“I myself still find my way of philosophizing new, & it keeps striking me so afresh, & that is why I have to repeat myself so often. […] [R]epetitions […] [f]or me […] are necessary.” (CV 1998: 3e) Wittgenstein's style is well known for its recursive—and according to some interpreters, even obsessive-compulsive—quality, but they are part of a thinking method: “I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections.” (AWL 1979: 43) The style also mirrors recurring ideas such (...) as “concepts are not for use on a single occasion” (Z 1981: 568), or the “bustle (Getriebe) of life […] comes about only through constant repetition” (RPP 1980b: 625 – 626). The aim of this essay is to show how the notion of repetition (Wiederholung) plays a significant role in the evolution of Wittgenstein's thought. It is the manifestation of a philosophical praxis, and although the notion of repetition remains in the background, it is a constant presence in his production, often featuring alongside his best-known concepts, like rule following, aspect seeing, and his thoughts on music and mathematics. This article will examine the different ways in which Wittgenstein reflects on the question of repetition in relation to the idea of identity, variation, and diversity, and as a fundamental aspect of human practice that is not the mere manifestation of underlying rules or principles, but a necessary condition for their emergence. (shrink)

What's aesthetically interesting or significant about electronic dance music? The first answer I consider here is that dancing is significant. Using literature on groove, dance and expression, I sketch an account of club dancing as expressive activity. I next consider the aesthetic achievements of DJs, introducing two conceptions of what they do. These thoughts lead to discussions of dance music's ontology. I suggest that the fundamental work of dance music is the mix and that mixes require their own ontology, distinct (...) from ontologies of recordings or improvisations. Finally, I explore two aspects of dance music's aesthetics: its connection with repetition and repetitiveness and its use of electronic sounds and technologies. I conclude with some speculative thoughts about the unique relation dance music bears to repetition and electronics. This article is Part II of two; in Part I, I consider the problem of defining dance music, via the framing question of authenticity. I explore history, genre, scenes and subcultures, and blackness. (shrink)

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, (...) biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. (shrink)

The recorded musical text -- Recording, repetition, and meaning in absolute music -- Schnabel's rationalism, Gould's pragmatism -- Digital mythologies -- Beethoven and the iPod Nation -- Photo/phono/pornography -- Mahler as imagist.

Is musical practice 'real' - and how is it connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that making music changes as soon as its meaning is not sought in a purpose-oriented production of results, but in performing music as an activity - indeed, as play. Musical practice, Eva-Maria Houben contends, should be understood as open and never finished. Such an emphasis on repetition can free us from perfection, productivity, and purpose, allowing meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and (...) relationships. Thus understood, musical practice can become a form of life and a reality in its own right. (shrink)

In contemporary virtue ethics, virtues are often assimilated to skills. This assimilation suggests that the moral knowledge of virtuous individuals parallels the practical knowledge of experts in a particular skill. According to Julia Annas (2011a, 2011b), virtues function as skills requiring the ability to articulate reasons for one’s actions. These skills are developed through habitual practice over time. For example, a pianist who internalizes piano techniques possesses practical expertise akin to someone who understands their actions, even when performed automatically. Annas (...) argues that to cultivate ethical virtue, we should emulate musical action, viewing it as a habit rather than mere repetition. This analogy aids in understanding virtue acquisition as practical skill-building. Expanding on Annas’s insights, this article contends that musical practice offers profound ethical implications for musicians as potential moral agents. Supported by important neurological and psychological studies on musical expertise, as well as the dynamics of classical music interpretation and professional career development, this argument sheds light on the ethical dimensions of musical agency. These insights into musical expertise could enhance our understanding of ethical expertise overall. (shrink)

I defend in this paper the thesis that there is a complex relation between minimalist musical works and the metaphysics of time, involving ontological, epistemological and axiological issues. This relation is explained by means of three sub-theses. The first one is that minimalist musical works literally exemplify –in Goodman’s sense–the properties ascribed to time by the metaphysical static view: 1) minimalist works intrinsically possess those properties by being composed according to the technique of minimal repetition; 2) they extrinsically refer (...) to those properties in virtue of pragmatic processes of accommodation of disagreements on what is taken to be common ground in a particular musical context. The second sub-thesis is that, in exemplifying those properties, minimalist musical works are valuable from two perspectives: a formalist one, according to which minimalist works purify the concept of what a musical work is; and a cognitive one, insofar they allow us to obtain phenomenal knowledge of what it is like to experience time as the static view conceives it. The third sub-thesis is that each particular minimalist musical work is valuable insofar it achieves either the formalist or the cognitive goals in an original way. (shrink)

Language- and music-readiness are demonstrated as related within comparative neuroprimatology by elaborating three hypotheses concerning music-readiness (MR): The (musicological) rhythm-first hypothesis (MR-1), the combinatoriality hypothesis (MR-2), and the socio-affect-cohesion hypothesis (MR-3). MR-1 states that rhythm precedes evolutionarily melody and tonality. MR-2 states that complex imitation and fractionation within the expanding spiral of the mirror system/complex imitation hypothesis (MS/CIH) lead to the combinatorial capacities of rhythm necessary for building up a musical lexicon and complex structures; and rhythm, in connection with (...) class='Hi'>repetition and variation, scaffolds both musical form and content. MR-3 states that music’s main evolutionary function is to self-induce affective states in individuals to cope with distress; rhythm, in particular isochrony, provides a temporal framework to support movement synchronization, inducing shared affective states in group members, which in turn enhances group cohesion. This document reviews current behavioural and neurocognitive research relevant to the comparative neuroprimatology of music-readiness. It further proposes to extend MS/CIH through the evolution of the relationship of the language- and music-ready brain, by comparing “affective rhythm” and prosody – i.e. by comparatively approaching the language- and music-emotion link in neuroprimatology. (shrink)

Il saggio si propone di approfondire due tendenze tipiche della musica contemporanea: la prima è il Minimalismo, movimento rappresentato da musicisti come La Monte Young, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, la seconda è la rave music (come la techno), caratteristica della popular culture nell’era postmoderna. Attraverso il pensiero di Adorno, e a partire dalla sua analisi dialettica del dualismo Schönberg-Stravinskij, il saggio propone una comprensione filosofica di concetti come “ripetizione” e “trascendenza”; l’assenza dello “sviluppo” in gran parte della produzione musicale (...) degli ultimi decenni, nella popular music quanto nella musica colta, dimostra una dispersione del soggetto e dell’individuo, smarrito all’interno di un “eterno ritorno” della struttura ritmica che può essere ricompreso nei termini di un “eterno ritorno dell’identico” e non nei termini di un “eterno ritorno della possibilità”; in quest’ottica, a venire sacrificata è anche la dimensione della trascendenza, che non a caso viene ricercata spesso nell’esotismo dei culti orientali o nel consumo di sostanze stupefacenti. L’insistenza nel Minimalismo della ripetizione come unica ed estrema categoria di riferimento e norma estetica, produrrà infatti nel corso degli ultimi anni una dicotomia apparentemente contraddittoria, ma che invece esprime la medesima matrice logica: da un lato l’invasamento edonistico del beat elettronico della musica dance elettronica, dall’altro la proposta commerciale della produzione industriale della musica pop. Non è un caso che proprio il Minimalismo sia sfociato in entrambe queste due tendenze, mostrandosi come la cifra comune originaria, traducendosi nella musica rave o nella musica rock. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Know-How of Musical PerformanceStephen DaviesMusicians make music; that is, the performance of music involves applied knowledge or know-how. Can we attain a discursive understanding of what the musician does, and does the attempt to achieve this put at risk the very art it aims to capture? In other words, what can be said of the nature of performance and does what we say turn a living practice into (...) a dead object? In this discussion, I aim to clarify the issues in terms of which these questions can be developed.Consider acquired practical knowledge or'knowing how.'1 It involves a learned skill or capacity to do something-typically, to perform an action-as in "I know how to ride a unicycle."2 'Knowing how'can be subdivided into types. A first variety is always conscious. For most people, mental arithmetic is of this kind. It is not mental arithmetic they are doing if they do not follow an appropriate rule, algorithm, procedure, or principle, even if they fluke the right answer. Many practical skills are of this sort. I know how to fill in tax forms, immigration documents, and hire purchase agreements. In all these cases, the working of the skill and the steps through which it is exercised are held inevitably before my mind. A second type of 'knowing how' might be termed "retrievable." I know how to drive a car. Most of the time, I am not aware of the processes, judgments, and procedures that are [End Page 154] involved. I do not have to think about my driving as I drive. Nevertheless, if I reflect on what I do, I can describe the steps or routines I go through. A third type of 'knowing how' is cognitively impenetrable. Cognitively impenetrable processes are opaque to introspection. Some bit of neurological hardware receives an input, processes it, and outputs some result, but the nature of that processing is not retrievable by consciousness. The skill is learned but the many computational, muscular, kinaesthetic, or other activities involved in the skill's application or execution are not available to the agent's awareness. From my own case, typical examples are of knowing how to walk, how to pick up a glass, and how to speak English.3 When a person intends to perform an action of this kind, he aims at it directly, as it were. He intends to turn his skateboard to the left, say, not to flex this muscle here and so. He can intend to produce a certain action as output, but the intermediate steps and movements involved in this, to the extent that they are controlled in an irretrievable fashion, are not what he can intend. Similarly, where 'knowing how' is retrievable but automatic, the action is intended directly. The intermediary steps and movements are not what are intended so long as the action remains automatic.In what ways is practical knowledge acquired? In some cases it can be learned from verbal descriptions of the appropriate basic actions and their sequences-"put the left leg in and shake it all about"-or of the relevant rules or algorithms-"multiply by π r2." In others, learning is by example, copying, or experimenting. Some procedures work better for some skills than others. Generally speaking, when we encourage children and stroke victims to walk we do not provide them with examples. By contrast, language skills are often conveyed via paradigm instances. And while it is possible to learn to drive a plane from an instruction manual alone, one is more likely to be successful by following and being assisted by an instructor. Always conscious skills are often acquired by memorizing the procedure or rule that must be kept in mind, whereas automatic but retrievable skills, because their application is unconscious, are usually acquired through physical repetition until the routine becomes unthinking. Nevertheless, even cognitively impenetrable skills might be learned by first following written instructions. What makes the skill impenetrable is not the method by which it is acquired but the inability to recall or describe the relevant steps, rules, or procedures when the skill is entrenched.4A given skill might be cognitively impenetrable for... (shrink)

Did Beethoven and Mozart have more in common with each other than Clapton and Hendrix? The current research demonstrated the widely reported Mozart Effect as only partly significant. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from 16 professional classical and rock musicians during a standard 2 stimulus visual oddball task, while listening to classical and rock music. During the oddball task participants were required to discriminate between an infrequent target stimulus randomly embedded in a train of repetitive background or standard stimuli. Consistent (...) with previous research, the P3 and N2 ERPs were elicited in response to the infrequent target stimuli. Own genre preference resulted in a reduction in amplitude of the P3 for classical musicians exposed to classical music and rock musicians exposed to rock music. Notably, at the pre-attentive stage of processing beneficial effects of exposure to classical music were observed for both groups of musicians. These data are discussed in terms of short and long-term music benefits on both conscious and unconscious cognitive processes. (shrink)

Susanne Langer’s idea of the primary apparition of music involves a dichotomy between two kinds of temporality: “felt time” and “clock time.” For Langer, musical time is exclusively felt time, and in this sense, music is “time made audible.” However, Langer also postulates what we would call ‘a strong suspension thesis’: the swallowing up of clock time in the illusion of felt time. In this paper we take issue with the ‘strong suspension thesis’ and its implications and ramifications regarding not (...) only musical meaning, but also the purported metaphysics of music construed as essentially inhering in felt time. We argue that this thesis is overstated and misdirecting insofar as it purports to describe what we experience when we hear music with understanding. We discuss a selection of examples of repetitive formations, from mediaeval music to contemporary music, which show that persistent, motion-inhibiting repetition undermines the listener’s ability to identify order and coherence due to a relative inability to anticipate the next occurrence of a differentiating musical event. We argue that Langer’s one-sided view of musical temporality, which patently relies on the conceptual framework of memory time and the specious present, exemplifies what we propose to call ‘the searchlight model of musical understanding,’ wherein the constant span of illumination of the searchlight (representing the span of the specious present) moves continuously parallel to, and along, its postulated target, i.e., the music heard, as it ‘illuminates’ it. We argue that, in the last analysis, memory time conceptually presupposes the publicly identifiable means of chronometric length. One maintains the ‘strong suspension thesis’ on pain of conceptual confusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 181-186 [Access article in PDF] Response to June Boyce-Tillman, "Towards an Ecology of Music Education" Claudia Gluschankof Levinsky College of Education, Israel I begin with two confessions. First, music was not my favorite class at school. I cannot even recall what we did there. It did not at all connect with the powerful, meaningful place that music had in my private life, (...) where I loved to sing with my family, and play and sing in ensembles in classes at a private music school. The private piano lessons were fine, but I found no joy in practicing on my own. Music was for me-and still is-a communal experience, associated with personal choice. School did not, and probably could not, provide that.Second, during a recent marketing meeting at the college where I teach and work, I finally said aloud, "I am not sure that I can market a product in which I don't believe." Being a teacher in overcrowded, resource-poor schools where parents are less involved yet more interfering and being expected to conform to standards and to act more as a producer of school ceremonies and festivals and less as a music educator is not a profession I would recommend entering. Boyce-Tillman's paper offers a model for music education in which the corrective emotional experience, in my own case, becomes a remedial object lesson in the setting of the music classroom and a reason to recommend music school teaching as a rewarding profession.Boyce-Tillman calls us to conceive of music "as intimately related to human society and the environment rather than as a discrete and separated category of knowing." Her position is in tune with Christopher Small's coined term "musicking": The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are [End Page 181] conventionally thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and society, between humanity and the natural world and perhaps the supernatural world.1The five interlocking areas proposed in Boyce-Tillman's model are present in Small's musicking: the relationships among the sounds parallel the area called Materials; the relationships between people and sounds may parallel the area called Expression, which refers to the personal meaning given to the organized sounds. "In the area of Construction, effectiveness often depends on the right management of repetition and contrast within a particular idiom." Such a particular idiom is part of the style ideal of a particular culture. It is defined in terms of form and content, and expresses some inner quality of the society that produced it. The style ideal can be characterized by different factors (for example, historical period, geographic location, school, manner of performance, individual composer, and so on) and can be examined in terms of musical components (form, texture, harmony, melody).2According to Boyce-Tillman, the area of Values "is related to the context of the music-making experience. All musical experiences are culturally related." Because values are shared by groups, I found this present in the relationships be-tween a subculture and the larger society, in its broader meaning. The fifth area is Spirituality, defined by Boyce-Tillman as "the ability to transport the audience to a different time/space dimension." That different time/space dimension may be understood as the supernatural world, referred to by Small.Small sees the greatest challenge to music educators today to be that of providing "that kind of social context for informal as well as formal musical interaction that leads to real development and to the musicalizing of the society as a whole,"3... (shrink)

Repetitive practice is one of the most important factors in improving the performance of motor skills. This paper focuses on the analysis and classification of forearm gestures in the context of violin playing. We recorded five experts and three students performing eight traditional classical violin bow-strokes: martelé, staccato, detaché, ricochet, legato, trémolo, collé, and col legno. To record inertial motion information, we utilized the Myo sensor, which reports a multidimensional time-series signal. We synchronized inertial motion recordings with audio data to (...) extract the spatiotemporal dynamics of each gesture. Applying state-of-the-art deep neural networks, we implemented and compared different architectures where convolutional neural networks models demonstrated recognition rates of 97.147%, 3DMultiHeaded_CNN models showed rates of 98.553%, and rates of 99.234% were demonstrated by CNN_LSTM models. The collected data contained sufficient information to distinguish the bowing techniques studied, and deep learning methods were capable of learning the movement patterns that distinguish these techniques. Each of the learning algorithms investigated produced high classification accuracies which supported the feasibility of training classifiers. The resulting classifiers may provide the foundation of a digital assistant to enhance musicians' time spent practicing alone, providing real-time feedback on the accuracy and consistency of their musical gestures in performance. (shrink)

In the second lecture of "Naming and Necessity," Saul Kripke presented a new and quite convincing picture of the reference of proper names. At the same time, however, he expressed some skepticism towards the possibility of developing it into a full-blown theory by offering “more exact conditions for reference to take place.” In this paper, after discussing the reasons for his skepticism, I hint at how I think Kripke’s picture could be developed and offer an outline of a theory of (...) reference based on it. One of the key notions my ‘theory’ makes use of is that of repetition, which I take from Kaplan’s “Words.”. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 45, Issue 2, pp 237 - 266 This essay explores the vicissitudes of resistance as the central concept of both Freud and Hegel. Read through the prism of psychoanalysis, Hegel appears less as a philosopher of inexorable progress than as a thinker of repetition, delay, and stuckness. It is only on this seemingly unpromising basis that the radical potential of both thinkers can be retrieved.

The speech-to-song illusion ( Deutsch et al., 2011 ) tracks the perceptual transformation from speech to song across repetitions of a brief spoken utterance. Because it involves no change in the stimulus itself, but a dramatic change in its perceived affiliation to speech or to music, it presents a unique opportunity to comparatively investigate the processing of language and music. In this study, native English-speaking participants were presented with brief spoken utterances that were subsequently repeated ten times. The utterances were (...) drawn either from languages that are relatively difficult for a native English speaker to pronounce, or languages that are relatively easy for a native English speaker to pronounce. Moreover, the repetition could occur at regular or irregular temporal intervals. Participants rated the utterances before and after the repetitions on a 5-point Likert-like scale ranging from “sounds exactly like speech” to “sounds exactly like singing.” The difference in ratings before and after was taken as a measure of the strength of the speech-to-song illusion in each case. The speech-to-song illusion occurred regardless of whether the repetitions were spaced at regular temporal intervals or not; however, it occurred more readily if the utterance was spoken in a language difficult for a native English speaker to pronounce. Speech circuitry seemed more liable to capture native and easy-to-pronounce languages, and more reluctant to relinquish them to perceived song across repetitions. (shrink)

This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers,Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts—pure difference and complex repetition&mdasha;and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, _Difference and (...) Repetition_ moves deftly to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. (shrink)

In the second chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze explores the relationship of the unconscious to the three syntheses of time that he previously outlined, in order to conceive of an unconscious that is no longer representational but rather "differential and iterative, serial, problematic, and questioning." This article examines the implications of this refoundation of the unconscious with respect to psychoanalysis. I particularly emphasize the topical, dynamic, and energetic consequences of this undertaking, through which Deleuze seeks to replace Freudian (...) metapsychology with an ontological approach to the unconscious. I show how this development is indebted to Lacan’s thematization of a symbolic order, though Deleuze offers an original interpretation of it. In doing so, I aim to situate his work within the context of a discussion with psychoanalysis that began before his doctoral thesis and whose provisional resolution would lead to his encounter with Guattari. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Repetition Fear and Trembling More Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 further reading.

In this paper, a repetitive control scheme of a 2-DOF robotic manipulator based on the improved cubic B-spline curve is proposed. Firstly, a repetitive controller for robotic manipulator is designed, which is composed of an iterative controller and disturbance observer. Then, an improved B-spline optimization scheme is introduced to divide the task of the robotic manipulator into three intervals. A correction function is added to each interval of cubic spline interpolation. Finally, a variety of cases are designed and simulated by (...) MATLAB. The experimental results show that, compared with the conventional B-spline, the improved B-spline has better performance in tracking accuracy and smoothness of motion trajectory. By changing the mechanism of the manipulator, the cases of different weights and lengths are designed. The experimental results in these cases show that the proposed scheme can be applied to most of the 2-DOF robotic manipulator control systems. (shrink)

The article focuses on the philosophical issues surrounding the establishment of revolution as a concept in its modern sense, as an intervention of something new that breaks from the past and produces a gap between tradition and innovation. The common interpretation of this process implies a linear conception of time, while at the same time describing the event of revolution as an implementation of this conception in a political sense. The article refers to the two prevailing works on the subject, (...) that being of Hannah Arendt and of Reinhart Koselleck. While Arendt describes the French Revolution as an event resulting in “newness” being injected into politics and thus opening history up to its future disavowing the repetition, where as Koselleck promoted the notion of universal history disavowing chance. In any case, both believe that it is due to the phenomenon of revolution being invented as history. But the concept was not pulled out of thin air. Arendt’s and Koselleck’s analysis involves philological accounts of the etymology and history of the word “revolution,” showing its radical change in meaning. Initially revolution meant exactly what was subsequently excluded from the notion of history, though also established as a result of revolution, repetition and chance. The article aims to demonstrate that this traditional interpretation misses another idea of repetition which doesn’t contradict “newness” but, on the contrary, produces it. Thus it is not simply a denial of repetition that constitutes revolution, but displacement of repetition understood as a cycle and coming to the forefront of the repetition which we interpret as a chance. (shrink)

In this paper we wish to analyze how Kierkegaard understood the art of writing novels, that is, as a way to express and develop the life-view of the author. We would like to argue that this notion, presented for the first time in From the Papers of One Still Living, was put into practice in the short novel Repetition, in which Kierkegaard used the biblical story of Job to explain the development of selfhood through the existential category of (...) class='Hi'>repetition. According to Kierkegaard, true repetition—which is the central category of the life-view he is trying to convey—helps the individual “recollect” the past correctly so he or she can reconcile with the present and grow into the future. (shrink)

I argue for an account of semantic paradox that requires minimal logical revision. I first consider a phenomenon that is common to the paradoxes of definability, Russell’s paradox and the Liar. The phenomenon—which I call Repetition—is this: given a paradoxical expression, we can go on to produce a semantically unproblematic expression composed of the very same words. I argue that Kripke’s and Field’s theories of truth make heavy weather of Repetition, and suggest a simpler contextual account. I go (...) on to outline a ‘singularity’ theory of semantical predicates in the spirit of remarks of Gödel. According to this theory, ‘denotes’, ‘extension’ and ‘true’ are context-sensitive expression that apply almost everywhere on a given occasion of use, except for certain singular points. I then turn to revenge paradoxes, and argue that even the dialetheist is subject to revenge. I then examine how the singularity theory responds to revenge. (shrink)

If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces its own social space, then modernity might be characterized by that (anti-)social and instrumental space epitomized and idealized in Le Corbusier's writings. This repetitively patterned space consumes and regulates the differences between places and people; it encapsulates a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same. Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of 'difference' can both help explain the operation of this (im)moral landscape and offer the possibility of alternative (...) post-modern social spaces that might produce and respect Otherness. In this sense Lefebvre's work is an incipient 'difference ethics'. (shrink)

This essay considers two concepts of repetition in thinking about canon, the history of ideas, and the work of an opponent, both real and fantastical. I take up these motifs in a variety of figures and cases, but principally in Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of the biblical Abraham in Fear and Trembling, a text rich in interpretive challenges. How might readers in the humanities contend with interpretive rivals while investing in the power of diverse readings? The argument turns on the (...) relationship between the struggle for self‐consciousness, understood through Hegel and Freud as an appointment with otherness, and the work of interpretation, understood as the endeavor to understand others, including other texts, other minds, and one’s own mind. What is the aim of interpretation? How does interpretation fail? To which history of ideas is a reader responsible? (shrink)

Oars sweep against resisting calm, the arc of their pull marking out a disturbance that clusters round each bite of the blade, their swing marking a measured passage across the lake’s expanse. The oars’ rhythmic movement, their muffled thudding resounding in the wooden curve of the hull whose upturned vaulting duplicates the sky’s own arch, reverberates in two realms, under air and above water, connecting at the same time as it disrupts. The movement of the oar, and of the boat, (...) is also the movement of the oarsman, the strength of arm and shoulder at one with the outstretched oar, reaching, grasping, pulling, releasing, and reaching again. A horn challenges the expectant quiet of the sky, a shotgun shatters it, the sounds repeating themselves in rolling waves, re-enacting a ritual long past, subsiding back into heavy stillness. The sound of the horn announces an arrival, declares an audience, proclaims an event – the gunshot commands it. In this place, in which the very light has the character of an immersive medium, in which the earth beckons toward its green embrace, one watches for the appearance, the imminent presence, of a hidden majesty, a concealed wonder, a secret – one that does not reside only in what is awaited, but in the place itself. (shrink)

How can a person forge a stable ethical identity over time? On one view, ethical constancy means reapplying the same moral rules. On a rival view, it means continually adapting to one's ethical context in a way that allows one to be recognized as the same practical agent. Focusing on his thinking about repetition, I show how Kierkegaard offers a critical perspective on both these views. From this perspective, neither view can do justice to our vulnerability to certain kinds (...) of crisis, in which our ethical self-understanding is radically undermined. I further examine his alternative account of ethical constancy, by clarifying Kierkegaard's idea of a ‘second ethics’, as addressed to those who feel ethically powerless and as requiring an ongoing process of self-transformation. (shrink)

In this article, other-repetition after informing statements is investigated in a corpus of institutional encounters between native Norwegian clerks and non-native clients. Such repetition is used to display receipt of information. A plain repeat with falling intonation is described as a display of hearing, whereas a repeat plus a final response particle, ‘ja’, constitutes a claim of understanding. Repeats with high-tone response particles in addition display emotional stance, such as surprise or interest, and these are primarily exploited for (...) the purposes of topic organization. In the cross-linguistic context of the current encounters, the native speakers are shown to use receipts as embedded corrections of the non-native speaker’s utterances. The repeats also have certain formal features that are characteristic of the situation, such as less pronominalization and ellipsis, and this is explained as a procedure to ensure the joint construal of linguistic form. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of Guttierez Alea's film Memories of Underdevelopment ( Memorias del Subdesarrollos , 1968) using Jameson's notion of the 'homeopathic neutralization' of repetition through its very usage in the modernist work of art to assuage the alienation of industrial society. Before the reading of the film begins, however, I explore the motif of repetition in the work of a handful of the most important thinkers of the newly industrial society. I mobilize their insights on (...) different levels of being: sociological, biological, psychological, and aesthetic, in order to understand how Alea uses repetition of form and content to construct the film's protagonist as a metaphor for the counter-revolution. I conclude with thoughts about the heterogeneity of communist states, and the dialectical relationship between high culture and popular culture. I propose that this relationship is better seen as a continuum with two extreme poles, rather than as a binary switch. (shrink)

Susan Faludi's Backlash, first published in 1991, offers a compelling account of feminism being forced to repeat itself in an era hostile to its transformative potentials and ambitions. Twenty years on, this paper offers a philosophical reading of Faludi's text, unpacking the model of social and historical change that underlies the “backlash” thesis. It focuses specifically on the tension between Faludi's ideal model of social change as a movement of linear, step-by-step, continuous progress, and her depiction of feminist history in (...) terms of endless repetition. If we uphold a linear, teleological ideal of social change, I argue, repetition can only be thought of in negative terms—as a step backwards or a waste of time—which in turn has a negative and demoralizing impact within feminism itself. To explore an alternative model of historical time and change, I turn to the work of feminist philosopher Christine Battersby, who rethinks repetition through the Kierkegaardian mode of “recollecting forwards,” and the Nietzschean notion of “untimeliness.” I suggest that Battersby's philosophical reconceptualization of historical repetition, as a potentially creative, productive phenomenon, can be of great utility to feminists as we enact and negotiate the dynamics of backlash politics. (shrink)

The present research explores the role of repetitive thought in developing control deprivation deficits. The two main RT theories lead to diverging predictions. The response style theory suggests that RT in reaction to distress leads to negative effects in terms of emotional and cognitive functioning. However, the theory of Marin and Tesser and its elaboration by Watkins, suggest that the effects of RT depend on its form and that individuals who are not depression-prone usually adopt the constructive form of RT (...) that leads to positive effects. To test which of these predictions is true for control deprivation situation, two experimental studies were conducted. Participants after control deprivation were induced RT or distraction, followed by the measurement of their emotional and cognitive functioning. The results suggest that repetitive thought reduces both emotional and cognitive helplessness deficits and has no effect in no control deprivation condition. This supports the theory of Martin and Tesser and its elaboration by Watkins. (shrink)