Ethos最新文献

This article develops a cultural theory of those dreams with rich imagery and developed plots that are likely to be dreamt in rapid-eye-movement sleep. Such dreams, it argues, are an instance of what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls “deep play.” For Geertz, deep play is play with “an image … a model, a metaphor” that makes visible fundamental cultural structures. Image metaphors for cultural models often appear in dreams. Deep play in dreams, I argue, subjects cultural models to destabilizing play in order to adapt them to the dreamer's experience and to confront threats to the dreamer's identity that models for being a person can pose. Dreamers destabilize models by ambiguating images that represent them in seven ways outlined in the article. Ambiguity stops the mind from settling on a single meaning. This inability triggers hyper-associations that challenge and subvert a model's given meanings. Two dreams from an undergraduate who participated in a study of dreaming at a major Northwestern university illustrate these ideas.

This article explores the role of images in intercultural training in youth mental health care. Drawing on ethnographic work conducted with practitioners taking part in transcultural seminars, this article discusses how the attention paid to images during these meetings can enable practitioners to adopt a different way of looking at the families they work with. To do so, I draw from the writings of theorists who have reflected on how images work and the power they can have over us. I first turn to the Barthian notion of punctum, and then to Kaja Silverman's argument on the role of the aesthetic object in “educating our look.” Through an ethnographic vignette, I describe how images flow during a meeting and impact the people present. I argue that working with images in intercultural training is more productive in transforming the colonial gaze than making theoretical statements that trainees may interpret as judgmental.

In this article, we analyze the multiple ways of moral being with depression in urban Nigeria, including those of the ethnographer. This approach fits recent theorizing in moral anthropology and mental health that aims at uncovering how mental illness and ethical being come into being in between patients and meaningful others. We argue that the Nigerian experience of depression does not follow the Heideggerian model of moral breakdown and ethical performance but is rather a shared experience of struggling along without the ideal of a full recovery. By proposing a radical reconsideration of existing care models that are largely based on cure and correction, struggling along draws attention to the unfinishedness of depression. This is best described as a heightened everyday awareness that lingers in between reflective and unreflective modes of being that comprise both the physical and metaphysical worlds young Nigerians inhabit and allows for moral being with mental health struggles.

This case study provides a critical discourse analysis of 121 letters of complaint and self-advocacy authored by Natasha Keating, a trans woman incarcerated in two Australian male correctional facilities from 2000 to 2007. During her incarceration, Natasha experienced victimization, misgendering, microaggression, and institutional discrimination. Despite this, Natasha embodied and “fought” against the injustices she experienced, whilst seeking to speak for other trans incarcerated persons also silenced and treated with indifference, contributing to changes in the carceral system. This original case study analyzes the discursive strategies Natasha employed to construct and reclaim an affirming self-identity through a deliberate campaign to effect social change and policy concessions within a system designed to curtail self-determination. Through her empathic and impassioned letter-writing approach, leveraging a military metaphor, this novel analysis showcases the significant implications her activism/agentism and determination had in naming and seeking to dismantle the systems of oppression trans incarcerated women experience.

This article describes how particular emotions map figuratively onto body parts in Australian Indigenous languages. While most languages use expressions involving body parts to talk about emotions—as in “broken-hearted,” for instance—Australian Indigenous languages do it to a remarkable extent. After identifying the figurative tropes—metaphors and metonymies—that recur most frequently in such expressions across the continent, the article discusses specific body-part associations and figurative patterns for several salient emotional categories. This includes generic emotions (feel good/bad); “empathetic” emotions (affection and derived emotions); anger and sulkiness; social attitudes around agreeableness and compliance; shame; love, desire, and jealousy; and fear and surprise. Far from being randomly distributed, the figurative properties of each category exhibit regular patterns. Some of these patterns reflect somatic and behavioral responses to emotions or cognitive properties of emotions, while others remain unexplained. [Australian languages, emotions, figurative language, embodiment]

Résumé Cet article décrit et analyse les correspondances entre catégories émotionnelles et parties du corps dans les expressions figuratives des langues aborigènes australiennes. La majorité des langues du monde utilisent des collocations incluant des parties du corps pour décrire des émotions—comme dans l'expression « cœur brisé » par exemple— mais celles-ci sont particulièrement nombreuses dans les langues australiennes. Après avoir identifié les tropes—métaphores and métonymies—qui reviennent le plus souvent dans ces expressions à travers le continent, l'article analyse les associations spécifiques entre certaines parties du corps, certains tropes, et certaines catégories émotionnelles. Ces catégories incluent les émotions génériques (se sentir bien/mal) ; les émotions dites « empathétiques » (affection et émotions dérivées) ; la colère et la bouderie ; les tempéramments relationnels comme l'amabilité ou un caractère conciliant ; la honte ; l'amour, le désir et la jalousie ; ainsi que la peur et la surprise. Chacune de ces émotions présente des associations préferentielles avec certaines parties du corps, et des propriétés figuratives récurrentes. Certaines de ces préférences et récurrences renvoient à des réactions somatiques ou comportementales aux émotions en question, d'autres à leurs dimensions cognitives ; et d'autres encore restent inexpliquées.