Ordinary Meaning and Ordinary People
In: University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 171, 365-468 (2023)
In: University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 171, 365-468 (2023)
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In: UC Irvine Law Review (forthcoming)
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Working paper
In: Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper 16
In: International Crimes and Other Gross Human Rights Violations, S. 295-328
In: East central Europe: L' Europe du centre-est : eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, Band 44, Heft 1, S. 156-159
ISSN: 1876-3308
In this paper, I propose some philosophical reflections arising from the encounter with a work of art, namely the Squatting Aphrodite, which is one of the Roman copies that is held in the same room as the Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. From the description of this artwork and the effect it has on the spectator, I draw three main consequences: the conceptual difference between ordinary sensibility and everyday aesthetics; the criticism of aesthetic conformity, and the political implications of adopting an ordinary perspective towards aesthetic experience.
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In this paper, I propose some philosophical reflections arising from the encounter with a work of art, namely the Squatting Aphrodite, which is one of the Roman copies that is held in the same room as the Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. From the description of this artwork and the effect it has on the spectator, I draw three main consequences: the conceptual difference between ordinary sensibility and everyday aesthetics; the criticism of aesthetic conformity, and the political implications of adopting an ordinary perspective towards aesthetic experience.
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"The big issues of medical ethics are more in the news than ever before. And yet they remain as stubborn and often as incendiary as ever. This book claims that in an effort to deal with the issues, mainstream philosophers have arbitrarily omitted many ethically relevant features in order to reduce the central problems to more tractable technical puzzles. The most gratuitous omissions have been the patient's point of view on the problem; the patient's ordinary life, which provides the wider context for his point of view; and the ordinary language and concepts by which the patient tries to make sense of the problem
This work began as a study of the dynamics of Chinese state socialist society under the impact of ten years of reform. Workers, lower level state cadres and private entrepreneurs were interviewed on the ordinary strategies of daily life in China; on such phenomena as corruption, the use of kinship and friendship networks, relations with superiors and colleagues at work and the rapidly increasing use of money for legal and illegal purposes. Approaching the problem from the perspective of the common Beijing resident illuminated the dynamic interaction between the fabric of daily life and the cou
Best Book of 2021 -Esquire? Featured on Good Morning America "A meticulous cartography of how outer forces shape young people's inner lives." -Esquire, Best Books of 2021 In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a "best life" has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across our personal and professional lives-and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life. Young adulthood: the time of our lives when, theoretically, anything can happen, and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social media has long been the scapegoat for a generation of unhappy young people, but perhaps the forces working beneath us-wage stagnation, student debt, perfectionism, and inflated costs of living-have a larger, more detrimental impact on the world we post to our feeds. An Ordinary Age puts young adults at the center as Rainesford Stauffer examines our obsessive need to live and post our #bestlife, and the culture that has defined that life on narrow, and often unattainable, terms. From the now required slate of (often unpaid) internships, to the loneliness epidemic, to the stress of "finding yourself" through school, work, and hobbies-the world is demanding more of young people these days than ever before. And worse, it's leaving little room for our generation to ask the big questions about who they want to be, and what makes a life feel meaningful. Perhaps we're losing sight of the things that fulfill us: strong relationships, real roots in a community, and the ability to question how we want our lives to look and feel, even when that's different from what we see on the 'Gram. Stauffer makes the case that many of our most formative young adult moments are the ordinary ones: finding our people and sticking with them, learning to care for ourselves on our own terms, and figuring out who we are when the other stuff-the GPAs, job titles, the filters-fall away
In: Index on censorship, Band 13, Heft 3, S. 7-10
ISSN: 1746-6067
This short story, written and hidden in 1953, found in 1971, remains unpublishable in Czechoslovakia Bohumil Hrabal is one of the best and most original contemporary Czech story-tellers. Unable to publish his work for many years, he was fifty when his books started coming out during the 'thaw' in the 1960s, and he was the author of Closely Observed Trains, made famous by Jiří Menzel's film of the same name. Together with the surrealist poet and musician Karel Marysko and the literary historian Professor Václav Černý, he is a character in his own story, this record of an ordinary day in the Czechoslovakia of the fifties when the Stalinist terror was at its height. On another level, the main hero of this particular story is time: although written as long ago as 1953, it has so far not appeared even in samizdat; the author himself added a postscript 18 years later, in 1971. The second postscript comes from Index on Censorship another 13 years on, 31 years after this hitherto unpublished story was written.
In: Cultural politics: an international journal ; exploring cultural and political power across the globe, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 200-218
ISSN: 1751-7435
Abstract
This article analyzes Tash Aw's novel We, the Survivors and Jewel Maranan's documentary film In the Claws of a Century Wanting, works that trace a poetics of survival as neoliberalism's good-life fantasies become decreasingly credible. It proposes that Aw's and Maranan's texts delineate part of a framework for narrating endurance under capitalism, contributing to an archive of detachment from neoliberal narrativity. Capitalism's modes of violence are embedded in ordinary life and legitimized through a pervasive neoliberal ideology that espouses heroic individualism, personal responsibility, and free-market dynamics. The politics of everyday worlds interpreted through neoliberal storytelling fail to show the contested entanglements of affect and exhaustion that make up endurance under capitalism. The texts analyzed here present their subjects as nonsovereign and embedded in the nonhomogeneous project of global capitalism and engage an eventfulness that exposes capitalism's subtle modes of violence. Moreover, through an ambiguous construction of subjects, they orient readers toward an implicated solidarity while refusing to locate a resolution within neoliberal ontology. This article contributes to the emergent aesthetics of survival detached from the good life promise of neoliberalism.
Lifestyle media ¿ books, magazines, websites, radio and television shows that focus on topics such as cookery, gardening, travel and home improvement ¿ have witnessed an explosion in recent years. Ordinary Lifestyles explores how popular media texts bring ideas about taste and fashion to consumers, helping audiences to fashion their lifestyles as well as defining what constitutes an appropriate lifestyle for particular social groups. Contemporary examples are used throughout, including Martha Stewart, House Doctor, What Not to Wear, You Are What You Eat, Country Living and brochures for gay an