This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the taking (...) up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history. (shrink)

This article considers the strengths and potential contributions of participatory visual methods for healthcare quality improvement research. It argues that such approaches may enable us to expand our understanding of ‘patient experience’ and of its potential for generating new knowledge for health systems. In particular, they may open up dimensions of people’s engagement with services and treatments which exceed both the declarative nature of responses to questionnaires and the narrative sequencing of self reports gathered through qualitative interviewing. I will suggest (...) that working with such methods may necessitate a more reflexive approach to the constitution of evidence in quality improvement work. To this end, the article will first consider the emerging rationale for the use of visual participatory methods in improvement before outlining the implications of two related approaches—photo-elicitation and PhotoVoice—for the constitution of ‘experience’. It will then move to a participatory model for healthcare improvement work, Experience Based Co-Design. It will argue that EBCD exemplifies both the strengths and the limitations of adequating visual participatory approaches to quality improvement ends. The article will conclude with a critical reflection on a small photographic study, in which the author participated, and which sought to harness service user perspectives for the design of psychiatric facilities, as a way of considering the potential contribution of visual participatory methods for quality improvement. (shrink)

Background: In recent years, the interest in ethical climate has increased in the literature. However, there is limited understanding of the phenomenon within the cancer care context as well as between countries. Aim: To evaluate cancer nurses’ perceptions of hospital ethical climate in Greece and Cyprus. Research design: This was a quantitative descriptive–correlational comparative study with cancer nurses. Data were collected with the Greek version of the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey questionnaire in addition to demographic data. Participants and research context: (...) In total, n = 235 cancer nurses working in cancer care settings in Greece and Cyprus were recruited at two national oncology nursing conferences. Ethical considerations: The study conforms to the principles of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki and the relevant ethical approvals were obtained according to national law. Results: The results showed that in terms of the “Managers” dimension, participants working in Greek hospitals had a higher score compared to the Cyprus participants. The perceptions of nurses working in oncology units in Greece regarding the ethical climate were more positive compared to Cyprus. Nurses with a higher level of education had a lower average ethical climate score across all dimensions. All dimensions exhibit positive and moderate to high correlations between them. Conclusion: It is imperative to evaluate and improve the hospital ethical climate that prevails in each cancer care department. This highlights the fact that nurses working in seemingly similar cultural and organizational contexts might still have different perceptions of the ethical climate. Despite these differences, it is necessary to create the right conditions to address ethical issues. A positive ethical climate requires good relationships between healthcare professionals and the presence of good teamwork in order to ensure better healthcare provision. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore a potential connection between two hypotheses recently put forward in the context of language evolution. One hypothesis argues that some human-specific change in the hominin brain developmental program habilitated the neuronal workspace that enabled “cognitive modernity” to unfold, also resulting in our globularized braincase. The other argues that the cultural niche resulting from our self-domestication favored the emergence of natural languages. In this article we document numerous links between the genetic changes we have claimed may (...) have brought about globularization and neural crest cells, which have been claimed to explain the constellation of distinctive traits found in all domesticated mammals. If these links turn out to be as robust as we think they are, globularization and self-domestication may well be closely related phenomena in the context of human evolution. (shrink)

RESUMENEl propósito de este ensayo es discutir sobre la posibilidad de desarroyo de una ontología de la imagen a partir de las premisas teóricas del Sistema del Saber hegeliano, mostrando también su relevancia en el debate contemporáneo de los visual studies o de la Bildkritik.PALABRAS CLAVESHEGEL, IMAGEN, ROMANTICISMO, ARTE ABSTRACTO, ESPIRITU SUBJETIVO, ICONOCLASTIA ENDOGENAABSTRACTThe aim of this essay is to argument the possibility to develop an Ontology of Image, taking as a starting-point the theoretical premises of the Hegelian System of (...) Knowledge and by doing so to show its actuality in the contemporary debate of visual studies or of Bildkritik.KEY WORDSHEGEL, IMAGE, ROMANTICISM, ABSTRACT ART,SUBJECTIVE SPIRIT, ENDOGENUS ICONOCLASM. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to explore a field of studies that until now has not gained the attention of the Hegelian scholars: the relationship between the Hegelian Philosophy and the philosophies of the Late Antiquity. The paper is divided in two parts, following what I consider the change of paradigm in image theories, during the passage from the Pagan to the Christian world. In the first part I consider Hegel’s thesis on what we could call the Greek image (...) theory, defined by the rationality of the human figure, until its slow decay. Such a decay will not be a simple disappearance but a transformation to what would later be the new principle for a Christian image theory: the speculative likeness. At the end of this essay, I will try to highlight the principle that undergoes the whole Hegelian treatment and that corresponds not to historical or empirical facts, but to his gnoseological theory, developed in the section of the Subjective Spirit in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The whole essay should be considered as a brief contribution to the construction of what is aimed to be a Hegelian theory of images and particularly to what I call “endogenous iconoclasm of the image”. Key words: Hegel – Late Antiquity – Image Theory – Endogenous Iconoclasm – Subjective Spirit.Resumen: El objetivo de este ensayo es explorar un campo de estudio que hasta ahora no ha llamado la atención de los especialistas: la relación entre la filosofía hegeliana y las filosofías de la Tardoantigüedad. El siguiente trabajo está dividido en dos partes, siguiendo lo que considero el cambio de paradigma en las teorías de la imagen durante el pasaje del paganismo al mundo cristiano. En la primera parte se examina la tesis de Hegel que podríamos llamar la teoría griega de la imagen, definida por la racionalidad de la figura humana, hasta su lento declive. Tal declive no será una simple desaparición, sino una transformación de lo que más tarde será un nuevo principio para una teoría cristiana de la imagen: la semejanza especulativa. Al final de este ensayo, trataré de evidenciar el principio que subyace en toda la doctrina hegeliana y que no corresponde a hechos históricos o empíricos, sino a su teoría del conocimiento, desarrollada en la sección del Espíritu Subjetivo en su Enciclopedia de las Ciencias Filosóficas. El ensayo en su totalidad debería ser considerado una breve contribución a la construcción de lo que estará destinado a convertirse en una teoría de la imagen hegeliana y espe- cíficamente en el desarrollo de lo que considero una “iconoclasia endógena de la imagen”.Palabras Clave: Hegel - Tardoantigüedad - teoría de la Imagen - iconoclasia endógena - Espíritu Subjetivo. (shrink)

Actualmente, la reflexión sobre la imagen se centra mayoritariamente sobre su masiva presencia y su interminable reproducción. En este trabajo nos centraremos, a la inversa, en cómo las imágenes se destruyen masiva y sistemáticamente. Si el examen interdisciplinar es una prerrogativa fundamental en los estudios visuales, el volumen Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present (Ashgate 2013), compilado por excelentes históricos y arqueólogos, ofrece a los filósofos un modelo importante de colaboración a la hora de pensar qué son las imágenes. El (...) propósito de este trabajo es presentar y discutir brevemente algunos aspectos originales de estos ensayos, enfatizando la importancia de los distintos modos y motivos por los que nuestros antepasados no solo han creado, sino también han destruido imágenes. Distinguiendo la iconoclasia del simple vandalismo, podemos descubrir una ambigüedad fundamental según la cual quien intenta preservar las imágenes, acaba con destruirlas y quien aparece como destros antepasados no solo han tructor, logra fertilizar nuevas concepciones y significados para su propia tradición figurativa. Quizás esta ambigüedad no sea algo que las imágenes sufren desde fuera, sino que sea algo connatural a la imagen misma. Y si es así, quien hoy estudia la vida de las imágenes, quizás podría encontrar un acceso privilegiado en esa a través una lógica paradójica que destaca como las imágenes mueren. PALABRAS CLAVESICONOCLASIA, ICONOFÍLIA, FILOSOFÍA Y TEORÍA DE LAS IMÁGENES, ESTUDIOS VISUALES.ABSTRACTContemporary thought on images focuses mostly on their massive presence and their endless reproduction. On the contrary, in this paper, I will focus on how images have been massively and systematically destroyed. If the interdisciplinary exam is a fundamental prerogative in visual studies, the volume Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present (Ashgate 2013), compiled by excellent historians and archaeologists, could offer to philosophers an important frame of teamwork in thinking what the images are. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss briefly some original aspects of these essays, by emphasizing the importance of means and reasons through which our ancestors have not only created, but also destroyed images. Once distinguished iconoclasm and mere vandalism, we could discover a fundamental ambiguity whereby any person who tries to preserve the images, finishes with wrecking them; while on the contrary somebody who appears as a destroyer, succeeds to fertilize new concepts and meanings for his/her own figurative tradition. Perhaps this ambiguity is not something that image suffers extrinsically, but something inherent to the image itself. And if it is so, he/she who wants to study the life of images, could perhaps find a privileged access to it, through a paradoxical logic that explains, instead, how images die.KEYWORDSICONOCLASM, ICONOPHILIA, PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY OF IMAGES, VISUAL STUDIES. (shrink)

Dos eventos, aparentemente distantes uno del otro y sin vínculos directos entre ellos, pero sin embargo estrictamente relacionados por un legado espiritual común, constituyen el tema de este trabajo. El primero, tuvo lugar en 1971, cuando una «capilla ecuménica» muy especial abrió sus puertas al público. Es conocida bajo el nombre de «Rothko Chapel», debido al proyecto general, realizado por el pintor Mark Rothko. Desde entonces, se ha convertido en una de las obras de arte más valiosas que representan la (...) estética religiosa contemporánea. Las pinturas negras de Rothko, la planta del edificio de «cruz griega» diseñado por el arquitecto Philip Johnson, el obelisco del artista Barnett Newman y la música compuesta para este ambiente por el compositor Morton Feldman, han reemplazado lo que tradicionalmente ha sido llamado «imago templi»; pero, contrariamente a toda tradición cristiana, representan nada (literalmente: no-thing). El segundo evento, tuvo lugar en 1795, cuando dos jóvenes amigos, Hegel y Schelling, estaban haciendo una especie de juramento bajo el signo de una Iglesia Invisible, actualizando un concepto ambiguo que, incluso arraigándose en las Sagradas Escrituras, ya había sido condenado por las iglesias oficiales por sus consecuencias heréticas. La relación entre estos dos eventos está dada por historiadores del arte moderno que han establecido que la pintura abstracta, desde un punto de vista formal, tiene sus raíces en la tradición romántica. Con este trabajo me gustaría contribuir al establecimiento de esta conexión, no solo por medios formales, sino también mostrando una actitud espiritual común hacia las imágenes. El cristianismo, esencialmente figurativo en su estética religiosa, siempre ha tenido que lidiar con la prohibición judía de la creación de imágenes. Esta dificultad ha sido trasferida a los debates contemporáneos en los que artistas con lecturas y educación clásicas, a menudo de origen judío pero activos en sociedades cristianas, intentan crear un nuevo tipo de arte, fuera de toda tradición y sin dogmas. Según mi sugerencia, Rothko Chapel debería considerarse como la realización de un equilibrio frágil en el que tanto el «aniconismo» como la «necesidad de imágenes» han superado su mutua unilateralidad, produciendo una etapa espiritual más elevada. Por lo tanto, tal capilla no sería un simple espacio donde todas las religiones podrían solo reunirse y dialogar, pero debería considerarse algo más sorprendente, es decir, una realización única de lo que lógicamente aparece como una pura contradicción: la realización de un Imago Templi para una Iglesia Invisible.Key words: Rothko; Hegel; Arte Abstracto; Idealismo; Iglesia Invisible. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, it aims at a refutation of a modern topic in philosophical literature about the supposed value of blindness as a kind of sight, deeper than the physical one, a kind of direct, intuitive and spiritual wisdom. This idea, in the last two centuries, has nourished not only an aesthetic mythology but also a specific kind of Metaphysics that we could summarize as the epistemological denigration of the Appearance, since the (...) truth would always be behind the phenomena, in the darkness of the indeterminate, where only a few would have access: this is the tyranny of blindness as a cultural paradigm. Thus, the systematic hermeneutical distortion of the Greek texts has been introduced into everyday language, slowly deforming our entire conception of the theoretical value of the visual and at the same time of the Greek legacy. For this reason, by dismantling the argumentation for this construct, the second aim of the article will be to offer an alternative reading of Greek visual culture, in this case especially through the work of Sophocles “Oedipus Rex”, where the majority of these topics pretend to be grounded. (shrink)

Two events, apparently distant one from the other and without any direct link between them, but nevertheless strictly connected by a common spiritual legacy, constitute the subject of this paper. The first one, took place in 1971, when a very special «ecumenical chapel» opened its doors to the public. It is known under the name of «Rothko Chapel», due to the general project, undertaken by the painter Mark Rothko. Since that time, it has become one of the most precious artworks (...) that represent the contemporary religious aesthetics. The black Rothko’s paintings, the Greek-cross building designed by the architect Philip Johnson, the Broken Obelisk of the artist Barnett Newman standing right out of the Chapel and the music composed for this ambient by the composer Morton Feldman, have replaced what traditionally has been called an «imago templi»; but contrary to all Christian tradition they represent (literally) no-thing. The second event, took place in 1795, when two young friends, Hegel and Schelling, were making a kind of oath under the sign of an Invisible Church, actualizing an ambiguous concept that, even if rooted in the Holy Scriptures, it had been condemned for its consequences as heretical. The relationship between these two events is given by contemporary art historians which have established that modern abstract painting, from a formal point of view, is rooted in the Romantic tradition. With this paper I would like to contribute to the establishment of this connection, not only by formal means, but by showing a common spiritual attitude towards images. Christianity, essentially figurative in its religious aesthetics, has always had to deal with the Jewish prohibition of image-making. This difficulty has been inherited to contemporary debates in which artist with classical readings and education, often of Jewish origins but active in Christian societies, try to create a new kind of art, above all traditions and free of dogmas. According to my suggestion, Rothko Chapel should be considered as the realization of a fragile balance in which both «aniconism» and «need of images» have simultaneously sublated their one-sidedness, producing a higher spiritual stage. Thus, such a chapel would not be a simple space where all religions could only meet and undertake a dialog, but should be considered as something more surprising: a unique realization of what logically appears as a pure contradiction: the realization of an Imago Templi for an Invisible Church. (shrink)

A very special kind of feast belongs to the Christian Orthodox tradition: there is a specific liturgical celebration of the Images in the so-called Sunday of Orthodoxy. While in many cultures images are employed in order to celebrate an historic event, this is the only feast in which, on the contrary, images are celebrated for themselves. Nonetheless, the role of images in Orthodoxy is not univocally and positively accepted. In fact, the title’s expression.the wolf as a shepherd. belongs to a (...) Desert Father and refers to the role of images in our mental life. This is not reported by a heretical iconoclastic document, but by the well-known Philokalia, a kind of handbook of Orthodox Aesthetics. This paper aims to present these two aspects in their paradoxical partnership. First, I will present some historical, symbolic and liturgical aspects of this feast. Thus, we should be able to understand better why many contemporary authors claimed that the origins of our visual culture can be traced in this Feast. However, if we comprehend the philosophical value of Byzantine icons, we realise that they have little to do with our contemporary images, no matter whether we mean artistic, religious or media images. We often talk about the.power of images., but just to blame them -as if they were autonomous entities- or to praise them, in a generalized aestheticization of contemporary life. Iconophobia and iconodoulia, I claim, are emerging as ontologically impoverished versions of the former Byzantine theoretical models. What falls into oblivion is the paradoxical status of the image as.appearance of the essence of Being. that demands as a condition of its own existence its self-sublation. These dialectics, conceptually inspired by the Hegelian logic, are fully present in Byzantine Aesthetics, where the feast is considered as a precarious image, held in memory of a future image-loss event known as eschaton. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Affect Attunement in the Caregiver-Infant Relationship and Across SpeciesExpanding the Ethical Scope of ErosCynthia WillettCompelling glimpses into the ethical capacities of our animal kin reveal new possibilities for ethical relationships encompassing humans with other animal species. Consider the remarkable report of a female bonobo in a British zoo who assists a bird found in her cage by retrieving the fallen bird, and spreading its wings so that this fellow (...) creature might fly away to its freedom. Or the report of a cat in a nursing home who curls up around dying elderly patients, and remains steadily by their side as they, unbeknownst to the medical personnel, pass away.1 Or of a sacred moment of silence by a stream for baboons in East Africa.2 Or of the ethics that spontaneously emerges among wolves at play.3 On the basis of extensive studies, biologist Frans de Waal argues that such anecdotes are far from rare, and that some core elements of moral understanding and compassion occur among a significant range of nonhuman as well as the human animal species. Apes, monkeys, and perhaps all nonhuman animals fail to display a distinctly human capacity for abstract moral reasoning. As de Waal (2006) remarks, it is difficult to tell (173–75). But our furry and feathery kin do without a doubt demonstrate rich elements of ethical response, and they often enough extend their moral concern to creatures beyond their own species. Of course, they will also bite each other’s heads off or eat their own young as well. But this is just to say that animals are neither natural [End Page 111] innocents nor savage brutes. Like us, they belong to what post-Nietzschean philosophers might frame, somewhat ironically, as a postlapsarian world of good and evil.What kind of philosophical approach could account for these postlapsarian genealogies of ethics? Biologists, primatologists, and anthropologists are drawing upon investigations of prosocial behavior to remap the boundaries of ethics, as for example in Isabelle Stengers’s call for cosmopolitical ecologies of relationships (2010, 33). Such a cosmopolitics aims to encompass our kin and kind from diverse species within the ethical boundaries of common worlds. Donna Haraway discovers an opening for Stengers’s ecology of relationships in the intimate encounters among co-evolving species, especially those she calls companion species (2008, 83). She argues, following Derrida, that the abstract reasoning processes of Stoic and Kantian cosmopolitan ethics remain closed to the participation of nonhuman animals as anything more than dependents, failing to observe the ways in which they act as companions, if not moral subjects. But then, what normative force might bind together an ethically attuned biosocial sphere that we as humans co-inhabit with other animal species?To explore this question, this essay takes its cues from well-established research on the responsive, preverbal connection of the human infant and adult caregiver (Bateson 1979; Trevarthen 1984; Stern 1985, 2010; Gibbs 2001, 2010; Hansen 2004; Anderson 2006; Papoulias and Callard 2010; Willett 1995, 2001). To this research we can add new animal studies (Smuts 1999, 2001; Fudge 2002; de Waal 2006, 2009; Bekoff 2007; Molnar 2008; Haraway 2008). These animal studies provide a basis for extending an “ethics of eros” with roots in Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault, Enrique Dussel, Africana feminism, Freudo-Marxist critical theory, and Plato (for discussions of this tradition, see Bergoffen 1997; Huffer 2009; Willett 2001)—but reconfigured in terms of social bonds across multiple animal species. In this tradition of ethics, the lack of a cognitive-based moral subjectivity that can translate into human terms does not consign nonhuman species to a mute moral status. On the contrary, some more primordial basis for relationship and meaning may weave thin but substantial threads of a postmoral ethics across regions of the biosphere.Given the diverse modes of subjectivity among animal species, and even the lack of what we call a moral subject altogether in many species, neither ordinary modes of empathy nor of moral understanding go very far in forging multispecies social bonds. For this reason, we turn to research on “the attunement of affects” in the infant-caregiver relationship (Stern 1985). As we shall see, this... (shrink)