Role Of Things Research Articles

Chronotope of an thing or chronotope thing: a thing as a structurizer of space and time

INTRODUCTION. The study is a philosophical and cultural analysis of the “thing” concept as a cultural form that structures the space and time of an individual’s daily existence. The main focus is on the role of things in creating and representing the chronotope, which is a combination of space and time. Things act as structurizers of space and time and occupy two positions in relation to the chronotope: 1) as an internal thing within the chronotopic space, and 2) as an external thing outside the chronotope. This allows things to fully realize their symbolic functions. The aim of the study is to substantiate the argument that things, as carriers of meaning and symbolic objects, play a crucial role in structuring and stabilizing human culture through their chronotopic indicators.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The material obtained as a result of the analysis and synthesis of both philosophical and cultural studies of the thing as an object and phenomenon of culture is presented.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Thing is a complex entity and cultural form that interacts with the chronotope bidirectionally, objectifying and subjectivizing it. It can act as an “thing” and as a “phenomenon”, and its symbolic meaning can be deep and multifaceted.CONCLUSION. The material presented in the study is intended to fund applied research on the spatial and temporal structure of human daily life, as well as for socio-cultural design in the field of preservation and actualization of cultural heritage.

TRADITIONS OF THE FRENCH THEATER OF ABSURD IN VICTOR SOLODCHUK’S PLAY “WHERE WE WERE EIGHT YEARS”

The article analyzes Solodchuk’s play «Where We Were Eight Years,» which was included in the electronic version of Anthology-24, published this year. The play is analyzed from the perspective of the French theater of the absurd, through the identification of common features in the play and in the plays written by S. Beckett and Ionesco, namely: a similar worldview, which is influenced by specific historical events, loss of the meaning of life, life without purpose and faith. The kaleidoscopic form of narrative organization, the absurdity and paradox of events, and the grotesque characters whose dialogues are reduced to a limited monologue, they do not understand each other. The form and style of the antidrama are subordinated to the effect of the evidence itself — the grotesque, the farce, brought to the point of excess, which reveals the monotony and meaninglessness of life. The desire to comprehend the universals of existence, the recurring patterns in human life are introduced into the text through the genre of parable, myth, symbol, and metaphor. The word loses its logical and grammatical connections, becomes grotesque, which leads to the loss of its meaning. The absurdist principle is also realized at the level of the figurative system of Solodchuk’s play, where the character appears as a multi-voiced entity. In the texts of the representatives of the theater of the absurd, attention is focused on material objects that replace the Other, so the role of things, objects, scenery increases, and to some extent they replace the object of communication for the characters. In Solodchuk’s play, the object is the Backpack, which is empowered with extraordinary abilities to take away aggression from the outside world. The open ending overcomes, even denies, the technique of ’exhaustiveness’ of dialogue in absurdist texts and appeals to the conceptual creation of the future.

“Daft naff Scottish things”: Stuff, Waste and Memory Objects in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet

Abstract Guided by new materialist approaches to the memory of loss, this reading of Jackie Kay’s 1998 novel Trumpet surveys the affective permutations registered by different objects of remembrance in the Scottish-Nigerian writer’s fictional account of mourning. Exploring several material figurations of Black Scottishness in Kay’s writings, the essay derives its main theoretical framework from studies on blended subject-object ontologies, including Bill Brown’s critique of thingness, Maurizia Boscagli’s notion of the disruptive agency of stuff, and Mel Y Chen’s view of matter’s animacy, and discusses how the novel latches onto the role of things in anchoring memory and in helping humans work through bereavement.

On the importance of things: a relational approach to agency

Abstract The present review is conceived to be a contribution from the double perspective of a semiotician and a designer to the current debate on the extended mind and on distributed cognition, focusing on the role of things (artefacts, material culture) for the emergence of agency in animate beings. The theory of material engagement as conceived by Lambros Malafouris was formally introduced seven years ago, proposing an idea of boundless cognition and reformulating key notions such as agency, intentionality, and mental representations, philosophically framed with the help of approaches such as postphenomenology (Ihde 2009; Ihde and Malafouris 2019). There is much to commend about a non-hierarchical, interdependent relationship between the world and living organisms — and more specifically between material things and human beings. Nevertheless, a balanced review of the notion of “material agency” is still called for. In this review, I show that an asymmetry can be introduced into the relationship between artefacts and human beings without committing the “sin” of anthropocentrism.

Writing from Home: Clarice Lispector’s Chronicles in the Jornal do Brasil

This article focuses on Clarice Lispector’s chronicles published in the Jornal do Brasil from 1967-1973. These chronicles become a public space for exposing the act of thinking, which is strongly linked to emotions, instead of depicting a daily overview of events for the newspaper’s readers. Drawing from Bruno Latour’s notions of “translation” and “purification,” I argue that there is a “translation” process in Lispector’s chronicles that goes against “purification practices.” To this effect, I focus on how Lispector displays both her thinking process and her emotions, and on the role of things and people in her writing. Lispector delves into life from her home, an environment that becomes an “epistemological space,” as defined by Stacy Alaimo.

Duration of Things and Duration of Culture

This article discusses the relation between temporal existence of things and the persistence of culture. The material and the immaterial aspects of culture are quite different in relation to time. According to philosopher Karl R. Popper, meanings, senses and ideas belong to a separate non- -temporal realm of being. They come about in time but henceforth they exist non-temporarily. Their existence, unlike that of physical objects, does not depend on keeping a delicate balance between the change and identity − it is not based on struggle against time. But on the other hand, their seemingly non-temporal subsistence is strictly connected to the temporal existence of things. The latter do not carry meaning in virtue of sheer convention, but rather by means of subtle connection between their material structure and the properties of sentient and intelligent beings. Books hold a very special place in this framework. Physical properties of books are intertwined with their content very strongly albeit mysteriously. It is safe to say that reducing books to their content − by conveying the content to digital carriers alone − would result in a serious impoverishing of culture. In reference to early journalist works by the poet Zbigniew Herbert, three functions of preserving and studying artefacts are distinguished: reconstruction, preserving and learning. In studying artefacts there is always a quest for originals and considerable efforts are made in order to distinguish them from copies and derivatives. The article gives a brief account of recent debate concerning the value of these pursuits. Finally, a discussion with Michel Foucault is presented, concerning the role of things in self-formation.

A Beat is a Hybrid: Mediation, ANT and Music as Material Practice

This article aims to discuss the notion of music as material practice from a perspective of mediation theory. It attempts a non-reductivist understanding of the role of things and material settings for processes of human action and interaction in the context of musical events. Having considered Tia DeNora's micro-sociological reconceptualisation of Adornian materialism (DeNora, T. 2003. After Adorno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), it invokes perspectives from actor-network theory, drawing in particular on the contribution made to music sociology by Antoine Hennion and the sociology of associations advanced by Bruno Latour. Moreover, considerations of time and temporality are added by reference to Georgina Born's work on mediation in cultural production. On these grounds, a reinterpretation of DeNora's model for understanding musical events is proposed and explored through a case study of a particular instance of music making as material practice, namely the production of beats by a Danish hip-hop deejay, Thorbjørn Schwarz (aka DJ Static).

Norwidowskie dialogi rzeczy

The article presents the problems of Norwid’s things based on a selection of works written in various phases of the poet’s life ( Wieczor w pustkach (fantazja) , Toast. Fantazja , Bajka , [Na „Kazanie Skargi” Jana Matejki], [O, jakze drogim jest klejnotem], [Milo byc od swojego czasu zrozumianym], Garstka piasku. Legenda, Krakus. Tragedia, Za kulisami. Fantazja ) in which things have the status of talking heroes, capable of entering into dialogues or quasi-dialogues. A literary and anthropological analysis of the above material allowed us to observe the mediating role of things in the poetic world of Norwid. The poet lends them the status of a material sign of the spiritual basis of reality, Divine transcendence, Truth; he makes them means of expression of the human self, their content, structure and acts; he entrusts the things with functions typical of the tools of social interaction, initiation, ritualistic activities of individual and collective identity. The evolution of the poet’s views on the world of things is noteworthy, namely the transition from the imagination of things animated by the power of the spiritual to the imagination threatened by the objectification of the human being.

What Kind of Thing Is Land? Hannah Arendt’s Object Relations, or

Informed by D. W. Winnicott’s object relations theory, and focused on the role of Things in constituting the world that is the object of Arendtian care, this essay examines Hannah Arendt’s treatment in The Human Condition of two liminal examples, cultivated land and poetry, that hover on the borders of Labor, Work, and/or Action. Cultivated land could belong to Work because cultivation leaves a lasting mark on the land, but it is assigned to Labor because land, once it is left uncultivated, returns to nature, Arendt says. Poetry could belong to Action, which is the realm of meaning-making speech, but it is assigned to Work because, Arendt argues, poetry’s memorability ultimately depends on its writtenness and, once it is written, it becomes a Thing possessed of the object permanence characteristic of Work’s objects. But (un)cultivated land also has a textualized form; it, too, can be written down as, for example, in the form of mapping. Why does Arendt not consider this? What possibilities of political thought or action (beyond the mere reassignment of land cultivation from Labor to Work) might have been opened had she done so? Working through these questions with particular reference to colonial cartography (in which uncultivated land, deemed “fallow,” has a particularly political resonance), and reading Kafka’s The Castle (cited by Arendt elsewhere) alongside Brian Friel’s Translations, this essay explores practices of participatory mapping and land sabbatical that might make of land a “Thing” in Arendt’s sense. Noting the Biblical origins of land sabbatical and that Arendt’s move in the Work section from cultivated land to text/poem retraces George Steiner’s diasporic journey “From Homeland to Text,” I suggest that The Human Condition, commonly called Arendt’s most Greek text, may have a Jewish unconscious.

Ethnology collections as supplements and records: what museums contribute to historical archaeology of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)

ABSTRACTNineteenth-century ethnological collections can supplement what is found in archaeological assemblages because they include objects unlikely to appear on archaeological sites, which either don’t normally preserve, are extremely rare or were intentionally destroyed in the past. However, collections are not neutral samples of what existed in past societies. They are biased by what collectors chose to take, and what was offered by the makers of ethnological objects. Collections, then, also represent an important record of agency in colonial exchanges. An archaeological survey of nineteenth-century Presbyterian missions and the surrounding landscapes in the southern New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) included analysis of museum collections from the same era. These objects provide evidence of the active, mutually constitutive role of things and interpersonal relationships in shaping cross-cultural exchanges.

Trwanie rzeczy i trwanie kultury

This article discusses the relation between temporal existence of things and the persistence of culture. The material and the immaterial aspects of culture are quite different in relation to time. According to philosopher Karl R. Popper, meanings, senses and ideas belong to a separate quasi-temporal realm of being. They come about in time but henceforth they exist non-temporarily. Their existence, unlike that of physical objects, does not depend on keeping a delicate balance between the change and identity − it is not based on struggle against time. But on the other hand, their seemingly atemporal subsistence is strictly connected to the temporal existence of things. The latter do not carry meaning in virtue of sheer convention, but rather by means of subtle connection between their material structure and the properties of sentient and intelligent beings. Books hold a very special place in this framework. The physical properties of books are intertwined with their content very strongly albeit mysteriously. It is safe to say that reducing books to their content − by conveying the content to digital carriers alone − would result in a serious impoverishing of culture. In reference to early journalist works by poet Zbigniew Herbert, three functions of preserving and studying artefacts are distinguished: reconstruction, preserving and learning. In such studies there is always a quest for originals and considerable efforts are made in order to distinguish them from copies and derivatives. The article gives a brief account of recent debate concerning the value of these pursuits. Finally a discussion with Michel Foucault is presented, concerning the role of things in self-formation.

Thinking Through Things in Texts: A Seventeenth-Century Example

What is the cognitive role of things — sometimes but not always expressed as nouns — that appear in texts? What kind of literary affordances are the material furnishings that appear in a piece of literary writing? These questions are explored in this essay through the example of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), a long work of literary philosophy that plays with the evolving conventions of its genre. Fusing methodologies borrowed from anthropology and linguistics, this essay reveals the extent and type of work done by two of Locke's things, manna and porphyry. In doing so it tests a way of tracing the cognitive action of the Essay's contemporary readership without recourse to modern experimental methods.

Abductionism: An attempt to achieve symbiosis

The logical problem of language acquisition has turned out to be a pivotal argument in favor of the nativist view on language acquisition. Although much work has been conducted in favor of inductionism and deductionism, the following paper is an attempt to cast lights upon the notion of abductionism in language acquisition in order to achieve symbiosis between deduction/induction and abduction. Though linguistic, much of Chomsky’s writings are the revisited reflection on the philosophy pioneered by Plato and Peirce. Chomsky inclination towards Peirce’s abductionism reflects the fact that Chomsky never ignores the role of input offered by the external world, although to him the role of things that are external to organism is looked from an inferior light. In sum, what the present paper tries to account that the genesis of any logic in language acquisition is best described as an integrative development of observational verification, theoretical falsification, and hypothetical explanation. Henceforth, looking at one’s own scientific method (i.e., induction, deduction, and abduction) from a superior light entails ignoring the dynamicity of language acquisition.

The role of things in teaching-learning processes in school

Die Rolle der Dinge in Lehr-Lernprozessen wurde in empirischen Studien bisher wenig beforscht. Fur den Bereich der qualitativen Unterrichtsforschung liegt dies an der traditionellen Fokussierung auf die sprachliche Ebene des Unterrichts. Bildungstheoretische Uberlegungen zur Bedeutung der Dinge sind hingegen selten, methodische Ansatze zu ihrer Erforschung fehlen fast vollig. Ausgehend von unserer Forschungspraxis und unter Ruckgriff auf die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie Latours verfolgt unser Beitrag eine doppelte Zielsetzung: Auf einer methodologischen Ebene konnen wir zeigen, dass die Uberlegungen Latours zum Verhaltnis von Menschen und Dingen anschlussfahig sind an die theoretischen Grundlagen der dokumentarischen Methode. Dies erlaubt die Integration der theoretischen Begriffe, die Latour zur Beschreibung von Mensch-Ding-Assoziationen verwendet, in das Begriffsinventar einer sequenziellen Interaktionsanalyse des Unterrichts. Zum anderen sind Latours Uberlegungen zur zirkulierenden Bezugnahme auf Dinge und sedimentiertes Wissen in Forschungsprozessen auch unterrichtstheoretisch relevant und lassen sich auf die empirische Beschreibung von Wissens- bzw. Kompetenzerwerb im Unterricht anwenden.

Not a Drama: Things Affect in Herbert Read's the Innocent Eye

This paper attempts to rethink the role of things in the ongoing constitution of life. It seeks to build upon existing accounts of things in the social sciences where the measure of things is taken in their capacity to trigger an emotional response in a human subject, arguing that it is also necessary to consider things where they do not disrupt and are not registered emotionally. It is argued that things can be usefully considered as a continual series of affective ‘micro-shocks’ working to generate affective atmospheres. These premises are explored through a brief empirical excursion into an autobiographical account of childhood life, Herbert Read's The Innocent Eye (1933). Read's account is sensitive to the role of things in life and adopts what might be understood as a stance of ‘childlike wonder’ towards a world full of things, where the human-as-thing is in a state of becoming in the midst of these. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of this discussion for three key issues: first, the usefulness of understanding things as affective; second, the thing-ness of things beyond their emotional rendering; third, the importance of experimentation in the reception and narration of things for better accounting for the work done by things.

The Empire of Things in Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Consumption of the Foreign and Imperial Self-Fashioning

The paper is devoted to exploring representations of colonial things in early eighteenth-century literature. In numerous literary and economic texts of this period, colonial luxuries come to represent the main objectives of imperialism. Literary representations of colonial things are engaged in negotiating the precarious relationship between England and its colonial others and express many of the uncertainties brought about by the emergence of imperialism and mercantile capitalism. Social positionings, class and gender relations were acted out in and through the world of objects, thus fashioning the imperial subject as a possessor of colonial goods. What is constructed in literature is, therefore, not so much a narrative of a specific colonial thing but rather a narrative of a subject's relation to that object. It is shown that the role of things in establishing an imperial ideology raises related questions about gender and thus provides an opportunity to consider the correlative workings of gender and empire.

Remembering Things

In an attempt to listen to things, and to unpack the dynamics and particularities of the role of things in constituting memory (and the role of memory in constituting things), we argue four points: that relations between things are crucial; that things provide us with markers of time, place, purpose, and identity; that these markers are historically obdurate; and that things actin ways that transcend semiotics. Each of these four—relations, markers, obduracy, and actions—are significant for and constitutive of memory. The argument is thus antirepresentational, suggesting that the world is perfectly capable of representing itself, and that our understanding of the world is immanent in the world and its relations.

Choseville: Brontë'sVilletteand the Art of Bourgeois Interiority

The essay argues that Charlotte Brontë'sVillette(1853) grapples with the role of things in the constitution of persons. It is a paradigmatic novel about the fortunes of private, psychological interiority under commodity culture; its immediate context is the empire of things after the Great Exhibition of 1851.Villetterepresents subjectivity as a cabinet of curiosities, an interior–like a parlor–filled with intensely meaningful, even fetishized, bibelots. Lucy, the novel's narrator, longs to retreat from the public spectacles of commodity culture but, ironically, finds her identity also through relations with things. The novel suggests that bourgeois subjectivity, though it points to a thorough intimacy with objects, is paradoxically defined by the nostalgic notion that true interiority has been beset by or even lost to the pressure of things.

Causality and things in themselves

In this paper I examine Kant's use of causal language to characterize things in themselves. Following Nicholas Rescher, I contend that Kant's use of such causal language can only be understood by first coming to grips with the relation of things in themselves to appearances. Unlike Rescher, however, I argue that things in themselves and appearances are not numerically distinct entities. Rather, I claim that it is things in themselves that we are intentionally related to in veridical experience, though of course we know them only as they appear to us via our subjective experiential faculties. In light of this account of the role of things in themselves in Kant's account of experience, I argue that his use of causal locutions to describe things in themselves is simply his attempt to capture the fact that as the objects that we are related to in experience, the existence of things in themselves is presupposed by any account of the nature of our experienceof them.