diaryofaphilosopher

[diaryofaphilosopher]

[diaryofaphilosopher]

The whole point of comedy is to assert and establish—in the end—the humanity and equality of all the people involved in its action, especially of the oppressed. Comedy is a dramatic procedure that allows for the recognition and acceptance of the other and of oneself. It allows for liberation from oppression in its various kinds: personal, psychological, family, social, and political. Thus, the end of comedy is the abolition of slavery in all its forms.

— Nikulin, D. (2014). Comedy, Seriously: A Philosophical Study. Palgrave Macmillan.

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The slave [in Ancient Greek comedy] was a carnivalesque character: he was both foolish (as commonly perceived), for he needed to carry out his intended plan without raising suspicion, and also very clever (as he truly was), for he needed to pretend to be foolish while carrying out his plan (which tended to go awry).

— Nikulin, D. (2014). Comedy, Seriously: A Philosophical Study. Palgrave Macmillan.

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"The International Gothic Association is a large family of academic researchers, students, artists and writers with a shared interest in all things Gothic. From the literary ghosts and vampires of the past, to the most contemporary representations of the strange, the horrific,  and the uncanny, our members have pioneered new research in Gothic Studies across disciplinary boundaries, genres, media, geographical locations and time periods."

[diaryofaphilosopher]

The Virtual Kant Congress with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (VKC) is a decentralized series of virtual sessions curated by Kant societies and groups from around the globe to commemorate Kant’s 300th birthday. The series seeks to honor Kant's ideal of cosmopolitan dialogue by connecting Kant researchers worldwide. Sessions will take place online (on Zoom) roughly every two weeks throughout 2024, starting in March.

[diaryofaphilosopher]

In Common Threads: A Cultural History of Clothing in American Catholicism, author Sally Dwyer-McNulty argues that uniforms provided women with their experiences of restriction: “Uniforms gave female students, in particular, a taste of the routine and sacrifice that came with religious life.” Girls’ dress codes were designed to be more strict than boys’, because “girls are considered more prone to sins of vanity.” Small acts of subversion — rolling up the waistbands of pleated skirts, untucking blouses, wearing loud socks, adding buttons and pins — help young women assert their individuality, sexuality, and self-worth.

— Connie Wang, "The Met Got The Catholic Fashion Story Wrong."

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I do not believe the central attraction of Catholicism for fashion designers and artistic dressers is something to run toward, but rather something to run from. “The exhibition explores how the Catholic imagination has shaped the creativity of designers and how it is conveyed through the narrative impulses,” the welcome placard reads. And within the exhibit, two dozen designers’ works are repeated to illustrate how they’ve drawn from the types of fundamental Catholic principles to create womenswear. But it is the rejection of Catholicism — and the ideas of perpetual tradition, rigid hierarchy, and unquestioning duty it’s become to be associated with — that is the stronger font of fashion creativity.

— Connie Wang, "The Met Got The Catholic Fashion Story Wrong."

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"The shift from the Afro-Caribbean zombie to the U.S. zombie is clear: in Caribbean folklore, people are scared of becoming zombies, whereas in U.S. narratives people are scared of zombies. This shift is significant because it maps the movement from the zombie as victim (Caribbean) to the zombie as an aggressive and terrifying monster who consumes human flesh (U.S.). In Haitian folklore, for instance, zombies do not physically threaten people; rather, the threat comes from the voduon practice whereby the sorcerer (master) subjugates the individual by robbing the victim of free will, language and cognition. The zombie is enslaved."

— Justin D. Edwards, "Mapping Tropical Gothic in the Americas" in Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture.

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"At first glance, the term 'Tropical Gothic' sounds a lot like an oxymoron, since in popular understanding the genre is often synonymous with its early settings of bleak European wildernesses battered by howling winds and tumultuous storms. In contrast, Tropical Gothic heroes and heroines have vacated traditional eerie castles and chilling wind-swept moors to take up residence in haunted plantation houses, overgrown bayous, mysterious jungles and exuberant tropical cities, where the horrific and the uncanny not only lurk in the shadows but occupy open, sun-drenched spaces alongside humans."

— Anita Lundberg, Katarzyna Ancuta & Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, "Tropical Gothic: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences."

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"Freud was particularly interested in the 'home' as a site for the emergence of the uncanny. The 'heimlich' is potentially that which is known, familiar and comforting; its opposite, the 'unheimlich', gives rise to that which is unknown, unfamiliar, even frightening. Ultimately, the uncanny is that which should have remained hidden, out of sight. As Rosemary Jackson states, this way of understanding the uncanny adds an ideological or 'counter-cultural' edge to the concept.'"

— Barbara Creed, "Tropical Malady: Film & the Question of the Uncanny Human-Animal."

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"eTropic disseminates new research from Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and allied fields on the variety and interrelatedness of nature, culture, and society in the tropics. Tropical regions of the world include: Equatorial Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Northern Australia, the Caribbean, Indian Ocean Islands, Latin America, the Pacific, the southern states of America and Hawai'i, USA. " (Quote from their 'About' page)

[diaryofaphilosopher]

Red may have been purple in antiquity, as the Greeks had a very different conception of colour to ours. For instance, they had no word for true blue. Was Clytemnestra’s carpet purple, or was it crimson? Was the imperial purple, in fact, red? Let us believe that Clytemnestra wove a crimson carpet for Agamemnon – blood red with a touch of blue in the blood. When he stepped on this first carpet he committed the sin of hubris, and was murdered. Red carpets lead to assassination. Revolutions die in their own red. Have you ever stepped on a red carpet? Felt the pomp and circumstance? Before it was pulled from under your feet? Red betrays.

— Derek Jarman, Chroma.

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But the monster also makes us realize that in an unequal society they are not equal. Not because they belong to different ‘races’ but because inequality really does score itself into one’s skin, one’s eyes and one’s body. And more so, evidently, in the case of the first industrial workers: the monster is disfigured not only because Frankenstein wants him to be like that, but also because this was how things actually were in the first decades of the industrial revolution. In him, the metaphors of the critics of civil society become real. The monster incarnates the dialectic of estranged labour described by the young Marx: ‘the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker; the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker; the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature… . It is true that labour produces … palaces, but hovels for the worker… . It produces intelligence, but it produces idiocy and cretinism for the worker.’ Frankenstein’s invention is thus a pregnant metaphor of the process of capitalist production, which forms by deforming, civilizes by barbarizing, enriches by impoverishing – a two-sided process in which each affirmation entails a negation. And indeed the monster – the pedestal on which Frankenstein erects his anguished greatness – is always described by negation: man is well proportioned, the monster is not; man is beautiful, the monster ugly; man is good, the monster evil. The monster is man turned upside-down, negated.

— Franco Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear."

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The Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy... Borders are set up to define the spaces that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.

— Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera.

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Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit. To show that I can and that I will write, never mind their admonitions to the contrary. And I will write about the unmentionables, never mind the outraged gasp of the censor and the audience. Finally I write because I'm scared of writing but I'm more scared of not writing.

— Gloria Anzaldúa, “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers."

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¿Por qué me siento tan obligada a escribir? Porque la escritura me salva de esta complacencia que temo. Porque no tengo otra alternativa. Porque tengo que mantener vivo el espíritu de mi rebeldía y de mí misma. Porque el mundo que creo en la escritura me compensa por lo que el mundo real no me da. Al escribir, pongo el mundo en orden, le doy una agarradera para apoderarme de él. Escribo porque la vida no apacigua mis apetitos ni el hambre. Escribo para grabar lo que otros borran cuando hablo, para escribir nuevamente los cuentos malescritos acerca de mí, de ti. Para ser más íntima conmigo misma y contigo. Para descubrirme, preservarme, construirme, para lograr la autonomía. Para dispersar los mitos que soy una poeta loca o una pobre alma sufriente. Para convencerme a mí misna que soy valiosa y que lo que yo tengo que decir no es un saco de mierda. Para demostrar que sí puedo y sí escribiré, no importan sus admoniciones de lo contrario. Y escribiré todo lo inmencionable, no importan ni el grito del censor ni del público. Finalmente, escribo porque temo escribir, pero tengo más miedo de no escribir.

— Gloria Anzaldúa, “Hablar en lenguas: carta a escritoras tercermundistas."

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