A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
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8 books about Connor, Steven
8 books about Connor, Steven
Beyond Words
Sobs, Hums, Stutters and Other Vocalizations
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2014
In Beyond Words, Steven Connor seeks to understand spoken human language outside words, a realm that encompasses the sounds we make that bring depth, meaning, and confusion to communication. Plunging into the connotations and uses associated with particular groups of vocal utterances—the guttural, the dental, the fricative, and the sibilant—he reveals the beliefs, the myths, and the responses that surround the growls, stutters, ums, ers, and ahs of everyday language.
Beyond Words goes outside of linguistics and phonetics to focus on the popular conceptions of what language is, rather than what it actually is or how it works. From the moans and sobs of human grief to playful linguistic nonsense, Connor probes the fringes and limits of human language—and our definition of “voice” and meaning—to challenge our basic assumptions about what it is to communicate and where we find meaning in language. By engaging with vocal sounds and tics usually trivialized or ignored, Beyond Words presents a startling and fascinating new way to engage with language itself.
Beyond Words goes outside of linguistics and phonetics to focus on the popular conceptions of what language is, rather than what it actually is or how it works. From the moans and sobs of human grief to playful linguistic nonsense, Connor probes the fringes and limits of human language—and our definition of “voice” and meaning—to challenge our basic assumptions about what it is to communicate and where we find meaning in language. By engaging with vocal sounds and tics usually trivialized or ignored, Beyond Words presents a startling and fascinating new way to engage with language itself.
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The Book of Skin
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2003
It is the largest and perhaps the most important organ of our body—it covers our fragile inner parts, defines our social identities, and channels our sensory experiences. And yet we rarely give a thought. With The Book of Skin, Steven Connor aims to change all that, offering an intriguing cultural history of skin.
Connor first examines physical issues such as leprosy, skin pigmentation, cancer, blushing, and attenuations of erotic touch. He also explains why specific colors symbolize certain emotions, such as green for envy or yellow for cowardice, as well as why skin is the focus of destructive rage in many people’s violent fantasies.
The Book of Skin then probes into how skin has been such a powerfully symbolic terrain in photography, religious iconography, cinema, and literature. From the Turin shroud to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to plastic surgery, The Book of Skin expertly examines the role of skin in Western culture. A compelling read that penetrates well beyond skin-deep, The Book of Skin validates James Joyce’s declaration that “modern man has an epidermis rather than a soul.”
“Richly conceived and elaborately thought out. No flicker of meaning has escaped Connor’s ferocious, all-seeing eye.”—Guardian
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Dreamwork
Why All Work Is Imaginary
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2023
Upending our perception of employment, a surprising investigation into the mystical nature of our daily toil.
Dreamwork is a book about the ideas, dreams, dreads, and ideals we have about work. Its central argument is this: Although we depend on the idea of work for our identity as humans, we feel we must disguise from ourselves the fact that we do not know what work is. There is no example of work that nobody might, under some circumstances, do for fun. All work is imaginary—which is not to say that it is simply illusory, but rather that, to count as work, it must be imagined to be work. In other words, a large part of what we mean by working is this work of imagining. Work is therefore essentially mystical—just the opposite of what it is taken to be by all of us spending our days at desks, behind cash registers, and in factories. Delving into this complex mythos, Dreamwork looks in turn at worries about whether or not work is hard; the importance of places of work; the meanings of hobbies, holidays, and sabbaths; and the history of dreams of redeeming work.
Dreamwork is a book about the ideas, dreams, dreads, and ideals we have about work. Its central argument is this: Although we depend on the idea of work for our identity as humans, we feel we must disguise from ourselves the fact that we do not know what work is. There is no example of work that nobody might, under some circumstances, do for fun. All work is imaginary—which is not to say that it is simply illusory, but rather that, to count as work, it must be imagined to be work. In other words, a large part of what we mean by working is this work of imagining. Work is therefore essentially mystical—just the opposite of what it is taken to be by all of us spending our days at desks, behind cash registers, and in factories. Delving into this complex mythos, Dreamwork looks in turn at worries about whether or not work is hard; the importance of places of work; the meanings of hobbies, holidays, and sabbaths; and the history of dreams of redeeming work.
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Fly
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2006
Few creatures are as universally despised as flies. Blamed for pestilence and plagues, they were publicly excommunicated from the medieval church. Beelzebub, “the lord of the flies,” was said to be the embodiment of evil, and, for centuries, flies were considered the result of spontaneous generation—the unnatural consequence of rotting meat.
Fly explores the history of this much-maligned creature and then turns to examine its newfound redemption through science. The secrets of the fly’s versatile powers of flight, Steven Connor reveals, are only beginning to be understood and appreciated. Its eyes and wings, for instance, have evolved so perfectly that they provide inspiration for some of today’s most daring technological and scientific innovations. And the humble fruit fly, Connor demonstrates, stands at the center of revolutionary advances in genetic research.
Connor delights in tracking his lowly subject through myth, literature, poetry, painting, film, and biology. Humans live in close and intimate quarters with flies, but Fly is the first book to give these common creatures their due.
Fly explores the history of this much-maligned creature and then turns to examine its newfound redemption through science. The secrets of the fly’s versatile powers of flight, Steven Connor reveals, are only beginning to be understood and appreciated. Its eyes and wings, for instance, have evolved so perfectly that they provide inspiration for some of today’s most daring technological and scientific innovations. And the humble fruit fly, Connor demonstrates, stands at the center of revolutionary advances in genetic research.
Connor delights in tracking his lowly subject through myth, literature, poetry, painting, film, and biology. Humans live in close and intimate quarters with flies, but Fly is the first book to give these common creatures their due.
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Living by Numbers
In Defence of Quantity
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2016
How do we really think about the world? We may use words to tell stories about it or draw pictures to represent it, but one thing we do far more than either of those is make calculations of the things that are in it—and to do that we use numbers. Numbers give shape and texture to almost everything we feel, say, dream, and do, a fact that Steven Connor explores in this qualitative assessment of the quantifiable. Looking at how numbers play a part in nearly every aspect of our lives, he offers a fascinating portrait of the world as a world of numbers.
Connor explores a host of thought-provoking aspects of our numerical existence. He looks at the unexpected oddities that shape the loneliest number—the number one. He looks at counting as a human phenomenon and the ways we negotiate crowds, swarms, and multitudes. He demonstrates the work of calculation as it lies at the heart of poetry, jokes, painting, and music. He shows how we use numbers to adjust to uncertainty and chance and how they help us visualize the world in diagrammatic ways, and he unveils how numbers even help us think about death. Altogether, Connor brings into relief an aspect of our lives so ubiquitous that we often can’t see it, unveiling a rich new way of thinking about our existence.
Connor explores a host of thought-provoking aspects of our numerical existence. He looks at the unexpected oddities that shape the loneliest number—the number one. He looks at counting as a human phenomenon and the ways we negotiate crowds, swarms, and multitudes. He demonstrates the work of calculation as it lies at the heart of poetry, jokes, painting, and music. He shows how we use numbers to adjust to uncertainty and chance and how they help us visualize the world in diagrammatic ways, and he unveils how numbers even help us think about death. Altogether, Connor brings into relief an aspect of our lives so ubiquitous that we often can’t see it, unveiling a rich new way of thinking about our existence.
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The Madness of Knowledge
On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowing
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2019
Many human beings have considered the powers and the limits of human knowledge, but few have wondered about the power that the idea of knowledge has over us. Steven Connor’s The Madness of Knowledge is the first book to investigate this emotional inner life of knowledge—the lusts, fantasies, dreams, and fears that the idea of knowing provokes. There are in-depth discussions of the imperious will to know, of Freud’s epistemophilia (or love of knowledge), and the curiously insistent links between madness, magical thinking, and the desire for knowledge. Connor also probes secrets and revelations, quarreling and the history of quizzes and “general knowledge,” charlatanry and pretension, both the violent disdain and the sanctification of the stupid, as well as the emotional investment in the spaces and places of knowledge, from the study to the library.
In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life.
In an age of artificial intelligence, alternative facts, and mistrust of truth, The Madness of Knowledge offers an opulent, enlarging, and sometimes unnerving psychopathology of intellectual life.
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The Matter of Air
Science and Art of the Ethereal
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2010
Take a deep breath. Air—without it, life on Earth would cease to exist. Though not usually seen, its presence is relied upon. At once both ethereal and physical, air has been associated with flight and spirit, and yet it has progressively become a territory that can be claimed through communications, warfare, travel, and scientific exploration. At the same time, air is no longer a completely reliable part of our daily life: like water, it has become an environmental element that must be watched closely for quality and purity.
A Matter of Air investigates the meanings of air over the last three centuries, including our modern concern over emissions and climate change. Steven Connor looks at the human relationship with air, both positive and negative. His explorations include the dangers posed by radio atmospherics, poison gas, and haze as well as our continued fascination with effervescence and explosives. Drawing ideas from religion, science, art, literature, and philosophy, A Matter of Air creates a comprehensive history of the human perception of air. Thoroughly researched and written with wit and quirky enthusiasm, the book will appeal to a wide range of general readers interested in the environment, human history, and our most essential aspects of life.
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A Philosophy of Sport
Steven Connor
Reaktion Books, 2011
While previous writing on the philosophy of sport has tended to see sport as a kind of testing ground for philosophical theories devised to deal with other kinds of problems—of ethics, aesthetics, or logical categorization—here Steven Connor offers a new philosophical understanding of sport in its own terms. In order to define what sport essentially is and means, Connor presents a complete grammar of sport, isolating and describing its essential elements, including the characteristic spaces of sport, the nature of sporting time, the importance of sporting objects like bats and balls, the methods of movement in sport, the role of rules and chance, and what it really means to cheat and to win.
Defined as games that involve bodily exertion and exhaustion, sports simultaneously require constraint and the ability to overcome it. Sport, argues Connor, is a fundamental feature of modern humans. It is shown to be one of the most powerful ways in which we negotiate the relationship between the human and natural worlds. Encompassing a huge range of different sports, and enlisting the help of Hegel, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno, Sartre, Ayer, Deleuze, and Serres, A Philosophy of Sport will inform, surprise, and delight thoughtful athletes and sporty philosophers alike.
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