Description
Book SynopsisRepetition is constitutive of human life. Both the species and the individual develop through repetition. Unlike simple recall, repetition is permeated by the past and the present and is oriented toward the future. Repetition of central actions and events plays an important role in the lives of individuals and the life of society. It helps to create meaning and memory. Because repetition is a central aspect of human life, it plays a role in all social and cultural spheres. It is important for several branches of the humanities and social studies. This book presents studies of an array of repetitive phenomena and to show that repetition analysis is opening up a new field of study within single disciplines and interdisciplinary research. Recommended for scholars of literature, music, culture, and communication.
Trade ReviewThis highly recommended book identifies nothing less than a new riddle of the Sphinx: What animal embraces mimesis; rejects repetition in the quest for freedom; and grasps for reproducibility in the face of unpredictability? The authors offer unexpected insights into this enigma and, in the process, open the human condition to sobering inspection. -- Charles Stewart, University College London
Mental innovation is usually associated with the ability to forget the past. In order to create new thoughts or new events, it seems necessary to free oneself from the past and to make a kind of tabula rasa. This book demonstrates the contrary. Because our imagination is necessarily dialogic and requests the best possible answer from the world or from the other, it needs to be enriched permanently by the past. This enrichment is conditioning our creativity, our ability to find the new thoughts or new events that fulfill ourselves as much as we desire. Our creations are always re-harmonizing the best of our past with our drive to the future and to the accomplishment of ourselves. Reading Repetition, Recurrences, Returns will teach us how to insert these memory games in our conversation with ourselves and with our human fellows. It will help you to reinforce your creative power. -- Jacques Poulain, Université Paris 8
Table of ContentsContents Introduction Part 1. Human Development: Memory and Self-Transformation in Ritual and Mimetic Processes Chapter 1. Repetition of the Self in Memory and Anticipation Joan Ramon Resina Chapter 2. Repetition and Reenactment in Rituals Axel Michaels Chapter 3. Repetitions and Difference in Physical, Mimetic, and Ritual Processes Christoph Wulf Chapter 4. Repetition, Training, Exercise: From Plato’s Care of the Soul to the Contemporary Self-Help Industry Almut-Barbara Renger Part 2. The Need to Repeat: Education, Rhetoric, and Conversation Chapter 5. The Need to Repeat: Young Children’ Reliving of Stories Ursula Stenger, Translated by James Garrison Chapter 6. Re-Petition in (Therapeutic) Conversation: A Psychoanalyst’s Perspective Using Conversation Analysis Michael B. Buchholz Chapter 7. Notes on Rhetoric and Repetition in Tourism Stephanie Malia Hom Part 3. Creativity: Rhythm and Repetition Chapter 8. Etoku (会得) and Rhythms of Nature Shoko Suzuki Chapter 9. The Births of Rhythm: John Dewey and Aesthetic Form Vincent Barletta Chapter 10. Repeating Sound, Sounding Repetition in Music Tiago de Oliviera Pinto Chapter 11. Gertrud Stein on Serial Repetition Ulla Haselstein Part 4. Aesthetics: Repetition and Creation of Art Chapter 12. Creativity and Repetition. Some Notes on the Practice and Cultural Discourses of Literary Creativity Günter Blamberger Chapter 13. The Compulsion to Be Cruel: Contemporary Returns Isabel Capeloa Gil Chapter 14. Leap into the Open Sky: Political Theater as a Return to the Past Matthias Warstat Chapter 15. The Domestication of Sound: On the Generativity of Repetition Holger Schulze Chapter 16. “Let’s do it again?!”: Shaping “Global” Art Production in Urban Nepal Christiane Brosius Index About the Editors About the Contributors
