After Meaning

Inspiring and distinctive, After Meaning provides a radical challenge to the way in which international law is thought and practised. Jean d’Aspremont asserts that the words and texts of international law, as forms, never carry or deliver meaning but, instead, perpetually defer meaning and ensure it is nowhere found within international legal discourse.

Reconstructing Meaning After Trauma: Theory, Research, and Practice informs actual therapeutic work with clients who present with traumas or other life disruptions by providing clinicians with information on the construction of meaning. It includes material on diverse mechanisms of clinical change and positive-promoting processes. The book covers identifiable treatments and specific lines of research in assisting clients in developing new meaning, such as posttraumatic growth (after sexual assault, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, destructive natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, and refugee experiences), and finding benefit (in the context of loss—loss of health, or loss of a loved one). Addresses a specific treatment or line of research Includes extended case vignettes at the beginning of each chapter Describes the associated theoretical background for each method Summarizes the research supporting each mechanism Concludes with a discussion of future directions for treatment, research, and theory

In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom earned through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage. Many people look for “closure” after a loss. Kessler argues that it’s finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience. In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Finding Meaning is a necessary addition to grief literature and a vital guide to healing from tremendous loss. This is an inspiring, deeply intelligent must-read for anyone looking to journey away from suffering, through loss, and towards meaning.

By exploring the significance of Wittgenstein’s later textsrelating to the philosophy of language, Wittgenstein’sLater Theory of Meaning offers insights that will transform ourunderstanding of the influential 20th-century philosopher. Explores the significance of Wittgenstein’s later textsrelating to the philosophy of language, and offers new insightsthat transform our understanding of the influential 20th-centuryphilosopher Provides original interpretations of thesystematic points about language in Wittgenstein’slater writings that reveal his theory of meaning Engages in close readings of a variety of Wittgenstein’slater texts to explore what the philosopher really had to say about‘kinds of words’ and ‘parts of speech’ Frees Wittgenstein from his reputation as an unsystematicthinker with nothing to offer but ‘therapy’ forindividual cases of philosophical confusion

One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell's Art and Agency is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell's work, which remains salient, and controversial, in the social sciences and humanities. Extending his theory into new territory – from music to literary technology and ontology to technological change – the contributors do not simply take stock, but also provoke, critically reassessing this important work while using it to challenge conceptual and disciplinary boundaries.

Although D. H. Lawrence's later novels have been the subject of much discussion by critics, few scholars have recognized or dealt with his sense of craft. By examining Lawrence's careful and finely orchestrated strategies with language, especially metaphor, Humma argues that a number of the longer works--from Aaron's Rod on and including the posthumously published The Virgin and the Gipsy--are small masterpieces. Different in kind from Women in Love or The Rainbow, these fictions are very important in their own way. Humma maintains that the early and middle novels work largely through powerful symbols. Those of the last decade, though, develop through an intricate interlacing of metaphor and symbolic detail. Humma devotes a chapter to each to Aaron's Rod, The Ladybird, Kangaroo, St.Mawr, The Plumed Serpent, The Virgin and the Gipsy, Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Escaped Cock. Aaron's Rod, as a transitional work, reveals much about Lawrence's narrative method and its dependence upon combinations of images. The Plumed Serpent, Humma suggests, is Lawrence's most ambitious failure. Other critics have faulted plot, character, and meaning, but Humma sees incoherent metaphors as the basis for those other problems. Because Lawrence's metaphors shape myths essential to central actions and meanings, the reader cannot fully appreciate the strategic function of metaphor in them. When Lawrence's method is successful, as it is in Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, figures of speech overlap each other, crossing boundaries in a web of "interpenetrating metaphors" that provide both structural integrity and thematic resonance. Paying close attention to the texts, Metaphor and Meaning in D. H. Lawrence's Later Novels shows that Lawrence was far from the indifferent craftsman in his later fiction that he has frequently been considered. In fact, Lawrence was acutely aware that language and meaning are inseparable, that technique, as Mark Schorer said, is discovery. John Humma's fresh perspective upon the art and meaning of Lawrence's later work provides a major revaluation of this last phase in the writer's career.