Emotion Depth And Flesh A Study Of Sensitive Space

This book philosophically explores the topic of emotional depth. The insights of James J. Gibson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the nature of perceived depth are compared and then extended to the dynamics of emotional experience and alterations in self-understanding.

Philosophically explores the topic of emotional depth.

Are emotions becoming more conspicuous in contemporary life? Are the social sciences undergoing an an 'affective turn'? This Reader gathers influential and contemporary work in the study of emotion and affective life from across the range of the social sciences. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, the collection offers a sense of the diversity of perspectives that have emerged over the last thirty years from a variety of intellectual traditions. Its wide span and trans-disciplinary character is designed to capture the increasing significance of the study of affect and emotion for the social sciences, and to give a sense of how this is played out in the context of specific areas of interest. The volume is divided into four main parts: universals and particulars of affect embodying affect political economies of affect affect, power and justice. Each main part comprises three sections dedicated to substantive themes, including emotions, history and civilization; emotions and culture; emotions selfhood and identity; emotions and the media; emotions and politics; emotions, space and place, with a final section dedicated to themes of compassion, hate and terror. Each of the twelve sections begins with an editorial introduction that contextualizes the readings and highlights points of comparison across the volume. Cross-national in content, the collection provides an introduction to the key debates, concepts and modes of approach that have been developed by social scientist for the study of emotion and affective life.

Central to the historicizing work of recent decades has been the concept of contingency, the realm of chance, change, and the unnecessary. Following Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogists have deployed contingency to show that all institutions and ideas could have been otherwise as a critique of the status quo. Yet scholars have spent very little time considering the genealogy of contingency itself—or what its history means for its role in politics. In Contingency and the Limits of History, Liane Carlson historicizes contingency by tying it to its theological and etymological roots in “touch,” contending that much of its critical, disruptive power is specific to our current historical moment. She returns to an older definition of contingency found in Christian theology that understands it as the lot of mortal creatures, who suffer, feel, bleed, and change, in contrast to a necessary, unchanging, impassible God. Far from dying out, Carlson reveals, this theological past persists in continental philosophy, where thinkers such as Novalis, Schelling, Merleau-Ponty, and Serres have imagined contingency as a type of radical destabilization brought about by the body’s collision with a changing world. Through studies of sickness, loneliness, violation, and love, she shows that different experiences of contingency can lead to dramatically dissimilar ethical and political projects. A strikingly original reconsideration of one of continental philosophy and critical theory’s most cherished concepts, this book reveals the limits of historicist accounts.

In this bold rewriting of visual culture, Brooke Belisle uses dimensionality to rethink the history and theory of media aesthetics. With Depth Effects, she traces A.I.-enabled techniques of computational imaging back to spatial strategies of early photography, analyzing everyday smartphone apps by way of almost-forgotten media forms. Drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Belisle explores depth both as a problem of visual representation (how can flat images depict a voluminous world?) and as a philosophical paradox (how do things cohere beyond the limits of our view?). She explains how today's depth effects continue colonialist ambitions toward totalizing ways of seeing. But she also shows how artists stage dimensionality to articulate what remains invisible and irreducible.

Since the early 1990s, phenomenology and cognitivism have become two of the most influential approaches to film theory. Yet far from being at odds with each other, both approaches offer important insights on our subjective experience of cinema. Emotions, Ethics, and Cinematic Experience explores how these two approaches might work together to create a philosophy of film that is both descriptively rich and theoretically productive by addressing the key relationship between cinematic experience, emotions, and ethics.

This book addresses new research directions focusing on the emotional and aesthetic nature of teaching and learning science informing more general insights about wellbeing. It considers methodological traditions including those informed by philosophy, sociology, psychology and education and how they contribute to our understanding of science education. In this collection, the authors provide accounts of the underlying ontological, epistemological, methodological perspectives and theoretical assumptions that inform their work and that of others. Each chapter provides a perspective on the study of emotion, aesthetics or wellbeing, using empirical examples or a discussion of existing literature to unpack the theoretical and philosophical traditions inherent in those works. This volume offers a diverse range of approaches for anyone interested in researching emotions, aesthetics, or wellbeing. It is ideal for research students who are confronted with a cosmos of research perspectives, but also for established researchers in various disciplines with an interest in researching emotions, affect, aesthetics, or wellbeing.

This Handbook presents thirty-one state-of-the-art contributions from the most notable writers on philosophy of emotion today. Anyone working on the nature of emotion, its history, or its relation to reason, self, value, or art, whether at the level of research or advanced study, will find the book an unrivalled resource and a fascinating read.