Place Of Love Research Articles

“We can’t allow ourselves to fall ill”: Health and (self-)discipline in female family caregivers from a gender perspective

Research has shown significant differences and inequalities in the health of women and men who care for older dependent family members, with women having poorer health and suffering more from overload. Women internalize a cultural model of caregiving involving social norms whereby caring becomes a central dimension of gender-female identity, cutting across other aspects of life. This study takes a biopsychosocial approach, understanding gender as a determinant of health, in order to investigate the processes of subjectivation (and “technologies of the self”) that mediate between the social organization of care and the health of women. A reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken in this qualitative study, following in-depth interviews with nineteen women caring for family members. The results show that women’s biopsychosocial health is affected by the subjective positions they adopt in order to submit to or resist gender-based social norms about caring in three dimensions: their relationship to their own health problems, their experience of vulnerability, and the place of love and morality in relation to being a caregiver. Those (inter)subjective processes reflect the neoliberal update of the gendered social organization of care and the way its social discourses, such as free choice and unstinting performance, relate to female caregivers’ biopsychosocial health. It is necessary to deconstruct this traditional model and the self-regulated processes as recast by the neoliberal order for the sake of women’s health, to relieve them of this burden. It is essential to commit to sociopolitical articulations aimed at shared responsibility in care.

"Speak from a place of love": The family dynamics surrounding Black father-daughter sexual health communication.

Parent-child sexual health communication reduces sexual risk behaviors among youth, which in turn lowers the transmission rate of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Despite being a known protective factor, gender differences persist with mothers being more likely to discuss sexual health with their children than fathers. Although individual characteristics, interpersonal familial factors and societal norms (e.g., communication self-efficacy, parent-child closeness, and cultural and gender norms) are associated with Black parents'likelihood to communicate about sex with their children, the current study seeks to explore which of these factors found among Black mother-child or father-son dyads extend to Black father-daughter dyads and how this phenomenon (i.e., Black father-daughter sexual health communication) relates to family structure. Seven father-daughter dyads (N = 7) and an additional five daughters (n = 5) in the United States completed individual in-depth semi-structured interviews. Daughters (Mage = 20.3) and fathers (Mage = 56.7) were biologically related, majority heterosexual, close, and lived together. Data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Analysis revealed three themes centering around the role of authoritative parenting, the tactics and skills facilitating sexual health communication, and family structure. Black father-daughter sexual health communication is facilitated by close father-daughter relationships, non-authoritative parenting styles, and open, supportive, and non-judgmental communication. Fathers can be better supported in knowing how and when best to communicate sexual health messages, and to mitigate the possibly negative impacts on communication of divorce or having multiple children.

Is there a place for love in an early childhood setting?

ABSTRACT In recent years, there has been a growth in the amount of literature and a resurgence of interest in what Jools Page identified as ‘professional love’. This research builds upon and extends Page’s work considering what love looks like in practice and describing a ‘loving pedagogy’. Despite recent research, love is still seldom talked about in the context of early childhood education and very few studies have considered what love looks like on a day-to-day basis within an early childhood setting. This small case study has identified that love is, indeed, present there in practice. Loving interactions were observed between adults and children in a preschool setting and how love manifests itself discussed with three educators during intimate conversations. This study compares observed practice with the educators’ understanding of love and shows that a loving pedagogy exists within daily interactions and that there is a place for love within an early childhood setting.

Тема сердце (дил) и духовное сердце (калб) в позднемавераннахрской агиографической традиции

The concepts of heart (dil) and spiritual heart (kalb) are important in the anthropological worldview of Sufism. The heart is a place of love (ishq). Divine love (ishq-i illohi) becomes the source where other paths and choices in a person's life begin. At the same time, it is the source of both sinful and pure thoughts. The heart serves as a cognitive tool. A person's search for truth and self-knowledge of his spiritual essence is carried out through hearts. With the dominance of sensory cognition in a person, there is a contradictory connection between the heart (dil, ishk) and the mind (acl). Sufis in most cases relied more on sensory cognition, on the dictates and inclinations of the heart than of the mind. The source base of the research was such Muslim hagiographic works (manakib) as “Jama'ul-makamat”, dedicated to the biography of the leader of the Transoxiana Naqshbandi brotherhood Khojagi Ahmad Kosoni (died in 1542), “Saadiya”, dedicated to the biography of the Juybar (Bukhara) Khojas, "Lamahat min nafahat al-uns", dedicated to the famous Jahrit Sufis, in in particular, the biography of Sheikh Khudoydod Azizon (died in 1533). The subject of the study is the analysis of the concept of the heart, its place and interpretation in the Sufi worldview. This concept is studied purely within the framework of the Muslim hagiographic tradition, based on the perception of the authors of the manakibs of this issue.The purpose of the study is to reveal the meaning of the concept of “heart”, “spiritual heart” in the Sufi worldview and its relationship with other elements of being.

Associative image of the Homeland in the language picture of the world of Ukrainian youth

Background. According to lexicographical sources, the semantics of the concept of the Homeland are dominated by the components ‘land’ (‘country’), ‘inheritance’, ‘father’, ‘family’, ‘native’, ‘property’, ‘origin’, ‘genesis’. They are sufficient, but they significantly limit the entire range of meanings, connotations, and associations that can be associated with the Homeland and do not capture the shades of meaning corresponding to the current socio-political and cultural situation.Contribution to the research field. The present study helps us to understand changes occurring in the meanings of words. In particular, the results show the dynamics in the perception of the Homeland, differences in the traditional lexicographic meaning and associative image.Purpose. The purpose of the article is to investigate the associative image of the Homeland concept, which was formed in the language picture of the world of Ukrainian youth.Methods. The written free associative experiment was conducted in April 2022. As a result, 1,009 questionnaires and 1,215 associations on the Homeland stimulus were collected. 253 types of reactions were identified.Results. The experiment showed that young Ukrainians most often associate Ukraine, mother, and home with the Homeland. 8% of responses are determined by the region of residence of the participants. Associations form thematic groups around the concepts of family, home, national symbols, values, and combat. A sense of belonging, ownership, kinship, love, warmth, pride, and happiness is important. Freedom and life become integral values. In the national picture of the world, the Homeland is visualized through the colours of the blue-yellow flag, embodied in Ukrainian nature.Discussion. The verbal image of the Homeland for a modern young Ukrainian has little to do with politics or ideology, instead emotional, imaginative and value components prevail. Despite the war, ideas about the Homeland did not become radicalized and did not acquire aggressive or militant features. On the contrary, the associative image of the Homeland reflects the perception of it as a place of love and warmth, a native home, a fatherland, and the highest value that must be protected.

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction

A Study of the Themes of Love in Ghased Persian Lyric Poems

Love is one of the main themes of poetry and its earthly and heavenly types are seen in the poems of poets and have created great themes and beautiful interpretations. Ghased is one of the poets who has a great skill in using words, depicting the image of love in various forms. The messenger has tried to express his pure love for his beloved in various images of his sonnets, although sometimes he has made love seem virtual or real. In his opinion, the place of love is undisputed, although in this painful way, you have endured the suffering of Versailles. The characteristics of love and its attributes in poetry are often similar to the themes of the poets before him and the status of love in his poetry is very high. Even its earthly type can be considered as the shadow of heavenly love. This research examines love and its place in the messenger's sonnets.

From rage to love: travesti-centred education in Argentina

ABSTRACT This article derives from a five-year collaborative engagement in which we intermittently visited Mocha Celis, a community-based high school programme in Buenos Aires. We seek to illustrate how, by centring travesti/trans experiences, some of Mocha Celis’s practices align with Quinlivan’s notion of an ‘epidemic of love’. By doing this, we hope to extend Quinlivan’s focus on sexualities education by showing the impact centring travesti people as part of this work may have, not only for travesti/trans individuals, but also for the overall educational project. Quinlivan’s ‘epidemic of love’ and her engagement with Muñoz’s queer utopias help us extend the idea of unruly sexualities education research – from a transformative space emergent from the hatred and dismissal faced by travestis into a school into a place of love and acceptance through difference. Quinlivan’s work helps us in the quest to identify the ever present, even if limited, spaces in which transformative change may occur.

The Song of Songs: Its Basic Teaching and Place in the OT Canon

The Song of Songs is a love poem (or a collection of poems), full of sensuous symbols. The central theme of the book is love; it celebrates human love in all its physical dimensions. Its language is love, a language which seems daring and sometimes even shocking, considering its seeming erotic feature. The author provides a teaching on the place of love and marriage in God’s plan of creation. It focuses on fidelity and mutuality in love between the sexes. The author offers a perspective of love not found elsewhere in the biblical writings. The climax of his teaching on love is contained in Sg 8:6-7. Here the poet emphasizes the power and energy of love. He compares the consuming power of love to “a raging flame” (rišpê ’ēš) which no water can quench. He specifies the value of love: love is so priceless that no material wealth can match it.

Collective (Re)constructions of Linguistic Surveillance at Home: Transfronterizx Families as Cultural and Linguistic Guardians

ABSTRACT In the current anti-immigrant context, Latinx families, children, and communities experience language as a highly contested and surveilled practice with consequential effects. In this study, I drew on the concept of literacies of surveillance and translanguaging to examine how language was embodied and rationalized in the context of three homes of Latinx, transfronterizx families. This critical multiple-case study led to three main findings: (1) Parents and children are linguistic guardians and surveil from a place of love and care, (2) embracing Spanish-English parallel monolingualism is a form of respeto, and (3) translanguaging is a way of being for bilingual children moving in and out of surveilled moments. The findings have important implications for reconstructing the concept of linguistic surveillance in research and reframing parents’ and children’s roles in school when it relates to designing and authoring children’s bilingual futures.

Presságios da letra de uma carta de amor

O presente artigo advém da necessidade de explicitar o tema da letra em seu uso na constituição do ser de fala e de sua correlação na instauração do amor. Um amor que se inscreve quando a letra convoca algo do ser para a literalidade, possibilitando, concomitantemente, um lugar para o sujeito bem como para um vazio que o constitui, permanentemente. Desde Freud podemos antever um flerte com a literatura e suas letras. Lacan amplia este percurso para outras artes delineando a imprescindível função da letra na constituição do sujeito de fala e do advento amoroso. A partir deste legado, almejo perpassar a questão do amor com o vazio que nunca se preenche a partir da inscrição promovida pela letra. Afirma-se neste artigo a importância de sustentar para o amor algo que sempre escapará à função significante, embora demande ser escrito para que possa existir. Desde esta perspectiva se abre um modo de sustentar um lugar para o amor onde a contingência do encontro não se desfaça e os sujeitos possam brincar com o fazer de suas letras.

Signs, and: Not knowing what to do with my hands …

Signs, and: Not knowing what to do with my hands … Aksinia Mihaylova (bio) Translated by Marissa Davis (bio) Signs Below the horizon, a boat skims the sea.The air conditioners drip ink.Starving gulls twist above salt marshesin ellipses—shelterfor black salt, for white saltstill untouched by autumn rain.Like headstones taken off their tombs,two birds straying from the flockfall a half-meter from the patiowith an elegiac cry. In the parking lot,an already-dead languagecrumbles into syllables of stoneover the cars. A stinging dust coats Ovid—but it is too late to gatheromens, too late to read them. I am not here in these pages of radiant frothflooding the banks of our parallel solitudes.I am not on that patio. Not above the roofs.I had made it to the heart of man,distanced myself from myself—but our liveslasted several times that of Godwearing man's soul.And I returned to me. The afternoon is calm. I study a horizonthat has not moved for years,waiting for the words tossed to space to return— [End Page 158] like orange blossoms, like an ache—so I can touch themand take them into me. Now I write:I do not look for signs on the water's surfacewhen you are in Sète and I in Crimea.In a place of love,there is no need for language. But you don't read Cyrillic.The air conditioners drip ink. [End Page 159] Not knowing what to do with my hands … Not knowing what to do with my hands,I clutch a basket of figs to my chestas he walks away from the garden of joy,buttoning the last ray of sunlightto his Adam's apple. Tomorrow, he will locka watercolor depicting the desireto change his lifein the day's lowest drawer again; he will shake my smell off his skinlike a bee shakes acacia pollen from its legs; he will regain his place among the statuesthat spread manuscripts over their headsfor a sky. I believed I had planted a flower in him.But timid steps. But rumpled sheets.But the dogs of insomniascratching all night at the door— he shrinks and dries. His bones thinlike his unwanted body. Slugs crawl outfrom under the stonespiling in his gut, in his throat, on his tongue,loneliness creeping in their pale trails. Like a blind man, you feel your wayforward, backward,from one end to the otherof a desire run dry. Mold grows in the house's humid colors,green like his eyes, his tears. [End Page 160] Who does this home belong to?And what is this city, and whowill console you in this afternoonhung from the parapet? Perhaps the womanwith chapped lips, a dry tongue,a wounded left breast. Perhaps the desireto coax her, to giveher freedom back. [End Page 161] Aksinia Mihaylova Aksinia Mihaylova is a poet, educator, and translator of over thirty-five books of poetry and prose. She is the author of six poetry books in Bulgarian, translated into numerous languages. Ciel à Perdre, her first poetry collection written in French, received France's Prix Apollinaire in 2014. She released her second French-language collection, Le Baiser du Temps, in 2019; it went on to become the 2020 recipient of the Prix Max-Jacob. Mihaylova is the founder of the independent literary journal Ah, Maria, and currently resides in Sofia, Bulgaria. Marissa Davis Marissa Davis is a poet and translator from Paducah, Kentucky, residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her original poems have appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Rattle, Iowa Review, and Sundog Lit, among other journals. Her translations have been published in Ezra and are forthcoming in Mid-American Review. Davis holds an MFA from New York University. Her first chapbook, My Name & Other Languages I Am Learning How to Speak (Jai-Alai Books, 2020), was the winner of Cave Canem's 2019 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Prize. Copyright © 2021 Middlebury College

Reading Poems Reflecting Robert Frost’s Tragic Life

This essay surveys the view of life manifested in Robert Frost’s tragic poems with special reference to the poet’s personal tragic life and his insight into human nature. In this essay, I read some of Frost’s poems describing constant problems such as human loneliness, communication problems, economic crisis, deaths of family members, etc. Frost’s tragic poems show an aspect of ambivalence in that life is difficult but “Earth’s the right place for love.” This philosophy was created in his efforts not to lose his sense of the equilibrium of life. By renewing and broadening the view of both the universality and the particularity of Frost’s poetry, we can understand the poet’s profound philosophy on the nature of human beings, God, life, and death.

Like a Dark Rabbi: Modern Poetry and the Jewish Literary Imagination by Norman Finkelstein

Reviewed by: Like a Dark Rabbi: Modern Poetry and the Jewish Literary Imagination by Norman Finkelstein Daniel Morris (bio) Like a Dark Rabbi: Modern Poetry and the Jewish Literary Imagination By Norman Finkelstein. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2019. 275 pp. I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate willfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better.I'd like to go by climbing a birch treeAnd climb black branches up a snow-white trunkToward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,But dipped its top and set me down again.That would be good both going and coming back.One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. —"Birches" (1914) by Robert Frost Beginning a Shofar review on Jewish poet and literary scholar Norman Finkelstein's Like A Dark Rabbi with "Birches," Robert Frost's chestnut about a boy swinging on a branch in the woods? Really? Can a goyish pastoral pass as Jewish poetry? After reading Finkelstein, who argues Jewish poetry represents ambivalence toward the realms of earth and sky, I now think Frost, the New Hampshire woodsman who depicted purportedly un-Jewish tasks like chopping wood, mowing hay, and picking apples, may don the Dark Rabbi mantel. Think of "Mending Wall" as Frost's crypto-cabbalistic take on tikkun olam. Align "Acquainted with the Night" with Finkelstein's reading of Hugh Seidman and Michael Heller, Dark [End Page 319] Rabbis who, like Frost, convey uncertainty, rupture, and loss. With its representation of a boy swinging "towards heaven," but wanting to land because Earth is the "right place for love," Frost's "Birches" prefigures the work of Jewish-born authors like Chana Bloch's "Furniture," which, Finkelstein writes, "intertwines the divine and the domestic, the cosmic and the ordinary: the thunder in heaven is like moving furniture" (144). Finkelstein attends to poets who signify Jewishness when they embrace liminality. Heller, paradoxically, regards "between" as "foundational" and diaspora as a "new kind of homeland" (114). (An exception would be Allen Grossman, who defined holiness as contingent on acts of separation; Heller sees holiness as "revealed at the heart of the secular" [108].) Describing Heller's "Ode to the Sky on the Esplanade of the New" as a "Buddhist Ode to the West Wind," Finkelstein notes how Heller modulates from "transcendental heights to a poetics grounded in history" (123). Jewish ritual, quotidian action, and an appreciation of language as a crucial form of mediation between persons and realms of experience inform Heller's poetry to the point "no one can safely say where the sacred leaves off [and] where the profane begins" (123). The phrase "Like a Dark Rabbi," from the Pennsylvania Dutch-bred modernist Wallace Stevens's "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" (1918), by itself indicates Finkelstein's open mind about who can write a Jewish poem. Like other philosemites such as Robert Duncan and Joseph Donahue, whose poetry Finkelstein treats in his study, Stevens is not a Jew by birth, ethnicity, or religious practice. In fact, as biographer Paul Mariani writes, Stevens was xenophobic and antisemitic. Nonetheless, Stevens expresses a "fascination and strong affinity with Jewish spirituality and Jewish texts" (222). In "Auroras of Autumn," for example, he writes of "that crown and mystical cabala" (162). Finkelstein's interpretation of Stevens, Duncan, and Donahue as practitioners of a Jewish poetics turns on his definition of rabbi as an Emersonian scholar. Describing Stevens as a "seeker of occult wisdom" (226) who views "imagination as emanation" (231), Finkelstein places him "somewhere between, if not beyond, the religious and the secular" (226). Like Frost's speaker in "Birches," Stevens is a rabbi because he seeks extraterrestrial wisdom "for human purposes" (223). [End Page 320] Regarding "Auroras of Autumn" as imagining a "post-religious space of redemption," Finkelstein aligns Stevens with Jewish-born poets ranging from objectivists such as Charles Reznikoff and George Oppen to the contemporary formalist Henry Weinfield to Bloch, the Israeli anti-Zionist author and...

Indissoluble Alterity: Masked Encounters/Encountering Masks

Indissoluble AlterityMasked Encounters/Encountering Masks Nathan Doherty (bio) “A horror story, the face is a horror story.” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus “There’s no jungle in my mind I can’t escape from.” Halloween Trés, Code Red Mixes, May 2016, “WWW” Not quite philosophy, criticism, or journalism proper, this article becomes a sort of speculative wandering through a montage of textual, visual, and auditory ecologies. Think of this as a kind of Deleuzean journalism, sketches of encounters that continue to develop and change as the unfoldings report.1 As such, what this article becomes, if successful, is an immersive consideration of how to use academic frameworks—the genre of the essay-geared-to-be-article, for example—to participate in the life of a specific creative community of musicians and performers in Baltimore, Maryland, using the resources at one’s disposal. The co-participants enabling the encounters featured here are multiple and proliferating: Baltimore as a place of love and agonism; the soundscapes and performances of Halloween Trés; the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; the academic community of Johns Hopkins University; and the world of academic publishing for starters. A three-person band whose star is in the ascendant in the small but dynamic local music scene, Halloween Trés operate on a number of shifting and conflicting planes all at once. Thinking these agonisms in Deleuzean terms gives this article the impetus and certain rhetorical formulations to be able to articulate aspects of Halloween Trés’s music and performance. Furthermore, thinking Deleuzean intensities [End Page 30] in Halloween Trés terms offers some of the tools necessary to parse what Deleuze could mean regarding the concepts of intensity, encounters, and the violence of thought. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Facial Recognition. Collage by Nathan Doherty. Original painting by Lorenzo Baeza. A personally validating moment came in response to an earlier draft of this article from a Halloween Trés band member, Lucas Rambo. After reading what I’d then put together, he was floored by my descriptions of their performances: “we just do this shit, you actually tried to articulate it.” But I think of it in almost the exact opposite terms, I’m just trying to affectively understand the heavy lifting their performances seem to be doing. In some regards this is the entire point of the following performance of Deleuzean journalism, an attempt to participate in, and to understand, the shifting dynamics of a lively artistic community both in terms of its emergent affective [End Page 31] registers and through the repertoire of concepts provided by a Deleuzean lexicon. The encounters I am interested in mapping here harbor a degree of intensity and contagion that open one to potent forces beyond one’s ken or ability to completely quantify, domains of what in Difference and Repetition Deleuze refers to as those of “wonder, love, hatred, suffering” (139). I posit this rhetorical agonism at the beginning of this project—especially important when considering Halloween Trés performances—to forestall the critique that neither all thought nor all encounters come about or emerge through fear and trembling, and certainly never only through terror/horror, which, at least in the moment of experiencing, often violently close down anything resembling thoughtfulness. The key to navigating such encounters together with their accompanying degrees of intensity, I will argue, is comportment and learning new ways of dwelling with the everyday unfolding of events that are always difficult to process or understand.2 In this way no affective event is without some emergent form of agonism, whether or not it be consciously divined. Love becomes contagion, and contagion can, perhaps, become something like love. RE-BEGINNING: FROM THOUGHTFUL TO ARTFUL TERROR(S) What is an encounter? On certain pragmatic levels, in part because of the limitations of the traditionally conceived human capacity to engage affectively with multiple sites of interaction to any sustained degree, it is difficult to provide a cogent description of the many disparate factors that constitute an encounter. What one often does interact with, or at least register to some degree, are heterogeneous entities that might at first...

ФІЛОСОФСЬКИЙ ПОГЛЯД НА ЗНАЧЕННЯ ЛЮБОВІ У СУСПІЛЬСТВІ: ПЛАТОН VS АРІСТОТЕЛЬ

The paper shows specifics and features of understanding of importance of love in society in the legacy of Plato and Aristotle. Explication of the role of love in society in Plato is revealed on the basis of the texts of his two dialogues «Symposium» and «Laws». In the «Symposium», through the speech of Eryximachus, it is emphasized that thanks to love, a complete unity is possible in society as a whole and between people. Love occupies a key place in society and its presence or deficiency leads to certain social phenomena (war, revolution, revival). Love cannot separate people both on a personal and social level. Destructive, destruction brings only hatred. Accordingly, every member of society who wants the society in which he lives to be prosperous and stable, should feel friendly to others, be sensitive and caring to those who need it. Аlso, in the «Laws» the ancient Greek thinker talks about how important it is to teach children — future citizens of the policy — who and how to love or hate. This is due to the fact that if the wrong way of understanding love among people develops, then this can lead to the destruction of society. After all, if love is inherent in justice, then it is not able to create disorder, to make destructive, to one degree or another to be a carrier of deviant behavior. Love is always where there is truth, where there is justice. And where there is a lie, a deception, the place of love no longer remains. She calmly and without resentment walks away from those people who have felt a sense of love, and does not knock again until the lie stops. It is proved that Αristotle is ambivalent about the importance of love for society. To some extent, he continues his predecessors Socrates and Plato, and emphasizes that the state is based on love and friendly relations. Love is not limited only to individual relationships and circumstances, it affects the entire social and cultural life of mankind. At the same time, he opposes them, because he notes the negative consequences for society and the state system of various manifestations of love deviations. Aristotle also emphasizes that social status is not important for close relationships. Intimacy, closeness to each other is higher than those or other social divisions, beliefs and disagreements. Thus, love overcomes social disunity, thereby creating a special community for which the main thing is the good of Оther.

Indissoluble Alterity: Masked Encounters/Encountering Masks

Indissoluble AlterityMasked Encounters/Encountering Masks Nathan Doherty (bio) “A horror story, the face is a horror story.” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus “There’s no jungle in my mind I can’t escape from.” Halloween Trés, Code Red Mixes, May 2016, “WWW” Not quite philosophy, criticism, or journalism proper, this article becomes a sort of speculative wandering through a montage of textual, visual, and auditory ecologies. Think of this as a kind of Deleuzean journalism, sketches of encounters that continue to develop and change as the unfoldings report.1 As such, what this article becomes, if successful, is an immersive consideration of how to use academic frameworks—the genre of the essay-geared-to-be-article, for example—to participate in the life of a specific creative community of musicians and performers in Baltimore, Maryland, using the resources at one’s disposal. The co-participants enabling the encounters featured here are multiple and proliferating: Baltimore as a place of love and agonism; the soundscapes and performances of Halloween Trés; the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; the academic community of Johns Hopkins University; and the world of academic publishing for starters. A three-person band whose star is in the ascendant in the small but dynamic local music scene, Halloween Trés operate on a number of shifting and conflicting planes all at once. Thinking these agonisms in Deleuzean terms gives this article the impetus and certain rhetorical formulations to be able to articulate aspects of Halloween Trés’s music and performance. Furthermore, thinking Deleuzean intensities [End Page 30] in Halloween Trés terms offers some of the tools necessary to parse what Deleuze could mean regarding the concepts of intensity, encounters, and the violence of thought. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Facial Recognition. Collage by Nathan Doherty. Original painting by Lorenzo Baeza. A personally validating moment came in response to an earlier draft of this article from a Halloween Trés band member, Lucas Rambo. After reading what I’d then put together, he was floored by my descriptions of their performances: “we just do this shit, you actually tried to articulate it.” But I think of it in almost the exact opposite terms, I’m just trying to affectively understand the heavy lifting their performances seem to be doing. In some regards this is the entire point of the following performance of Deleuzean journalism, an attempt to participate in, and to understand, the shifting dynamics of a lively artistic community both in terms of its emergent affective [End Page 31] registers and through the repertoire of concepts provided by a Deleuzean lexicon. The encounters I am interested in mapping here harbor a degree of intensity and contagion that open one to potent forces beyond one’s ken or ability to completely quantify, domains of what in Difference and Repetition Deleuze refers to as those of “wonder, love, hatred, suffering” (139). I posit this rhetorical agonism at the beginning of this project—especially important when considering Halloween Trés performances—to forestall the critique that neither all thought nor all encounters come about or emerge through fear and trembling, and certainly never only through terror/horror, which, at least in the moment of experiencing, often violently close down anything resembling thoughtfulness. The key to navigating such encounters together with their accompanying degrees of intensity, I will argue, is comportment and learning new ways of dwelling with the everyday unfolding of events that are always difficult to process or understand.2 In this way no affective event is without some emergent form of agonism, whether or not it be consciously divined. Love becomes contagion, and contagion can, perhaps, become something like love. RE-BEGINNING: FROM THOUGHTFUL TO ARTFUL TERROR(S) What is an encounter? On certain pragmatic levels, in part because of the limitations of the traditionally conceived human capacity to engage affectively with multiple sites of interaction to any sustained degree, it is difficult to provide a cogent description of the many disparate factors that constitute an encounter. What one often does interact with, or at least register to some degree, are heterogeneous entities that might at first...

School’s the Right Place for Love, or Why We Keep Teaching

In this article, three educators 12 years into their careers discuss what they’ve learned about teaching. The educators, all of whom attended the same undergraduate institution and completed their student teaching together, begin by reflecting on their training experience and how it prepared them (or didn’t) to face the daily challenges of the classroom. The conversation turns to significant failures, proudest moments, and the vital role creativity plays in teacher longevity before settling on reasons these educators keep teaching despite the fact that more and more people are leaving the profession or avoiding it altogether. By the conversation’s end, a message of hope emerges, one that identifies imagination and community as fundamental to a teacher’s long-term success.

Ritual to Reclaim the Body As a Place of Love

Ritual to Reclaim the Body As a Place of Love

The Statement of [inline-graphic 01], Revised

The Statement of [inline-graphic 01], Revised Sean Gill (bio) Hello, . I hope this message finds you well. I want to preface my comments by saying that I only want to help you with the Court, and if any of my revisions appear insensitive, they only come from a place of love. Like all my clients, I want, above all, for you to receive asylum—even if that means hurting your feelings! I know that you have been resistant to making changes to your statement because you want it to represent the whole truth. Here's a little secret: much truth out there masquerades as fiction, and many lies live on, posing as facts. I believe that, often, a person sees or experiences something true and they want to share it, but they are ashamed. They don't want other people to know their peccadillos or their innermost thoughts. They call it fiction. It's safer that way. Conversely, in memoir (or in a situation like this, a legal statement), where the self is a character, there is a vested interest in burnishing the rougher edges with half-truths and convenient inventions. That's perfectly fine—everybody does it! In the era of image control, self-awareness is not a virtue. You must never admit you are wrong or less than perfect. In this instance, you must be the "perfect victim." Your life may depend on it. With this in mind, I think that improving your statement to match audience expectations is the smartest move. We are playing to flesh-and-blood men, not Angels of History. Americans these days—even judges!—are weaned on screen stories. They've been conditioned with certain prejudices against those who defy the three-part structure. You'll see what I mean in my notes. I was a screenwriter for a time, and you know my bona fides. Without further ado… [End Page 49] THE STATEMENT OF CASE NO. 147382-H I was once a railway engineer. I thought I could use my position to leave the city before the siege began. I used to have a family, but now I am alone. In January of this year, I was arrested and denounced because of my knowledge of local infrastructure. It was said that someone witnessed me photographing the underbelly of a road-rail bridge, the only one of these structures in my country. Truthfully, I may have been photographing the sunset, as this is one of my hobbies. I answered the front door one week later as my two children were preparing for school. The secret police forced a sack over my head and bound my wrists with copper wire. After three hours of waiting, blind, in the back of a van, I was informed that I was under arrest for conspiracy to commit an act of terror against the road-rail bridge. (My wife took video footage of my arrest and uploaded it to the internet. This has been included as evidence in my supporting material.) I explained that this was a misunderstanding, and that if I were actually photographing at all, it was likely I was photographing the sunset. I gave them the code to unlock my phone, so that they could see my gallery of sunsets. I did not hear anything more about my phone or these photographs. I was instructed at this point to confess. During this period, which may have lasted as long as forty-eight hours, I drifted in and out of consciousness, the hood never removed from my head, nor the wire unspooled from my wrists. Every few hours I was allowed a sip of water through a straw they fed through a hole in the hood. The water was warm and tasted of sulfur, of rotten eggs. I could only take solace in the idea that they did not seem to be [End Page 50] poisoning me. This is really good, and it's a shame because no one is going to read this far. PUT IT AT THE BEGINNING. Remember the lesson from my essay "So You Want to Write a High-Speed Screenplay That Sells?" You've got to commit to grabbing the...