Immaterial Bodies

In this unique contribution, Blackman focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within the social sciences. Fresh and convincing, this book uncovers the paradoxes and tensions in work in affect studies by focusing on practices and experiences, including voice hearing, suggestion, hypnosis, telepathy, the placebo effect, rhythm and related phenomena. Questioning the traditional idea of mind over matter, as well as discussing the danger of setting up a false distinction between the two, this book makes for an invaluable addition within cultural theory and the recent turn to affect. In a powerful and engaging matter, Blackman discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis. Interdisciplinary in its core, this book is a must for everyone seeking a dynamic and thought provoking analysis of culture and communication today.

In this unique contribution, Blackman focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within the social sciences. Fresh and convincing, this book uncovers the paradoxes and tensions in work in affect studies by focusing on practices and experiences, including voice hearing, suggestion, hypnosis, telepathy, the placebo effect, rhythm and related phenomena. Questioning the traditional idea of mind over matter, as well as discussing the danger of setting up a false distinction between the two, this book makes for an invaluable addition within cultural theory and the recent turn to affect. In a powerful and engaging matter, Blackman discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis. Interdisciplinary in its core, this book is a must for everyone seeking a dynamic and thought provoking analysis of culture and communication today.

When approaching the multiplicity of the spiritual experiences of healing, ethnographers are often presented with ideas of the existence of “other” worlds that may intersect with the so-called “material” or “physical” worlds. This book proposes a sensory ethnography of healing with a focus on ethnographic knowing as embedded in an embodied epistemology of healing. Epistemological embodiment signals that personal scholarly experience of the “unknown”—be it in the form of trance, or as the embodiment of an “other”—shapes the concepts of healing, body, trance, self, and matter by which ethnographers craft out analysis.

Psychologists are increasingly interested in embodiment based on the assumption that thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are grounded in bodily interaction with the environment. Human is a being that possesses body and mind, and as such makes his decisions in line with the state of his mind, and for this reason, this piece, has further expanded the nature, meaning, attribute, and the place of the mind in human existence. This piece makes use of analogies in order to make the work more appreciable by the reader. Discussion over the mind-body relationship is not a new occurrence in philosophy as an academic field of study, hence the many complexities associated with the subject. Various philosophers posit various views about the mind-body relationship. In ancient philosophy, mind and body formed one of the classic dualism, and many philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza and Rene Descartes, have written explicitly about this subject, and others like the pre-Socratic philosophers have written treatises that could easily be applied to the discourse of the mind-body relationship. The mind is an essential part of human existence. In fact, complete humanity consists in the presence of the mind. The presence of the mind as such, in human existence does not mean that the mind is materially existent neither does it mean that the mind is an eternal entity, which affects or determines the body, instead the mind is an immaterial entity which reveals itself in many immaterial ways, hence, its attributes, and is immaterially present as far as the body lives. In others words, the mind cease to exist once the body dies. In more words by extension the mind cannot exist independent of the body. This book focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within social sciences. It examines how embodiment is used in social psychology, and explores the ways in which embodied approaches enrich traditional theories. Although research in this area is burgeoning, much of it has been more descriptive than explanatory. This Compilation discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body-studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis.

This handbook of Anabaptism and Spiritualism provides an informative survey of recent scholarship on the Radical Reformation, from the 1520s to the end of the eighteenth century. Each chapter offers a narrative summary that engages current research and suggests directions for future study.

The Body Productive represents a new and radical approach to the relationships between capitalism, work and the body. Self-evident, natural, biological - this is how we think of the body on an everyday basis. However, this supposedly most direct aspect of our being may in fact be a primary site of socio-economic mediation and ideological reproduction. How are bodies produced under capitalism? How, in turn, does capitalism make bodies productive? How is the body (and knowledge of the body) shaped by demands of production, consumption and exchange, and how can these logics be resisted, challenged and overcome? These are the questions at the heart of The Body Productive, a collection of original, radical new approaches to the relationships between capitalism, work and the body from an international group of scholars and activists. Taking inspiration from the neglected theoretical work of François Guéry and Didier Deleule, and bridging Marxist and Foucauldian traditions, this book rethinks the relationships between the biological and the social; the body and the mind; power and knowledge; discipline and control.