DOCSLIB.ORG

This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. The Rise of the Curator: Archiving the Self in Contemporary American Fiction Robert Lederer PhD English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2014 ! ! 1 Declaration This is to certify that the work contained within has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signed: ! ! 2 ! ! 3 Abstract / Lay Summary Concurrent with a bloom of interest in the archive within academic discourse, an intense cultural fascination with museums, archives, and memorials to the past has flourished within the United States. The ascendency of digital technologies has contributed to and magnified this “turn” by popularising and habituating the archive as a personal memory tool, a key mechanism through which the self is negotiated and fashioned. This dissertation identifies a sustained exploration of the personal archive and its place in contemporary life by American novelists in the twenty-first century. Drawing on theories of the archive and the collection, this dissertation analyses the parameters of the curated self through close-readings of recent novels by five US authors. The first two chapters read Paul Auster’s Sunset Park through trauma theory and Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved through psychoanalysis, noting that in each the system of archiving generates moments of catharsis. The two chapters argue that, for the subject shattered by trauma, archiving activates and fulfils psychoanalytic processes that facilitate the self’s reintegration and prompts a discursive revelation about the painful past. The texts, thus, discover in the archive strategies for achieving, however provisionally, a kind of stability amongst unexpected change. The next two chapters reveal the complicity of archival formations with threats posed in the digital age and articulate alternative forms of self-curation that counteract these pernicious forces. To ward off information overload, E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley advocates the ethical flexibility of “blind” narration that, wending through time, accommodates a broad range of perspectives by refusing to fantasise about its own ultimate and total claim to accuracy. Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, meanwhile, diagnoses the cultural anxiety over increasingly invasive surveillance measures. While the novel situates the digital archive, or database, at the heart of this new dataveillance, it recommends investing the self in material collections, where personal meaning is rendered in the inscrutable patois of objects that disintegrate over time. For Egan, the material archive thereby skirts the assumed readability and fixity of data on which this surveillance thrives. The conclusion analyses Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, observing within it and the other novels a consistent concern with archival destruction, erosion, and stagnation. Together, the texts suggest that the personal archive is persistently stalked by disintegration and failure. Yet, within this contemporary moment in which curation has become a widespread means of self-fashioning, they also show how these hazards can be creatively circumvented or actively courted, can threaten the subject or be harnessed by it. ! ! 4 ! ! 5 Table of Contents Declaration 1 Abstract / Lay Summary 3 Table of Contents 5 Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 Terminology: Curate, Archive, Personal Archive 13 Archive Fiction and Art 20 Between Posthumanism and Humanism 26 Chapters, Themes, Tropes 33 Archiving Trauma and Financial Collapse in Paul Auster’s Sunset Park 41 Broken Homes and the Terrain of Trauma 45 Archival Working-Through 53 The Crisis of Futurity 67 Becoming Archive 79 The Archive as Psychoanalytic Mirror in Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved 87 Looking Indirectly 90 Artistic Plethora and Representing the Mixed Self 95 Hysteria, Overmixing, and the False Self 100 Using People as Objects 106 Archival Play 110 Potential Space and Narrative 118 Self-Distance and Clutter 123 Archive Fever in the Doomed Domestic of E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley 129 Perspective and the Politics of Realism 134 Homer and Langley and the Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel 146 Impossible Self-Reliance 151 Archive Fever and the Violent Future 157 Homer and Langley’s Archive Fever 163 Information Overload 168 Curation, the Newspaper, and the Novel 173 Ghosts and Computers 185 ! ! 6 Archive 2.0: Blank Spaces and Database Surveillance in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad 189 Digital Subjects 193 Liquid Postmodern Time 195 Space and Intimacy in a Digitised Culture 200 Parallel Personhood and the Representation of Simultaneity 206 Database Gaps 214 Database Recombination 219 Databases and the Superpanopticon 226 Goon Squad: Panoptic to Superpanoptic Surveillance 232 Return to the Material Archive 239 Conclusion: The Personal Archive and the Death Drive 247 Works Cited 261 ! ! ! 7 Acknowledgements I am massively thankful for the funding that I received at the University of Edinburgh. This dissertation benefitted incalculably from the generous support of the Scottish Overseas Research Student Awards Scheme and the University’s College Research Studentship. Ken Millard’s words of support and perceptive criticisms encouraged me to think about my topic in unexpected ways. I am immensely appreciative for the energy he brought to the supervision of this project. I am grateful for late-stage editing by Shahidha, Lila, and Laurence; for my parents—Tom and Melissa—and my sister, Julia, who (usually) stopped asking questions about my dissertation when I couldn’t stand to think about it anymore; and, again, for Laurence, who listened when I couldn’t help nervously talking about it. ! ! 8 ! ! 9 Introduction Without realising it, I began rehearsing for this dissertation almost a decade ago, when Facebook first permitted university students where I studied in Canada to sign up for its then-fledgling social networking website. Like so many early users, I shared my likes, thoughts, and photographs without deeply scrutinising what defining myself online achieved intellectually and emotionally. The popularity of social networking websites, and the now-ubiquitous practice of rendering the self according to their museum interfaces, elicits several questions about contemporary subjectivity. How does self- consciously gathering and displaying personal information inhere in the notion of the self, what it is composed of and how it changes over time? What personal work takes place on online profiles: narcissistic exhibitionism, public performance, psychological self-analysis, personal diarising, or temporal anchoring? Facebook is just one of a multiplicity of platforms on which modern-day people assemble records of themselves. The fascination with self-documentation through diaries, photographs, and videos seems to have intensified in recent years with the propagation of digital technologies and the Internet. An array of digital applications allows users to monitor their everyday lives, from the vagaries of their moods to a daily count of their footsteps, in an effort to harvest data and, from it, extract self-knowledge that would otherwise go unmeasured. Together, these programmes form a movement known as Quantified Self, whose practitioners unite around ‘a belief that gathering and analysing data about their everyday activities can help them improve their lives’.1 While the name ‘Quantified Self’ is sparsely known, its premises infuse the cultural consciousness and its activities pervade the behaviour of people in the West. Both Facebook and Quantified Self incorporate acts of assembling, arranging, and examining an archive of data into the process of actualising the self and registering knowledge about it. The emergence of digital self-archiving has a relevant prehistory in the rise of personal collections in the 1980s, when Susan Pearce and Paul Martin date the emergence a ‘new’ populist and inclusive form of collecting. It is during this decade, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 ‘Counting Every Moment’, Economist, 3 March 2012 <http://www.economist.com/node/21548493> [accessed 23 June 2014]. ! ! 10 they suggest, that the dominant object of personal collections moves from the rare or exotic item towards typical, everyday wares, making collecting accessible to a broader reach of people.2 The widespread appeal of collecting, they conclude, shows that ‘it is undeniably an integral part of how we relate to the contemporary world.’3 Leah Dilworth similarly notes a ‘collecting mania’ in twenty-first century America, with a history that extends back two hundred years, but she curiously omits the kinds of archives typically housed on digital devices.4
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Download Article (PDF)
    Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 289 5th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2018) A Review of Paul Auster Studies* Long Shi Qingwei Zhu College of Foreign Language College of Foreign Language Pingdingshan University Pingdingshan University Pingdingshan, China Pingdingshan, China Abstract—Paul Benjamin Auster is a famous contemporary Médaille Grand Vermeil de la Ville de Paris in 2010, American writer. His works have won recognition from all IMPAC Award Longlist for Man in the Dark in 2010, over the world. So far, the Critical Community contributes IMPAC Award long list for Invisible in 2011, IMPAC different criticism to his works from varied perspectives in the Award long list for Sunset Park in 2012, NYC Literary West and China. This paper tries to make a review of Paul Honors for Fiction in 2012. Auster studies, pointing out the achievement which has been made and others need to be made. II. A REVIEW OF PAUL AUSTER‘S LITERARY CREATION Keywords—a review; Paul Auster; studies In 1982, Paul Auster published The Invention of Solitude which reflected a literary mind that was to be reckoned with. I. INTRODUCTION It consists of two sections. Portrait of an Invisible Man, the first part, is mainly about his childhood in which there is an Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is a absence of fatherly love and care. His memory of his growth talented contemporary American writer with great is full of lack of fatherly attention: ―for the first years of my abundance of voluminous works.
    [Show full text]
  • “Then Catastrophe Strikes:” Reading Disaster in Paul Auster's Novels and Autobiographies « Then Catastrophe Strikes
    Université Paris-Est Northwestern University École doctorale CS – Cultures et Sociétés Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences Laboratoire d’accueil : IMAGER Institut des Comparative Literary Studies Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman, EA 3958 “T HEN CATASTROPHE STRIKES :” READING DISASTER IN PAUL AUSTER ’S NOVELS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES « THEN CATASTROPHE STRIKES » : LIRE LE DÉSASTRE DANS L’ŒUVRE ROMANESQUE ET AUTOBIOGRAPHIQUE DE PAUL AUSTER Thèse en cotutelle présentée en vue de l’obtention du grade de Docteur de l’Université de Paris- Est, et de Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature de Northwestern University, par Priyanka DESHMUKH Sous la direction de Mme le Professeur Isabelle ALFANDARY et de M. le Professeur Samuel WEBER Jury Mme Isabelle ALFANDARY , Professeur à l’Université Paris-3 Sorbonne Nouvelle (Directrice de thèse) Mme Sylvie BAUER , Professeur à l’Université Rennes-2 (Rapporteur) Mme Christine FROULA , Professeur à Northwestern University (Examinatrice) Mme Michal GINSBURG , Professeur à Northwestern University (Examinatrice) M. Jean-Paul ROCCHI , Professeur à l’Université Paris-Est (Examinateur) Mme Sophie VALLAS , Professeur à l’Université d’Aix-Marseille (Rapporteur) M. Samuel WEBER , Professeur à Northwestern University (Co-directeur de thèse) In memory of Matt Acknowledgements I wish I had a more gracious thank-you for: Mme Isabelle Alfandary , who, over the years has allowed me to experience untold academic privileges; whose constant and consistently nurturing presence, intellectual rigor, patience, enthusiasm and invaluable advice are the sine qua non of my growth and, as a consequence, of this work. M. Samuel Weber , whose intellectual generosity, patience and understanding are unparalleled, whose Paris Program in Critical Theory was critical in more ways than one, and without whose participation, the co-tutelle would have been impossible.
    [Show full text]
  • Living with Philosophy Ebook
    THE REASON OF THINGS: LIVING WITH PHILOSOPHY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK A. C. Grayling | 256 pages | 01 Jan 2010 | Orion Publishing Co | 9780753817131 | English | London, United Kingdom The Reason of Things: Living with Philosophy PDF Book We are nevertheless the spawn of the Earth. Fascinating subject matter Philosophy seeks not simply knowledge, but deep understanding and wisdom. Check out the masterclass here. What is missing from You Must Change Your Life is an investigation of what happens when the vertical collapses, as it does sometimes for everyone, even believers. One of the most powerful masterclasses we have is on love and intimacy. Nothing inspires me or interests me in any meaningful way. The line, then, like the sphere, becomes for Sloterdijk a substitute for metaphysics. Eventually, they give up and surrender—they give up on the idea that they were meant to do anything or be with anyone special, and they just end up feeling worse. One way or another, many of us dedicate our lives to something other than our own self-interest. But if Sloterdijk is not a believer, then where does he think we can actually experience this kind of perfectly trusting togetherness? I was a bit confident in his word this time and just as he said from the beginning that my ex husband will locate me,Amazingly at first it was through text message,phone call just as dr olorun told me my ex came back in less 48 hours begging me on his knees for forgiveness, yes he is back with a golden heart, Love, care, emotions and flowers and things are better now ideed dr olorun is powerful.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing the 9/11 Decade
    1 Writing the 9/11 Decade Charlie Lee-Potter A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of PhD ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 2013 2 Declaration of Authorship I Charlie Lee-Potter hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: ________________________ 3 Charlie Lee-Potter, Writing the 9/11 Decade Novelists have struggled to find forms of expression that would allow them to register the post-9/11 landscape. This thesis examines their tentative and sometimes faltering attempts to establish a critical distance from and create a convincing narrative and metaphorical lexicon for the historical, political and psychological realities of the terrorist attacks. I suggest that they have, at times, been distracted by the populist rhetoric of journalistic expression, by a retreat to American exceptionalism and by the demand for an immediate response. The Bush administration’s statement that the state and politicians ‘create our own reality’ served to reinforce the difficulties that novelists faced in creating their own. Against the background of public commentary post-9/11, and the politics of the subsequent ‘War on Terror’, the thesis considers the work of Richard Ford, Paul Auster, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Don DeLillo, Mohsin Hamid and Amy Waldman. Using my own extended interviews with Ford, Waldman and Shamsie, the artist Eric Fischl, the journalist Kevin Marsh, and with the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams (who is also a 9/11 survivor), I consider the aims and praxis of novelists working within a variety of traditions, from Ford’s realism and Auster’s metafiction to the post- colonial perspectives of Hamid and Aslam, and, finally, the end-of-decade reflections of Waldman.
    [Show full text]
  • Economics Reading List
    Last updated: July 2015 Economics Reading List If you are interested in Economics then it usually means you are interested in the way it applies to the real world around you. You should keep up with the news, particularly when it involves key economic indicators or policies. Journalists frequently use concepts and vocabulary from Economics A Level, and reading the news regularly will help cement these ideas in your mind. Reading news-sources will also give you up to date macroeconomic data on things like inflation, unemployment and growth, as well as good examples of market failure such as monopoly power and negative externalities, as well as the government’s measures to deal with these. News-sources: The BBC news website is worth a daily visit, particularly the Economy tab. The blogs written by Robert Peston, Linda Yeuh and Kamel Ahmed are very good. Build in listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 (Mon - Sat 6:00am – 9:00am) into your morning routine. Subscribe to the Economist through the School offer. You are unlikely to read it cover to cover every week, but skim through for interesting articles and those that map on to topics you are studying. The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and Independent all have good coverage of the economy. The Guardian and Telegraph on Saturday, and the Times on Sunday are particularly strong on economic news. Never, ever, read the Daily Mail. The Week – this is an excellent weekly magazine that presents the week’s news in brief. Economic Review, Economics Today – these are magazines available to A Level students through the School, and aimed specifically at an A Level audience.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Ontological Narratives: Ways of Being in Film'
    SEQUENCE 6.1(2021) ISSN 2052-3033 (Online) ‘Ontological Narratives: ways of being in film‘ Joanna Callaghan ‘SEQUENCE Journal is a project from REFRAME, an open access academic digital platform for the practice, publication and curation of internationally produced research and scholarship in media, arts and humanities’ SEQUENCE 6.1(2021) ‘Ontological Narratives: ways of being in film‘ Joanna Callaghan Introduction Ontological Narratives is a research project that explores philosophy through filmmaking practice. The project is concerned to extend and complicate notions of practice as research, through the production of a group of films which both represent and interrogate theoretical issues raised by specific philosoph- ical texts. It aims to both pursue specific research themes — questions concerning ontology and its relation to film narrative — and to question what we mean, and might mean, when we talk of practice as research. The project has forged interdisciplinary connections between film and philosophy through creative practice, a position which is largely absent from much philosophical discourse on film. It also works through a feminist standpoint, one which interrogates philosophy ontologically and epistemo- logically. In terms of philosophical content, the films from Ontological Narratives contain subject matter derived from readings of philosophers that are transformed and interrogated via fictional stories. These stories centre on or pertain to the question of being / being human. This focus on the ‘most universal and emp- tiest of concepts’ responds to Heidegger’s challenge set forth in Being and Time: ‘the indefinability of Being does not eliminate the question of its meaning: it demands that we look the question in the face’ (1990: 23).
    [Show full text]
  • Breakfast with Socrates: a Day with the Worlds Greatest Minds Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    BREAKFAST WITH SOCRATES: A DAY WITH THE WORLDS GREATEST MINDS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Robert Rowland Smith | 192 pages | 10 Jun 2010 | Profile Books Ltd | 9781846682414 | English | London, United Kingdom Breakfast with Socrates: A Day with the Worlds Greatest Minds PDF Book Popular with our students. Despite being regarded as one of the wealthiest women , Oprah never fails to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate. Is the unexamined life worth living? Jun 04, Niloofar Ashtiani rated it really liked it. He was slow in learning to speak as a child—so slow that his parents consulted a doctor. Our rankings include programs students can only find online. We also participate in the Blinkist Affiliate Program. Though his status as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama suggests that he was destined for spiritual leadership, fate could not have selected a more suitable vessel to lead the captive Tibetan people from exile. This ultimately led to a year professorial tenure. March 27, Its exactly what it says it is, but is exactly less hokey than it sounds. You can unsubscribe at any time. By being among the first to specifically facilitate the trade of popular music and by creating a P2P forum that was readily accessible and attractive to users, Fanning would initiate dramatic change in both the music business and the world of online file sharing. The author cleverly peppers the text, a monologue really, with quotations and references from the ancient Greeks through to our current great thinkers, make his points and provide unexpected insights. Want to Read saving….
    [Show full text]
  • The-Programme.Pdf
    • •• 14 SEP 2019 • • - HOWTO •• • •• CHANGE • • 1 • . YOUR LIFE •- SUPPORTED BY mlJtNtwUorkmimcs •• •• ••••· ..... IF WE COULD CHANGE OURSELVES, THE TENDENCIES IN THE WORLD WOULD ALSO CHANGE… WE NEED NOT WAIT TO SEE WHAT OTHERS DO. – Gandhi rapped in the rat race. Bombarded by bad news. T Exhausted by society’s insistence that we give, give, give and get nothing back. Is it any wonder that stress and depression are global health emergencies? At How To Academy, we believe it’s time to fight back against the rising tide of anxiety and despair. That’s why we’ve partnered with The New York Times to create a new kind of festival – one dedicated to the philosophy of being the change you want to see. Today you’ll attend masterclasses and keynotes filled with evidence-based ideas for invigorating your physical and emotional health, and growing in com- passion, courage and resilience. You’ll meet eminent entrepreneurs and busi- ness psychologists, who’ll teach the skills required to thrive in the world of 2019: from leadership to pres- ence, communication to coping with overload. And you’ll hear from globally renowned politi- cians, artists and activists on what part you can play in the fight for a better future. Today isn’t about self-improvement for its own sake: it’s about self-improvement for the sake of the planet. The battle for equality, climate justice, and the future of democracy begin with the individual – but before you can change the world, you first need to change yourself. We’ve gathered together a spectac- ular line-up from across the globe who are waiting to show you how.
    [Show full text]
  • View: "Sunset Park"
    Books Book Review: "Sunset Park" By Paul Auster '70CC (Henry Holt and Company). By Steven G. Kellman | Winter 2010-11 Paul Auster ’70CC is contemporary literature’s foremost connoisseur of missing persons. If this author, who titled his last novel Invisible (2009), were a biographer, he would be tracking the enigmatic exits of Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and the Roanoke colonists. In Auster’s The Book of Illusions (2002), a filmmaker named Hector Mann fakes his death and secludes himself for 60 years within a compound in the New Mexico desert. The narrator of The Locked Room (1986) seeks to learn why his best friend vanished, abandoning a wife and child. Anna Blume, the protagonist of In the Country of Last Things (1987), goes off in quest of her missing brother. In Ghosts (1986), a character named Black tells Blue the story of “Wakefield,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s account of a man who walks away from his wife and his life and returns 20 years later. Auster’s latest runaway is 28-year-old Miles Heller. At the outset of Sunset Park, the author’s 16th novel, Miles has been living in self-imposed exile for more than seven years. He bears heavy guilt over the death of his stepbrother, whom he pushed into the path of a car when both were in their teens. That event caused Miles, a brilliant student and gifted athlete, to abjure everything he loved, including baseball. He eventually drops out of college and hits the road, wending his way to Florida, where he gets a gig making foreclosed houses habitable for new occupants.
    [Show full text]
  • Hexham Book Festival 2018
    on son e cher on enningt err owland Smith Ander d Holloway ey agnusson aul Flet aul atrick Bade atrick achel Joyc P P Philip Collins Mimi Mimi R Mick H Mick Richar obert Rly M Michael P Michael sse R eay Contini ry Ma arie-Elsa Bragg arie-Elsa Sal M ennan Sarah Dunnak Mo te Ka Sarah R une Sarpong une J urray Simon GrMayo udy M udy J usa Simon T ohn ohn J Stephen McGann J ohn Crace ohn Tim Dowling J oe Shut oe e Tim Marshall J oe Dunthorne oe Tony r Je Williams emy emy Trine H J enni M enni V ine AC ahnemann H Grayling elen P elen Alan H urray Alastair Campbell arriet H arriet May 6th – April 26th F T 2018 Festival Andr aylor Book Hexham iona Shaw iona F ankhur Angus Ro Evan Davis Evan iona M iona Caitlin Davies Elizabeth Day Elizabeth Charlott Dhar Chris Mullin David Stark ew Michael H arman st ozley shini David shini xbur e P gh eacock urley ey If you’re perplexed by Brexit, troubled by Trump and galled by gender inequality, the Hexham Book Festival can help you make sense of it all. There’ll be books unspooling our fast-paced global politics, a forensic examination of the part the US dollar plays in all our lives, a look at our bellicose bear of a neighbour, Russia, past and present, spy novels unearthing the secrets of the Intelligence Services, and a dizzying re-evaluation of the Reformation, our first real dust up with Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • Howthe Lightgetsin the Philosophy and Music Festival at Hay 26Th May – 5Th June 2011
    The institute of art and ideas presents HowThe LightGetsIn The philosophy and music festival at Hay 26th May – 5th June 2011 philosophy sessions/ talks and debates live sessions/ music and comedy film sessions/ documentaries and discussion night sessions/ dancing and chill out globe at hay www.howthelightgetsin.org BBC FOUR IS PROUD TO BE THE BROADCAST MEDIA PARTNER FOR HOWTHELIGHTGETSIN: THE PHILOSOPHY AND MUSIC FESTIVAL AT HAY Culturally Enriching Television INTRODUCTION HowTheLightGetsIn 2 011 The philosophy and music festival at Hay The world is in transition. And with it our beliefs and values. This year’s HowtheLightGetsIn theme is ‘New Gods: Icons and Ideas in a Changed World’. Are the great narratives that have built and sustained the West under threat? And, if so, what are the new gods that will replace them? This year we have a whole new field to add to our festival space, with new venues and a wider and larger range of events. Although the festival site and the programme continue to grow apace, we are determined to keep the informal atmosphere and the intimate feel that has made HowTheLightGetsIn such a special event. Our line up of philosophers, writers, politicians, scientists, musicians and performers includes many names you will recognise, but HowTheLightGetsIn is not about celebrity: it’s about ideas and playfulness. Our events are the backdrop to creating a space where real conversation and genuine human interaction can take place. And it’s not all going to be cerebral. There will be music and bands and parties into the night, along with documentary screenings, comedy nights, and free acoustic events all day every day.
    [Show full text]
  • Spiritualise-Report.Pdf
    Spiritualise Revitalising spirituality address to 21st century challenges Spiritualise Revitalising spirituality to address 21st century challenges Dr Jonathan Rowson December 2014 December December 2014 Contents Acknowledgements 3 Background and purpose of the RSA’s two year project 5 1. Facing up to widespread spiritual confusion 9 Who needs spirituality? 9 Spirituality needs definition, but it doesn’t need a definition 14 Why ‘Spiritual but not religious’ might be a wrong turn 18 Spiritual is more about meaning than ‘happiness’ 21 The heart of the spiritual – it’s about our ‘ground’ not our ‘place’ 24 2. In search of our spiritual ‘ground’ – what are we? 29 The social brain: why ‘beliefs’ are not what we typically assume 30 Cultural psychology: why the sacred won’t go away 34 Automatic processing: why the spiritual injunction to ‘wake up’ matters 40 Embodied cognition: why the experience of meaning is visceral and important 44 Divided brain: why our need for perspective and balance is greater than ever 48 Neural plasticity: why we need to take spiritual practice seriously 50 Conclusions to section 2 54 3. Living from our ground, not our place 55 Love (the promise of belonging) 55 Self (the path of becoming) 67 Soul (the sense of beyondness) 73 4. Spiritual pathways to personal, social and political transformation 78 From political power to personal power and back again 80 From utility to virtue and back again 82 From economic objectives to existential threats and back again 83 From surface to depth, and back again 85 From life to death, and back again 87 From self to soul, and back again 88 From political freedom to psychological freedom and back again 88 From happiness to meaning and back again 89 From extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation and back again 89 From beliefs to institutions and back again 90 Afterword 92 About the RSA The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) believes that everyone should have the freedom and power to turn their ideas into reality – something we call the Power to Create.
    [Show full text]