Wallace-Hadrill's reading of spatial hierarchy does not address the representation of gender in mythological paintings. However, a rough survey indicates that the majority are erotic and/or violent. Erotic depictions common on household items suggest that the Romans were sensitive to this content; the likely use of pattern books in selecting programs for domestic decoration suggests a synoptic awareness of it. This points to the applicability of contemporary theories of representation and power, and Mulvey's model of visual pleasure in narrative film (...) is adapted for this paper. According to Mulvey, film offers two pleasures: scopophilia, which presents the woman as aesthetic-erotic fragments, suggesting but concealing her difference ; sadistic voyeurism, which assumes difference and then investigates, punishes, or forgives it. Both are illustrated in paintings of Ariadne abandoned and rediscovered, and in other paintings which portray either the gaze or erotic violence . While these paintings seem to confirm in relation to gender what the rest of the house says about class and status, some paintings confuse the issue. The male body is often fetishized , and attacked ; gender and role are sometimes deliberately ambiguous . Such transgressions of the boundaries of the male body are not a part of Mulvey's theory, and they suggest the use of gender to complicate as well as confirm the class/status message of the house; two different negotiations of this use are found in the House of the Vettii and the House of the Ara Maxima. One can compare reversals and reassertions of gender, class and status in other evidence, in literature, pantomime and the games. (shrink)

The paper argues that the act of looking, as defined between the story of Gyges, Candaules, and the offended queen and the story of Solon's visit to Lydia, functions in the first book of Herodotus, and perhaps also elsewhere throughout the Inquiry, as a metaphor for the relation of the histôr to the object of his investigation. Further, by a careful comparison of the Gyges story in Herodotus with the queen's own narration in the enigmatic "Gyges Tragedy" , we can (...) define a Herodotean psychology of spectation that bears a striking resemblance to the specifically tragic psychology manifest in the fragment. Herodotus positions his readers, the paper argues, in the place of Gyges, forcing them to look-in their imaginations-on what does not belong to them, just as the theatai in the Theater of Dionysus must look in imagination on the scene described by the queen. While the tragic audience is protected from the fate of Candaules and of Gyges' descendant Croesus by the constitutive blindness of tragedy that prevents the spectators from seeing what happens in the mukhos, Herodotus' audience must seek some other reassurance that they will not face the voyeur's penalty. This paper finally argues that Solon's theôria, with its crucial purpose of establishing the nomoi of Athens and its crucial ethic of looking not at the object of desire but at the end, installs in Herodotus' historiê the psychology of tragedy: to look desiringly is to lose, but to look inquiringly is to learn. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of art to recreate violent mythological landscapes in Roman domestic ensembles. Focusing on the Niobids found in two imperial horti it argues that the combination of sculpture and landscape exerted a powerful imaginative effect over ancient viewers, drawing them into the recreated mythological world. Mythological landscape paintings also offered a view out onto a mythological realm, fostering the illusion of direct access to the spaces of myth. However, these fantasy landscapes need to be seen in (...) the light of the associations which natural landscapes held in the Roman imagination. Recreations of mythological landscapes in domestic art express the desire to incorporate the natural world into the domestic sphere but through the presence of violent events they also highlight the inherent powers of those landscapes and the gods who frequent them. They speak to a yearning to immerse oneself in myth and the natural realm, yet also warn of the perils of such a desire. (shrink)

This essay discusses the place of popular culture, especially visual representation, in theories of female subjectivity and examines two recent works on women and popular culture as representative of two primary critical and methodological approaches to the female subject. The essay considers the limitations and implications of both qualitative communication research and text-based feminist criticism and the need to construct a dialogue between them.

Elegies 1.19 and 2.15 combine the motifs of loss, desire, and writing in complex ways. In each poem, the speaker's attempt to recapture the past-to possess his beloved by writing about her-leads him to confront the imperatives of time and the limits of his own poetic art. Furthermore, because Cynthia is so closely identified with Propertius' project as an elegiac poet, she becomes a focus of literary as well as erotic unease. In poem 1.19, the narrator's anxiety about Cynthia's fidelity (...) discloses a deeper anxiety about the reception of his poetry, and about the ability of a text to represent its author faithfully once it enters the public domain. In contrast to 1.19, elegy 2.15 seems initially to resist the prospect of change and loss. In the first ten lines of the poem, the narrator affirms a kind of mastery over time and his beloved, re-creating a scene of pleasure from the past, and presenting Cynthia's unclothed body as the object of his and the reader's amorous gaze. Yet Cynthia's active role in the scene-the evidence of "her" desire-leads to the dissolution of the amatory tableau. Cynthia brings elements of narrative into the erotic spectacle created by the poet-lover; as in poem 1.19, she is associated with forces which threaten the text's stability or closure. In both elegies, however, the poet's fictive encounters with loss are productive as well as unsettling. Such fictions permit him to view both love affair and poetic project retrospectively, and to evaluate their significance. They give expression to literary anxieties, but also allow these anxieties to be explored and partially mastered. Finally, they offer a way of thinking about the limits of love, of representation, and of a writer's control over his text. (shrink)

Recent years have seen psychoanalysis move out of the clinical area into the arena of empirical social research. This article uses a case study from a psychoanalytically informed media research project to explore conceptual, ethical, and methodological implications in research design in the light of this shift. The ideas of unconscious communication between interviewer and interviewee, the role of the researcher's subjectivity, and the impact of unconscious defences on the generation and interpretation of data are explored. In addition the free (...) association narrative interviewing (FANI) method is evaluated. (shrink)

The concept of `the granny' is not uncommon in British media texts, in a range of stereotyped representations of older women and in (sometimes playful, sometimes serious) invocations of the grandmother role. `Granny parties' are one genre of recreational social event where young people dress up as grannies. In this paper I bring together data from the media and from an ethnographic study of granny parties in order to assess the age-political and ideological significance of `granny' in these very different (...) contexts. In both cases, representations and performances prove to be fashioned dialectically, in relation to normative assumptions about grannies as conservative, passive and out-dated characters. Despite the ludic frames of many representations, it isargued that the granny concept recycles restrictive ideological values for gendered ageing. (shrink)

Gender, race, and sexuality are not just identities; they are also systems of social organization – i.e., systems of privilege and oppression. This article addresses two main ways privilege and oppression (e.g., racism, misogyny, heteronormativity) are relevant topics in and for philosophical aesthetics: (i) the role of the aesthetic in privilege and oppression, and (ii) the role of philosophical aesthetics, as a discipline and a body of texts, in constructing and naturalizing relations of privilege and oppression (i.e., white heteropatriarchy). The (...) first part addresses how systems of privilege and oppression use the aesthetic. I will discuss various ways race, gender, and sexuality, as both embodied identities and broader social institutions, work with and through “the aesthetic”. The second part addresses racism and (hetero) sexism in the discipline of aesthetics. Both in its history and its present practice aesthetics’apparent neutrality on questions of privilege and oppression is actually evidence of its investment in systems of privilege and oppression. (shrink)

Because music communicates extra-propositionally, philosophers often use musical concepts and metaphors to discuss implicit and/or affective knowledges. Music is a productive means to philosophically analyze affect, but only when these analyses are grounded in rigorous studies of actual musical works and practices. When we don’t ground our study of music in musical practices, works, and theories, “music” just becomes a mirror of whatever assumptions and biases we already have. I show how the overly-abstract treatment of music and sound in Jean-Luc (...) Nancy’s Listening leads to significant philosophical and political problems. By following his musical metaphors all the way through, I show how his theory of listening naturalizes maleness/masculinity, and, like liberal multiculturalism, values “difference” only as a way to re-center whiteness and patriarchy. As an alternative, I use R&B/electropop singer Kelis’s 2010 single “Acapella” (sic) to develop an alternative account of music, affect, and the politics of difference. (shrink)

Are horror films immoral? Gianluca Di Muzio argues that horror films of a certain kind are immoral because they undermine the reactive attitudes that are responsible for human agents being disposed to respond compassionately to instances of victimization. I begin with this argument as one instance of what I call the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA), and I argue that Di Muzio’s attempt to identify what is morally suspect about horror films must be revised to provide the most persuasive interpretation (...) of the ARA. I then argue that the ARA provides a compelling standard for evaluating the moral permissibility of creating and viewing horror films, yet I note that it is an exceedingly difficult practical task evaluating the risk that these films create for our reactive attitudes. My conclusion is that the ARA provides a useful way or orienting ourselves to the complicated details of evaluating the moral status of horror films. (shrink)

This paper considers some problems with text-centered psychoanalytic and semiotic approaches to film that have dominated feminist film criticism, and develops an alternative contextual approach. I claim that a contextual approach should explore the interaction of film texts with viewers' culturally formed sensibilities and should attempt to render visible the plurality of meaning in art. I argue that the latter approach will allow us to see the virtues of some classical Hollywood films that the former approach has overlooked, and I (...) demonstrate this thesis with an analysis of the film Christopher Strong. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the implications of the performative aspects of Julia Kristeva 's Powers of Horror by situating this work in the context of similar aspects of her previous work. This construction and its relationship to abjection are integral components of Kristeva 's notion of practice and as such are fundamental to her critique of Hegel and Freud.

Fifteen years after the first translations of Anglo-American feminist film theories, this gender approach is finding it hard to gain acceptance in France. The main reason is the elitist view of cinema d’auteur that is still prevalent in academic circles, where the art is seen as a genius’s creation outside social determinations in general and gender relations in particular. However, under the influence of historians and sociologists, who dominate gender research in France, French work on film privileges a historical and (...) sociocultural approach, whereas American research is dominated by psychoanalytical approaches. French gender analyses privilege the expression of dominant relations but also of contradictions at work in the films, whether popular or by an auteur-e, as well as in the stars’ image or in tv fiction. Finally some research explores the changes brought about by the emergence of female film-makers on the French scene. (shrink)

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for (...) social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It used to be said that shame culture waned in early modernity, but there is a growing body of historiography on the vital role that recognition and the opinion of others continued to play. Honour mattered; for some it was the mark and the maker of your true self. While philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Rousseau disagreed in their evaluations of the phenomenon, they were united in thinking that the great engine of recognition whirred like furious (...) clockwork through human society. When one listens to voices from the margins of power, however, to formerly enslaved black women and men, and white women, one hears a different story – that the machine is broken. I argue that, albeit from incomparable positions, they articulate a theory of misrecognition in the face of systematic power. Sensitive to the entanglements of epistemology and naturalised inequality, they offer a politics of vision that deconstructs the punitive lenses of gender and race which render people invisible and misunderstood, and in so doing they try to write themselves into view. They offer an account of the mysterious intractability of hegemonic ways of seeing that poses a challenge to both the putatively laissez-faire economy of recognition of their enlightened contemporaries, and to the emancipatory teleology of modern recognition theorists. (shrink)

This article proposes to read John Banville’s The Book of Evidence, a crime story narrated from the protagonist’s first-person gaze, from a Lacanian perspective by referring to his mirror stage theory. As an extension of testimonial literature, the novel is deemed to be a narrative of introspective self-examination, thus introducing a creation of “the self” paralleling the text. The protagonist’s mnemonic narrative is accompanied by the idea of an alternative world of not only self-expression but also self-depiction and presentation, as (...) in Lacan’s Imaginary. This self-creation, however, may not be as innocent as it seems. The reason for this is that although the mirror phase involves a transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, it presupposes the role of the other, biologically (m)other, in order to accustom the subject to the law of society. However, just because the protagonist, Freddie, mentions his mother’s presence as “nothing,” there is no soothing force for his adaptation to societal laws. Here, Freddie is subject to what Lacan sees as a minor prototype who lives in a society and yet is attached to his own rules, which is the first principle of male violence associated with this novel. Therefore, this article also tries to find answers for Freddie’s performance of male violence within the axis of psychoanalytic postulations elaborated on Lacan’s identity theory. (shrink)

The following Introduction briefly traces, albeit in jarring cuts, the evolution of caste question and its relationship with Indian cinema. It also tries to point out some aspects of Indian film theory, its lacunae and hopes that some of the questions raised here may give rise to future works by other (better) theorists. Pre-Independence cinema in India rarely addressed caste question, and if it did, then it was through an abstract global humanist lens. This tendency to address caste through a (...) hollow and empty shell of a theoretical model unfortunately has stuck around even in these times, and only found newer ways to reinvent itself in Neoliberal times. To understand the reason of Indian cinema’s lack of addressing caste more directly and pointedly, it has to be seen as part of a historical process. Only then can we see the history of ideology that is “outside of itself”, that is, in the material conditions that made possible Indian caste-society as well as its cine-culture. It also tries to raise questions about the film form, and its many possibilities of experimentation with the caste question (i.e. both in ideological and experiential possibilities). Lastly, it introduces some of the key works in this issue. Of course, with the hope that the readers will forgive and give respite to the many lacuna of the issue, as well as the Editor himself. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Vallée’s HBO miniseries, Sharp Objects (2018), follows Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) as she returns to her childhood home in Wind Gap, Missouri, to investigate the murders of two young girls. This article explores a specific type of object related to the systems of violence that reveal themselves over the course of the miniseries: ivory tiles. Here, the ivory tiles affixed to the floor of Camille’s mother’s, Adora Crellin’s (Patricia Clarkson), master bedroom both reveal and influence sinister behaviours of the (...) household’s women. In employing concepts inspired from Thing Theory and Object-Oriented Ontology, as well as critical theory, this article examines how the ivory tiles possess multilayered excesses that constitute an object’s thingness. The foremost excess that informs the ivory tiles’ thingness, I contend, is its relationship to white supremacy. It is not only the tiles’ material history that informs its relationship to white supremacy, but how, through outlining the forms of agency things possess under Thing Theory, the tiles are able to reveal the forms of violence that are structured within the domestic sphere of the Crellin home. A product of violence, the ivory tiles as things speak back to the design of white supremacy. (shrink)

Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1952) was a point of reference for filmmakers searching new ways of filmmaking during the 1960s and 1970s because it anticipated the characteristic reflexivity of cinematic modernity because of the protagonist’s look at the camera. By unexpectedly bursting into the narrative, this gaze becomes a self-conscious strategy aimed at disarticulating not only the cinematic fiction, but also Monika’s fiction, which has symbolically appropriated the imaginary world projected by cinema.

In this article, it will be concluded that the major automotive racing league, Formula 1, is failing in its efforts to be a truly unisex sport. In the current Formula 1 series, there are no female drivers. Although women have never been officially prohibited from competing in Formula 1, there have been fewer than 10 female drivers since its inception. This inquiry focuses on why women drivers have been prevented from securing professional driving positions in Formula 1 and racing on (...) equal terms with men. I argue that there are five major barriers which perpetuate women’s exclusion from this league: historical and current attitudes, assumed physical and mental inferiority, sexualisation, money, and representation and visibility. In this cultural examination, I demonstrate that the situation for women in Formula 1 appears to be bleaker than in other sports that are making progress in their quest for gender equality. However, I also suggest that, despite ethical issues, W Series – a new, women-only, single-seater car racing championship – could potentially motivates positive change for women’s car racing by promoting gender equity through a new league which enables women to improve themselves in a protected category. This article also considers the impact of sex in Formula 1, which is pertinent to the discussion surrounding alleged biological differences. The discussion employs Simone de Beauvoir’s conceptualisation of ‘Otherness’, as well as Helmut Pflugfelder’s account of female embodiment in motorsport. The overall findings are that more focused research is required for gender issues in Formula 1 to be accurately addressed. (shrink)

A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance is an e-book exploring contemporary ideas and themes in the research and practice of dance. It contains 23 chapters written by researchers at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, and is divided into six sections: Spaces of Practice, Philosophy, Communities, Politics, Data and Thinking, and Epistemology.

The aim of this article is to explore how the differences between Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze delineate two different interpretations of the politics of found footage cinema. To do so, the notion of cinematic interval is crucial. While Debord's practice of détournement presupposes a Hegelian-inspired notion of interval that allows for self-awareness to be achieved, Deleuze puts forth a Bergsonian concept of interval that functions as a condition of possibility for creating an ‘image of movement in itself’. To explore (...) these two interpretations, this article uses Guy Debord's 1973 film The Society of the Spectacle as a case study. By focusing on this specific object, the two interpretations of the cinematic interval make it possible to compare two alternative ways of dealing with the representability – or unrepresentability – of capital, and hence to sketch two alternative views on the politics of found footage film practices. (shrink)

The first issue this essay examines is the articulation of the cinema of the body, the feminine gestus, and the ‘political cinema’, which begins with the philosophical shout, ‘Give me a body, then!’ and ends with the ‘Third World Cinema’ as a cinema of memory. How is this Deleuzian concept in tension with the one proposed here of ‘missing body’? The second issue concerns the importance of the body for theory and practice within feminist film theory and queer theory. The (...) question of the body is introduced in-between these two lines in the context of a series of Latin American documentaries. The final problem is then how to see and show a body that is missing, like an outside of the body image, and of a certain regime of the visible and the audible that tends to be fixed in topics by the production of technologies of memory. (shrink)

The essay reads as a moment of alliance – a moment of reading of two disparate things together. The event of alliance remains inspired by Gilles Deleuze's theorisations of becoming. This marks the coming together of unrelated things – one into the fold of another – without being subordinated in the process. It reads an anime, Kiki's Delivery Service, with Deleuze and Guattari's writings on ‘the girl’ – where the girl represented as ‘real’ in a fantasy meets the girl written (...) as a metaphor in a theoretical intervention. This inflicts a sense of violence, of abstraction, to both the figures of ‘girl’. On the one hand, Miyazaki's work, removed from the discourse of anime, is placed under a feminist scrutiny, while on the other hand, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the ‘girl’, extracted from the logic of the original texts, is reinserted into feminist renditions. The two readings are coordinated by a specific intention. This is to imagine the feminist potential of the ‘girl’. Occasionally the two works appear to talk to each other, yet sometimes they stand incommensurable. The texts animate each other without being subsumed by each other – inhabiting and following the movements to trace the other as fields of singularities which cannot be reduced to fixed identities or parallels. This transversal act of reading does not aim at coercing the Deleuzian notion of the girl upon Kiki, but rather looks forward to the conversations generated between the two narratives. (shrink)

Figuring Naipaul deals with two issues: the writings of the Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul and the problematic of postcolonial self-representation. In the literary world and among the reading public Naipaul has gained prominence and notoriety in the last two decades. But the critical response to his work has been essentially from what I call the 'mainstream' perspective. In my first Chapter (Part I) I attempt to map various critical trajectories that emerged from the mainstream perspective in the context of Naipaul criticism. (...) In order to contest the tacit assumptions of the mainstream discourse and to figure the representation of the postcolonial world in Naipaul's work I elaborate the patterns in which they both repeat and suggest a certain kind of collusion between the underlying assumptions of the two discourses (Naipaul's own and that of the mainstream criticism). The body of the thesis (Part II), consisting of eight chapters, is largely devoted to a detailed discussion of various ways in which what I call the Naipaul text constructs the postcolonial situation. This discussion elaborates certain recurring ruses and tropes I locate in the Naipaul text. My argument is that the ruses and tropes the text deploys in figuring the subject of the postcolonial world are deeply problematical in that they implicate the text in the hegemonic grand narrative of imperialism. The operation of these ruses and the pattern they constitute in the text are discussed in each Chapter of Part II. The ruses that the text depends on are mainly two: narrative deferral and the ruse of the gaze. The narrative movement of the Naipaul text, as I will show, drawing on the ruses of deferral and the gaze, has no less an aim than that of the project of self-consolidation. That is, these ruses along with tropes of 'centre', 'origin' and 'wholeness' proclaim in Naipaul's writing a certain desire for self-consolidation and self-unification. Between the desire to 'house the subject' and the celebration of a "home" Naipaul's project suspends the subject of the postcolonial world; these aspects are analysed in Chapters Two and Eight of my thesis respectively. But between these two moments, aspects of the text I attempt to unravel, the Naipaul text scapegoats the postcolonial condition. This scapegoating, I will argue, is a necessary condition for the realisation, for Naipaul, of the project of self-consolidation. This operation of the text is figured in the postcolonial dispatches Naipaul constructs. These dispatches, as I read them from Chapters Three to Seven, shape the postcolonial world in the Naipaul text. Each Chapter focuses upon specific works or groups of works by Naipaul. My analysis also engages with various sources the text relies on to prepare its dispatches. Chapter Nine is basically a critique of Naipaul's conception of 'history'; this critique undertakes to analyse Naipaul's utterances about history in general and his historical narrative, The Loss of El Dorado, in specific. My attempt is to show how various narratives of the Naipaul text represent the subject of the postcolonial world. In the process of unravelling the text I attempt to show how one can dislocate a pattern apparent in a text and celebrated by established opinion. I argue that such dislocations are important for conceiving interventionary critical strategies in the postcolonial situation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If phenomenology is a research methodology uniquely positioned to enable us to learn from others, I aim to demonstrate the idea that cinema is a privileged site from which to investigate the notion of virtuality (sight and reality), even in an age where vision’s predominance is waning. In order to do so, I consider the painfully disruptive mother-daughter relationship found cross-culturally and discourse-analytically in contemporary patriarchal societies. This bond is arguably of central concern to feminists (and women in general) (...) since previous research has found that the fractious nature of this dynamic points to a very specific psychological deformation of the female psyche under conditions of sexist oppression. The views of French psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva and other feminist contributors to the debate on this psychological construct are considered. The possibility of a cultural remedy inspired by a secularised trend of Chinese Buddhism in post-Maoist China, a society very different from that of the West, is investigated. This will involve the analysis of the film Curse of the Golden Flower (Chinese Mandarin soundtrack and English subtitles). I subsequently explore whether or not a valuable model for the compromised mother/daughter relationship is available within the context of the notion of a “slave economy” in the comparatively healthier mother/son relationship of (contemporary) Han Chinese culture. By means of cross-cultural analysis as research tool, this article finds confirmation for the proposition of a positive mother/daughter dynamic in the French novelist Colette’s relationship with her mother, Sido. In conclusion, I find that cinema (as an art form serving the eye, i.e. virtuality) is particularly well suited as a site to investigate psychological phenomena by way of interpretative phenomenology as a research methodology, even as vision – as the human sense of choice – has begun to wane amid a global crisis in masculinity. (shrink)

This article off ers a pioneering ecofeminist study of Viktor Ivchenko’s Lisova pisnia and Yurii Illienko’s Lisova pisnia. Mavka, two Soviet Ukrainian film adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s eponymous fairy-drama. It focuses on the interrelated depiction of gender and nature along with the drama’s ideological and material aspects: androcentrism and deforestation. The production of both fi lms coincides with, and arguably refl ects, what Marko Pavlyshyn describes as “the emergence of a conservationist consciousness” in the USSR in the 1960s. The article’s (...) goal is therefore twofold – to bring new ecofeminist insights into Ukrainian fi lm studies and to raise eco-awareness about the Volyn Polissia, which provides the setting for Ukrainka’s drama and its adaptations, and currently faces environmental devastation from illegal amber mining. (shrink)

Images share a common feature with all phenomena of imagination, since they make us aware of what is not present or what is fictional and not existent at all. From this perspective, the philosophical approach of Kendall Lewis Walton—born in 1939 and active since the 1960s at the University of Michigan—is perhaps one of the most notable contributions to image theory. Walton is an authoritative figure within the tradition of analytical aesthetics. His contributions have had a considerable influence on a (...) broad range of topics, such as the role of categories in the understanding of the arts (Walton, “Categories of Art”. Philosophical Review, 79(3): 334–367, 1970), the ambiguous nature of emotions in the experience of fictional stories (Walton, “Fearing Fictions”. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(1): 5–25, 1978), the transparency of photographic images compared to other depictions (Walton, “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism”. Noûs, 18(1): 67–72, 1984) and, above all, the development of a general theory of fiction as imaginative activity. His 1990 book Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts collects and re-elaborates articles Walton published on the subject since the 1970s. Though he does not attempt to give a definitive answer for what imagination is, Walton thoroughly investigates its role in all cases of representational works, describing depictions as a specific case of “make-believe” activity: images, in short, are specific props of a visual and perceptual “make-believe” game. (shrink)

It should have become clear by now that the following discussion will be theoretical in perspective. Historical studies, like any other form of science, cannot be conducted without a theoretical framework. Sometimes, we are unaware of the distinctions we draw before we search for material, select and interpret it; some even think that we should just let the sources speak for themselves. Nevertheless, no material can speak for itself: it can only answer to questions we ask. And these questions we (...) ask are dependent on our present preconceptions of bygone societies and their historical development; as every hermeneutic endeavour, historical studies begins with a Vorurteil (prejudice). Many studies of the eighteenth-century public sphere have started out from those conceptions outlined by Habermas; as mentioned above, most of these studies found fault in Habermas's description of the eighteenth century and revealed his preconception as a prejudice. However, by exposing Habermas's approach as ideological, it seemed easy to claim a common-sense, bias-free position for oneself. I do not think such a position is possible: the hermeneutic Vorurteil can never be overcome entirely; it can only be adequately reflected and adjusted. Rather than claiming to work without all preconceptions, one should, I think, try to explicate one's theoretical framework as precisely as possible. If there really are too many findings that cannot be integrated into Habermas's model, one should look for a new model that might be better suited to give meaning to new historical evidence. It is such a new theoretical framework that I want to propose here. In order to do so, a meticulously detailed examination of Habermas's framework is necessary to find out which theoretical decisions led to the shortcomings of his approach. Following this re-examination, I will try to construct a new framework that avoids Habermas's shortcomings. Of course, this new theoretical framework will only be as good as the extent to which it is able to integrate historical evidence and extricate meaningful answers from these sources. Unfortunately, however, there is not enough space here to put the new framework to the test - that will have to be done elsewhere. (shrink)

From 2013 to 2017, Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson was the star vehicle in four unrelated science fiction films that saw her portray a posthuman female enabled by artificially intelligent technology. As such technologies become ever more ubiquitous in the world, so too are the burgeoning discourses around posthumanism and artificial intelligence, which are predominantly disseminated to non-specialists through science fiction and journalistic media. These discourses hold the power to influence our perceptions of incoming technological advancements. Therefore, it is important to (...) gain an interdisciplinary understanding of these discourses and their intersections in order to contribute to the cultivation of a general population that is technologically literate and empowered, as well as foster productive dialogues between specialists from within and across the sciences and humanities fields. The media’s configuration of Scarlett Johansson as an ‘exceptional’ woman, often by drawing upon the lexicon of science fiction, has initiated underlying connections between the actor and posthuman figures within the genre, contributing to her perceived suitability for such roles. Despite appearing to be the ‘ideal’ candidate for posthuman female roles, Johansson’s repeated casting poses several problematic implications, particularly when taken into consideration through a feminist lens. Not only does it contribute to an agenda that establishes improbable conceptions of how artificial, posthuman entities should look and behave, but it also perpetuates retrograde notions of gender roles. (shrink)

In this thesis I look at possible implications of the philosophical use of sight metaphors as rendered visible in the philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Through Murdoch’s reading of Plato, and together with the perspectives added by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul de Man, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Mats Persson, I argue that some contemporary philosophy as shaped by science and logic might be partially blind to essential aspects of human life and human awareness. I show that this partial blindness becomes visible in an (...) inability to acknowledge and understand the philosophical importance of that which cannot be seen from a distance, and I argue that this may be due to a modern understanding of clarity. I claim that this understanding of clarity essentially differs from that of Plato and that it becomes particularly evident in Plato’s reliance on metaphors and allegories, not as unclear and obfuscating aspects to be untangled, but as depicting essential dimensions of the inexhaustible complexity of life. I finally argue that it is vital to recover and to philosophically consider these obscurer aspects if philosophy is to stay relevant to actual human beings living in the muddle that is everyday life. (shrink)

Human interactions with nature reveal contradictions and misunderstandings based upon anthropocentric colonising behaviours. Cultural forms such as film and media have played a key role in creating and perpetuating negative affect towards nonhuman species, particularly apex species, shark, crocodile, bear, and snake. From early Hollywood films through to contemporary online series, these majestic species have been subjected to vilification and denigration onscreen, resulting in speciesism, subjugation and colonisation of animals, whilst simultaneously extending human ‘authority’ over nature and perpetuating fear – (...) particularly of apex species. A range of hybrid genre textual examples from screen and media, from fictional and factual film and television will illustrate these paradigms. An ongoing issue is the anthropomorphising of species onscreen. Drawing upon extensive work since 2009 with international classifications systems, this paper will also examine the positionality of the American Humane Association in monitoring the role and treatment of ‘animal actors’ in film; developing a compelling empirical case for the necessity for reform in classifications systems, expanding classification Codes to include non-anthropocentric perspectives and the rights of nature with regard to nonhuman actors in public awareness. The necessity for a nuanced understanding of ontological damage to species is currently not a classifiable theme under any existing classification systems. An outcome of this article is the proposed development and implementation of a new classification symbol designated as ‘Animal Shield’. This interdisciplinary article will be presented from the perspectives of an environmental ecologist and cultural film studies scholarship, building upon research into decolonising nature. (shrink)

Research on pornography has distinguished between its violent and nonviolent forms. Analyses of the content of violent pornography have largely focused on readily available soft-core images in adult films and magazines. However, current research has not adequately addressed pornography on the Internet. We show that discussions about violent pornography are incomplete without an understanding of the Internet as a unique and rapidly expanding medium for disseminating images of sexual violence against women. This article attempts to fill that gap by examining (...) violent pornography using a sample of 31 free Internet sites. Each site was analyzed for its portrayal of women victims, male perpetrators, and its story of rape. Please be advised that the analysis contains graphic descriptions of violence toward women found on Internet rape sites. (shrink)

This article draws on Foucault's concept of the exercise of power and Gramsci's concept of hegemony to examine how women used cosmetic surgery to exercise power over their bodies and lives. The analysis is rooted in two feminist perspectives on cosmetic surgery. The first argues that women who elect to have their bodies surgically altered are victims of false consciousness whose bodies are disciplined by the hegemonic male gaze. The second asserts that women who undergo elective cosmetic surgery exercise free (...) choice in controlling their bodies and lives. By examining sites wherein power is exercised by and over women, the authors argue for a synthesis of these two perspectives. They find that the women achieved greater power and control over their bodies and lives when they embodied hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty. Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group. (shrink)

How do adolescent girls envision the world of work and their potential place in it? This article considers teen magazines as a possible source for girls’ perceptions about the work world, including their own career futures. The author explores the occupational landscape embedded with in Seventeen magazinein 1992 in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The labor market in Seventeen-land is heavily skewed toward professional occupations, particularly in the entertainment industry. A close reading of the text reveals four primary messages about (...) the world of work: Entertainment careers are a viable and prestigious option, men are the norm as workers, men hold the power, and fashion modeling is the pinnacle of “women’s work. ” The author argues that Seventeen may be promulgating a distinct set of what Collins called “controlling images” directed at predominantly white girls. The findings suggest gender researchers should attend to the connection between the mass media and girl culture. They also underscore the importance of teaching media literacy. (shrink)

In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through portrayals of men gazing desirously at women's bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first is (...) seemingly at odds with theories that claim that heterosexuality's mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and racialized. (shrink)

This article examines the contradictions inherent in blind women’s appearance management. Based on an anthropological analysis of interviews with 40 blind women in Israel, the article argues that while serving as a valuable tool within stigma management, appearance management operates simultaneously as a site of rigorous discipline of the body in an effort to comply with feminine visual norms, and as a vehicle for the expression and reception of sensory pleasure. It argues for the significant role of blind women’s appearance (...) in negotiating normalcy and rejecting the normative, stigmatizing script written for them as disabled-blind-women. By studying the role of appearance in the lives of women who do not rely on sight as a central mode of perception, the article addresses the complicated position of blind women in visual culture and challenges the traditional ocular focus of the study of feminine identity and gender performance. (shrink)