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Central to the historicizing work of recent decades has been the concept of contingency, the realm of chance, change, and the unnecessary. Following Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogists have deployed contingency to show that all institutions and ideas could have been otherwise as a critique of the status quo. Yet scholars have spent very little time considering the genealogy of contingency itself-or what its history means for its role in politics.In Contingency and the Limits of History, Liane Carlson historicizes contingency by tying it to its theological and etymological roots in "touch," contending that much of its critical, disruptive power is specific to our current historical moment. She returns to an older definition of contingency found in Christian theology that understands it as the lot of mortal creatures, who suffer, feel, bleed, and change, in contrast to a necessary, unchanging, impassible God. Far from dying out, Carlson reveals, this theological past persists in continental philosophy, where thinkers such as Novalis, Schelling, Merleau-Ponty, and Serres have imagined contingency as a type of radical destabilization brought about by the body's collision with a changing world. Through studies of sickness, loneliness, violation and love, she shows that different experiences of contingency can lead to dramatically dissimilar ethical and political projects. A strikingly original reconsideration of one of continental philosophy and critical theory's most cherished concepts, this book reveals the limits of historicist accounts.

Contingency (Philosophy) --- Senses and sensation.

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"A collection of essays exploring the social aspects of sensation in the ancient Near East and how these cultures represented sensory phenomena in their languages, literature, art, and architecture"--Provided by publisher.

Senses and sensation --- Civilization, Ancient. --- Senses and sensation. --- History. --- Middle East. --- Senses and sensation - Middle East - History --- Civilization, Ancient --- Middle East

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Odors, including those of incense, spices, cooking, and refuse, were both ubiquitous and meaningful in central and late medieval Western Europe. The significance of the sense of smell is evident in scholastic Latin texts, most of which are untranslated and unedited by modern scholars. Between the late eleventh and thirteenth century, medieval scholars developed a logical theory of the workings of the sense of smell based on Greek and Arabic learning. In the thirteenth through fifteenth century, medical authors detailed practical applications of smell theory and these were communicated to individuals and governing authorities by the medical profession in the interests of personal and public health. At the same time, religious authors read philosophical and medical texts and gave their information religious meaning. This reinterpretation of scholastic philosophy and medicine led to the development of what can be termed a medically aware theology of smell that was communicated to popular audiences alongside traditional olfactory theory in sermons. Its impact on popular thought is reflected in late medieval mystical texts. While the senses have received increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, this volume presents the first detailed research into the sense of smell in the later European Middle Ages.

Smell --- Odors --- Senses and sensation --- Medical science --- History

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Sound leaves no ruins and no residues, even though it is experienced constantly. It is ubiquitous but fleeting. Even silence has sound, even absence resonates. Sound and the Ancient Senses aims to hear the lost sounds of antiquity, from the sounds of the human body to those of the gods, from the bathhouse to the Forum, from the chirp of a cicada to the music of the spheres. Sound plays so great a role in shaping our environments as to make it a sounding board for thinking about the self and its connection to others, as well as about space and ecology, emotions and experience, mortality and the divine, orality and textuality. From antiquity to the present day, poets and philosophers have strained to hear the ways that sounds structure our world and identities. This volume looks at theories and practices of hearing and producing sounds in ritual contexts, medicine, mourning, music, poetry, drama, erotics, philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics, vocality, and on the page, and shows how ancient ideas of sound still shape how and what we hear today. As the first comprehensive introduction to the soundscapes of antiquity, this volume makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning fields of sound and voice studies and is the final volume of the Senses in Antiquity series.

Sound --- Senses and sensation --- Senses and sensation. --- Psychological aspects. --- Religious aspects. --- History. --- Oïda. --- So. --- Grècia. --- Roma. --- Psychological aspects --- Religious aspects --- History --- Sound in literature. --- Senses and sensation in literature. --- Classical literature --- Social aspects --- History and criticism. --- Sound - Psychological aspects --- Sound - Religious aspects --- Senses and sensation - History

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Smell and History collects many of the most important recent essays on the history of scent, aromas, perfumes, and ways of smelling. With an introduction by Mark M. Smith--one of the leading social and cultural historians at work today and the preeminent champion in the United States of the emerging field of sensory history--the volume introduces to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to historians of all fields the richness, relevance, and insightfulness of the olfactory to historical study.Ranging from antiquity to the present, these ten essays, most of them published since 2003, consider how olfaction and scent have shaped the history of medicine, gender, race-making, class formation, religion, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization; how habits and practices of smelling informed ideas about the Enlightenment, modernity, and memory; how smell shaped perceptions of progress and civilization; and how people throughout history have used smell as a way to organize categories and inform worldviews.

Smell --- Olfaction --- Chemical senses --- Senses and sensation --- Nose --- History. --- Social aspects.