COGNITION: gnόsko “γνώσκω” meaning ‘I know’ (noun: gnόsis “γνώσις” = knowledge)
‘to conceptualize’ or ‘to recognize’
It s a group of mental processes that includes: attention, memory, producing and understanding languages, learning, reasoning, problem resolving and decision making.
SPIRITUALITY: search of the “sacred” and the divine. Aliveness
BRAIN WAVES: The human brain produces different levels of electrical activity depending on the amount of information it is processing. During a detailed task, it lights up with electrical charges as it sends and receives messages at a high concentration, its neurons firing in quick succession. While in a relaxed state of sleep, it glows dimmer, its neurons firing less often. This brainwave activity is calculated by electroencephalographs (EEGs), machines that gather data from electrodes adhered to the skull and measure the frequency (the amount of electric activity per unit of time) in Hertz. Measurements of electrical activity in the brain are more commonly referred to as brainwaves.
- ALPHA WAVES: oscillating electrical voltages in the brain. They are indicative of a lack of visual processing and lack of focus: the less visual processing and more unfocused, stronger A waves. The relaxed and reflective state.
- BETA WAVES (12 -30 Hz): the normal, awake consciousness associated with busy tasks.
- THETA WAVES (4 – 7 Hz): a very relaxed state associated with meditation and some sleep states. There, we often experience extreme relaxation, creativity, as well as vibrant mental imagery.
- DELTA WAVES (3 and under Hz): deep, dreamless sleep
ARCTIC HYSTERIA or PIBLOKTO: is a condition exclusively appearing in Polar Eskimos, prevalently in winter. The symptoms can include intense hysteria (screaming, uncontrolled wild behavior) of up to 30 minutes duration,depression, corpophagia, insensitivity to extreme cold (such as running around in the snow naked), echolalia (senseless repetition of overheard words) and more. This condition is most often seen in Inughuit women.This culture-bound syndrome is possibly linked to Hypervitaminosis A.
SHAMANISM: a practice to reach altered states of consciousness in order to encounter or interact with the spirit world, to enter in trance state during a ritual and to practice divination and healing.
Technique of a religious ecstasy
LIZARD BRAIN: the oldenst part of the human brain that senses danger and where insticts and good feelings originate; primal thoughts; subconscious or involuntary processes;connection with the limbic system; the amygdala: structure linked to both fear responses and pleasure. Conditions such as anxiety, autism, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias are suspected of being linked to abnormal functioning of the amygdala, owing to damage, developmental problems, or neurotransmitter imbalance.
SUBJECTIVITY: According Foucault: it is the product of a dual process:
- subjectifiction: creation of a new identity.
- subjugation: subordination of an identity to the disciplinarian regimes of a given society
It refers to the condition of being a subject and the subject’s perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires.
Its a social thing that comes about throughtthe intereactions within the society. it s aprocess of individuation and equally a process of socialization. The subject is the form of an existing being while subjectivity is the content, and the process of subjectivation is the alteration of what it means to be that subject. Subjectivity, which is the way that the subject expresses itself, constantly undergoes change, though still remains constant characteristics, depending on the subject who has the potential to affect their subjectivity. This is true, that subjectivity is constantly undergoing change, because what makes up our psychic experience is a wide range of perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts and beliefs, that, through the passage of time, and our relation to space, constantly generate transformation in terms of our subjective relation to the world.
SUBJECTION: The act to bringsomethinbg under the control of something else.
SPEECH ACTS: acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.
PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCES: are defined in the speech act theory as sentences which are not only passively describing a given reality, but they are changing the (social) reality they are describing. An utterance is “performative” just in case it is issued in the course of the “doing of an action”
ILLOCUTIONARY ACT: the idea of an “illocutionary act” can be captured by emphasising that “by saying something, we do something”. example: “I nominate John to be President”, “I sentence you to ten years’ imprisonment”, or “I promise to pay you back.” In these typical the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself.
Clasification:
- assertives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition
- directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice
- commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises and oaths
- expressives = speech acts that express the speaker’s attitudes and emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks
- declarations = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife
LOCUTIONARY ACT: describes the linguistic function of an utterance.
PERLOCUTIONARY ACT: is viewed at the level of its psychological consequences, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something.
Example, my saying to you “Don’t go into the water” (a locutionary act with distinct phonetic, syntactic and semantic features) counts as warning you not to go into the water (an illocutionary act), and if you heed my warning I have thereby succeeded in persuading you not to go into the water (a perlocutionary act).
PERFORMATIVITY: is a term often used to name the capacity of speech, as a production of the “speaking body” (Felman 1980/2003), as well as other non-verbal forms of expressive action, to perform a type of constructed identity. It is the construction of identity and the reality that surrounds and conditions it through (mostly verbalized) social interaction.
Buttler gives emphasis on the manners which identity is passed to life through discourse. She uses this concept for the theory of gender development.
FREUD
PSICOANALYSIS: Freud was the founder (1922) and he provides the 3 following definitions:
- a discipline focused on investigating the Unconscious.
- a therapeutic method for treating nervous disorders.
- growing body of research data.
UNCONSCIOUS: is the non-conscious part of the mind. It affects the conscious thought and behavior but is not directly accessible for interpratation. The dreams represent fulfillments of unconscious wishes and desires that the conscious mind censors because of social taboos or because are a threat to the integrity of self. The content of the unconscious is forced out oof consciousness through meccanism of repression.
ILLUSION is something that one wishes very much to be true and drives the person to the belief in God. As children, the parents initially are protecting us from reality and help us to believe that everything will be allright, that we are safe. As adults, we still need this kind of assurance. And here come the religion, as the projection of what we want. For Freud society’s belief in Goid is a collective nevrosis arising from the Oedipus ComplexPerformance theories are interested in psicoanalysis cause of its attention to the process of identity formation, especially the formation fo gender.
MARXISM THEORY.
- a revolutionary critique of capitalist society. Marx was concerned with the need for social changes in light of teh injustice and oppression cause by the 19th C industrial capitalism and the ecomonic relations it produced.
- a way to analyse not only economic relations but also the values and viewpoints created by industrial capitalism> a an economic system that promotes an unequal and therefore unjust mode of production
Central to the marxist thought is the historical materialism. Marx sees History as a struggle of the human being over the material goods and their production. Material circumstances shape ideas.
Capitalism: an oppressive system and unjust system of labor and production centers on social relation and the tool used in the production of goods. the mode of production is created : interaction of human labor and technologies, forces of production or relations of production>)the proletariat (workers labor) turn the raw matierial into finished goods and the capitalists (owners) control the sale and distribution. The bourgeoise (neither owners nor workers but the service providers as teachers and doctors) provide services to both classes but they are identified more with the capitalists.
The economic mode of production determinates its superstructure >political, artistic, cultural, religious, scientific, moral production. From this aspect art isn’t an indipendent or autonomus mode of human activity but is conditioned and determinated by the society’s mode of production.
JUDITH BUTLER
Gender> Gender is not being but doing. Its not who you are but what you do. That is how you express your identity in word, actions, dress and manner.
Sexual identity is performative.
Subjection signifies the process of becoming subordinated by power as well the process of becoming subject.
To have power is to be subjected to power.