Lisa Blackman

Thoroughly updated and revised throughout with brand new chapters on affective bodies, indeterminate bodies, assemblaged bodies and a new conclusion, and featuring essay and classroom questions for classroom use, The Body: Key Concepts, Second Edition, presents a concise and up-to-date introduction to, and analysis of, the complex and influential debates around the body in contemporary culture. Lisa Blackman outlines and illuminates those debates which have made the body central to current interdisciplinary thinking across the arts, humanities and sciences. Since body studies hit the mainstream, it has grown in new regions, including China, and moved in new directions to question what counts as a body and what it means to have and be a body in different contexts, milieu and settings. Lisa Blackman guides the reader through socio-cultural questions around representation, performance, class, race, gender, disability and sexuality to examine how current thinking about the body has developed and been transformed. Blackman engages with classic anthropological scholarship from Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, revisits black feminist writings from the 1980s, as well as engaging with recent debates, thought and theorists who are inventing new concepts, methods and ways of apprehending embodiment which challenge binary and dualistic categories. It provides an overview of the proliferation of body studies into other disciplines, including media and cultural studies, philosophy, gender studies and anthropology, as well as mapping the future of body studies at the intersections of body and affect studies.

Thoroughly updated and revised throughout with brand new chapters on affective bodies, indeterminate bodies, assemblaged bodies and a new conclusion, and featuring essay and classroom questions for classroom use, The Body: Key Concepts, Second Edition, presents a concise and up-to-date introduction to, and analysis of, the complex and influential debates around the body in contemporary culture. Lisa Blackman outlines and illuminates those debates which have made the body central to current interdisciplinary thinking across the arts, humanities and sciences. Since body studies hit the mainstream, it has grown in new regions, including China, and moved in new directions to question what counts as a body and what it means to have and be a body in different contexts, milieu and settings. Lisa Blackman guides the reader through socio-cultural questions around representation, performance, class, race, gender, disability and sexuality to examine how current thinking about the body has developed and been transformed. Blackman engages with classic anthropological scholarship from Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, revisits black feminist writings from the 1980s, as well as engaging with recent debates, thought and theorists who are inventing new concepts, methods and ways of apprehending embodiment which challenge binary and dualistic categories. It provides an overview of the proliferation of body studies into other disciplines, including media and cultural studies, philosophy, gender studies and anthropology, as well as mapping the future of body studies at the intersections of body and affect studies.

Haunted Data explores the concepts that are at work in our complex relationships with data. Our engagement with data – big or small – is never as simplistic or straightforward as might first appear. Indeed, Blackman argues that our relationship with data is haunted with errors, dead ends, ghostly figures, and misunderstandings that challenge core assumptions about the nature of thought, consciousness, mind, cognition, affect, communication, control and rationality, both human and non-human.Using contemporary controversies from ‘weird science’ including the field of priming and its uncanny relations to animal telepathy, as well as artificial intelligences and their curious relation to psychic research (‘clairvoyant computers’), Blackman shows how some of the current crises in science in these areas reveal more than scientists are willing or even able to acknowledge. In addition to proposing a new theory of how we might engage with data, Haunted Data also provides a nuanced survey of the historical context to contemporary debates, going back to the 19th Century origins of modern computation and science to explain the ubiquity and oddness of our data relations. Drawing from radical philosophies of science, feminist science studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and the field of affect studies, the book develops a manifesto for how artists, philosophers and scientists might engage creatively and critically with science within the context of digital communication.

Haunted Data explores the concepts that are at work in our complex relationships with data. Our engagement with data – big or small – is never as simplistic or straightforward as might first appear. Indeed, Blackman argues that our relationship with data is haunted with errors, dead ends, ghostly figures, and misunderstandings that challenge core assumptions about the nature of thought, consciousness, mind, cognition, affect, communication, control and rationality, both human and non-human.Using contemporary controversies from ‘weird science’ including the field of priming and its uncanny relations to animal telepathy, as well as artificial intelligences and their curious relation to psychic research (‘clairvoyant computers’), Blackman shows how some of the current crises in science in these areas reveal more than scientists are willing or even able to acknowledge. In addition to proposing a new theory of how we might engage with data, Haunted Data also provides a nuanced survey of the historical context to contemporary debates, going back to the 19th Century origins of modern computation and science to explain the ubiquity and oddness of our data relations. Drawing from radical philosophies of science, feminist science studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and the field of affect studies, the book develops a manifesto for how artists, philosophers and scientists might engage creatively and critically with science within the context of digital communication.

In this unique contribution, Blackman focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within the social sciences. Fresh and convincing, this book uncovers the paradoxes and tensions in work in affect studies by focusing on practices and experiences, including voice hearing, suggestion, hypnosis, telepathy, the placebo effect, rhythm and related phenomena. Questioning the traditional idea of mind over matter, as well as discussing the danger of setting up a false distinction between the two, this book makes for an invaluable addition within cultural theory and the recent turn to affect. In a powerful and engaging matter, Blackman discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis. Interdisciplinary in its core, this book is a must for everyone seeking a dynamic and thought provoking analysis of culture and communication today.

In this unique contribution, Blackman focuses upon the affective capacities of bodies, human and non-human as well as addressing the challenges of the affective turn within the social sciences. Fresh and convincing, this book uncovers the paradoxes and tensions in work in affect studies by focusing on practices and experiences, including voice hearing, suggestion, hypnosis, telepathy, the placebo effect, rhythm and related phenomena. Questioning the traditional idea of mind over matter, as well as discussing the danger of setting up a false distinction between the two, this book makes for an invaluable addition within cultural theory and the recent turn to affect. In a powerful and engaging matter, Blackman discusses the immaterial body across the neurosciences, physiology, media and cultural studies, body studies, artwork, performance, psychology and psychoanalysis. Interdisciplinary in its core, this book is a must for everyone seeking a dynamic and thought provoking analysis of culture and communication today.

Questions around 'the body' are central to social theory. Our changing understanding of the body now challenges the ways we conceive power, ideology, subjectivity and social and cultural process. The Body: the key concepts highlights and analyses the debates which make the body central to current sociological, psychological, cultural and feminist thinking. Today, questions around the body are intrinsic to a wide range of debates - from technological developments in media and communications, to socio-cultural questions around representation, performance, class, race, gender and sexuality, to the more 'physical' concerns of health and illness, sleep, diet and eating disorders, body parts and the senses.The Body: the key concepts is the ideal introduction for any student seeking a concise and up-to-date analysis of the complex and influential debates around the body in contemporary culture.

Questions around 'the body' are central to social theory. Our changing understanding of the body now challenges the ways we conceive power, ideology, subjectivity and social and cultural process. The Body: the key concepts highlights and analyses the debates which make the body central to current sociological, psychological, cultural and feminist thinking. Today, questions around the body are intrinsic to a wide range of debates - from technological developments in media and communications, to socio-cultural questions around representation, performance, class, race, gender and sexuality, to the more 'physical' concerns of health and illness, sleep, diet and eating disorders, body parts and the senses.The Body: the key concepts is the ideal introduction for any student seeking a concise and up-to-date analysis of the complex and influential debates around the body in contemporary culture.

The hearing of voices is generally regarded as a pathological phenomenon - a form of mental illness. This title challenges the assumption in psychiatry and psychology that hearing voices has a pathological basis, and contains information from people who hear voices but who have found traditional clinical approaches unhelpful. It also provides information on an alternative approach to hearing voices.

This book provides an innovative approach to the relation of psychology to the media for media and cultural studies students. Drawing on post-structuralism, discursive psychology, postcolonial theory and feminism, the book explores the regulation of the masses and its place both in the project of psychology and of media studies. By means of a number of innovative case studies, the book demonstrates the centrality of images of Otherness in constituting the relation between the normal and pathological that lies at the heart of the relationship between psychology and the media. The book establishes a way beyond the present impasse and looks forward to a different way of thinking about psychology and the media. Essential reading for all media and cultural studies students and for those interested in media psychology.