Identity, Gender and Personhood

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

Throughout the thesis I take symbolic communication and visual metaphors as starting points for developing a contemporary picture of diverse Craft practices in a small corner of Scotland. As a result, this thesis is both an ethnography of Craft and a craft object, explicitly made to be a theory-laden object of material culture.

Both in its analysis and its subject matter, this thesis aims to question a variety of epistemological regimes found not only in anthropology, but also in the North-East of Scotland. The main argument of this thesis is that in order to understand something about Craft and the experiences of its makers it is important to have an understanding of the ways in which they create that world as meaningful: that is, an understanding of the thirdness (or symbolism) that is an active, generative force in that world. In the following chapters I argue two interwoven points: one, that a stash (collection) is a collection of stash (craft materials) and is also a site of thirdness in which symbolic thought and action are vital. And two: that, as such, stash and the craft world in which it is embedded are well served by an approach to visual anthropology that takes seriously a study of semiotics in which poetics become more than a subject of analysis; poetics are also allowed to develop into a method(ology) of engaging both informants and audience in a meaningful dialogue of knowledge production.

By using images to contextualize ethnographic evidence and by making these previous points not only with words, but also through imagery, I aim to convince the reader of the integrity of my ethnographic analyses as well as that theories of visual anthropology are as useful for analysing anthropological subjects as for communicating ourselves.

Humanity is on the threshold of recognizing the fundamental error in its view of life and death. Both death as well as active life is necessary to the vital formation of a larger, more essential whole. In this paper, I apply the sociology of knowledge and change as it pertains to death and focus on ways in which we can step outside its traditional frameworks and limitations. I also discuss topics related to death such as birth, aging, sickness, and war, and examine cultural differences in attitudes toward death. I offer varying perspectives including the Buddhist view and from these draw implications and conclusions. I apply the lenses of contemporary social scientists such as Edgar Morin, Kenneth Gergen, Edward Stewart, Milton Bennett, Mary Catherine Bateson, E. Doyle McCarthy, Philip Slater, and Piotr Sztompka. To these I add other relevant passages from the writings and speeches of key thinkers on the topic of death, in particular, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator, Daisaku Ikeda. To construct a more humanistic and sustainable view of life, it is first of all crucial to establish a culture which perceives death in its larger living context as but one cycle in the expansive eternity of life.

The term cisgender (from the Latin cis-, meaning “on the same side as”) can be used to describe individuals who possess, from birth and into adulthood, the male or female reproductive organs (sex) typical of the social category of man or woman (gender) to which that individual was assigned at birth. Hence a cisgender person's gender is on the same side as their birth-assigned sex, in contrast to which a transgender person's gender is on the other side (trans-) of their birth-assigned sex.

After being engendered through the appropriating activity (upadana) of the mind (manas), applied to the universal experience of the storehouse consciousness (alayavijnana), the individual experience is constituted through the conjoint activity of the six “operational consciousnesses” (pravrtti vijnana): the five sensory consciousnesses and the mental consciousness (manovijnana). The brute sensory experience is projected by the five sensory consciousnesses, approximating the senses, but being rather some faculties (indriya), capacities, the potentiality of consciousness to engender some specific types of experience. In Vijnanavada, the sensory experience is totally devoid of concept (vikalpa), presenting itself as an amorphous flow of sensory inputs. Conceptualization is performed by the mental consciousness which, in an illusory manner, projects the categorically discriminated entities onto the sensory flow. Vijnanavada authors claim that the conceptually determined entities created by the mental consciousness (manovijnana) are purely fictitious, hence the mental consciousness projecting a totally illusory ontological sphere, which broadly comprises all the states of human awareness. Most of the human conscious experiences take place at the level of this conceptual sphere, this meaning that human awareness and the entire human drama involve mainly illusory entities.
Therefore, conceptual experience is severely flawed, firstly, because it is produced at the level of the limited individual self (atman), and, secondly, due to its fictitious character (vitatha).

Keywords: Buddhism, Vijñanavada, mental consciousness, manovijnana, operational consciousness, pravrtti vijnana, perception, concept, category.

Understanding cross-cultural concepts of the ‘self’ and the ‘person’ and how they contribute to the formation of people's identity has been a rich source of inquiry within anthropology. While in the past the South Asian person, characterised as having fluid permeable boundaries--a 'relational' self, has been contrasted with the autonomous indivisible person in Western social and psychological theory--the 'individual' self, more recent scholarship has shown that the same people may hold different senses of personhood, sometimes presenting the self as constituted by a network of relationships, and at other times stressing the self as a robustly bounded individual.  At the same time, the anthropological literature on marriage and kinship has theorised that the ideal of companionate marriage is attendant to the emergence of the 'individualised self' wherein agency is the hallmark of modern identities.  People's narratives emphasising the freedom to choose demonstrate how being ‘modern’ is a deeply salient issue for ordinary people.

In this paper, I draw from the life-histories of urban middle-class women in Sri Lanka to question the assumption that ‘modernity’ is producing similar kinds of selves in various parts of the world. I illustrate how at first people's stories about who they are appear to suggest ‘modernity’ as inevitable, that its processes are reconstituting the person who, less constrained by ‘tradition’ and collective expectations, is now experiencing greater freedom. However, through a close reading of marriage narratives, I demonstrate how in fact women experience, interpret, and understand what it means to be modern in various ways, thereby producing different gendered selves in different contexts.  More critically,  I argue that ideas about the person and how women act and present themselves are neither unitary nor stable by illustrating the contexts in which ‘individualistic’ ideas of personhood predominate, and circumstances in which the individualised agentic self is downplayed and denied.  I assert that the co-existence of different notions of the person, rather than leading to an unstable self, in fact help individuals maintain their sense of identity and belonging by prevent the disintegration of kinship ties.  Hence, contradictory deployments of identity maintain social order.  Instead of exiling women who challenge norms, multiple narratives about the self provide a way to assimilate those who do not conform, thereby preventing irreparable damage to the web of social relations that hold families together.  This in turn enables families to present a unified, morally coherent collective ‘self’ to others.

Tapa (or barkcloth), which is made from the inner-bark of specific trees, is intimately interwoven with past and present socialities across Oceania. The cloths have been used to decorate, wrap, cover, protect and carry the human body, as exchange valuables and commodities, in land claims, and as indexes and embodiments of ancestral power. This article explores the complexities of personhood in Oceania by focusing on the making and ceremonial use of tapa among the Maisin of Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea. I will elucidate dynamics of the intimate correspondence between people and things, and, in particular, how people’s gendered identities are mediated: that is shaped, reproduced and contested through the cloths’ specific materiality and design. Ultimately, it reveals the mutual growth of people and things and how they are part of each other’s substance, thereby dissolving the subject-object dichotomy.

Both Jotterand's (2010) and Bostrom's (2005; 2007) use of the term “dignity” with regard to human versus posthuman miss the mark; they create a dichotomized,“us versus them” scenario, rather than recognizing the interconnectedness of all sentient beings—interconnectedness, as in nonseparability and entanglement and in feminist theory (Barad 2007 2. Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Pour les Chacobo (Pano de l´Amazonie bolivienne), la condition féminine n´est pas un état purement "naturel" ou "physiologique" ni défini une fois pour toutes. La femme y accède seulement à travers des étapes progressives de construction et de modelage social de sa personne. Nous examinons ici les représentations et pratiques qui constituent l´"humanité" et la "personne" pour les Chacobo en général; dans le cas particulier des femmes, nous analysons les conditions attribuées à la féminité à travers de la conception de la gestation et la procréation, la représentation mythique de la sexualité, les restrictions rituelles autour de la grossesse et la couvade, l´initiation féminine, la division sexuelle du travail, l´idéologie des relations entre sexes et quelques-unes des règles de l´organisation sociale.

This book tests the explanatory and descriptive power of the doctrine of sin in relation to two concrete situations: sexual abuse of children and the holocaust. Taking seriously the explanatory power of secular discourses for analysing and regulating therapeutic action in relation to such situations, the book asks whether the theological language of sin can offer further illumination by speaking of God and the world together. Through its discussion of abuse and the holocaust, an engagement with Augustine, original sin and feminism, a fresh and sometimes surprising perspective is offered, both on the theology of sin and on the pathologies under consideration. The understanding of sin that emerges is centred on joyful worship of the trinitarian God. This essay is more systematic and more theological than most practical, pastoral or applied theology and more practical and concrete than most systematic or constructive theology. It is a genuinely concrete, systematic theology.

What do we mean when we refer to world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does world mean for an ethnographer or an anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but do we really know what we mean by these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, and how these shed light on the relationship between humans and the world in the midst of which they find themselves.

As Pina-Cabral shows, recent decades have seen important shifts in the way we relate human thought to human embodiment—the relation between how we think and what we are. The book proposes a novel approach to the human condition: an anthropological outlook that is centered around the notions of personhood and sociality. Through a rich confrontation with ethnographic and historical material, this work contributes to the ongoing task of overcoming the theoretical constraints that have hindered anthropological thinking over the past century.

On the Nervous Life (among urban working classes) is a study of the concept of person/personhood in the lower strata of Brazilian society. It is based upon an ethnography of two neighbourhoods near Rio de Janeiro and concentrates in the symbolic area of the "nerves", "nervousness" and "nervous diseases". These are understood as indexes of a specific, holistic notion of the person, quite different of the psychological, individualistic notion prevailing among upper, learned classes (directly heir to the Great Tradition of Western individualism). A historical review of the evolution of the concept of nerves and nervousness helps in the description of the two models.