Ayahuasca is a psychoactive beverage that is mostly used in ritualized settings (Santo Daime rituals, neo-shamanic rituals, and even do-it-yourself-rituals). It is a common practice in the investigated socio-cultural field to call these settings “healing rituals.” For this study, 15 people who underwent ayahuasca (self-)therapy for a particular disease like chronic pain, cancer, asthma, depression, alcohol abuse, or Hepatitis C were interviewed twice about their subjective concepts and beliefs on ayahuasca and healing. Qualitative data analysis revealed a variety of motivational (...) patterns, subjective effects, and user types. Most participants were convinced that ayahuasca had influenced their illness positively or improved their coping with their illness. More importantly, it had enhanced their well being in general. As a result, we concluded that the effects of ayahuasca should not be reduced to a pharmacological model. The substance should be conceptualized as a psychological catalyst that unfolds within different fields of sociocultural ideas. (shrink)

The aim of this article is two-folded. First, I wish to situate Baudelaire in the midst of 19th-century media, bring attention to the way he explored the new media of his day, and suggest that he developed his own media aesthetics. Second, I wish to examine Baudelaire’s relation to photography more specifically, emphasizing his love of commonplaces and clichés. I begin by contextualizing Baudelaire’s notorious attack on photography in the Salon de 1859 and then examine three poems in light of (...) the photographic culture of Baudelaire’s day. Central here is the experiment on the notion of identity that was carried out with the spread of portrait photography: the notation of a unique identity was undermined, processes of multiplication were explored, and the poetic discourse of the “soul” was radically changed. (shrink)

This paper argues for an understanding of emotion based upon Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of embodiment and passivity. Through a critical assessment of cognitive theories of emotion, and in particular Solomon's theory, it argues (1) that there is a sense in which emotions may be judgments, so long as we understand such judgments as bodily enactments of meaning, but (2) that even understood in this way, the notion of judgment (or construal) can only account for a subset of emotions which I call (...) "emotional clichés," and not for authentic passions. In contrast with Solomon's account which conceives the subject as constituting, this account of emotion requires us to understand subjectivity as moved by meanings in the world, and as sometimes, in an authentic passion, dispossessed by those meanings. (shrink)

La picturalisation de la mosaïque, à partir de la fin du ive siècle, se traduit par l'utilisation d'un nombre croissant de couleurs pour exprimer les jeux d'ombres et de lumières et donner ainsi l'illusion du volume. À cette fin, les mosaïstes ont utilisé, outre des matières naturelles, des matériaux artificiels comme la céramique, mais aussi le verre, la faïence et la peinture qui n'ont pas toujours été signalés dans les publications. Notre propos est donc d'en étudier, à partir de (...) l'examen des mosaïques déliennes, l'emploi selon les types de motifs et de décors, de présenter des observations techniques sur la fabrication de ces tesselles et de les replacer au sein des autres productions de verre et de faïence, enfin d'examiner l'apport de ces observations à l'histoire de la mosaïque hellénistique. (shrink)

This paper describes one form of not-knowing the good that interferes with teaching ethics, namely the use of moral clichés to justify one’s moral behavior. After identifying some of the key problems with an uncritical acceptance of moral clichés (e.g. the fact that they aim for universality, lack of room for exceptions, and take the place of thinking), two common features of moral clichés are articulated.

This paper describes one form of not-knowing the good that interferes with teaching ethics, namely the use of moral clichés to justify one’s moral behavior. After identifying some of the key problems with an uncritical acceptance of moral clichés (e.g. the fact that they aim for universality, lack of room for exceptions, and take the place of thinking), two common features of moral clichés are articulated.

One of the most important pieces of evidence which we possess concerning the judicial rights of Roman provincials, particularly their status in relation to the governor's tribunal, is provided by Cicero's brief outline of those provisions of the lex Rupilia, the Sicilian provincial charter, which dealt with judicial administration. The passage reads as follows: Siculi hoc iure sunt ut, quod civis cum cive agat, domi certet suis legibus, quod Siculus cum Siculo non eiusdem civitatis, ut de eo praetor iudices ex (...) P. Rupili decreto, quod is de decem legatorum sententia statuit, quam legem Rupiliam vocant, sortiatur. Quod privatus a populo petit ant populus a privato, senatus ex aliqua civitate qui iudicet datur, cum alternae civitates reiectae sunt; quod civis Romanus a Siculo petit, Siculus index, quod Siculus a civi Romano, civis Romanus datur; ceterarum rerum selecti iudices ex conventu civium Romanorum nr000ni solent. (shrink)

El sujeto migrante, por su condición intermedia de traductor cultural, presenta una perspectiva ambiguasobre los clichés del humanitarismo. El origen de las protagonistas de We Need New Names y Americanah les permite relatar la experiencia vivida con la ayuda humanitaria, a la vez que la migración y la distancia de esta condición, adquiriendo una voz crítica e irónicamente denunciatoria sobre las paradojas de la piedad. No obstante, en el mismo movimiento, su asentamiento en el país de recepción las desorienta y (...) les hace perder progresivamente su reflexión mordaz, convirtiéndolas en consumidoras del sufrimiento a la distancia y reforzando la colonialidad del poder. Primero, veremos el desarraigo de los sujetos migrantes, Ifemelu y Darling; luego, la evolución de las políticas y paradojas de la piedad y su influencia en el espectáculo del sufrimiento desde la mirada del sujeto migrante; finalmente, el artificio del humanitarismo cliché de los medios de comunicación, de la fotografía y su relación con las ong. (shrink)

Erpressungen, Unterschlagungen, der Raub von Kunst- und Kultgegenstanden und die verbrecherische Willkurjustiz des Gaius Verres als Statthalter von Sizilien bieten Cicero reichlich Stoff fur ebenso furchtlose wie vernichtende rhetorische Attacken. Die Auswahlausgabe enthalt die Erste Rede sowie das vierte Buch der Zweiten Rede.".

The clichés attached to Islam and Muslim women that the West had perpetuated since the Middle Ages and that were later propagated by Orientalist writers and painters, are reviewed in this article. The emergence of the subject of women as the centrepiece of western accounts of Islam in the late 19th century is equated with the beginning of European colonialism in Muslim countries, and the reasons for choosing the two controversial issues related to Muslim women: polygamy and the veil. It (...) clarifies the status of women before Islam and after its Revelation, assessing the positive and little-known aspects of the Muslim woman's role throughout history and the grounds for the deterioration of her status. The article closes with a matter-of-fact assessment of the position of women in the Islamic world today, reproving any approach based on generalities and oversimplifications when dealing with Islam-related issues. (shrink)

Diffusions in Architecture: Artificial Intelligence and Image Generators delves into the impact of Diffusion AI algorithms and generative image models on architecture design and aesthetics. The book presents an in-depth analysis of how these new technologies are revolutionizing the field of architecture. The architects presented in the book focus on the application of specific AI techniques and tools used in generative design, such as Diffusion models, Dall-E2, Stable Diffusion, and MidJourney. It discusses how these techniques can generate synthetic images that (...) are both realistic and imaginative, creating new possibilities for architectural design and aesthetics. This comprehensive overview of the impact of Diffusion AI algorithms and generative image models on the field of architecture shows how they are changing the way architects approach their work. With a foreword by Lev Manovich—artist, writer and one of the world's most influential digital culture theorists. Sharing the work and insights of a team of designers and theorists from a range of backgrounds, offering disciplinary depth, and covering the full impact of these tools and models on architecture, Diffusions in Architecture includes information on: Fresh perspectives on design and aesthetics, with designs, images, and commentary from 22 leading architects, theorists, and designersThe potential of prompt engineering and text-to-image models applicable to a broad interdisciplinary audienceWhether image generators, or AI in general, will be an aid for human design, or potentially displace humans from the market fundamentals of a larger debate in the architectural discourse (and practice) on the use of image generatorsCollecting the different ideas that have emerged in the field, Diffusions in Architecture provides architects, designers, concept artists, and theorists with an overview of this cornucopia of architectural imaginations produced in a common effort between humans and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

When we defend aesthetic education in instrumental terms or rely on clichés of creativity and imagination, we win at best a pyrrhic victory. To make a lasting place for the arts in education, we must critique the transmission model of education and the instrumentalist view of life that undergirds it. To help us perceive anew the nature and value of the aesthetic, I explore John Dewey's distinction between recognition and perception. Through a series of examples drawn from painting and poetry, (...) I embody Dewey's theory and describe a number of artistic strategies for interrupting recognition and cultivating perception. (shrink)

Samba is Rio de Janeiro’s most powerful form of artistic expression, but also one of the city’s main clichés. It is a cliché of "national identity", cliché for the people and for the Nation State. However, more fundamental than its capture in these clichés, making it powerless, samba is a line of flight or - even better than that - it is a series of lines of flight, according to the different modes by which it has been reinvented (...) throughout the 20th century. Samba draws Rio’s map, with its sections and territorial occupations : shaping territories and being shaped by them, inventing bodies according to their performances. The performances go against asepsis, physical disciplines, and the separation that one tries to inflict on the city’s territories. In short : samba is a permanent interplay between biopolitical resistance and the action of biopower. (shrink)

La pensée du cliché est indissociable d’un geste critique, qui en fait l’envers de l’originalité : ressassés, usés, signes de paresse intellectuelle, les clichés désignent dans la langue la puissance du commun. Au-delà d’une condamnation expéditive, qui génère elle-même ses propres clichés (des clichés il faut toujours se défaire), nous proposons ici d’analyser en détail les raisons de la critique, en prêtant une attention particulière aux apports de deux théoriciens du style, Antoine Albalat et Rémy de Gourmont. Ces deux (...) auteurs ont participé à la condamnation du cliché de manière constructive, fournissant listes, éclairages linguistiques, mais aussi une « philosophie du cliché » (R. de Gourmont) qui met en regard les automatismes de la mémoire et la qualité particulière des images portées par les clichés. La confrontation de leurs analyses permet de renouveler la problématique du cliché et de penser l’efficacité et l’évolution particulière de ces images, que l’on présente d’ordinaire comme figées. (shrink)

Stefan Collini's Absent Minds is a rich, critical history of a cliché: that English culture is peculiarly hostile to intellectuals. Despite striking differences in the organization of intellectual life in the U.S. and Britain, precisely the same cliché pervades American writing. The explanation may lie less in structure than in the transnational mobility of the language of the intellectual.

Today, eighteenth-century poetry is undervalued by readers and scholars alike, still the victim of a persistent bias among French literary historians who consider this period as rationalist and antipoetic, an era of unfortunate verse that was fortunately ushered out by Romanticism. By reading a corpus of anthologies of seventeenth-century French poetry published in the twentieth century, this article investigates a particular modality of this invalidation: how the aesthetic merits of the Baroque are elaborated against highly critical readings of eighteenth-century poetry. (...) “Baroquist” anthologists deliberately (mis)read Enlightenment-era poetry as insipid in order to value and define “their” object of study more forcefully. Should we believe these critics, the Baroque and the Enlightenment periods would seem to be wholly antithetical to each other: the former rife with orphic creative flare, celebrated as the cradle of modern poetry, and the latter suffering from a total lack of poetic artistry. The aim of this article is to show the ways in which Baroquist anthologies see eighteenth-century poetry as “post-classic” at best, and to offer a rationale for their damaging historiographical strategy. (shrink)

Today, eighteenth-century poetry is undervalued by readers and scholars alike, still the victim of a persistent bias among French literary historians who consider this period as rationalist and antipoetic, an era of unfortunate verse that was fortunately ushered out by Romanticism. By reading a corpus of anthologies of seventeenth-century French poetry published in the twentieth century, this article investigates a particular modality of this invalidation: how the aesthetic merits of the Baroque are elaborated against highly critical readings of eighteenth-century poetry. (...) “Baroquist” anthologists deliberately (mis)read Enlightenment-era poetry as insipid in order to value and define “their” object of study more forcefully. Should we believe these critics, the Baroque and the Enlightenment periods would seem to be wholly antithetical to each other: the former rife with orphic creative flare, celebrated as the cradle of modern poetry, and the latter suffering from a total lack of poetic artistry. The aim of this article is to show the ways in which Baroquist anthologies see eighteenth-century poetry as “post-classic” at best, and to offer a rationale for their damaging historiographical strategy. (shrink)