores how the figure of the orphan was shaped by changing social and historical circumstances. Analysing sixteen major novels from Defoe to Austen, this original study explains the undiminished popularity of literary orphans and reveals their key role in the construction of gendered subjectivity.

Engendering Ireland

Engendering Ireland
Author: Rebecca Barr
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2015-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443883077

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Engendering Ireland is a collection of ten essays showcasing the importance of gender in a variety of disciplines. These essays interrogate gender as a concept which encompasses both masculinity and femininity, and which permeates history and literature, culture and society in the modern period. The collection includes historical research which situates Irish women workers within an international economic context; textual analysis which sheds light on the effects of modernity on the home and rising female expectations in the post-war era; the rediscovery of significant Irish women modernists such as Mary Devenport O’Neill; and changing representations of masculinity, race, ethnicity and interculturalism in modern Irish theatre. Each of these ten essays provides a thought-provoking picture of the complex and hitherto unrecognised roles gender has played in Ireland over the last century. While each of these chapters offers a fresh perspective on familiar themes in Irish gender studies, they also illustrate the importance and relevance of gender studies to contemporary debates in Irish society.

Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia

Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia
Author: Ewa Mazierska
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1474405150

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Bringing together a range of theoretical and critical approaches, this edited collection is the first book to examine representations of the body in Eastern European and Russian cinema after the Second World War. Drawing on the history of the region, as well as Western and Eastern scholarship on the body, the book focuses on three areas: the traumatized body, the body as a site of erotic pleasure, and the relationship between the body and history. Critically dissecting the different ideological and aesthetic ways human bodies are framed, The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia also demonstrates how bodily discourses oscillate between complicity and subversion, and how they shaped individuals and societies both during and after the period of state socialism.

Body Matters

Body Matters
Author: Avril Horner
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2000
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780719054693

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Why do bodies matter? Body Matters is a collection of essays by feminists working in literary and cultural studies which addresses this question from a range of theoretical perspectives.

Nobel Universal Graphical Language

Nobel Universal Graphical Language
Author: Milan Randic
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2010-05-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1453518185

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Nobel is a pictographic language based on some 120 basic signs and many arrows of different shape that are mutually combined. It is named after Alfred Nobel (18331896), Swedish chemist and industrialist, inventor of dynamite, who left most of his fortune to a foundation that annually gives awards to individuals whose work is characterized as greatest benefit to mankind, known as Nobel Prizes. Besides the awards for sciences and literature significantly, Alfred Nobel included, among others, a prize for peace (that besides individuals, also organizations may obtain). Although it would be utopian to believe that human conflicts could be avoided if communication tools would improve, the emergence of universal languages certainly cannot make the situation worse! Universal languages are a communication tool, which makes it possible for people of no common language to communicate. They are graphic, but they should be distinguished from picture writings, which only passively offer information on some event or give messages. Universal languages have more similarity with the sign languages that are used for people who lost hearing or the sign language of American Plains Indians, who spoke different languages and could communicate by sign language that they developed. However, written language has some advantages over hand sign languages in that one can communicate at a great distance, particularly today in the age of fax and computer communications, and that one can leave messages for posterity. This is not the place to argue for or against the promise of written sign languages. Graphic (written) sign languages exist today, and the best known are Chinese characters used in China and Japan. The problem with Chinese characters is that there are too many characters and it is difficult to learn so many. It takes years for children in China and Japan to learn so many different characters, and the task would be even harder for grown people to learn if they have not done this when young. Nobel is designed to remove this difficulty and is based on the following requirements: 1. SMALL NUMBER OF BASIC SIGNS 2. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO RECOGNIZE 3. SIGNS SHOULD BE EASY TO REPRODUCE 4. COMBINATIONS LIMITED TO THREE SIGNS 5. COMPLEMENTARY We have already mentioned that Nobel uses about 120 basic signs, which can be viewed as a small number, particularly in view of over 100 signs of Nobel that are so obvious that they can be easily absorbed. The other requirements are also very important. There are many signs that can be easily recognized, but in order to be acceptable for Nobel, they also need to be easily reproduced, because that will facilitate communication. Also, when making combinations of signs, one has to make some restriction in order to maintain clarity, so we decided to have no more than three signs combined into single word. Finally, the last requirement, that of complementarities, needs some explanation. Besides having signs that one can easily recognize and easily draw, one needs some structure to be embedded into composition of signs that facilitates one to remember and learn signs easily. We refer to this structure as complementary or, broadly speaking, associational, and what it implies is that words and objects that are related should have related signs. Thus, for example, pairs of words like man-woman, cat-dog, coffee-tea, good-bad, love-hate, etc., should have signs that are in some opposition, while words like smoke-flame-fire, tree-wood-forest, water-sea-ocean, good-better-best should have signs that are in competition. With this in mind when one sees and learns the basic signs, the meaning of many combinations of signs can be in advance anticipated. This helps one to learn Nobel rather fast; not months, not weeks, perhaps not even days, but a couple of hours may suffice that one may learn hundreds and hundreds of words. In this respect, Nobel may be unique among languages written, spoken of,

Routledge Library Editions: Criminology

Routledge Library Editions: Criminology
Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1660
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429643322

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Reissuing seven works originally published between 1940 and 1997, this collection spans the time in which Criminology has been a recognised academic discipline. It offers a set of excellent works on diverse aspects of the field from nineteenth century criminality to burglary in the 1980s. The set includes a Dictionary and several works looking at the social and psychological side of crime.

Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings

Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings
Author: Griselda Pollock
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2005-08-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134768508

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Great collection from for top feminist art historians and thinkers Includes Griselda Pollock and Mieke Bal International perspective focusing on gender and race