Des pratiques artistiques aux discours sur l’immigration, les présences qui nous hantent en masse vivent de la tension entre leurs réalités médiales, nos désirs d’immédiateté et nos rêves d’immunité. Ce sont les plis générés entre ces trois registres qui rendent nos modes de présence très compliqués.

En Das Passagen-Werk Benjamin vuelve sobre el concepto de Ursprung, esta vez como salto genuino de lo que ha sido, como vuelco dialéctico en el instante del Jetztzeit del materialista histórico, instante de legibilidad, pero también como parada e interrupción [Stillstand] de este despliegue, donde la fuerza dialéctica queda suspendida por un instante, en el ahora de su cognoscibilidad. Para llegar a esto, el berlinés ha hecho un recorrido reflexivo, crítico y contundente, el cual comienza a definirse más intensamente desde (...) el prólogo Epistemocrítico de su Trauerspiel. Rastrearemos el recorrido en ambas obras y en las construcciones problemáticas de sus textos y fragmentos anteriores, especialmente en la tensión de la mediación, relación y conexión entre la obra de arte y el arte como despliegue teórico; sobre todo la tensión existente entre los primeros Románticos y Goethe, en la dialéctica entre la forma pura [Idee] y el contenido ideal [Ideale] del arte. También nos inmiscuiremos en las tesis Sobre el concepto de historia y Parque central y algunos fragmentos sobre Baudelaire. Nuestro objetivo principal es mostrar el despliegue de la imagen [Bild] en la escritura filosófica benjaminiana, en medio [Mittel] de los extremos de idea y fenómeno, de verdad y conocimiento, por tanto en la misma construcción conceptual, cuando nombrar y contemplar la realidad histórica, la realidad material debía ser comentada, interpretada y leída en su eterna caducidad [ewige Vergängnis] o hundimiento [Untergang], como exposición [Darstellung] de una experiencia histórica configurada por determinadas constelaciones imaginales. (shrink)

In the constitution of contemporary image theory, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy has undoubtedly become a major conceptual reference. Rather than trying to establish what Wittgenstein’s own image theory could possibly look like, this paper would like to critically assess some of the advantages as well as some of the quandaries that arise when using Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘seeing-as’ for addressing the plural realities of images. While putting into evidence the tensions that come into play when applying what was initially a theory (...) of the gaze to a theory of the image, the paper shall subsequently discuss three modes of iconic vision: the propositional seeing-as, the projective seeing-in and the medial seeing-with. (shrink)

Este artículo se centra en ciertas reflexiones tempranas de la filosofía de Walter Benjamin y sostiene que en ellas se advierte un pasaje del concepto de verdad comprendido como misterio [Geheimnis] a uno en que la verdad es abordada en cuanto enigma [Rätsel]. En primer lugar, se establece la determinación de la preminencia subjetivista de la modernidad y se muestra en qué sentido el programa benjaminiano de una filosofía venidera avanza hacia una reflexión liberada del yo, capaz de experimentar lo (...) no-dicho por la totalidad subjetivista. Luego, se señala por qué la búsqueda de una relación sujeto-objeto distinta a la de la síntesis se concentra en la objetividad estética. A continuación, se indica la aproximación entre verdad y belleza efectuada por el filósofo y se sugiereuna conexión entre tal aproximación y la actualización benjaminiana de la filosofía platónica, fundamentalmente, la asociada a la figura medial de Eros. Por eso, finalmente, se expone el abordaje de la búsqueda tensional del δαίμων como la vía benjaminiana para desmontar la concepción misteriosa de la verdad y afirmar, en cambio, su carácter enigmático. (shrink)

In order to explore the relationship of social support, self-efficacy, and subjective well-being of special education teachers in China, 496 teachers from 67 special education schools were surveyed by questionnaire. We found that the subjective well-being of special education teachers in China was in the medial level. There were significant differences in subjective well-being level among teachers of different genders, teacher position, education background, and teaching age. Male teachers were of higher subjective well-being; subjective well-being of head teachers was (...) lower than those were not head teachers; teachers with the educational background of postgraduate were of higher relaxation and tension than those with junior college educational background; the control scores of emotion and behavior of teachers with teaching age of 3 years and below were significantly lower than those of teachers with teaching age of more than 10 years. Self-efficacy played a partially mediating role in the relationship between social support and subjective well-being of special education teachers. Suggestions to improve the subjective well-being of special education teachers were discussed in the article. (shrink)

It is shown that all the assumptions for symmetric monoidal categories follow from a unifying principle involving natural isomorphisms of the type →, called medial commutativity. Medial commutativity in the presence of the unit object enables us to define associativity and commutativity natural isomorphisms. In particular, Mac Lane’s pentagonal and hexagonal coherence conditions for associativity and commutativity are derived from the preservation up to a natural isomorphism of medial commutativity by the biendofunctor . This preservation boils down (...) to an isomorphic representation of the Yang–Baxter equation of symmetric and braid groups. The assumptions of monoidal categories, and in particular Mac Lane’s pentagonal coherence condition, are explained in the absence of commutativity, and also of the unit object, by a similar preservation of associativity by the biendofunctor . In the final section one finds coherence conditions for medial commutativity in the absence of the unit object. These conditions are obtained by taking the direct product of the symmetric groups for 0≤i≤n. (shrink)

How can the medium be addressed when it is always already saturated in religious over-determinations and ever marked by theological concerns (such as revelation and incarnation) while, at the same time, religion would not be practiced and theology not be done without using some such medium? We encourage methodological and conceptual shifts, first, from medium to mediality; second, from religion to its partial negation (or, perhaps, partial permeation); third, from theology to doing the theological differently. With these shifts we desire (...) to initiate, continue, and intensify debates, specifically between theologians and scholars of religious studies and media theory. (shrink)

As Foucault has argued persuasively, human sciences carry in themselves not only the danger of anthropologization, but, precisely because of their epistemic instability and hybridity, also the potential for its criticism. This criticism is all the more important in the current turn to the human being as living, sentient and affective being, which takes place under the sign of life- and brain-sciences. Thus, it serves as the starting point of the medial anthropology and its focus on the medium of (...) the game that this paper presents. German Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen tragen, wie Foucault überzeugend argumentierte, nicht nur die Gefahr der Anthropologisierung, sondern, gerade aufgrund ihrer epistemischen Instabilität und Hybridität auch das Potential zu deren Kritik in sich. Diese Kritik ist in der gegenwärtigen – im Zeichen der Lebens- und Neurowissenschaften stattfindenden – Hinwendung zum Menschen als lebendes, empfindendes und affektives Wesen in neuer Weise aktuell. Sie bildet den Ausgangspunkt der hier vorgestellten medialen Anthropologie und deren Fokussierung auf das Medium des Spiels. (shrink)

As Foucault has argued persuasively, human sciences carry in themselves not only the danger of anthropologization, but, precisely because of their epistemic instability and hybridity, also the potential for its criticism. This criticism is all the more important in the current turn to the human being as living, sentient and affective being, which takes place under the sign of life- and brain-sciences. Thus, it serves as the starting point of the medial anthropology and its focus on the medium of (...) the game that this paper presents. (shrink)

Aggleton & Brown propose that familiarity-based recognition depends on a perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system. However, connections between these structures are sparse or absent. In contrast, the perirhinal cortex is connected to midline/intralaminar nuclei. In a human, a lesion in this thalamic domain, sparing the medial dorsal nucleus, impaired familiarity-based recognition while sparing recollective-based recognition. It is thus more likely that the intralaminar/midline nuclei are involved in recognition.

Bilder haben seit je her das Vermögen, sich als Metamalerei reflexiv mit den Bedingungen ihrer eigenen Bildlichkeit auseinander zu setzen. In Momenten,medialer Vanitas’, wie sie der Beitrag nachvollzieht, ist es die Symbolik der Vanitas, welche gegen das Bild als solches gerichtet wird. Schon im Barock entstehen sie mit so unterschiedlichen Werken wie jenen Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts und Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios, die als spezifisch,thanatologische Metamalerei‘ bezeichnet werden können. Sie zielen auf die mortifzierenden Strukturen bildlicher Repräsentation, ihre Medialität und Materialität. Doch (...) auch in zahlreichen zeitgenössischen Bildern von Marlene Dumas finden sich solch selbstreflexive Momente medialer Vanitas und damit moderne Transformationen eines vormodernen Topos. (shrink)

Bilder haben seit je her das Vermögen, sich als Metamalerei reflexiv mit den Bedingungen ihrer eigenen Bildlichkeit auseinander zu setzen. In Momenten,medialer Vanitas’, wie sie der Beitrag nachvollzieht, ist es die Symbolik der Vanitas, welche gegen das Bild als solches gerichtet wird. Schon im Barock entstehen sie mit so unterschiedlichen Werken wie jenen Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts und Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios, die als spezifisch,thanatologische Metamalerei‘ bezeichnet werden können. Sie zielen auf die mortifzierenden Strukturen bildlicher Repräsentation, ihre Medialität und Materialität. Doch (...) auch in zahlreichen zeitgenössischen Bildern von Marlene Dumas finden sich solch selbstreflexive Momente medialer Vanitas und damit moderne Transformationen eines vormodernen Topos. (shrink)

With great sympathy for Roman Ingarden and his work, Edith Stein edited his book project The Literary Work Of Art. In the letters she exchanges with him shereflects on relationship between reality and ideality: she writes that those who do not see the world as a reality must be fools. The political events in the 1930s had an impact on phenomenology. While Edmund Husserl dissociates himself from his protégé Martin Heidegger with regard to the content of his philosophy as well (...) as with regard to his ideology, Edith Stein distances herself more and more from the phenomenological method, seeing it as removed from reality, and she eventually become a Carmelite nun. Roman Ingarden, on the other hand, reconsiders interpreting phenomenology as aesthetic theory. Literature and film are being re-analysed in terms of phenomenological mediality and as factors of human communication. (shrink)

One lingering, unresolved dimension of intermediality theory is the status of mediality itself. Typically, the concept of intermediality is offered as a challenge to the idea that media exist as “isolated monads” ; the task of the analyst then becomes that of thinking through the variety of relationships between them. The risk is that this conception of intermediality may work to hypostatize media as particular kinds of objects. In this hypostatization, work on intermediality has sometimes diverged in important ways from (...) the ongoing development of ideas about mediality itself. Mediality is best seen, I would argue, not as a permanent and definitive property of objects or forms but as the occasional.. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Molekulargenetik bietet seit ein paar Jahren völlig neue Zugänge zur menschlichen Vergangenheit. Das noch junge und sehr dynamische Forschungsfeld der Archäogenetik nimmt für sich in Anspruch, Geschichte schreiben zu können, und zwar über alte DNA. Durch zahlreiche beachtenswerte Veröffentlichungen hat es viel Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt und erfahren – nicht nur im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, sondern auch in den Medien. Allerdings erfährt die mediale Berichterstattung von der Forschung bisher wenig Beachtung. Auch der Forumsbeitrag kann dieses Desiderat nicht beheben, sucht aber – mit (...) einem exemplarischen Blick auf die Presseberichterstattung – erste Tendenzen einzufangen. Dies geschieht anhand von drei Thesen, sie lauten: Erfolgsgeschichten erzählen, Grenzen ziehen und konformistisch schreiben.In recent years molecular genetics has provided a completely new approach/access to the human past. The still new and quite dynamic research field of archaeogenetics claims to be able to write history using ancient DNA. Through numerous remarkable publications it has generated and received much interest not only in scientific discourse but also in the media. So far, however, scientists have not paid much attention to this coverage–a research desideratum this paper cannot resolve. But by looking at selected press clippings it seeks to capture first trends according to the following three theses: telling success stories, drawing boundaries, and writing in a conformist manner. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Molekulargenetik bietet seit ein paar Jahren völlig neue Zugänge zur menschlichen Vergangenheit. Das noch junge und sehr dynamische Forschungsfeld der Archäogenetik (auch Paläogenetik oder Genetic History) nimmt für sich in Anspruch, Geschichte schreiben zu können, und zwar über alte DNA. Durch zahlreiche beachtenswerte Veröffentlichungen hat es viel Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt und erfahren – nicht nur im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, sondern auch in den Medien. Allerdings erfährt die mediale Berichterstattung von der Forschung bisher wenig Beachtung. Auch der Forumsbeitrag kann dieses Desiderat nicht (...) beheben, sucht aber – mit einem exemplarischen Blick auf die Presseberichterstattung – erste Tendenzen einzufangen. Dies geschieht anhand von drei Thesen, sie lauten: Erfolgsgeschichten erzählen, Grenzen ziehen und konformistisch schreiben. (shrink)

Auch in freiheitlichen Demokratien gibt es mediale Formen und Verfahren, die staatlich monopolisiert sind. Dies sind die Verfahren zur Sicherung und Stabilisierung der Echtheit von Geld und staatlichen Dokumenten, also den zentralen Medien von Ökonomie und Staat. Im Sinne einer noch zu schreibenden Mediengeschichte des Staates stellt der Aufsatz diese Formen und Verfahren der Echtheitssicherung dar und zeigt auf, wie immer wieder auf neue technologische Bedrohungen des medialen Monopols des Staates reagiert werden musste. Even in liberal democracies there are media (...) forms and procedures monopolized by the state. Such are the methods to secure and stabilize the authenticity of money and state documents, i.e. the central media of economy and the state. In terms of a media history of the state, the paper describes these forms and methods of securing authenticity and shows how the state had to respond to ever new technological threats to its media monopoly. (shrink)

(Part of a symposium on an OUP collection of Paul Russell's papers on free will and moral responsibility). Paul Russell’s The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell’s attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell’s position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates the (...) tension between Russell’s critical and compatibilist commitments. The problem is not obviously insurmountable, and as a compatibilist who is sympathetic to the view, my aim is to spark further discussion. (shrink)

This paper proposes a systematic framework for the analysis of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework is based on the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability, which stresses the need for a simultaneous integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions without, a priori, emphasising one over any other. The integrative view presupposes that firms need to accept tensions in corporate sustainability and pursue different sustainability aspects simultaneously even if they seem to contradict each other. The framework proposed in this paper (...) goes beyond the traditional triad of economic, environmental and social dimensions and argues that tensions in corporate sustainability occur between different levels, in change processes and within a temporal and spatial context. The framework provides vital groundwork for managing tensions in corporate sustainability based on paradox strategies. The paper then applies the framework to identify and characterise four selected tensions and illustrates how key approaches from the literature on strategic contradictions, tensions and paradoxes—i.e., acceptance and resolution strategies—can be used to manage these tensions. Thereby, it refines the emerging literature on the integrative view for the management of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework also provides managers with a better understanding of tensions in corporate sustainability and enables them to embrace these tensions in their decision making. (shrink)

I offer a reading of Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean” that avoids two pitfalls: taking it as truistic, and taking it as involving the bizarre thesis that whenever one acts as reason directs, one’s action is mid-way between some extremes. The crucial point is that while Aristotle denies the existence of useful general ethical truths, he himself offers truths about the likelihoods with which rationality will require actions of certain types; and it is with such truths that the statistical idea (...) of the mean gets a foothold in his theory of the virtues. (shrink)

I offer a reading of Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean” that avoids two pitfalls: taking it as truistic, and taking it as involving the bizarre thesis that whenever one acts as reason directs, one’s action is mid-way between some extremes. The crucial point is that while Aristotle denies the existence of useful general ethical truths, he himself offers truths about the *likelihoods* with which rationality will require actions of certain types; and it is with such truths that the statistical idea (...) of the mean gets a foothold in his theory of the virtues. (shrink)

In light of developments within the field of media theory, a certain consensus has evolved in favour of approaches like mediatization and mediation. While these approaches above all focus on societal change from a media-dependent point of view, this article addresses the reverse side of these processes, asking about media users' appropriation of media in order to experience sociality that has only just been enabled by media-use. This awareness of medial terms and conditions is characterized as recipients' acknowledgment as (...) well as utilization of medial constraints, which is subsequently referred to as mediality. (shrink)

In the recent literature on the nature of sound, there is an emerging consensus rejection of what might be thought of as the scientifically informed commonsense position: that sounds, whatever else they may be, must be entities that mediate between the source of the sound and the subject hearing it. This paper offers an argument for such "medial" theories of sound. This argument is intended to shift attention from the two considerations that have dominated the debate thus far: the (...) relevant scientific facts about audition and the spatial phenomenology of auditory experience. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the broad applicability of the concept of symbol in human communication, beyond but including verbal language. The starting point is Charles Sanders Peirce’s understanding of symbolicity as signification grounded on habits. The goal is to be able to conceptualize mediality in general and media interrelations, particularly in relation to symbolicity. Informed by a multimodal view on media, the author provides a systematic overview of symbolicity within the context of communication among human minds structured around two crossing parameters: (...) symbols being limited or widespread among people and symbols not being part of or being part of systems – languages. Based on this overview, I clarify the role of culture in language notions and conceptualize language in relation to mediality. I also suggest a way of more precisely describing similarities and differences between languages and media types, without either conflating or totally separating the two concepts. Finally, I investigate how the dependence of language and media type conceptions on culture affects the idea of intermediality. Together, these investigations and conceptualizations promote a more comprehensive understanding of symbolicity in general and a deeper knowledge of the role of symbolicity in human communication, including verbal language, and intermedial relations involving all kinds of different media types. (shrink)

Bei der Rezeption von Kunst treten vier Faktoren ins Spiel: Als Bedingungen der Wahrnehmung fungieren Wissensbestände, entsprechende Präsentationsbedingungen sowie - nicht zuletzt - das Medium des Geldes. Sie bilden ein Rahmensystem, durch das ein Werk erst in Erscheinung zu treten vermag. Einschliesslich des rezipierten Gegenstandes, der den vierten Faktor in diesem Geschehen abgibt, stehen alle Faktoren in stetiger Wechselwirkung.