Angels academia

A key term in the cultural criticism of Walter Benjamin is his notion of "reception in distraction" as an antidote to ideology's domination over the mass society in the modern age. This dissertation attempts to illuminate this idea by offering case studies of three projects that summon into existence a new kind of reader, one capable of a trained apperception we may describe as "distracted." One objective of the mass society according to a Frankfurt model of culture is the erasure of the subject; reception in distraction serves at once to create a space for the social dream and to re-inscribe the subject at the moment of reception through an insistence on its unruly, embodied presence. "Reception in Distraction" creates a cognitive space for disengagement from ideology, modeling what Michael Denning called the "dream work of the social." Critical theory is thus available to the mass public in the form of the "dream of history" that is solely available to a distracted apperception and whose subject is the faint possibility that the crisis of the present may be redeemed and repaired in the future. This project attempts to locate this dream of history in the autobiographical writings of Gertrude Stein, the detective fiction of Kenneth Fearing and the late silent cinema of Charlie Chaplin, each of which illustrates clearly the manner in which "distraction" functions to generate contradiction in the face of ideology's mass cultural form. Stein's experiments with the autobiographical form call for exactly this manner of reception, for which "Alice B. Toklas" becomes a key model. Similarly, Kenneth Fearing's Marxist detective novel The Big Clock and Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's final silent film, reflect on the possibility of a productive reception-in-distraction that may co-opt the social forms of capitalism into a project of resistance and counter-discourse. "Distraction" is therefore more than merely an attitude of reception: it occasions a cognitive distance from ideology that is a key form of critical theory in the modern period. Hallgrímur Benediktsson, and my in-laws, Norman and Myrna Miller. Lastly, I am thankful to my wife Adrienne Benediktsson, whose confidence that this day would some day come has sustained me. And to my daughter, the young princess Magdalena Eva Marie Benediktsson, I dedicate this dissertation: you have thrown open the doors of the real to shed the final light upon the import of this project, by demonstrating to me the power of attention in distraction to shape the authority that attempts to control it. vi ABSTRACT A key term in the cultural criticism of Walter Benjamin is his notion of "reception in distraction" as an antidote to ideology's domination over the mass society in the modern age. This dissertation attempts to illuminate this idea by offering case studies of three projects that summon into existence a new kind of reader, one capable of a trained apperception we may describe as "distracted." One objective of the mass society according to a Frankfurt model of culture is the erasure of the subject; reception in distraction serves at once to create a space for the social dream and to re-inscribe the subject at the moment of reception through an insistence on its unruly, embodied presence. "Reception in Distraction" creates a cognitive space for disengagement from ideology, modeling what Michael Denning called the "dream work of the social." Critical theory is thus available to the mass public in the form of the "dream of history" that is solely available to a distracted apperception and whose subject is the faint possibility that the crisis of the present may be redeemed and repaired in the future. This project attempts to locate this dream of history in the autobiographical writings of Gertrude Stein, the detective fiction of Kenneth Fearing and the late silent cinema of Charlie Chaplin, each of which illustrates clearly the manner in which "distraction" functions to generate contradiction in the face of ideology's mass cultural form. Stein's experiments with the autobiographical form call for exactly this manner of reception, for which "Alice B. Toklas" becomes a key model. Similarly, Kenneth Fearing's Marxist detective novel The Big Clock and Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's final silent film, reflect on the possibility of a productive reception-in-distraction that may co-opt the social forms of capitalism into a project of resistance and counter-discourse. "Distraction" is therefore more than merely an attitude of reception: it occasions a cognitive distance from ideology that is a key form of critical theory in the modern period. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .

This paper explores the problem of political/legal institutions being accepted as valid embodiments of ethics through the investigation of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Lévinas, it situates the dialogue between ethics and politics, presenting a mutual reflection of the theorist and the playwright on the making of subjectivity in relation to the progress of history. Claiming ethics as the first philosophy, Lévinas emphasizes that human politics should not be substituted with inhuman forces-a dilemma in twentieth century and a problematic phenomenon depicted in the play-suggesting a means of framing the characters' sufferings. In this paper Lévinas' notions of bodily sensibility, proximity, and politics will be used to assert "difficult freedom"-a politics informed by ethics and a shared vision with Angels in America-an ethics by which the self is realized by the other to whom the self is subjected.

Full Stop, 2023

Pointing out, first, how few on the literary landscape are fratricide or near-fratricide novels, the review welcomes Theroux's offering on that count. It also welcomes it for its suggestions of stirrings in the octogenarian Theroux's conscience/soul.

Michael H. Mitias argues that friendship is a central moral value constituting an integral part of the good life and therefore deserving a prominent place in ethical theory. He consequently calls upon ethicists to make immediate and decisive adjustments toward accommodating what he regards as a neglected organic relationship between friendship and morality. This is not a fanciful amendment to our standard conception of morality but a radical proposal grounded in a unifying vision to recapture the right way of doing ethics. While the assessment is compelling, and the plea well-placed, neither has been fully understood in the scholarly reception of Mitias. This paper clarifies both. What sets it apart from other reactions to Mitias is a holistic approach drawing on literary considerations as well as philosophical ones. The combined aim is to demonstrate that Mitias is not seeking simply to restore friendship to its rightful place in normative ethical theory, which is indeed the full extent of his formal mission, but that he is seeking to do so specifically within virtue ethics. This interpretation rests on a broad engagement with Mitias’s publications beyond the recent treatise often taken understandably yet erroneously to be his only work on the subject.

2017

Punctum Books, 2022

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-angels-wont-help-you/

Angels and Demons, 2019

Present and Memory The Armenian people-whose lands and borders have been mutilated over the centuries and relentlessly redistributed among the neighboring countries-have suffered barbarities beyond imagination, geographically an, above all, humanly; a process that, across time, resulted in its diaspora throughout the globe. In spite of all adversity, Armenians have remained united in their shared memory and spirit, beyond time and space. Such extraordinary predisposition for resilience and spiritual communion is defined Armenity, a term that, for non Armenians, can be sensed, grasped, perhaps, even embraced in its enigmatic implications, but never fully understood. As for Chatwin Australian aborigines, who travelled across their lands in an utter and mysterious symbiosis, each Armenian path, each mountain (the Ararat!), each city or village, constitute a living memory, a trace in the order of ancestral traditions, the fragment of a story that can only be comprehended by natives, those who were born there, or bear its genetic architecture; A land that mystically travels in and via the DNA of each descendant, in spite of distance and age. Arshak Sarkissian is permeated with Armenity. He was born and raised in Gyumri, the second major Armenian city, tragically known for the disastrous earthquake that scourged it in 1988. A true son of his time, the artist experienced the fall of the Soviet empire followed by the complex transition toward a new independent nation that had to be reconstructed from scratch. In a time that required ideas, knowledge, economic resources and, above all, the imagination of individuals inspired with one or multiple visions ... should they be pragmatic or creative. In such a context, Arshak's first steps in the art world began at a very young age. As a polyphonic researcher, who travels over and beyond the aesthetic and the structure of the artwork, the young artist experiments and alternates mediums that include painting, drawing, printing, sculpture and installation. By playing with and in between the boundaries of traditional signs and symbols, he generates a babylic idiom that intertwines, overlaps and eventually reorganizes the real. Arshak's vision begins, and is eventually fulfilled, through artworks pervaded with memories, ancient and modern forms, tension and humor, and eventually infused with both personal and collective drama. The versatile and mutating nature of his characters conveys hybrid and often disturbing reminiscences of his historical-cultural heritage. His fervent imagination generates vivid and constantly mutating art forms while his creative process is constantly inspired by Western iconographic models that leads him to reinvent expressions such as painting, engraving, sculpture and theater costumes. The artist combines

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the unique means by which the television production of Angels in America (2003) depicts and interprets the stigmatised body of the homosexual with AIDS. This work investigates how this text is unique in its representation of these bodies as abject in the cultural sphere, but then elevates them to positions of great importance by making them the chosen sites of divine visitation. Through a critical lens that combines an analysis of dominant socio-political attitudes of America in the 1980's and theoretical work exploring notions of the abject, this thesis explores how the AIDS-afflicted homosexual body is rendered legible through political metaphors. It demonstrates that when viewed through the lens of historical and medical discourses, this particular body can be interpreted as an undesirable cell being expunged from the otherwise healthy body politic.