Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9964745
G. Winthrop‐Young
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Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9964843
Des Fitzgerald
Abstract:This article argues for a mutation in how mental health is conceived in the early twenty-first century. In this mutation, physical environments, in the form of homes, workplaces, and streetscapes, are understood as central to the production and maintenance of good mental health. Much writing on this topic has taken place within a rhetorical division between stereotypically urban buildings or spaces (tower blocks, for example), which are said to be harmful to the human mind, and idealized rural or green spaces, such as parks or small hamlets, understood to be psychologically restorative. This discourse, which has its roots in both cultural and scientific developments, has rendered mental disorder as, at least in part, a spatial problem—which is to say, as a problem that might be both understood through but also treated by spatial practices. The goal of the article is to establish the ground of this claim and to make some of its epistemic roots visible. The article begins with an ethnographic account of a contemporary intellectual movement aimed at populating urban spaces with trees in the name of global mental health. Then the discussion turns to a series of critical developments in the psychological and neurobiological sciences—the article demonstrates how these, in turn, are efflorescing into new links between the architectural and psychological sciences. The article shows how this scientific discussion is paralleled by developments in urban planning—Ebenezer Howard’s program of the early twentieth century, set out in Garden Cities of To-Morrow, is taken as exemplary here. The article ends with a reading of Clive Barker’s 1985 short story “The Forbidden” and of the film Candyman, which it gave rise to, whose shared sense of horror at the visceral consequences of failed urban experiments, I argue, should be read as a critical inflection point for the contemporary relationship between psychology and architecture.
摘要:本文认为在21世纪初,心理健康的概念发生了突变。在这种突变中,以家庭、工作场所和街景为形式的物理环境被理解为产生和维持良好心理健康的核心。关于这一主题的许多文章都是在刻板的城市建筑或空间(例如塔楼)和理想化的农村或绿色空间(如公园或小村庄)之间的修辞区分中进行的,前者被认为对人类的心灵有害,后者被认为是心理恢复的。这种根植于文化和科学发展的论述,至少在一定程度上,将精神障碍视为一个空间问题——也就是说,作为一个既可以通过空间实践来理解又可以通过空间实践来治疗的问题。本文的目的是建立这一主张的基础,并使其一些认识根源可见。这篇文章首先从人种学的角度描述了一场当代智力运动,该运动旨在以全球心理健康的名义在城市空间中种植树木。然后,讨论转向心理学和神经生物学的一系列重要发展——文章展示了这些发展如何在建筑科学和心理科学之间形成新的联系。这篇文章展示了这种科学讨论是如何与城市规划的发展并行的——埃比尼泽·霍华德(ebenezer Howard)在《明天的花园城市》(Garden Cities of tomorrow)一书中提出的20世纪初的规划,在这里被视为典范。文章以克莱夫·巴克(Clive Barker) 1985年的短篇小说《被禁》(The Forbidden)和电影《坎迪曼》(Candyman)作为结尾,我认为,这两部电影对失败的城市实验的内在后果有着共同的恐惧感,这应该被解读为当代心理学和建筑之间关系的一个关键转折点。
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Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9964829
Joff P. N. Bradley
Abstract:Reflecting on the mental ecologies of digital life and the crisis of spirit in the contemporary era, this article principally addresses the question of the possibility of epokhē (ἐποχή), the crisis of formation or self-cultivation (Bildung) and the possibility of a “third world,” which can be opened up by the phenomenological practice of epokhē. This will be undertaken idiosyncratically through a comparison between the thoughts of the British novelist and professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University in London, Will Self, and the late French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (1952–2020). Both thinkers, albeit in different ways and with different emphases—one literary, one more philosophical—address the psychical and traumatogenic consequences of epokhē. We can understand this as a suspension of disbelief in the present as we live through an “epoch without epoch,” a time witnessing the seizure of the symbolic by industrial technologies of the spirit. This is the time of the simulacrum of the real and the circulation of symbolic exchange and death. Both thinkers are interested in reinterpreting the concept of epokhē to consider psychic individuation or the psycho-pathological effects of technology upon the embodied human sensorium. I proffer some original thoughts drawn from the paradigm of critical postmedia philosophy and ecosophy on how to take the best elements from these thinkers to mount a sustained critique of technical life in the traumatized present that is without epoch.
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Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9964815
C. Stockwell
This article examines several recent theorizations of the concept “world” from within or in proximity to the field of world literature, and argues that these theorizations all suffer from a missed engagement with the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, the most important contemporary thinker of the concept. Focusing on recent books by Emily Apter, Debjani Ganguly, and Pheng Cheah, this article argues that while these theorists all make reference to Nancy, they do so in ways that miss essential aspects of his thinking. The article argues that the theoretical frameworks put forth by these thinkers prevent them from engaging with what Nancy called the “sense of the world.” The article concludes with a reflection on the place of joy in the text of Nancy to which all three of these thinkers make reference: The Creation of the World or Globalization.
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Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9964801
Ethan Stoneman, Joseph Packer
The last decade witnessed a drastic reconfiguration of American conservatism by way of a newly emergent and energized dissident right. Beyond the question of ideology, this article argues that an essential aspect of this realignment occurs at the level of strategy, specifically with the adoption of agitational tactics pioneered by the progressive left. It attempts to make sense of this sea change, first, by tracing in broad strokes the history of American conservatism's opposition to much of what passes for agitational politics. It then examines the right's seemingly abrupt adoption of three species of agitational practice: Alinsky-styled radicalism, identity politics, and accelerationism. It concludes by discussing the implications of this shift, in terms of what it means both for the future of conservative discourse and for leftist groups who must now take into account the possibility of having to outmaneuver their own set of tactics.
{"title":"American Conservatism Unmoored","authors":"Ethan Stoneman, Joseph Packer","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9964801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9964801","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The last decade witnessed a drastic reconfiguration of American conservatism by way of a newly emergent and energized dissident right. Beyond the question of ideology, this article argues that an essential aspect of this realignment occurs at the level of strategy, specifically with the adoption of agitational tactics pioneered by the progressive left. It attempts to make sense of this sea change, first, by tracing in broad strokes the history of American conservatism's opposition to much of what passes for agitational politics. It then examines the right's seemingly abrupt adoption of three species of agitational practice: Alinsky-styled radicalism, identity politics, and accelerationism. It concludes by discussing the implications of this shift, in terms of what it means both for the future of conservative discourse and for leftist groups who must now take into account the possibility of having to outmaneuver their own set of tactics.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86345987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}