Hannah Wojciehowski - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Hannah Wojciehowski
1st chapter of _Group Identity in the Renaissance World_ (Cambridge UP, 2011).
Papers by Hannah Wojciehowski
Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 2019
This chapter contends that conceptual metaphors constitute a form of distributed cognition. But w... more This chapter contends that conceptual metaphors constitute a form of distributed cognition. But while Lakoff and Johnson (1999) propose a transhistorical theory of conceptual metaphor, the present essay, following Trim (2007, 2011), presents a diachronic account of conceptual metaphor that allows for cultural evolution and historical change. Originally presented as a companion piece to Lochman, this chapter offers a case study of metaphors of emotional and cognitive enaction that were prominent during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, and that throw into relief certain premodern perceptions of intersubjectivity and synchrony. Conceptual metaphors frequently entail notions of gender, in addition to those of embodiment, extension, and enaction. Drawing attention to the gendered aspect of the history of distributed cognition helps us to understand our own embodiment better, while also enabling us to perceive and to critique in new ways the long history of real and imagined gend...
From Antihumanism to Cognitive Literary Studies Until quite recently, appeals to human nature wer... more From Antihumanism to Cognitive Literary Studies Until quite recently, appeals to human nature were more likely to be met with skepticism, caution, or even cynicism on the part of many literary theorists, rather than with enthusiasm, fascination, or assent, though this trend is clearly reversing in some quarters. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the humanities, and literary studies in particular, were the site of a pronounced antihumanist discourse-i.e., a sustained critique of notions and ideals concerning human identity that were often associated with the Enlightenment and the so-called 'project of modernity.' Antihumanism was one of the overarching themes of post-1968 French philosophy, including that of Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Its roots and antecedents could be traced even further back to the philosophies of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Husserl, and Heidegger-each of whom had challenged and critiqued prevailing ideologies of the human, and of political, social, and psychic life as they had been previously understood. As the contemporary political theorist Diana Coole explains, stressing the influence of phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, antihumanist thinkers maintained that humanism is itself implicated in an aggressive subjectivist culture that reproduces the hubris and existential impoverishment of the modern age, in which normativity as such succumbs to positivism and nihilism, and Western norms translate into imperialism and colonialism (2007, 28). Coole makes it clear that antihumanist thought, so prominent in the late twentieth century, and associated most strongly with French neo-Marxism, poststructuralism, and Foucaultian genealogical theory, had its roots in earlier nineteenth-and twentieth-century critiques. Those earlier challenges were, however, given new force by the May uprisings in 1968, both in Paris and in other parts of the world, and by events leading up to that watershed moment, as Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut have persuasively argued (1990, xvii ff.). Post-'68 Marxists (including Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu) aligned the traditional discourse of humanism with bourgeois ideology, positivism, and the failures and catastrophes of modernity. Meanwhile poststructuralists such as Derrida and Foucault, who constructed their philosophies upon a Nietzschean and Heideggerian framework, folded Marx's view of man's potential mastery of nature and his political environment into their far-reaching critiques of humanist thought. 2 Within all of these discourses, the very word 'humanist' soon became a shorthand term connoting all things retrograde, totalizing, and/or totalitarian-the very essence of false consciousness. By the 1970s and 80s, antihumanist theories had moved far beyond their original German and French contexts, powerfully influencing academic discourses of the humanities and social sciences throughout Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. By the late 80s, the critique of humanist subjectivity was in full swing. Liberationist movements such as postcolonial and ethnic studies, feminisms, and the more recent gender and queer studies had, to a greater or lesser extent, incorporated various critiques of subjectivity into their own arguments, and, as a consequence, absorbed the rhetoric of antihumanism. Initially some offshoots of these resistance movements (for example, American feminisms and African-American Studies of the 60s, 70s and early 80s) hewed towards older notions of subjectivity and agency as part of an effort to gain political rights that had previously been withheld or denied. Other groups that were strongly informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, by Derridean deconstruction, and by discourses of poststructuralism or post-Marxism questioned the strategic value of claiming liberal humanist subjectivity while, in effect, buying into the illusions and ideologies of modernity that several generations of thinkers had so painstakingly challenged. To imagine for oneself or one's group the possession of that humanist subjectivity was to re-instantiate the hegemonic power relations and oppressive ideologies that each of these critical movements was seeking to dismantle. Literary theorist and deconstructionist Gayatri Spivak, articulating the double-bind of that situation for feminists, theorists of race, and postcolonial critics, suggested a paradoxical solution: namely, taking "the risk of essence" (1989, 129). 3 One could assume a provisional essentialism in order to foster the interests of one's group, while simultaneously acknowledging within one's group and among allies the contingency of identity, whether individual or collective. Other critics, finding such suggestions to be 2 Ferry and Renaut further argue: "[I]t is important to understand that this critique of modern rationality was absolutely inseparable from a critique of the subject (of man) defined as conscience and as will, that is, as man as the author of his acts and ideas. In order to understand this, one must refer back to the considerable trauma represented by the Second World War for European intellectuals. Immediately after the war, in fact, it is no exaggeration to say that 'civilized societies,' that is the entire Western world, could legitimately be accused of having engendered, or at least of having been unable to stop, two of the greatest political catastrophes of this century: colonialist imperialism and Nazism" (xii-xiii). 3 Spivak's proposal, initially offered at a 1982 Modern Language Association meeting in Los Angeles, would become a touchstone for many theorists at that time.
Literature and Theology, 2014
Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 2019
In their 1999 book Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Though... more In their 1999 book Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, cognitive linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson made a modest proposal: human language, even at its most abstract, relies on metaphors of the body; its functions, feelings and perceptions; and its movements in space and time. Understanding an idea, they pointed out in a classic example, is often described as grasping something, while not understanding might be described as going by a person or going over one's head (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 45). Conceptual metaphor, as they called this phenomenon, is a tool that humans use to explain in language the abstract and subjective in terms of other, more concrete domains of sensorimotor experience that are situated, as it were, closer to hand. In Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson called for nothing less than a reassessment of the conditions of reason itself. They argued that '[t]he same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reasons. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding' (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 4). Understanding these facts, they contended, requires a reappraisal of the Western philosophical tradition, which for more than two millennia has celebrated its transcendence of the corporeal and the natural world by means of the exalted power of human reasoning; in doing so, the authors held, philosophers have consistently failed to recognise the embodied and metaphorical dimension of their discourse. At the time that they published Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson were not only amplifying their earlier collaboration on conceptual metaphor, Metaphors We Live By (1980), as well as Johnson (1987) and Lakoff (1987); they were also responding to the then-new scientific theories of the embodied mind that had emerged in the early to mid 1990s, notably those of Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) and Damasio (1994). The insights of Philosophy in the Flesh, which seemed radical at the time, have now been largely absorbed into mainstream philosophy
Censorship and Exile, 2015
The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, 2015
Feminist Formations, 2013
of Jewish people. She also denounces the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy with the military d... more of Jewish people. She also denounces the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy with the military dictatorship.
California Italian Studies, 2011
... Interview with Vittorio Gallese. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski. ... This essay explores that q... more ... Interview with Vittorio Gallese. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski. ... This essay explores that question with a new combination of insights from neuroscience and literary theory, while also assessing the difficulties as well as the potential gains of such interdisciplinary research. ...
Image Narrative, 2010
E): Applying recent theories of embodied cognition to Danny Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire... more E): Applying recent theories of embodied cognition to Danny Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, this essay contrasts Vittorio Gallese's notion of the "shared manifold" of human experience to earlier models of identification drawn from Freudian psychology and Alvin Goldman's simulationist theory of mind, and also proposes a fourth notion of empathy: "getting under the skin." Focusing on Slumdog's "blue boy" scene, which evoked strikingly different reactions from viewers around the world, this essay argues that viewer identification and empathy, while possibly universal phenomena, are simultaneously subject to cultural and historical constraints. Creating emotional bonds between viewers and filmic protagonists thus remains a complicated challenge for filmmakers aiming to reach a global audience.
How do stories often evoke intense feelings and sensations in their readers? This essay explores ... more How do stories often evoke intense feelings and sensations in their readers? This essay explores that question with a new combination of insights from neuroscience and literary theory, while also assessing the difficulties as well as the potential gains of such interdisciplinary research. The authors lay the groundwork for a neurocritical embodied narratology that incorporates both the critiques of traditional humanism within literary studies and of classic cognitivism within neuroscience. Their methodological approach focuses on Feeling of Body (in contrast to Theory eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.
1st chapter of _Group Identity in the Renaissance World_ (Cambridge UP, 2011).
Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 2019
This chapter contends that conceptual metaphors constitute a form of distributed cognition. But w... more This chapter contends that conceptual metaphors constitute a form of distributed cognition. But while Lakoff and Johnson (1999) propose a transhistorical theory of conceptual metaphor, the present essay, following Trim (2007, 2011), presents a diachronic account of conceptual metaphor that allows for cultural evolution and historical change. Originally presented as a companion piece to Lochman, this chapter offers a case study of metaphors of emotional and cognitive enaction that were prominent during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, and that throw into relief certain premodern perceptions of intersubjectivity and synchrony. Conceptual metaphors frequently entail notions of gender, in addition to those of embodiment, extension, and enaction. Drawing attention to the gendered aspect of the history of distributed cognition helps us to understand our own embodiment better, while also enabling us to perceive and to critique in new ways the long history of real and imagined gend...
From Antihumanism to Cognitive Literary Studies Until quite recently, appeals to human nature wer... more From Antihumanism to Cognitive Literary Studies Until quite recently, appeals to human nature were more likely to be met with skepticism, caution, or even cynicism on the part of many literary theorists, rather than with enthusiasm, fascination, or assent, though this trend is clearly reversing in some quarters. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the humanities, and literary studies in particular, were the site of a pronounced antihumanist discourse-i.e., a sustained critique of notions and ideals concerning human identity that were often associated with the Enlightenment and the so-called 'project of modernity.' Antihumanism was one of the overarching themes of post-1968 French philosophy, including that of Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Its roots and antecedents could be traced even further back to the philosophies of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Husserl, and Heidegger-each of whom had challenged and critiqued prevailing ideologies of the human, and of political, social, and psychic life as they had been previously understood. As the contemporary political theorist Diana Coole explains, stressing the influence of phenomenologists Husserl and Heidegger, antihumanist thinkers maintained that humanism is itself implicated in an aggressive subjectivist culture that reproduces the hubris and existential impoverishment of the modern age, in which normativity as such succumbs to positivism and nihilism, and Western norms translate into imperialism and colonialism (2007, 28). Coole makes it clear that antihumanist thought, so prominent in the late twentieth century, and associated most strongly with French neo-Marxism, poststructuralism, and Foucaultian genealogical theory, had its roots in earlier nineteenth-and twentieth-century critiques. Those earlier challenges were, however, given new force by the May uprisings in 1968, both in Paris and in other parts of the world, and by events leading up to that watershed moment, as Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut have persuasively argued (1990, xvii ff.). Post-'68 Marxists (including Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu) aligned the traditional discourse of humanism with bourgeois ideology, positivism, and the failures and catastrophes of modernity. Meanwhile poststructuralists such as Derrida and Foucault, who constructed their philosophies upon a Nietzschean and Heideggerian framework, folded Marx's view of man's potential mastery of nature and his political environment into their far-reaching critiques of humanist thought. 2 Within all of these discourses, the very word 'humanist' soon became a shorthand term connoting all things retrograde, totalizing, and/or totalitarian-the very essence of false consciousness. By the 1970s and 80s, antihumanist theories had moved far beyond their original German and French contexts, powerfully influencing academic discourses of the humanities and social sciences throughout Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. By the late 80s, the critique of humanist subjectivity was in full swing. Liberationist movements such as postcolonial and ethnic studies, feminisms, and the more recent gender and queer studies had, to a greater or lesser extent, incorporated various critiques of subjectivity into their own arguments, and, as a consequence, absorbed the rhetoric of antihumanism. Initially some offshoots of these resistance movements (for example, American feminisms and African-American Studies of the 60s, 70s and early 80s) hewed towards older notions of subjectivity and agency as part of an effort to gain political rights that had previously been withheld or denied. Other groups that were strongly informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, by Derridean deconstruction, and by discourses of poststructuralism or post-Marxism questioned the strategic value of claiming liberal humanist subjectivity while, in effect, buying into the illusions and ideologies of modernity that several generations of thinkers had so painstakingly challenged. To imagine for oneself or one's group the possession of that humanist subjectivity was to re-instantiate the hegemonic power relations and oppressive ideologies that each of these critical movements was seeking to dismantle. Literary theorist and deconstructionist Gayatri Spivak, articulating the double-bind of that situation for feminists, theorists of race, and postcolonial critics, suggested a paradoxical solution: namely, taking "the risk of essence" (1989, 129). 3 One could assume a provisional essentialism in order to foster the interests of one's group, while simultaneously acknowledging within one's group and among allies the contingency of identity, whether individual or collective. Other critics, finding such suggestions to be 2 Ferry and Renaut further argue: "[I]t is important to understand that this critique of modern rationality was absolutely inseparable from a critique of the subject (of man) defined as conscience and as will, that is, as man as the author of his acts and ideas. In order to understand this, one must refer back to the considerable trauma represented by the Second World War for European intellectuals. Immediately after the war, in fact, it is no exaggeration to say that 'civilized societies,' that is the entire Western world, could legitimately be accused of having engendered, or at least of having been unable to stop, two of the greatest political catastrophes of this century: colonialist imperialism and Nazism" (xii-xiii). 3 Spivak's proposal, initially offered at a 1982 Modern Language Association meeting in Los Angeles, would become a touchstone for many theorists at that time.
Literature and Theology, 2014
Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 2019
In their 1999 book Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Though... more In their 1999 book Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, cognitive linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson made a modest proposal: human language, even at its most abstract, relies on metaphors of the body; its functions, feelings and perceptions; and its movements in space and time. Understanding an idea, they pointed out in a classic example, is often described as grasping something, while not understanding might be described as going by a person or going over one's head (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 45). Conceptual metaphor, as they called this phenomenon, is a tool that humans use to explain in language the abstract and subjective in terms of other, more concrete domains of sensorimotor experience that are situated, as it were, closer to hand. In Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson called for nothing less than a reassessment of the conditions of reason itself. They argued that '[t]he same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reasons. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding' (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 4). Understanding these facts, they contended, requires a reappraisal of the Western philosophical tradition, which for more than two millennia has celebrated its transcendence of the corporeal and the natural world by means of the exalted power of human reasoning; in doing so, the authors held, philosophers have consistently failed to recognise the embodied and metaphorical dimension of their discourse. At the time that they published Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson were not only amplifying their earlier collaboration on conceptual metaphor, Metaphors We Live By (1980), as well as Johnson (1987) and Lakoff (1987); they were also responding to the then-new scientific theories of the embodied mind that had emerged in the early to mid 1990s, notably those of Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) and Damasio (1994). The insights of Philosophy in the Flesh, which seemed radical at the time, have now been largely absorbed into mainstream philosophy
Censorship and Exile, 2015
The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, 2015
Feminist Formations, 2013
of Jewish people. She also denounces the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy with the military d... more of Jewish people. She also denounces the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy with the military dictatorship.
California Italian Studies, 2011
... Interview with Vittorio Gallese. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski. ... This essay explores that q... more ... Interview with Vittorio Gallese. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski. ... This essay explores that question with a new combination of insights from neuroscience and literary theory, while also assessing the difficulties as well as the potential gains of such interdisciplinary research. ...
Image Narrative, 2010
E): Applying recent theories of embodied cognition to Danny Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire... more E): Applying recent theories of embodied cognition to Danny Boyle's 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, this essay contrasts Vittorio Gallese's notion of the "shared manifold" of human experience to earlier models of identification drawn from Freudian psychology and Alvin Goldman's simulationist theory of mind, and also proposes a fourth notion of empathy: "getting under the skin." Focusing on Slumdog's "blue boy" scene, which evoked strikingly different reactions from viewers around the world, this essay argues that viewer identification and empathy, while possibly universal phenomena, are simultaneously subject to cultural and historical constraints. Creating emotional bonds between viewers and filmic protagonists thus remains a complicated challenge for filmmakers aiming to reach a global audience.
How do stories often evoke intense feelings and sensations in their readers? This essay explores ... more How do stories often evoke intense feelings and sensations in their readers? This essay explores that question with a new combination of insights from neuroscience and literary theory, while also assessing the difficulties as well as the potential gains of such interdisciplinary research. The authors lay the groundwork for a neurocritical embodied narratology that incorporates both the critiques of traditional humanism within literary studies and of classic cognitivism within neuroscience. Their methodological approach focuses on Feeling of Body (in contrast to Theory eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.