Philosophy of Communication and Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists: The Interplay of the Poetic and Pragmatic

This article conceptualizes the importance of Umberto Eco’s understanding of lists for philosophy of communication. Philosophy of communication is understood as the necessary and insightful interplay of the poetic and pragmatic through which meaning emerges. In The Infinity of Lists, Eco offers an essay-length interpretation of lists presented alongside a collection of art and literature that represent his theoretical work in action. Eco articulates lists as a means for cultural order and form in the attempt to convey what is otherwise beyond articulation. Although philosophers of communication have recognized the importance of Eco’s philosophical and semiotic project for human communication, his work on lists has received little attention within and outside of the field of communication. This article assumes that lists are significant to Eco’s project and to philosophy of communication, situated in the interplay of the poetic and the pragmatic.     

The Burden of Sexual Problems: Perceived Effects on Men’s and Women’s Sexual Partners

Sexual dysfunction sometimes negatively affects the individual, his or her partner, and the relationship. We investigated the relationship between the distress experienced by men and women with orgasmic phase difficulties and the perceived distress of their partner(s). We also identified predictors of perceived partner distress, and related self and partner distress to severity of the problem and relationship quality. Data were drawn from 374 men with premature ejaculation (PE) and 377 women with anorgasmia who responded to a survey regarding their sexual functioning, including their distress about their condition and the perceived distress of their partners. Results yielded an overall distress score consisting of combined self and perceived partners distress, with women showing a higher overall score and higher perceived partner distress than men. For men, significant predictors of perceived partner distress included self-distress, relationship quality, interest in sex, and arousal difficulty; for women, only the level of self-distress significantly predicted perceived partner distress. These findings indicate the burden of experiencing sexual difficulty, identify factors related to perceived partner distress, and demonstrate differences in self versus partner distress across men and women. Overall, such findings reiterate the strong need for the inclusion of the partner in any attempted remediation of a sexual problem.     

The message is the medium: immaterialism and McLuhan’s Poetic Excess

Against interpretations of Marshall McLuhan as philosophical materialist, I argue that Understanding Media and its tagline, the medium is the message, show McLuhan to be an immaterialist: a poetic, intuitive thinker, at least as interested in immaterial as in material aspects of the world. From a pragmatic perspective, or one requiring attention to both poetic and technical modes of understanding, McLuhan’s approach—offering a torrent of flashing insights and neglecting the process of empirically assessing these insights—is described as poetic excess. This is a double-edged sword, alienating many readers even as it inspires others. McLuhan’s poetic excess is a rhetorical reminder of the value and power of poetic thinking, and simultaneously of its insufficiency for the fullest understanding. Pleading that his poetic texts should be read rhetorically rather than literally, I argue we should forgive McLuhan’s worst affronts to technical, materialist rationality. McLuhan’s immaterialist epistemology, inseparable from the content of his insights, is a valuable part of his distinctive and foundational contribution to media studies.     

Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Qualitative Sociology - This article examines a recent controversy over the Catholic Church’s registration of Cordoba’s iconic Mosque-Cathedral as official Church property in 2006. In...     

How to Sharpen Words: Mayakovsky’s Machines of Poetic Humour

Analysis of Mayakovsky’s prose writings of the mid-1920s on the craft of satire reveals that he understood it to be a scientific discipline subject to strict cause-and-effect relationships: if the satirical treatment of a theme — any theme — is correct, then the piece will produce ‘involuntary laughter’ (neproizvol’nyi smekh). As an example, he puts forward his 1923 poem ‘Schematic of Laughter’ (Skhema smekha) — a text he claims contains no comic ideas, but only the correct satirical sharpening of discourse. As a barebones inventory of comic devices, the poem is a perfect place to begin an examination of Mayakovsky’s poetics of humour. But it is not alone; in a note to the 1925 poem ‘Shallow Philosophy in Deep Places’ (Melkaia filosofiia na glubokikh mestakh), Mayakovsky explains that it too is a ‘skeleton poem’ (stikh-skelet), just like the ‘Schematic’, and another compendium of humorous devices. Together, then, these poems represent the purest and most concentrated expression of Mayakovsky’s understanding of the mechanics of poetic humour. Sustained close reading of both poems reveals that his humorous devices, ranging from formal to narrative, all serve to establish and then deceive expectations in the reader.     

The Emotional Experience and Expression of Anger: Children’s Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to explore and identify key themes related to a child’s experience of anger. The existing literature on children’s emotional experiences stems from adult perceptions and interpretations; this study was envisioned to investigate the experience of anger among children using their own words. Furthermore, this study was designed to illustrate a contextual perspective of children’s emotional knowledge, so that teachers, social workers, counsellors and other child mental health professionals may be able to relate and interpret children’s emotional experiences. Participants were male and female students, aged 8–9 years and in a regular grade three classroom within a community school. Through the use of semi-structured interview focus groups conducted over a span of 10 weeks, participants were invited to disclose their understandings of anger and how they experienced it. Results were analyzed via a content analysis that resulted in five themes. These themes consisted of understanding anger, origins of anger, consequences of anger, regulation and resolution of anger, and finally relations with others. Results and implications of the findings were discussed.     

Antipolitics and Counterpolitics in Nepal’s Civil Society: The Case of Nepal’s Citizens’ Movement

This article considers the relationship of civil society to the domain of the political from the actors’ perspectives. It explores the attempt by a citizens’ movement (CMDP) in Nepal to construct new political realities in the context of the autocratic regime of king Gyanendra and then during the democratic transition. This was, paradoxically, to be achieved through the construction of an apolitical space. Theoretically, this production of apoliticality by civil society actors shows that civil society is not only implicated in the expansion of what is understood as ‘political’ but also in setting its boundaries. The broader aims of the article are to contribute to the ethnography of civil society and to add to current understandings of the relationship of actually existing civil societies to the political domain. Practically, it argues that debates over whether civil society is or is not political in the Nepal case and normative positions within development circles that it should not be political are misconceived since civil society is a site for the production of both politicality and apoliticality.     

The Lovers of Venice: Musset’s Works and Life in Kuzmin’s A New Rolla

The title of Mikhail Kuzmin’s Novyi Rolla [A New Rolla] has been considered cryptic despite its evident allusion to Alfred de Musset’s “Rolla,” a poem with which it shares little. In this article I argue that the link to Musset is clear if we read A New Rolla as responding not just to “Rolla,” but also to Musset’s novel La Confession d’un enfant du siècle [The Confession of a Child of the Age] and his biography. From this composite source Kuzmin takes up the themes of a debauchee finding love, love as serial yet serious, and a love triangle in Venice, as well as an apostrophe to the kiss. Kuzmin endorses most of Musset’s idea of love, but rejects the egalitarian ideal implicit in the sympathetic treatment of the prostitute Marion in “Rolla.” A secondary allusion to Nikolai Nekrasov’s “Kogda iz mraka zabluzhden’ia” [When, out of the darkness of error] reinforces Kuzmin’s rejection of the egalitarian ideal of sexual love. The allusions to Musset and Nekrasov amount to anachronisms that partially undermine the precise temporal setting of A New Rolla. Kuzmin’s work thereby occupies an intermediate position among his period pieces, as it is neither openly playful like Venetsianskie bezumtsy [Venetian Madcaps] nor constructed with its seams hidden like the Aleksandriiskie pesni [Alexandrian Songs].     

Employed Women’s Well-Being: The Global and Daily Impact of Work

Although women derive satisfaction and self-efficacy from work, the potential for stress and the need for balance of multiple roles are of great concern. Utilizing a sample of women from the National Longitudinal Survey cohort Young Women in 1997, this study develops a model which delineates global well-being, measured as life satisfaction and daily well-being, measured as depression, and tests the impact of personal, family, and work variables specifically chosen for each well-being measure. Findings suggest that in addition to personal and family variables, union membership, supervisory capacity, recent promotion, and government employment are significant correlates of global life satisfaction and irregular shifts, paid leave, and telecommuting are significant correlates of daily depression.     

‘The sinking cenotaph’: Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestation of monumentalised nationalist public memories of Malawi’s President Banda

This article discusses Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestations of the constitution and monumentalisation of nationalist public memories of former and first president of Malawi, Dr H.K. Banda. After more than a decade since the end of his rule as life president in 1994 and his demise in 1997, the Malawi government has constituted and monumentalised memories of Banda in Malawi through a monumental mausoleum on his grave and a statue in the capital city, Lilongwe. While others have hailed these monuments as fitting tributes for the ‘founding father’ and ‘nationalist hero’ of the nation, Mapanje and Chimombo contest such public monumentalisation of Banda’s reign in Malawi in their poetry, suggesting that Banda was a dictator undeserving of such posthumous memorialisation. They also suggest that the narratives constituted in the monuments do not represent the interests of the victims of his dictatorship. This article argues that such contestations challenge the constitution of nationalist memories of postcolonial African nations through leaders who instituted totalitarian rule.     

The question of India’s North-East identity and solidarity

The question of India’s North-East identity and solidarity has been a subject of debate among scholars, academicians and others. Apologia to a collective North-East believes in the existence of North-East identity and solidarity. Against the apologia’s stands are the critique who rather brushed aside North-East collectivity and questioned the clubbing together of the region as one entity. This article highlights some of the contrasting views of understanding India’s North-East, and takes the issue further by proposing to call these contending paradigms as the ‘apologists’ and the ‘sceptics’. We further argue that despite their apparent ‘antithesis’, both paradigms are related.