Vital Voids Finegold, Andrew
2021, 2021-05-11
eBook
The Resurrection Plate, a Late Classic Maya dish, is decorated with an arresting scene. The Maize God, assisted by two other deities, emerges reborn from a turtle shell. At the center of the plate, ...in the middle of the god’s body and aligned with the point of emergence, there is a curious sight: a small, neatly drilled hole.Art historian Andrew Finegold explores the meanings attributed to this and other holes in Mesoamerican material culture, arguing that such spaces were broadly understood as conduits of vital forces and material abundance, prerequisites for the emergence of life. Beginning with, and repeatedly returning to, the Resurrection Plate, this study explores the generative potential attributed to a wide variety of cavities and holes in Mesoamerica, ranging from the perforated dishes placed in Classic Maya burials, to caves and architectural voids, to the piercing of human flesh. Holes are also discussed in relation to fire, based on the common means through which both were produced: drilling. Ultimately, by attending to what is not there, Vital Voids offers a fascinating approach to Mesoamerican cosmology and material culture.
We usually think of signs as fixed relations: a red light signifies 'Stop'. In his bold new book, James Williams argues that signs are processes: you see the red light and think 'should I stop?', ...triggering a creative response. Williams develops this new process philosophy of signs through a formal model, in contrast to earlier structuralist definitions. He draws on the philosophies of Deleuze and Whitehead, criticises earlier work on the sign in biology by Jakob von Uexküll, and connects to contemporary work on process in the philosophy of biology by John Dupré. The process model has wide applications in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and informs their critical debates with science. In defining the sign as essentially political, this radical definition of the sign opens up new possibilities for social and political critique.
Signifying Europe provides a systematic overview of the wide range of symbols used to represent Europe and Europeanness, both by the political elite and the broader public. Through a critical ...interpretation of the meanings of the various symbols—and their often contradictory or ambiguous dimensions—Johan Fornäs uncovers illuminating insights into how Europe currently identifies itself and is identified by others outside its borders. While the focus is on the European Union’s symbols, those symbols are also interpreted in relation to other symbols of Europe. Offering insight into the cultural dimensions of European unification, this volume will appeal to students, scholars and politicians interested in European policy issues, cultural studies and postnational cultural identity.
The book, which contains 50 illustrations, makes a coherent and important contribution to a subject of great current interest to classicists of all disciplines.
This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both ...analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is thereby focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such otherwise erroneously individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).
Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2017 Emoji have gone from being virtually unknown to being a central topic in internet communication. What is behind the rise and rise of these winky faces, ...clinking glasses and smiling poos? Given the sheer variety of verbal communication on the internet and English's still- controversial role as lingua mundi for the web, these icons have emerged as a compensatory universal language. The Semiotics of Emoji looks at what is officially the world's fastest-growing form of communication. Emoji, the colourful symbols and glyphs that represent everything from frowning disapproval to red-faced shame, are fast becoming embedded into digital communication. Controlled by a centralized body and regulated across the web, emoji seems to be a language: but is it? The rapid adoption of emoji in such a short span of time makes it a rich study in exploring the functions of language. Professor Marcel Danesi, an internationally-known expert in semiotics, branding and communication, answers the pertinent questions. Are emoji making us dumber? Can they ultimately replace language? Will people grow up emoji literate as well as digitally native? Can there be such a thing as a Universal Visual Language? Read this book for the answers.
An Essay on Man Cassirer, Ernst; Gordon, Peter E
05/2021
eBook
One of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers
presents the results of his lifetime study of man's cultural
achievements An Essay on Man is an original
synthesis of contemporary knowledge, a ...unique interpretation of the
intellectual crisis of our time, and a brilliant vindication of
man's ability to resolve human problems by the courageous use of
his mind. In a new introduction Peter E. Gordon situates the book
among Cassirer's greater body of work, and looks at why his "hymn
to humanity in an inhuman age" still resonates with readers today.
"The best-balanced and most mature expression of Cassirer's
thought."- Journal of Philosophy "No reader of this book
can fail to be struck by the grandeur of its program or by the
sensitive humanism of the author."-Ernest Nagel, The
Humanist "A rare work of philosophy and a rare work of
art."- Tomorrow
The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals ...that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.
Mass-produced of tin-lead alloys and cheap to make and purchase, medieval badges were brooch-like objects displaying familiar images. Circulating widely throughout Europe in the High and late Middle ...Ages, badges were usually small, around four-by-four centimeters, though examples as tiny as two centimeters and a few as large as ten centimeters have been found. About 75 percent of surviving badges are closely associated with specific charismatic or holy sites, and when sewn or pinned onto clothing or a hat, they would have marked their wearers as having successfully completed a pilgrimage. Many others, however, were artifacts of secular life; some were political devices—a swan, a stag, a rose—that would have denoted membership in a civic organization or an elite family, and others—a garland, a pair of clasped hands, a crowned heart—that would have been tokens of love or friendship. A good number are enigmatic and even obscene. The popularity of badges seems to have grown steadily from the last decades of the twelfth century before waning at the very end of the fifteenth century. Some 20, 000 badges survive today, though historians estimate that as many as two million were produced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries alone. Archaeologists and hobbyists alike continue to make new finds, often along muddy riverbanks in northern Europe.Interdisciplinary in approach, and sumptuously illustrated with more than 115 color and black-and-white images, Medieval Badges introduces badges in all their variety and uses. Ann Marie Rasmussen considers all medieval badges, whether they originated in religious or secular contexts, and highlights the different ways badges could confer meaning and identity on their wearers. Drawing on evidence from England, France, the Low Countries, Germany, and Scandinavia, this book provides information about the manufacture, preservation, and scholarly study of these artifacts. From chapters exploring badges and pilgrimage, to the complexities of the political use of badges, to the ways the visual meaning-making strategies of badges were especially well-suited to the unique features of medieval cities, this book offers an expansive introduction of these medieval objects for a wide readership.
This book interprets for the Western mind the key motifs of India's legend, myth, and folklore, taken directly from the Sanskrit, and illustrated with seventy plates of Indian art. It is primarily an ...introduction to image-thinking and picture-reading in Indian art and thought, and it seeks to make the profound Hindu and Buddhist intuitions of the riddles of life and death recognizable not merely as Oriental but as universal elements.
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