Transformation Of Body Research Articles

Fine structure of mushroom bodies and the brain in Sthenelais boa (Phyllodocida, Annelida)

Mushroom bodies are known from annelids and arthropods and were formerly assumed to argue for a close relationship of these two taxa. Since molecular phylogenies univocally show that both taxa belong to two different clades in the bilaterian tree, similarity must either result from convergent evolution or from transformation of an ancestral mushroom body. Any morphological differences in the ultrastructure and composition of mushroom bodies could thus indicate convergent evolution that results from similar functional constraints. We here study the ultrastructure of the mushroom bodies, the glomerular neuropil, glia-cells and the general anatomy of the nervous system in Sthenelais boa. The neuropil of the mushroom bodies is composed of densely packed, small diameter neurites that lack individual or clusterwise glia enwrapping. Neurites of other regions of the brain are much more prominent, are enwrapped by glia-cell processes and thus can be discriminated from the neuropil of the mushroom bodies. The same applies to the respective neuronal somata. The glomerular neuropil of insects and annelids is a region of higher synaptic activity that result in a spheroid appearance of these structures. However, while these structures are sharply delimited from the surrounding neuropil of the brain by glia enwrapping in insects, this is not the case in Sthenelais boa. Although superficially similar, there are anatomical differences in the arrangement of glia-cells in the mushroom bodies and the glomerular neuropil between insects and annelids. Hence, we suppose that the observed differences rather evolved convergently to solve similar functional constrains than by transforming an ancestral mushroom body design.

Bodily Transformations as a Sign of Personal Identity Loss of Heroes of World Literature Works of Second Half of XX — early XXI Centuries

The question of the self-identity crisis of the heroes of literary works at the turn of the century is considered. Particular attention is paid to the bodily transformations of characters as a sign of the loss of personal identity. The relevance of the study is due to the need to fill the existing lacunes in modern literary criticism on the problem of bodily metamorphosis, considered in the designated context. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that previously unexplored works of art by individual writers are analyzed. The authors offer an analysis of the most representative novels of the second half of the 20th — early 21st centuries: “The Last Dream of Reason” by D. Lipskerov, “Second Body” by M. Pavich, “Box Man” and “Alien Face” by Kobo Abe. An analysis of works through the prism of V. Podoroga’s phenomenological theory of corporeality is presented in the paper; special attention is paid to the concepts of “body without skin” and “body outside the norm”. The idea of physicality and identity of J. Baudrillard is also reflected in the work. It is proved that in the novels there are several ways of bodily modifications: moving to another body or object, changes in the functions of internal organs, fusion with an object, which is interpreted by the authors as a sign of the loss and fruitless search for the personal identity of the heroes.

JOURNEY «BEYOND THE BODY» IN THE NOVEL OF H. MURAKAMI «KAFKA ON THE BEACH»

The article examines the phenomenon of traveling «beyond the corporeality» of the characters of Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the Beach. Special attention is paid to the bodily transformations of the characters, going beyond the limits of physicality, as signs of the loss of personal identity. The article also compares the «bodily journeys» of the main character of the novel with the passage of the labyrinth, which also symbolizes the rite of initiation. The relevance of the research is due to the need to fill in the existing gaps in modern literary criticism on the problems of bodily metamorphoses considered in the designated context, as well as on the study of the creative heritage of H. Murakami in general. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the novel by H. Murakami, chosen as the object of research, is analyzed through the prism of the phenomenological theory of corporeality by V. Podorogi, special attention is paid to the concept of «the body outside the norm». The work also reflects the ideas about the physicality and identity of J. Baudrillard, F. Nietzsche, M. Yampolsky et al. It is proved that in the novel the phenomenon of the hero's journey inside his own body is both a sign of the loss of personal identity and a way of acquiring this identity.

At the Margins of Time and Place

At the Margins of Time and Place

The Adaptation and Development of the Proclean Notion of Κατάβασις: From Proclus to Maximus the Confessor

This paper examines the impact of Proclus’ notion of divine descent, i.e., κατάβασις, on the formation of core theological doctrines in Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor. The notion of κατάβασις was originally employed by pagan Proclus to explain the downward providence of gods toward humans, emphasizing the dominant role of gods for human perfection. In his exegesis on Alcibiades I, Proclus identified Socrates as the incarnation of divine providence, a divinely inspired lover in charge of Alcibiades’ conversion to philosophical life. Pseudo-Dionysius adapted the Proclean notion of κατάβασις by supplementing it with the Christian notion of God’s ecstatic love, understood as God’s providential act toward His creation. In the Celestial Hierarchy and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius endeavored to reveal the reciprocal-ecstatic union between God and humans made possible by His ecstatic κατάβασις during the liturgy. Maximus adapted and further developed the Dionysian notion of κατάβασις. While stressing the crucial role of the κατάβασις for human salvation, he gave it a new meaning by synthesizing it in the context of his anthropology, which stressed the holistic transformation of the human body and soul as a result of the divine descent.

Embodied Objects: Chūjōhime’s Hair Embroideries and the Transformation of the Female Body in Premodern Japan

The female body in medieval Japanese Buddhist texts was characterized as unenlightened and inherently polluted. While previous scholarship has shown that female devotees did not simply accept and internalize this exclusionary ideology, we do not fully understand the many creative ways in which women sidestepped the constraints of this discourse. One such method Japanese women used to expand their presence and exhibit their agency was through the creation of hair-embroidered Buddhist images. Women bundled together and stitched their hair into the most sacred parts of the image—the deity’s hair or robes and Sanskrit seed-syllables—as a means to accrue merit for themselves or for a loved one. This paper focuses on a set of embroidered Japanese Buddhist images said to incorporate the hair of Chūjōhime (753?CE–781?CE), a legendary aristocratic woman credited with attaining rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land. Chūjōhime’s hair embroideries served to show that women’s bodies could be transformed into miraculous materiality through corporeal devotional practices and served as evidence that women were capable of achieving enlightenment. This paper emphasizes materiality over iconography and practice over doctrine to explore new insights into Buddhist gendered ritual practices and draws together critical themes of materiality and agency in ways that resonate across cultures and time periods.

Embodying legal precarity: Living with ongoing short‐term protection in Germany

AbstractImmigration regimes pay particular attention to the migrant’s body in the process of legal and bureaucratic inscription. Legal precarity, defined by the repeated reception of short‐term protection from deportation, is an existential and deeply embodied experience. The analysis of Schwangerschaftsduldung (temporary suspension of deportation based on pregnancy) and protection for unaccompanied minors, two legal situations in Germany, can shed light on how the migrant’s body receives centre stage in the process of legal status determination and shows how the long journey to relative legal stability deeply affects the body. The two legal categories have in common a temporal limitation and an association with bodily transformations. By centring on the legal trajectories of three migrants, this article shows how the body is taken as the marker of vulnerability and (un)deservingness and becomes the bearer of legal precarity.

Letter from the Editors

Letter from the Editors

Raw becomings: Bodies, discipline and control in Julia Ducournau’s Grave

ABSTRACT Julia Ducournau’s Grave (2018) takes place within the confines of an isolated veterinary school, where humans and animals coexist as part of a highly codified environment. Against the backdrop of the school’s methodical and ritualised social regulation, disruptive bodily transformations take place, blurring the biological and behavioural categories that traditionally define species-based identities. Grave presents us with two irreconcilable yet complementary concepts of the body: one that is subject to the scientific pursuit of categorising, normalising and disciplining already in evidence in the proto-cinematic project of decomposing movement, and another corporeality based on fluidity and exchange, recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming. Following the stylistic conventions of a French horror cinema that foregrounds the materiality of the image, bodies, in Grave, appear as markers of subjection, adaptation or resistance to strategies of disciplining and normalisation. However, the film’s visual and narrative lines of flight, and its open-ended conclusion, raise the question of a move from one disciplining system to another, more diffuse model of control.

An analysis of the writing of ‘suicide cult’ members

Abstract The infamous ‘Heaven’s Gate cult’ committed a mass suicide in 1995 believing members of the group would achieve salvation through bodily transformation and departure aboard UFOs. The group left a large volume of writing available as a book and a website which outlined their belief structure. This writing, largely by the group’s leaders Ti and Do, is supplemented by ‘exit statements’ written by the group members. We analysed these writings and demonstrated how the texts evolve from accessible texts for recruiting individuals into the group through more complex texts for cementing the belief structure and reinforcing the ingroup. We also identify differences in the ‘exit statements’ that demonstrate the ideas and concepts that gained traction with the group members.

Monsters, Disaster, and Organic Balance: Digesting History Through Oral Traditions

AbstractThis paper examines “Coyote, Whirlwind, and Ravine,” a long tale told in the Northern Paiute language by McDermitt storyteller Pete Snapp and recorded by folklorist Sven Liljeblad in the early 1960’s. It weaves in traditional episodes of western Numic folklore to narrate the history of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community as witnessed by an elder born shortly after the beginning of the colonization of this area of the Northwestern Great Basin in the western United States. This paper explores how the bodies of certain characters who emanate from landscape, mainly monsters, are tools for the narrative expression of social change, for the telling of history, and the expression of Indigenous spiritual frameworks. It places the experience of the Indigenous social body, embodied by Coyote, through the grinds of the ultra-material Ravine and confronts it to ethereal nefarious powers. Poetics of materiality applied to the body of Coyote operate a structural transformation. Mythical turmoil expresses social experiences and change in the colonial context, but also makes manifest the transformation of the social body that result in the contemporary form of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community.

Guardians of Idolatry: God, Demons, and Priests in Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón’s Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions

Guardians of Idolatry: God, Demons, and Priests in Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón’s Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions

Observations on Casting Gomorra. La serie

ABSTRACT This short piece briefly addresses the casting of Ciro Di Marzio and Gennaro Savastano in Gomorra. La serie, paying particular attention to casting directors Sara Casani and Laura Muccino. The essay is based upon a personal interview with them, and investigates the hidden labour of casting directors in the Italian context who are more often than not women. It also pays special attention to the intricate process of casting two of the series’ focal villains, both of whom underwent profound bodily transformations before and during season one.

Social transformation interventions at South African public universities

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify the transformation disclosures in the publicly available annual reports of South African public universities and to establish the extent to which universities account to their stakeholders about how they have discharged their transformation obligations. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory qualitative study involves a thematic content analysis of publicly available annual reports using ATLAS.ti software to identify and categorise transformation interventions disclosed by South African public universities. Findings This empirical study identifies several interventions that universities have introduced to facilitate access to and successful completion of tertiary studies by students. Some of the disclosed mechanisms include the provision of financial aid, student support and counselling, tutoring and mentoring and ICT enhancements and the introduction of language policies. The results also highlighted several challenges to sustainable transformation including funding, social and academic barriers and infrastructural challenges experienced by universities. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, this study represents one of the first studies to use the public disclosures in the annual reports of public universities to identify interventions introduced to facilitate transformation of the student body. Despite its South African orientation, the observations have implications for universities worldwide experiencing similar challenges, especially in developing countries.

Tranformation of a health sciences postgraduate population (2008-2017) at a higher education institution in South Africa: Has this occurred?

Despite efforts to prioritise transformation of the previously disadvantaged population, inequalities created by the Apartheid system persist in the South African higher education system. This study assessed transformation in relation to population affinity and gender of first-time enrolments of Health Sciences (HS) postgraduate students at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg. A retrospective study of the Wits HS postgraduate student database was used for this assessment. The probability of a postgraduate student being Black African increased by 7.5 per cent per year [OR: 1.075, 95% CI (1.052–1.099), p<0.001] over the period 2008–2017 and of being female, increased by 5.6 per cent per year [OR: 1.056, 95% CI (1.033–1.081), p<0.001]. While transformation has occurred, Black African females are still under-represented. The transformation of the postgraduate student body as observed in this study is of importance to other countries struggling with racial and gender equity in the health workforce.

Sorcery and well-being: bodily transformation at Beckeranta

ABSTRACT This paper examines bodily transformation and well-being within the context of a millenarian movement that emerged during the 1840s in the area surrounding Mount Roraima at the periphery of Brazil, Guyana (British Guiana at the time), and Venezuela. The site of this movement was Beckeranta – meaning ‘Land of the Whites’ – where up to 400 Amerindians were reportedly killed in a quest that is described in its sole historical account as centred around a goal of bodily transformation into white people. In examining this movement, the paper engages with longstanding debates in medical anthropology concerning the body, as well as conversations among Amazonianists concerning the social formation of bodies, and examines sorcery and shamanism as practices that go ‘beyond the body’. Notions of bodily transformation in Amazonia, which are often activated by strong emotions, facilitate conceptual expansions of the body in medical anthropology. The paper suggests that bodily transformations tied to sorcery and shamanism are in some contexts, such as at Beckeranta, associated with desires for well-being. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2020.1807726.

The power of informal cancer caregivers’ writings: results from a thematic and narrative analysis

BackgroundCancer is a disease that disrupts not only the patient’s life, but that of the entire family as well, from a care, organizational, and emotional perspective. Patients share their experience of illness frequently with their informal caregiver (IC), a partner, son/daughter, friend, volunteer, or any other person in the family or social network who offers to support them during their clinical journey. The purpose of this study was to investigate ICs’ still unknown cancer experiences through the stories of IC participants in a Literary Artistic Competition the Centro di Riferimento Oncologico di Aviano (CRO) IRCSS organized, and understand the themes that emerged from their texts and hence, the power of expressive writing.Materials and methodsA qualitative study was carried out on literary texts using Mishler’s three levels of narrative analysis: thematic (to detect themes and subthemes); structural (to support the thematic level), and performative (to understand the narratives’ meaning). In addition, the narratives were classified based on Kleinman and Frank’s models. A particular focus was placed on the language of the narratives to identify figures of speech, e.g., metaphors related to cancer.ResultsSeven main themes emerged from the 40 stories’ thematic analysis: perceptions of the disease; biographical breakdown; relationships; transformation of the sick body; IC’s role; encounter with death; and strength of memory. The ICs’ stories also highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the patient’s clinical pathway. ICs are a resource not only for the patient, who, thanks to them, is assured of continuous assistance but also for the healthcare organization, above all because they serve a relational role as a “bridge” between patients and healthcare workers. ICs have important messages to offer to healthcare organizations. If involved adequately, they can provide a strategic strength in supporting patients and healthcare workers themselves. The in-depth analysis of the themes and subthemes in this study led the authors to hypothesize that expressive writing benefit ICs with respect to the possibility of sharing their experiences with others and giving evidence of their role. Their stories are a testimony that can help those who face a similar experience.

Cuerpos performáticos: las prácticas transformistas del certamen Nuestra Belleza Gay Cárdenas

In this anthropological research a description and analysis of performative bodily practices is carried out by young people who subscribe to diverse sexual orientations within the framework of the contest “Our Gay Beauty Cárdenas”, which is held every year during the month of July in the rural community of Cárdenas, located in the middle of the state of San Luis Potosí, México. The methodology implemented  corresponds to an ethnographic work carried out through observation-participant which allowed me to carry out a visual and narrative record on the performative and transformational practices carried out by Julian and Raymundo two of the participants of that Beauty Contest. The bodily transformations are carried out by the participants from various bodily practices that they have called under the concept of “tricks”, through which they obtain highly feminized faces and bodies. That is why the conclusion of such research suggests that within such bodily practices they consciously or unconsciously reproduce hegemonic body patterns. In this case, the beauty pageant reproduces performative practices oriented to the reproduction of female models idealized and standardized by the sociocultural context.

НЕКЛАССИЧНЫЙ КЛАССИК. ВЗГЛЯД НА ИСКУССТВО С. ЭРЬЗИ (1876-1959) ИЗ XXI ВЕКА

For the first time in Russian art history, the article attempts to show the integrity of the art of the Russian-Argentine sculptor S. Erzya on the basis of an art history analysis of his most famous works created in Italy, Russia and Argentina. The features of his personal and creative development are revealed in the context of socio-cultural events, which were distinguished by a stormy, sometimes catastrophic nature. The youthful ideals of Tolstoyism in the mind of a mature master acquire the features of a worldview that asserts the priority of the ideals of moral and spiritual perfection, the devotion to which was almost invariably paid with the price of life. A documentary confirmation of Erziʼs words is given in the entry of his secretary, L. Orsetti. People who knew Erza intimately in Italy, Russia, and Argentina also wrote about their commitment to these ideals. The theme of sacrifice, the suffering path unites both his biblical works and things of revolutionary themes. Their success is described in the article not only on the basis of periodicals, but also for the first time with the involvement of exhibition catalogues. In Argentina, Erzya created monumental portraits of the spiritual leaders of mankind - these portraits by the sculptor himself were collected in a special exhibition in his house: Moses, Beethoven, Tolstoy, N. Gogol. The motives of beauty and birth, the continuation of the human race are embodied by Erzya in the famous female images «Nude», «Eve», «Motherhood», «Dance». The plastic beauty and the mystery of the transformation of the female body fascinated the audience at the exhibitions of the sculptor's works and were evidence of the change in his somatic perception in Argentina. Thus, in the art of Erzi in Argentina, the intuition and emotional supernormality inherent in the cultural consciousness of Latin Americans are manifested. The sculptor's attitude to the material he chose for a particular work was dictated by the concept. His rare ability to work in any material - cement, marble, bronze, wood-makes him stand out among modern sculptors. He followed the Michelangelo tradition in the processing of the marble block and became the only master to conquer the hard species of tropical trees. Today it is obvious that the legacy of the sculptor-thinker Erzya is not fully appreciated.

Bacon’s Inductive Method and Material Form

This paper contends that Bacon’s inductive method depends crucially on his general account of matter. I argue that Bacon develops a dynamic form of corpuscularianism, according to which aggregates of corpuscles undergo patterns of change that derive from active inclinations and appetites. The paper claims that Bacon’s corpuscularianism provides him with a theory of material form that enables him to theorize bodily change and possible material transformations. The point of natural histories and experiments is then to find the processes of corpuscular change that correlate with making present or making absent simple natures.