An interview with Marie-José Mondzain: what is an image?

ABSTRACT

Marie-Jose Mondzain is one of the major philosophers writing about image, iconography, and representation today. In this interview, she discusses a few of the central ideas in her approach to and thinking about the nature of image and image-making as they bear upon the emergence of subjectivity and visibility in general. According to Mondzain, images are not visual objects we may or may not see; rather they are the site where the visible and its invisibility crisscross each other in opening the field of presence. Images, as Mondzain says in the interview, are cracks or leaks in being. They are where lights first come in and where man and beings are born to each other in their being-in-the world, that is, in their truth. Moving beyond historical and theoretical reflections, Mondzain turns to discuss things and scenes of mass media of late, addressing issues of pleasure, anxiety, desire, and the like, wherein ideologies, power, and the lure of images can be seen to intersect with our everyday life that has become irrevocably one of passive mobility. To the point at every turn, her answers to questions in this interview provide a glimpse to her forceful thinking and insights.     

‘The Product of the Town Itself’: Community Representation and the Stanley Cup Hockey Challenges of the Kenora Thistles, 1903–1907

This case study of community representation in Canadian hockey analyzes media accounts of four Stanley Cup hockey series played by the Kenora Thistles between 1903 and 1907. It examines newspaper coverage of the Thistles hockey club as it moved from an amateur team represented by players with roots in their home community to a professional aggregation that included paid imports from outside the town. The essay explores the relationship between sport and civic identity during a key time of change in top-level hockey. The dominant narrative surrounding the Thistles portrayed players as true ‘members’ of the town of Kenora. Even after the turn to professionalism, narratives of small-town, amateur purity and close connections to the community characterized coverage of the Thistles as they pursued the Stanley Cup. At the same time, however, a growing emphasis on securing the personnel that could ensure victory led to praise for the club’s efforts to please its supporters, or ‘customers’. As a result, this study of notions of civic representation in early hockey provides insight into the process by which sports teams came to be viewed as symbolic representatives of their communities.     

《司岗里》传说:佤族走失文明的历史再现

佤族没有文字,其历史文化均以口耳相传的方式传承下来,这为佤族历史文化的解读提供了诸多可能。佤族创世神话《司岗里》流传于整个阿佤山地带,乃至缅甸、泰国、老挝、柬埔寨、印度,内容不仅涵盖了宇宙、人类及万物的起源,还包括了佤族及其先祖数千年颠沛流离的迁徙史。当我们将这部神话传说与失落千年的古滇国文化、夜郎文化、哀牢文化和石佛洞文化进行链接的时候,佤族那段走失的文明便会以另一种方式再现。     

表象训练在“二十四式”教学中的应用研究

针对武术项目教学"三多"的问题,以人体生理学运动技能形成的过程为切入点,在传统的"二十四式"教学方法的基础上采用对比实验法、数理统计法、文献资料等研究方法,对表象训练法的教学效果进行研究。实验证明这种教学方法能激发学生的学习主观想象力,达到更好的教学效果。     

论安·塞克斯顿诗歌《灰姑娘》中的重复

美国现代作家塞克斯顿在其诗歌《灰姑娘》中运用类像和怪异两种重复方式对原格林童话进行了成功的"变形",揭示了后现代社会的表征危机以及消费主义文化。     

Studying culture-cognition relations in collective practices of daily life: a research framework / El estudio de las relaciones cultura-cognición en las prácticas colectivas cotidianas: un modelo de investigación

This article sketches a framework for the study and analysis of culture-cognition relations that I present in my recent book, Cultural Development of Mathematical Ideas: Papua New Guinea Studies. Taking an historical approach, I focus on the reproduction and alteration of representational forms for number and the functions that representational forms serve in collective practices in and out of school. My key argument is that, in the context of their goal-directed communicative activities in collective practices in daily life, people unwittingly reproduce and alter representational forms and the functions that these forms serve. The process leads to continuities and discontinuities in form-function relations in communities over historical time. To provide evidence for this process and its role in the cultural development of ideas, I report selected findings from research conducted in 1978, 1980 and 2001 in Oksapmin communities; I focus on historical shifts in the forms and functions of the Oksapmin body part counting system over time. I then update that body of research with a sketch of a recent 2014 follow-up study. I close with reflections on the utility of my framework for the study of culture-cognition relations in other communities and on cognitive domains other than mathematics.     

Researching female professors: the difficulties of representation,positionality and power in feminist research

This article draws on findings from my doctoral research to exemplify some of the difficulties I encountered when interviewing 20 female professors¹1. In the UK context, the title of ‘professor’ is reserved for full professors only – that is, those with either an established or personal chair. and subsequently writing about their life histories. In this article, I discuss how I addressed the issues of representing and positioning my participants, and I reflect on the power dynamics present in the research process. The article contends that by drawing on Bourdieu and Wacquant's [An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press] understanding of reflexivity and feminist interpretations of their work including McNay [“Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity.” Theory Culture Society 16: 95] and Adkins [“Reflexivity Freedom or Habit of Gender?” Theory Culture Society 20: 21], valuable research can be produced, despite the difficulties. A related aim of this paper is to reflect back after four years in an academic post on my position as a novice researcher, and some of the associated issues facing doctoral students, particularly the problems with researching upwards [Walford, G. 2011 Walford, G. 2011. “Researching the Powerful.” British Educational Research Association on-line resource. Accessed March 17, 2014. www.bera.ac.uk/system/files/Researching%20the%20Powerful.pdf [Google Scholar]. “Researching the Powerful. British Educational Research Association On-line Resource.” Accessed March 17, 2014. www.bera.ac.uk/system/files/Researching%20the%20Powerful.pdfWalford 2011].     

Images as representations: visual sources on education and childhood in the past

The challenge of using images for the history of education and childhood will be addressed in this article by looking at them as representations. Central is the relationship between representations and reality. The focus is on the power of paintings as representations of aspects of realities. First the meaning of representation for images as sources for the history of education and childhood – mirrors of realities, complex symbol systems or representations – is explained. A distinction is made between images of real people and images of patterns of human behaviour and the value of the phenomenon of historical sensation as a methodological instrument for insight in that relationship is dealt with. Second, a specific genre of paintings from the seventeenth century, namely portraits of dead children, will be described and analysed to make clear that their value for the history of education and childhood can be studied adequately only by using those images as representations and by interpreting them within the cultural rules and regulations of time and place. This analysis results in the conclusion that images should be considered in their function as representations of aspects of educational and childhood reality.     

‘Twilight or Middlemarch?’ A Teacher’s Refusal to Choose

What should children and young adolescents read? Recent changes in the English curriculum have once again shifted the focus towards more canonical texts, but does featuring such texts on the course necessarily equate to rigorous teaching and in-depth learning? Through a self-examination of her own reading history, the author argues for a dialogic approach to reading and text selection instead, so that students may negotiate better understandings of themselves and their own socio-cultural contexts.     

超越表达：论科学理论知识的先验特征与先验证成

一般来说,在科学哲学之中,对科学理论的考察都围绕着理论表达的方式、机制及其恰当性而进行,而且无论是科学理论的陈述观还是模型观都会将表达与同构关系密切地联系起来。这些考察的哲学背景都与关于科学理论的知识论、然后是科学中的形而上学问题有关——尤其是对于知识论而言,是否可能、如何论证科学知识的真理性、客观性、合理性与普适性以及如何证成如此的科学理论知识都是非常重要的问题,而且这些问题和表达及其恰当性有密切的关系。于是,与科学知识有关的怀疑论、工具主义挑战其实都来自于对基础的科学理论表达机制、被表达项的认定等产生的怀疑与挑战。可是,基于同构性的表达机制不可能完全消除对科学理论知识的怀疑论挑战。这时,科学哲学的讨论就需要超越表达并将对科学理论知识的证成引向先验的进路。