Old Email Archive
Return to old archive list
digest 2006-04-15 #001.txt
litsci-l-digest Saturday, April 15 2006 Volume 01 : Number
166
In this issue:
SUB 06 Darwin and the Disciplines: Human/Animal Expression in the
Humanities and Sciences
SUB 06 Male Pregnancy, Transformation Theory, Evolution and the
Historical Avant-garde
SUB 06: What Color is Your Proline? Towards a rhetoric of color in
molecular biology
Sub 06 Panel Imagining Living Being
SUB 06: "Girls and Ghosts in the Machine: Technology and the
Human..."
SUB 06 From Communication to Commons-Formation: Coltrane's Cosmic
Model of Rhythmic En-Trane-ment
SUB 06: Techne, Affect: Film, Television, and Other Placebos
(panel)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:06:53 -0400
From: Kara Kendall
Subject: SUB 06 Darwin and the Disciplines: Human/Animal Expression in
the Humanities and Sciences
Below, please find abstracts for a proposed panel entitled "Darwin and
the Disciplines: Human/Animal Expression in the Humanities and
Sciences." This panel will explore the implications of Darwin's theory
of expression (with particular emphasis on his _The Expression of the
Emotions_) for philosophy, physiology, and psychology. Questions or
responses can be directed to klkendal@indiana.edu.
Thank you,
Kara Kendall
Associate Instructor
Department of English
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
*****
Sarah Winter
Assoc. Professor, English, University of Connecticut, Storrs
sarah.winter@uconn.edu
The Physiology of Discourse: Darwin=92s The _Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals and the Nineteenth-Century Demise of Rhetoric
This talk explores the emergence of a Darwinian evolutionary science of
_expression in the context of the histories of rhetoric and
nineteenth-century theories of race. Charles Darwin=92s The _Expression
of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) supersedes a series of
earlier studies of gesture and _expression, including rhetorical
treatises on elocution, manuals of stage acting and physiognomy, and
works of natural philosophy, such as Charles Bell=92s The Anatomy and
Philosophy of _Expression (1806), which defined _expression as an
indication of uniquely human intelligence and divine design, based on
examples from art and comparative physiology. Darwin=92s study explains
facial expressions as a repertoire of automatic responses resulting
from natural selection and shared with animals. While Darwin=92s
argument contradicts the racial differentiation of human forms common
in both aesthetics and physiology by arguing for the universal meaning
of _expression, it also undermines the roles of rhetoric and aesthetics
in defining _expression as a form of discourse. In suggesting that
language is supplemental to instinctive and involuntary modes of
communication, Darwin=92s biology of _expression also subordinates the
humanistic to the scientific disciplines, and participates in the
demise of rhetoric as the practical study of the emotive and gestural
forms of communication.
Keywords: Darwin; _expression; rhetoric; race; aesthetics; language;
physiology
*****
Kara Kendall
Assoc. Instructor, English, Indiana University, Bloomington
klkendal@indiana.edu
Of Mongrels and Men: Levinasian Humanism and Human-Dog Coevolution
A central project of Western humanism has been the establishment of a
concrete distinction between humans and nonhumans. But Darwinian
continuity, coupled with a growing body of scientific knowledge of
nonhuman animals and their capacities, renders any universal
distinction tenuous at best. Recent theories of human/canine
coevolution further problematize the category of the humanist subject.
If, as some studies suggest, the human brain has been literally shaped
by the presence of our canine counterparts, then the concept of the
human as an autonomous subject becomes radically unintelligible.
Emmanuel Levinas grapples with this unintelligibility in his essay,
=93The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights.=94 This paper explores
Levinas=92=
s
struggle to preserve human uniqueness in light of the evident
=93humanity=94 of his canine doppelganger, Bobby. Levinas holds that
the
human alone possesses a face which both articulates and recognizes the
commandment, =93Thou shalt not kill.=94 Nevertheless, he seems tempted
to
grant that the dog, too, has a face. While others have noted
Levinas=92s
struggle to preserve his categorical distinction when =93thinking of
Bobby,=94 I argue that it is precisely the (co)evolutionary intimacy of
humans and dogs which enables the mongrel to so thoroughly confound the
face as an ethical category.
Keywords: Levinas; Darwin; coevolution (human/canine); humanist ethics;
expression of emotions; domestication
*****
Nancy Barta-Smith
Professor, English, Slippery Rock University
nancy.barta-smith@sru.edu
On the Margins of Expression: The human animal divide in Piaget,
Baldwin, and Merleau-Ponty
In a chapter entitled "The Mind of the Animal" in _The Story of the
Mind_, published in 1898, the American psychologist James Mark Baldwin
noted that "the development of the mind in its early stages and in
certain of its directions of progress is revealed most adequately in
the animal" (25). Baldwin outlines progression in animals of forms of
behavior that are similar to behavior in children and that increasingly
take on an expressive character and evolutionary significance. This
same progress from reflex to imitative action is present in Piaget's
descriptions of the prepersonal or presubjective life of the child.
For Piaget deferred imitation marks the movement into the symbolic
since the child refers not to a model she copies in the experiential
world, but to memory and imagination, beginning the movement to
intentional life characterized by language use and understanding of
formal operations. Thus, for both Baldwin and Piaget, the child is
akin to the animal in its initial reliance on instinct, imitation and
the prepersonal. For the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
however, intentional life is already embraced in what Baldwin calls the
animal's "imperfect instincts" and the "general instinct" of imitation.
For Merleau-Ponty according to contemporary interpreters of his work,
the body is not the animal within the human and blind to mind but
already a type of reflexivity. Life as an organic process and the
highest expression of human culture are intertwined. The reflexivity
crucial to reason, language, and culture first arise in the body itself
(220). For Merleau-Ponty "Flesh" is a term that represents this more
fundamental understanding. In fact, Merleau-Ponty's work offers a
response to Darwin's _The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals_
and efforts like Baldwin's to account for gradations in instinct.
Rather than being strictly instrumental, emotional expressions
structure situations. The adaptive or instrumental behaviors that
evolutionary theory is concerned with occur in the context of the
organism's "expressive implication in the world" and evolutionary
theorists ought to attend to the expressive interactions of organisms
rather than seeing animal gestures entirely
in terms of adaptive or vestiges of formerly adaptive behaviors (242).
Keywords: Darwin; Evolution; Instinct; Imitation; Expression of
Emotions;
Flesh; James Mark Baldwin; Jean Piaget; Maurice Merleau-Ponty
*****
Moderator: TBA
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:43:39 -0500
From: Christine Kanz
Subject: SUB 06 Male Pregnancy, Transformation Theory, Evolution and the
Historical Avant-garde
Keywords: Literature, Male Birth Fantasies, Transformation Theory,=20
Lamarck, Futurism, F. T. Marinetti
Paper Title: Male Pregnancy, Transformation Theory, Evolution and the=20
Historical Avantgarde
By Christine Kanz
Early 20th century text, culture, and film are full of male birth=20
fantasies, of men wishing to give birth. =46rom psychoanalysis=92
male=20=
=93pregnancy envy=94 (which is thought of as a parallel to female
=93penis=
=20
envy=94), to texts by authors such as Franz Werfel, Franz Kafka, or=20
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, to Fritz Lang=92s =93Metropolis=94 Robert =
Wiene=92s=20
=93Dr. Caligari,=94 and the work of artists such as Hans Bellmer, Max=20
Beckmann, or Umberto Boccioni; male birth fantasies are a phenomenon
of=20=
mass culture. At the same time male birth fantasies tend to return to=20
older theories of evolution such as the theories of preformation or=20
epigenesis. In my talk I will focus on Jean Baptiste Lamarck=92s=20
transformation theory and its echoes in Marinetti=92s novel =93Mafarka =
the=20
Futurist=94. Although somewhat forgotten, recent research in genetics=20
suggests that there may be some truth to Lamarck=92s theories. Given =
this=20
background Marinetti=92s futurist text too =96 or futurism at large =96
=
once=20
again becomes an important source on the interrelations between
modern=20=
culture and the world of modern science.
Dr. Christine Kanz, Ass. Prof., Dept. of German, University of Bern,=20
Switzerland.
E-mail: christine.kanz@germ.unibe.ch=
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:54:00 -0400
From: "Black, Suzanne H."
Subject: SUB 06: What Color is Your Proline? Towards a rhetoric of color
in molecular biology
Adding to the avalanche of abstracts, I'd like to propose the following
project for SLSA 2006. Perhaps it could share a panel with Isabel
Wallace's submission, which is also about visual coding and art/
molecular biology connections.
Best to everyone,
Suzanne
Suzanne Black
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of English
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907
(765) 496-1647
blacksh@cla.purdue.edu
___________________________
What Color is Your Proline? Towards a rhetoric of color in molecular
biology
Keywords:
Color, molecular biology, science communication
Rhetoricians and philosophers of science display growing interest in
science's visual forms. The scientific photographer Felice Frankel was
elected honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC)
in 2005, and a number of essay collections examine scientific figures
(Pauwels, 2006) and models (de Chadarevian & Hopwood, 2004). So far,
however, this research has paid little attention to the role of color in
scientific communication-a surprising omission, given color's aesthetic
impact and its importance as a perceptual category.=20
One scientific field in which color plays a key, yet little theorized
role, is molecular biology. Journals feature sophisticated and striking
representations of large biological molecules, and genetic engineering
has produced rabbits, fish and frogs carrying green fluorescent
proteins. How might we understand color in such images and animals? Is
it strictly a matter of convention and a tool for differentiation, or
does it carry an argumentative and rhetorical burden?
In this paper, I lay out a brief semiotic and historical trajectory of
chemical representation, drawing on the work of Roald Hoffmann and Eric
Francoeur. I then seek to place it in dialogue with more reflective
discussions of color, such as those of John Gage, and with discussions
of false color imaging in astrophysics.=20
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:33:49 -0400
From: "edcohen@ix.netcom.com"
Subject: Sub 06 Panel Imagining Living Being
Panel submission
Imagining Living Being:
The Politics of Metaphor in Thinking about Organisms (especially Human
Ones)
Keywords: Politics, Metaphor, Life, Medicine, Evolution
1. Pestilence and Political Theology
Eugene Thacker
School of Literature, Communication & Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
Historical narratives of plague and pestilence often bear forth a mytho-
poetic and political function: plague is often represented as an
exceptional
instance that is weaponized by a sovereign diety, usually taken to be a
sign
of divine punishment. The character of these punitive forms, while
divinely
instrumentalized, involves an intervention into the natural order. If,
as
Carl Schmitt argues, the miracle in theology is analogous to the
exception
in politics, then the case of plague-as-punishment presents a conflicted
case, existing of the order of nature and yet totally outside of it.
This
paper will explore the relation between this mytho-poetic and this
political
function of plague and pestilence. Taking up the dialogue on political
theology between Schmitt, Benjamin, and Kantorowicz, this paper will
also
touch upon current programs in 'biodefense' as an ambivalent engagement
with the questions of political theology.
****************************************
2. Dumb Luck Versus Intelligent Design in Origin-of-Life Metaphors
Ira Livingston, Associate Professor
Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
SUNY, Stony Brook
ilivingston@notes.cc.sunysb.edu
This paper explores the logic of several scientific metaphors of the
origin
of life, especially physicist Murray Gell-Mann's account of "frozen
accidents" and chemist A.G. Cairns-Smith's image of "paradoxical
structures." I argue that this logic enacts dialectical contradictions
within current paradigms and thus points the way toward new frameworks.
Between the extreme inadequacies of both "Intelligent Design" and the
scientific response that might as well be called "Dumb Luck" (as in
Daniel
Dennett's assertion that "the designs found in nature are nothing short
of
brilliant, but the process of design that generates them is utterly
lacking
in intelligence of its own"), can scientific theory affirm an
intelligent
universe?
****************************************
3. The Inheritance of Inheritance
Ed Cohen, Associate Professor
Women's and Gender Studies and Comparative Literature
Rutgers University, New Bruswick
edcohen@rutgers.edu
The current vogue for genetic testing among those "seeking ancestry
through DNA"--as the front page of the New York Times recently described
it--raises a number of intriguing questions about the political
inheritance of, and the economic and psychological investments in, the
biological concept of "inheritance." As made evident by the popular
embrace of genetic testing (whether for purposes of personal
identification, property claims, access to resources allocated to
designated ethic and racial groups, citizenship rights, or child custody
and support) the metaphor of genetic "inheritance" takes on a
literalness today which makes evident the political, legal and economic
assumptions upon which it rests. Inheritance was first adopted in the
mid-nineteenth century, most famously in Darwin's Origin of Species, to
describe the continuities of "traits" across generations of individuals
within a species. Prior to this biological incarnation, inheritance had
served exclusively as a political, legal, and economic concept which
defined the temporal disposition of property and position through
kinship rather than biology. The eventual apotheosis of the new
bio-political concept in the strands of human DNA, which now figure as
the vault where this "inheritance" reposes, thoroughly naturalizes its
metaphorical genealogy and thereby conceals its juridico-political
origins. Yet as recent (political) critiques of the dogma of DNA by
Evelyn Fox Keller, Richard Lewontin, Robert Sapolsky, among others
suggest, it might be worth reconsidering the unconscious attributes that
we inherit when we inherit the trope of genetic inheritance--which is
what this paper will do.
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:27:39 -0400
From: "Jaime Weida"
Subject: SUB 06: "Girls and Ghosts in the Machine: Technology and the
Human..."
Name: Jaime Weida
Paper Proposal: Ghosts and Girls in the Machine: Technology and the
Human in
Japanese Visual Popular Culture
My paper will examine how cyborg technology appears in Japanese animated
movies and television series. In Japanese anime, there is a recurring
theme
of the human either being supplanted or enhanced by mechanistic
technology.
Within this genre, how does the human re-define itself? My discussion
will
especially focus on the role of the female cyborg in anime, and the ways
in
which these characters are in dialog with traditional gender roles. I
will
examine the replication of the cyborg as compared to the actual
generative
capacity of the human female, and I will also discuss the issue of
reproduction and replication of the cyborg in conjunction with the
marketing
and production techniques used to distribute and merchandize the actual
DVD??s and associated commodities. Many of the cyborg characters
appearing
in anime are not only female, but highly sexualized, and I will discuss
the
implications of this trend. I will also discuss the evolution of the
cyborg
in anime, from the late 1980??s and 1990??s to the present day, and what
connexion this evolution has with the actual evolution of technology.
Films
and series I will consider include, but are not limited to, the movie
?¨Ghost
in the Shell,?Æ the OVA ?¨Armitage?Æ series and the related movies, as
well as
the television series ?¨Chobits.?Æ
Keywords: cyborgs, anime, feminism, Japan, film studies
Jaime Weida
Ph.D. Student
Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Adjunct Faculty
Borough of Manhattan Community College and Hostos Community College
New York, New York
Email: jcweida@hotmail.com
Please note that while this is a currently being proposed as a
stand-alone
paper I might also be interested in joining a suitable panel.
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:25:17 -0400
From: "Trey Conner"
Subject: SUB 06 From Communication to Commons-Formation: Coltrane's
Cosmic Model of Rhythmic En-Trane-ment
Looking to link up here:
Negative Evolution: AfroFuturisms*
STREAM: Music/Sound/Noise of EBR.com [moderator Trace Reddell]
From Communication to Commons-Formation: Coltrane's Cosmic Model of
Rhythmi=
c
En-Trane-Ment
"Once you become aware of this force for unity in life, you can't ever
forget it. It becomes part of everything you do. In that respect,
[Meditations] is an extension of A Love Supreme since my conception of
tha=
t
force keeps changing shape." =96John Coltrane
During 1965, John Coltrane's musician collectives reguarly and seemingly
summarily summoned a spectacular resonance. When Coltrane's ensembles
sampled from Eastern sacred traditions, they remixed the jazz ensemble
playback format, troping it towards one of the oldest genres of
informatio=
n
compression, the mantra. A Love Supreme, "Evolution," "Cosmos," Om, and
Meditations are at once information compression algorithms and, at the
same
time, a sequence of sonic snapshots that regulate and transduce
Coltrane's
cosmic " force of unity," which, nevertheless, like Shiva's dance,
always
changes--a force that sacred and shamanistic practices of rhythm have
alway=
s
emerged to manage and make share-able.
The rich harmonics and affective penumbra produced by mantric formula
such
as OM opens up more than....well, more than words can say, semantically
speaking. This "irrational" quality provokes our deepest feelings and
makes
it necessary and possible to resonate with others: it solicits sonic
intelligences into being, and calls for rhythm. Coltrane's
technoshamanisti=
c
ensembles continue to provide a model for diverse media ecologies moving
from communciation to commons-formation, and as such, can help us tune
in o=
n
the role of rhythm in diverse aspects of technocultural production. Jazz
ha=
s
always mixed idioms; increasingly, the discontinuities of digital
culture
facilitate asignifying mixtures of sacred, secular, and profane
technologies. At the same time, Coltrane's sonic science, AfroFuturism,
an=
d
other evolutionary discourses anticipate and emerge in digital attention
economies to describe the evolutionary dynamics of these very rhythms of
commons-formation and "becoming transducer."
tags/keywords: music noise sonic_computing neurobiology evolution
rhythmic_entrainment AfroFuturism
Trey Conner
PhD. Candidate
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16801
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:31:38 +1000
From: "Elizabeth A. Wilson"
Subject: SUB 06: Techne, Affect: Film, Television, and Other Placebos
(panel)
Techne, Affect: Film, Television, and Other Placebos
This panel explores the ongoing renaissance of theories of affect
in particular relation to a variety of twentieth-century
psychoanalytic writing and contemporary models for empirical
studies of mind, attachment, sociality, and the technologies by
which these are distributed and known. How can we reassess the
influence of classical psychoanalysis for critical discourse?
What cultural theory and criticism is enabled by the very
different assumptions of affect theories? Our particular concern
is with the fundamental usefulness of the affect theories for the
study of transferential relations either in therapeutic contexts
or those of spectatorship and viewership.
Name: Lisa Cartwright and David Benin
Paper title: Affect and representation in science studies
Abstract: Looking back on Jacques Lacan??s powerful influence in
clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis, the French psychoanalyst
Andre Green recalls that Sigmund Freud, in The Interpretation of
Dreams, produced a theory of the psychic apparatus that was ?¨at
the price of a fascination with representations, to the detriment
of affects?Æ (Green 1986, 180). Green proposes that affect ?¨from
this moment on?Æ was maligned in the emergent science of
psychoanalysis for being an unscientific site of research.
Representation, partly because of its empirical observability,
was foregrounded instead. This paper begins by reviewing the
history of affect??s elision from theories of representation, film
theory, and visual culture, and by showing some of the ways in
which film and video documents have come into play in empirical
studies of affect in cognitive science and psychology.
Throughout, we put forward the writings of Andre Green on the
subject of affect as a useful set of texts through which to
consider question of spectatorship, representation and visuality
in science studies.
Keywords:
Affect, spectatorship, empathy, representation, psychoanalysis
Contact details:
Lisa Cartwright and David Benin
Department of Communication
University of California, Santa Cruz
lisac@ucsd.edu, dbenin@ucsd.edu
Name: Adam Frank
Paper title: Television, Affect, Groups: Strange Intimations
Abstract: This paper brings two mid-twentieth-century affect
theories to the study of television: Silvan Tomkins??s theory of a
biological affect system; and object relations theory that
follows on Melanie Klein??s writing, in particular Wilfred Bion??s
work on group psychology. One basic aspect of television viewing,
I will argue, is the technical ability to give us strangely
intimate, seemingly controlled experiences of the primary
physiological mediums of affective communication, face and voice.
Both ?¨as technology and cultural form?Æ (in Raymond Williams??
phrase), television is complexly layered, transforming and
condensing the nineteenth-century graphic means (photography,
phonography, telegraphy) for indexically reproducing the mediums
of affective communication, as well as transforming the theories
and fantasies which embed these techne. Approaching television by
way of theories of affect, my paper will recast television:
first, by way of the extremely difficult but everyday task of
making emotional contact with a group (a task that, in Bion??s and
Klein??s terms, consists of projective and introjective
identifications); and second, by way of the particular freedoms
of the affect system which, in Tomkins??s understanding, has the
evolutionary function of amplifying and magnifying both drive and
cognitive responses, thus comprising a motivational system that
occupies a middle range of flexibility and freedom between these
two systems. Along the way I will describe some unusual
treatments of television especially in the work of perceptual
artist James Turrell.
Keywords:
Affect, television, technology, groups, Turrell
Contact details:
Adam Frank
Department of English
University of British Columbia
adafrank@interchange.ubc.ca
Name: Elizabeth A. Wilson
Paper title: Serotonin and Empathy
Abstract: One of the established findings in the contemporary
psychological literature on the treatment of depression is that
the combination of talk-therapy and drugs works better (on
average) than either talk-therapy or drugs on their own. The
effects of one seem to strengthen the effects of the other. Most
often, however, the political debates about depression (and
especially, commentary on the emergence of SSRI and SNRI
pharmaceuticals) champion only one of these modes of treatment.
Time and again, discussions about the treatment of depression
narrow down to conceptually simplistic pro-drug/anti-drug
stances.
The finding that talk and drugs work best when combined--the
notion that neither does as well on its own as it does when
allied with the other--suggests that a different kind of
conceptual and political model is needed to think about the
nature of depression and its treatment. How is it that talk and
drug, words and molecules, affects and chemicals are able to
intermesh, amplify and transform each other? Taking Silvan
Tomkins?? affect theory as its starting point, this paper will
explore the rich imbrication of empathy, affect and serotonin
that the treatment of depression has made visible. Special
attention will be given to the role of placebo--which seems to
haunt both classical psychoanalytic and contemporary
pharmaceutical claims for efficacy and scientific credibility in
the treatment of depression. The administration of this
seemingly disinterested drug can elicit a powerful treatment
response; an examination of this curious effect is one way in
which the psychosomatics of depressive states can be more
comprehensively understood.
Keywords:
affect, serotonin, anti-depressants, placebo
Contact details:
Elizabeth A. Wilson
Women??s and Gender Studies Program
The University of New South Wales
e.wilson@unsw.edu.au
--
Elizabeth A. Wilson
ARC Australian Research Fellow
Co-convenor, Women's and Gender Studies Program
Morven Brown 124
Mailing address:
Women??s and Gender Studies Program
The University of New South Wales, NSW 2052
Australia
Ph: +61 2 9385 2300
Fax: +61 2 9385 1047
Email: e.wilson@unsw.edu.au
Homepage: http://womenstudies.arts.unsw.edu.au
