Notions Of Alienation Research Articles

The Concept of World Alienation in Hannah Arendt

This article explores the concept of “world alienation” in the work of Hannah Arendt. It seeks to answer two sets of questions. First, what exactly is “world alienation” and how does Arendt’s concept differ from other theories of alienation? Second, what does “world alienation” mean in regard to Arendt’s characterisation of modernity, and what remedies does Arendt equip us with to overcome alienation? The article shows that Arendt’s notion of alienation emerges from her understanding of the “world” as a realm of both human-made things and political action, thus differing from Rousseauian and Marxist notions of alienation. It argues further that Arendt’s analysis of modernity as being defined by world alienation constitutes a critique of capitalism, globalisation, and the destructive potentials unleashed by modern science.

To die a thousand deaths: COVID-19, racial capitalism, and anti-Black violence

In this short commentary, we discuss the ways in which racial capitalism has developed a historical and ecological landscape through which COVID-19 has emerged, spread, and created uneven impacts across long-standing racial divisions inseparable from capitalist accumulation and expansion. We argue that this perspective on COVID-19 (and infectious disease in general) creates strong alliances with calls for reparations rooted in abolition of policing and incarceration, especially in light of the conjuncture of pandemic and uprising in response to police violence in the United States context. By bringing long-standing Marxian notions of alienation and metabolic rift, crucial for understanding the ecological and epistemic fissures leading to COVID-19’s spread, in conversation with writing on racial capitalism and anti-Blackness, we hope to illuminate pathways to a more grounded historical and ecological analysis that supports a radical vision of ecosystem health.

Human Connection in the Light of the Writings of Karl Marx and Amartya Sen

This article uses Karl Marx’s notions of alienation and antagonism to understand human connection, defined as the interrelationship between human beings that helps transcend self-interest and fosters the sense of solidarity. The Marxian notions are revisited using the works of Amartya Sen, particularly those on identity and violence. Sen’s critique of rationality is discussed, invoking his notions of sympathy, antipathy, and commitment. The article uses two texts, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Manik Bandyopadhyay’s Ekannoborti, as vantage points to understand the key concepts of Marx and Sen. It then discusses the backgrounds of the authors and the political interpretations of their work and shows how the overriding importance ascribed to a particular identity may convolute the literary motivation of an author.

A Brechtian perspective on London Road: Class representations, dialectics and the ‘gestic’ character of music from stage to screen

This article uses Brechtian philosophy to assess the role of music and song in the audience reception of the ‘verbatim musical’ London Road. The first section analyses class representations in London Road, with a particular focus on the dialectics and the ‘gestic’ role of the music and song. The second section explores how the adaptation from stage to screen further affects the dialectics of the musical and, paradoxically, serves key Brechtian aims. I focus on two dramaturgical changes in the adaptation from stage to screen: the chronological order of the narrative and the alternation of interview sections and dramatized sections, which resembles the structure of the popular drama-doc genre. Given that reordering and restaging the original verbatim numbers affected audience reception, I analyse the way the meaning is affected through the Brechtian notions of alienation and the gestic character of music. Throughout, I discuss class representations and relevant dialectical implications.

Notions of Alienation and Motherhood in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

Motherhood as an institution peculiar to women has always been reflected in diverse forms in Nigerian fiction. Whereas many authors venerate motherhood as the peak of feminine and familial achievements, some, like Buchi Emecheta, vilify it for the attendant ills experienced by women who are enmeshed in it. This paper examines Buchi Emecheta’s deconstruction of motherhood in The Joys of Motherhood with a focus on the possibility of motherhood leading ultimately to alienation. Using the theory of womanism, an African variant of feminism which exults the peculiarities of African women and their circumstances, the paper analyzes how the author frames the experience of the protagonist as a mother to interrogate how socio-cultural dynamics impact gender constructs and the larger contexts of gendered spaces. In studying the author’s textual construction of motherhood, the study discovers that the author employs specific characters as metaphorical indexicalities to denounce patriarchal and traditional feminists’ penchant for extolling and venerating motherhood at the expense of women’s search for self-realization with individual objectives that do not involve putting their womanhood in the service of society as subservient mothers with depersonalized psyches. The study concludes that the title is the author’s ironical way of positing that being a mother is not all-fulfilling, because, as textualized in the novel, motherhood can become an avenue for women’s societal oppression, exploitation, and alienation.

Alienation in a four factor world

AbstractThis paper aims to reconstruct the concept of alienation as a live topic for active social theorizing. Joining Marxian and Simmelian ideas, it provides a multi‐dimensional, formal, and synthetic theory of alienation. The paper develops a set of theoretical tools for articulating formal elements of action that make alienation possible, without giving conceptual priority to alienation in the sphere of production, or within that sphere to the alienation of labor. These tools make it possible to derive classical notions of alienation as specific, contingent combinations of multiple elements, theorizing them as concrete socio‐historical configurations of a broader universe of possibilities. They also organize systematic reflection on various forms and relations of alienation; not only those between for instance labor and capital, but also among all four factors of production: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. The paper accordingly develops an original, multi‐dimensional theorization of alienation for a complex, pluralistic world.

Possum’s cinematic space: Landscape, alienation and New Zealand Gothic

Abstract Possum has often been read as a commentary on the sense of place and belonging in postcolonial New Zealand. This article proposes a semiotic analysis of the construction of space in Possum. In particular, it will examine the stylistic choices deployed by the director in relation to the notions of alienation and New Zealand Gothic.

A performatividade nos quatro discursos

This paper intend to demonstrate that one of the consequences of the Lacan’s thesis according which the subject is constituted as an effect of the significant chain is that the Lacanian notion of language structure encompasses the inscription of the subject in a social link. Once the constitution of the subject by the language (S1-S2) produces a divided subject ($) and a residual called object a (a), we’ll see that this four terms are combined creating the four types discourse. In that way, the notions of alienation and separation are resumed, in order to emphasize that the discourse of the master can be extracted from these operations and be considered as the constitutive gesture of any social link. In order to reinforce that the Lacanian notion of structure of language encompasses the possibility of to produce a subject and the inscription in a social link, it is considered also the structuralist notion of language and the notion of performative formulated from the pragmatic philosophy of language.

Me, Myself and My Brain Implant: Deep Brain Stimulation Raises Questions of Personal Authenticity and Alienation

In this article, I explore select case studies of Parkinson patients treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) in light of the notions of alienation and authenticity. While the literature on DBS has so far neglected the issues of authenticity and alienation, I argue that interpreting these cases in terms of these concepts raises new issues for not only the philosophical discussion of neuro-ethics of DBS, but also for the psychological and medical approach to patients under DBS. In particular, I suggest that the experience of alienation and authenticity varies from patient to patient with DBS. For some, alienation can be brought about by neurointerventions because patients no longer feel like themselves. But, on the other hand, it seems alienation can also be cured by DBS as other patients experience their state of mind as authentic under treatment and retrospectively regard their former lives without stimulation as alienated. I argue that we must do further research on the relevance of authenticity and alienation to patients treated with DBS in order to gain a deeper philosophical understanding, and to develop the best evaluative criterion for the behavior of DBS patients.

A Comparative Study on the Theme of Human Existence in the Novels of Albert Camus and F. Sionil Jose

lbert Camus (1913-1960), novelist, essayist, dramatist, and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, is esteemed as one of the finest philosophical writers of modern France. The French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about him as “the latest example of that long line of moralistes whose works constitute perhaps the most original element in French letters.”1 Camus’ literary legacy includes three novels, namely L’Etranger (The Stranger) of 1942, La Peste (The Plague) of 1947, and La Chute (The Fall) of 1957, and a fourth unfinished one that was posthumously published as The First Man in 1995. Camus’ works both intensively and extensively explored the theme that was prevalent in the intellectual climate of the post-World War II Europe, the absurdity of human existence together with the notions of alienation and disillusionment, and speculated beyond the crushing pessimism a glimmering faith on human dignity and brotherhood. These concerns, no matter how well ingrained they may be in the European history of ideas, would prove to be too cognitively remote for a contemporary Filipino reader. Thus, there is a need to mediate Camus’ literary discourses with a more familiar Filipino text. If ever there are some few Filipino novelists in English who can possibly parallel the breadth and depth of Camus’ intellectual brooding, one of them would certainly be Francisco Sionil Jose. Eleven years younger than Camus and still very much productive, Jose has authored more than ten novels that are translated into over twenty languages. Nick Joaquin, his fellow National Artist, refers to him as “Asia’s white hope for the Nobel,” as well as “the most widely read Filipino author.” This paper would pursue the question: what are the similarities and differences between Camus and Jose’s novels with regard to the theme of human existence? By comparing the novels of Camus and Jose, this paper aims to grasp the temporally and culturally distant speculations of the former on human existence through the more familiar texts of the latter. But since a

A Comparative Study on the Theme of Human Existence in the Novels of Albert Camus and F. Sionil Jose

lbert Camus (1913-1960), novelist, essayist, dramatist, and recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, is esteemed as one of the finest philosophical writers of modern France. The French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about him as “the latest example of that long line of moralistes whose works constitute perhaps the most original element in French letters.”1 Camus’ literary legacy includes three novels, namely L’Etranger (The Stranger) of 1942, La Peste (The Plague) of 1947, and La Chute (The Fall) of 1957, and a fourth unfinished one that was posthumously published as The First Man in 1995. Camus’ works both intensively and extensively explored the theme that was prevalent in the intellectual climate of the post-World War II Europe, the absurdity of human existence together with the notions of alienation and disillusionment, and speculated beyond the crushing pessimism a glimmering faith on human dignity and brotherhood. These concerns, no matter how well ingrained they may be in the European history of ideas, would prove to be too cognitively remote for a contemporary Filipino reader. Thus, there is a need to mediate Camus’ literary discourses with a more familiar Filipino text. If ever there are some few Filipino novelists in English who can possibly parallel the breadth and depth of Camus’ intellectual brooding, one of them would certainly be Francisco Sionil Jose. Eleven years younger than Camus and still very much productive, Jose has authored more than ten novels that are translated into over twenty languages. Nick Joaquin, his fellow National Artist, refers to him as “Asia’s white hope for the Nobel,” as well as “the most widely read Filipino author.” This paper would pursue the question: what are the similarities and differences between Camus and Jose’s novels with regard to the theme of human existence? By comparing the novels of Camus and Jose, this paper aims to grasp the temporally and culturally distant speculations of the former on human existence through the more familiar texts of the latter. But since a

Iain Sinclair's Excremental Narratives

Iain Sinclair's Excremental Narratives

Ulysses' reason, nobody's fault

Drawing on notions of alienation, reification and rationalization in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer explored the phenomenon of reason as such concerning the subject and the species, and diagnosed the pathologies of occidental societies. Reason provides the means for a vulnerable being to subordinate nature and serve its desire for self-preservation. However, this reason is instrumental since it objectifies the world and reifies other beings in order to render them manipulable. It is a subjective reason because it promotes the subject's own ends and aims at the subject's survival at the expense of the individual's inner world of unconscious desires and instincts and the reconciliation of human beings with the external world. The myth of Ulysses is magnificantly interpreted by Horkheimer and Adorno along such anthropological lines. As I see it, this anthropology inexorably connects the advent of civilization with the reifying power of reason from the start. Against the early Frankfurt School anthropological explanation of reason, I defend the distinction between communicative and strategic rationality that presupposes a different anthropology from the Freudian one that informed the Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Of Cabbages and Kin

This article argues for the maintenance of the traditional anthropological analytic distinction between gifts and commodities, against a recent trend to refer to all objects as commodities when exchange is their socially relevant feature. It examines Marx’s notions of alienation and commodity fetishism in the context of human praxis and suggests that rigorous, rather than impressionistic, use of these analytic concepts in anthropology can clarify a distinction between gifts and commodities in relation to praxis and intention, rather than exchange.

The Mirror and the Veil: The Passing Novel and the Quest for American Racial Identity

In this scene from James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the encounter between the young, nameless mulatto boy - who will soon transform into the still nameless ex-colored of the novel's title - and his image in the is both troubling and inconclusive. The boy seeks in this seemingly objective specular image the visible evidence of his identity - a sign or mark which might brand him indisputably as either or white. He finds instead both liquid darkness and ivory whiteness contraposed, the blackness of his hair falling over his temples, making his forehead seem whiter than it really was. In short, for the boy his image is a doubtful proof of his race, as was his former opinion of himself (as or, more precisely, as blank or without color), or as are the opinions others will later form of him (as white, black, mulatto, etc.). Barred from what for others seems an objective test of identity, the boy is left in a peculiar position: He may choose his race. This choice, of course, is not an uncomplicated one, entailing as it does either the denial of his own history, on one hand, or the acceptance of an unjustifiable but undeniable economic and social subjugation, on the other. The complex of social, economic, and political considerations involved in this choice - both undergirding it and following from it - are symbolized when the boy looks into the mirror. Does a man gaze into the looking-glass to find a man looking back? Or is it the other way around? Johnson never answers these questions, but never stops asking: The question of verifiable and constant identity is as crucial for the boy in this scene learning that he is black as it is, later in the novel, for the man determined to pass as white - and as ambiguous. The Negro becomes, in Johnson's novel and in other African American literature of the same period, the conscious, speaking center of what for the rest of the world is a largely unconscious effort to mark the borders of race, class, and self; his struggles with self-definition, with class and race consciousness as both internalized and articulated, are themselves mirrors for the racialized American dialogue of identity that surrounds him. Similar mirroring confrontations - both literal and figurative - arise in Charles Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, another novel in which issues surrounding American racial identity are explored through an examination of the lives of its two passing characters, John and Rena Walden. In each of these books, the confrontation between the figure and his/her image marks a point at which the enigmatic American dialogue of race is resolved into a single human being, as the complementary notions of alienation and assimilation inherent in that dialogue are balanced on the narrow fulcrum of a constructed and constructing self. Hall of Mirrors: Lacan and Gates In order to understand fully the implications of passing for identity-formation, it may be useful to examine the figure's confrontation with the from two similar, yet distinct, theoretical vantage points: first, from the point of view of Lacan's identity theory, and then from the more racially aware perspective of Henry Louis Gates's theory of Signification. Certainly, the scene with which I began this essay resonates with Lacan's mirror - that (to Lacan) crucial stage in a child's development during which the child develops an I: The stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation - and which manufactures for the subject... the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality . . . and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of alienating identity which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development. Thus to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Urn welt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications. …