Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture

Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture PDF Author: Christopher J. Gilbert
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817361707
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Unraveling the intricate dance of pleasure and pain in contemporary American culture

Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture

Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture PDF Author: Christopher J. Gilbert
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817361707
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
Unraveling the intricate dance of pleasure and pain in contemporary American culture

Dopamine Nation

Dopamine Nation PDF Author: Dr. Anna Lembke
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524746746
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES and LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER “Brilliant . . . riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain . . . and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.

Pleasure and Pain in Us Public Culture

Pleasure and Pain in Us Public Culture PDF Author: Christopher J. Gilbert
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 9780817322120
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Unraveling the intricate dance of pleasure and pain in contemporary American culture Mainstream news and social media often highlight presentations of pain that invite a voyeuristic, pleasurable experience, whether the result of war, disasters, crime, accidents, or other catastrophes. This collection of essays explores pleasurable pains and painful pleasures, showing how they pervade contemporary western public culture. Deploying methodologies drawn from psychoanalysis, rhetoric and communication, political theory, and visual culture, Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture offers insightful criticisms and theories about how pleasure and pain function in public discourse, media, and everyday communication practices. The contributors provide a sample of fascinating range of news reportage, television, film and cinema, stage drama, comic performances, street art, and other forms of popular culture. The media cited and analyzed include Spike Lee's films, Afrofuturism, autoethnography, and the #MeToo movement. The collection takes up engrossing topics such as the cathartic allure of pain, ethical dilemmas surrounding public displays of suffering, and the transformative power of narratives that confront trauma. The essays also draw connections between theory and real-world outcomes, explore the implications of enjoying traumatic comedy, and link the natural world to otherwise mundane instances of interspecies violence. Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination hearings and what they suggest about witnessing trauma is also discussed. Pleasure and Pain in US Public Culture will change how a reader sees the world. It imparts a startling vision of western culture permeated by pain and pleasure"--

Hurts So Good

Hurts So Good PDF Author: Leigh Cowart
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541798023
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers. At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience? By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

This Is Pleasure

This Is Pleasure PDF Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1524749141
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Coarseness in U.S. Public Communication

Coarseness in U.S. Public Communication PDF Author: Philip Dalton
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
ISBN: 161147504X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Public expression in the United States has become increasingly coarse. Whether it’s stupid, rude, base, or anti-intellectual talk, it surrounds us. Popular television, film, music, art, and even some elements of religion have become as coarse, we argue, as our often-disparaged political dialogue. This book’s contention is that the U.S. semantic environment is governed by tactics, not tact. We craft messages that work—that perform their desired function. We are instrumental, strategic communicators. As such, entertainment and journalism that draw an audience, for instance, are “good.” This follows the logic that the marketplace, an aggregate of hedonically motivated individuals, decides what’s good. Market logic, when unencumbered by what some characterize as quaint human sentimentalities, liberates us to cynically communicate whatever and however we want. Whatever improves ratings, web traffic, ticket sales, concession sales, repeat purchases, and earnings is good. Embracing this communicative paradigm more fully necessitates the culture’s abandonment of collective notions of both taste and veracity, thus weakening the forces that keep individual desires in check. Our present communication environment is one that invites the hypertrophic expression of the ego, enabling elites to erode public communication standards and repeal laws and regulations resulting in immeasurable individual fortunes. Meanwhile, perpetual plutocratic rule is made even more certain by the cacophonous public noise the rest of us are busy making, leaving us incapable, disinterested, and unwilling to listen to one another.

American Cultural History

American Cultural History PDF Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019020060X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the "fireside chats" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Dodgers, from the blues to Andy Warhol, dime novels to Disneyland, the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples. This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Camming

Camming PDF Author: Angela Jones
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479829420
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The first inside look at how sex workers use webcams to make a living The erotic webcam industry, also known as “camming,” is a thriving global business. Angela Jones takes readers inside this multi-billion dollar industry, revealing how its workers experience intimacy, community, empowerment—and, as she compellingly argues, pleasure. Drawing on in-depth interviews, survey data, web analytics, and more, Jones highlights not only the dangers, but also the rewards, of working in one of the most taboo corners of the Internet. She provides an inside look at the public and private shows between cam models and their customers, from exotic dancing and pornographic videos, to masturbation shows and erotic chatrooms. A fascinating, much-needed glimpse into the lives of cam models, Camming takes us behind the webcam lens to experience the power of erotic labor in the twenty-first century.

Pictures and Tears

Pictures and Tears PDF Author: James Elkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113595013X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This deeply personal account of emotion and vulnerability draws upon anecdotes related to individual works of art to present a chronicle of how people have shown emotion before works of art in the past.

Pain as Human Experience

Pain as Human Experience PDF Author: Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520075122
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"With case studies drawn from anthropological investigations of chronic pain sufferers and pain clinics in the northeastern United States, the authors attempt to invent new ways of writing about this language-resistant human experience. Focused on substantive issues in the study of chronic pain, their work explores the great divide between the culturally shaped language of suffering and the traditional language of medical and psychological theorizing. They argue that the representation of experience in local social worlds is a central challenge to the human sciences and to ethnographic writing, and that meeting that challenge is also crucial to the refiguring of pain in medical discourse and health policy debates. Anthropologists, scholars from the medical social sciences and humanities, and many general readers will be interested in Pain as Human Experience. In addition, behavioral medicine and pain specialists, psychiatrists, and primary care practitioners will find much that is relevant to their work in this book."--Jacket.