Category Archives: bachelard

Ms – Week 9 Bachelardian Reverie

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“For, as so many ethnographic studies of laboratory life have shown, the laboratory is not a ‘non-space’: it is itself a real configuration of persons, devices, and techniques, which imposes its own characteristics on the data generated, as well as the interpretations made of them, and all the more so when the subjects are individual living creatures, be they human or other animals” (Rose & Abi-Rached 228).

This about sums up how my views of laboratory science have been changed. Laboratories are not a blank white page that – well, here is a poem:

LABORATORY

white lab coats and

beakers.

that’s what I see

in laboratory.

what have those

white coats done…

in experimenting on the brain?

the brain was like a spirit

before I could see

that experimenting

is precise

it is not a game

(or at least it shouldn’t be).

Now I understand what

laboratory

means.

Because even

a blank

white page

is still made

of something.

 

Bachelard week 8

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“They [the neurological conceptions of personhood] have argued that the human brain… is evolved for a collective form of life… and the formation of groups both small and large to pursue common aims.”
Rose, N. Abi-Rached, J., 2012. Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the mind. Princeton University Press. (pg 226)

 

“She says the tree
Is stationary and multitudinous in her chest, untouched
And skeletal, almost like metal, in its network against the sky.”

‘Duality’
Rogers, Pattiann, 1940 – The tattooed lady in the garden. Wesleyan University Press. (p. 15)

Each body has many deep and unyielding roots

that reach to the earth, whether the eyes can see the branches’

silhouette against the dewy sky,

or its forces are hidden in spectral starlight of spirit. The patient arches

of these unfurling footsteps

begin to braid together,

finding, as they join, their common direction

which is slowly unwinding

in an ever widening spiral

which reaches out into the neuronal hands,

seeking to touch, and be held

in the rivers caught in sharp relief

that flow through butterflies’ wings as they soar

over eyes to show the branching

fractals innate on the earth, and in the trees

and in each fire filled body that creates

and destroys, and are created and destroyed

on the skin of the planet which heaves and rolls

its life blood underfoot to remind all beings with roots

of the finite blessing of this time, and this space.

P – Week 9 Reverie

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“Emotions course through the veins, engage the heart and the lungs, the bowels and the genitals, the muscles, the skin and face.” (Rose/Abi-Rached, 230)

The physical reactions of the non-physical…can emotions be mapped in the blood even if they can’t be found in the brains? My heart stops and my lungs contract and my muscles ready themselves for the chase whenever I look at love, my veins quicken and quiver with excitement, but I have the same reaction when I look at hate…so far removed and yet so close. Does my body recognize the nuances of difference or only the heat of the response? My face is the only thing that changes and that is cultural conditioning, not something written in my bones and blood.

Word count: 101

P – Week 8 Reverie

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“Our Perception of the World Is a Fantasy That Coincides with Reality” (Rose/Abi-Rached, 207)

Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality on occasion if we’re lucky but we never really know if we’re lucky because we never really know what reality is. Is it what we see or is it something more or something less? It changes from person to person moment to moment memory to memory and changes every time it is remembered. There is know knowing in the muddled soup of our brains whether we are up or down and that is a confusing slide of behavior, a merry go round of an experience.

Word count: 97

**Sorry for the lateness.  We had to make a sudden move to Indiana last week and I haven’t had internet until now…

Week 9 Psychoanalysis of Fire

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“We are inclined to excuse all these naive beliefs, because
we now interpret them only in their metaphorical translation.
We forget that they corresponded to psychological realities.
Now ‘it oEren happens that metaphors have not completely lost
their reality J their concreteness. There is still a trace of concreteness
in cerrain soundly abstract definitions. A psychoanalysis
of objeccive knowledge must retrace and complete this
process of de-realization”
(Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire; 70)

With meditation comes the refinding of meaning in simple thoughts already thought,
realizations already come to or epiphanies once mulled over; seen with a new light.
How clear things can become with cliche metaphors, and common ideas.
They are this way because that’s why they became common in the first place.
But like all things, should be revisited, re-thought over.
Explore different facets of sound advice,
what different meanings could be applied to ‘practice makes perfect’
how perfect in all reality is inconceivable,
and therefore to achieve perfection, an eternity of practice is needed
but the more it is done the closer to eternity you are.
‘All things change’
It lies within the basic facts of our existence.
Within our evolution as a species,
and even the amount we age each day.
When we think we know something, that is when it is known you don’t. 

i-week 9 neurorev

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“It’s far too early”

author says

“to say anything for sure”

but culture is a hungry beast

and will say whatever might be said.

“Is Neuron a contemporary god?” I was once asked.

the unspoken message believes it so

all the funding says “look at the brain

and see the meaning of insane

and see me–authority

i can fix and fill your neural cavities.”

so much focus on the brain.

you don’t have to speak

what’s really being said

to know that the Powers That Be

are harnessing us further

I think–

based on no definitive statements–

individuality is coming to an end.

Ab- Spring Reverie Week 9.

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Marisa Malone

Neuro Reverie Conclusion.

Week. 9

Word Count: 107

“Emotions course through the veins, engage the heart and the lungs, the bowels and the genitals, the muscles, the skin and face. As for cognition, do we not think, literally here, with hands and eyes?” (Rose, Abi-Rached, 230)

My body is a translator of the tangled neurons and synapsis that line layers of skin.

My brain functions through my entire body–or, my body functions through my entire brain (?)

Through western culture, through education, through privilege, through ability, my hands and eyes have evolved to become the translators of the world, the word, the thought, the image, the feeling, filtered through my body-brain. If I literally think with my body and my body is emotion and my body is female and my body is object and my body is seen and I frame my body in cultural values…do I trust my hands and eyes?

Bachelard week 8

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“Most mysteriously, your brain turns its view back on itself to generate your sense of self-awareness.”

Rose, N. Abi-Rached, J., 2012. Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the mind. Princeton University Press. (pg 199)

“Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.”
Rose, N. Abi-Rached, J., 2012. Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the mind. Princeton University Press. (pg 207)
“The killifish, simultaneously swallowed up like a slip of sun
By the shadow of the hawk, can be seen as itself once again
Inside Felicia’s laughter
Felicia, catching up and stepping on the shadow
Of the hawk, has finally seen the black wings of her feet.”
‘Little fugue’
Rogers, Pattiann, 1940 – The tattooed lady in the garden. Wesleyan University Press. (p. 76)
The conversation flows into silence
And sound fills the field.
The sunlight glinting off the waterfall inside the bird’s laughter,
The stellars jay calls like the eagle above and spirits are sent on their way
With air beneath their midnight wings
Of impenetrable air.
The lights flash past the stars
Hung in the house where the peacock feather
Shines in shades of emerald and midnight glass
That is grasped in the silences
Between the minds joined in forming
Pools and ripples of vibrant air, that til this moment
Have never before been sewn into being,
Except in the meadow of sound,
Where the house remembers the bird’s laughter
In the glittering waterfall where it finds its first home.

E – Reverie Week 8

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“As for cognition, do we not think, literally here, with hands and eyes?” pg 230

“..there is nothing to fear in the rise to prominence of neurobiological attempts to understand and account for human behavior.” pg 232

Why does something physical

Have more weight than something

Ideological? If it exists physically

We give something more thought, more

Courtesy than if it is an idea.

 

A man does not have himself killed

For a petty distinction

You must speak to his soul.

But how do you do that if

His soul is neurons and clusters

and brain cells? Surely the same way.

With words, ideas. Sounds.

Sounds that are physical, waves

To be interpreted by a brain.

But their meaning will resonate long after

The waves have dissipated.

 

Ideologies have weight. Nazism, communism,

Slavery, sexism, racism, transphobia.

Weight, and

Body counts.

But we cannot see sexism, or touch

Transphobia. If it exists in our neurons

It is most likely because it exists in

Our culture.

So why so much emphasis

On what is physical?