GURBANI KIRTAN RENAISSANCE: REVIVING MUSICAL MEMORY,REFORMING SIKH IDENTITY

This article examines the modes of revival within the contemporary renaissance of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music) in an effort to differentiate historically operative practices from modern products being sold as tradition. Modern reformist tendencies have attempted to institutionalize a normative Sikh musical identity into one homogeneous ‘Gurmat Sangeet’ genre through codifying Sikh raga forms and promoting a particular Sikh musical orthopraxy and history. The process of institutionalization privileges written sources as authoritative, erasing the memory of operative practices passed down orally since the time of the Sikh Gurus through the Gurbani Kirtan parampara (tradition). In questioning how Sikh musical knowledge has been propagated and authenticated since modernity, I propose a reassessment of what values and musical modes are indelible to the fabric of Gurbani Kirtan, what aspects are modern derivatives, and what aspects are negotiable. I believe such an approach will not limit Sikh musical expression to a past identity subsumed by orthodox rigidity. Instead it will move toward a phenomenological epistemology that recognizes how orality and embodied experience are intrinsic to the Gurbani Kirtan parampara that remembers, practices, and teaches a particular methodology to embody the Bani as Guru for newly creative Sikh subjectivities.     

文化互化时代的文化认同

"自我"这个术语指的是在人们不断变化的经验中存续的主体。我们至少将自我视为个体认同的中心,或者是个体的组织功能。假如有"共同体自我"之类的东西,考察文化认同或许是值得期待的。康德认为,存在一个超越我们经验的"先验自我"。我们可以类似地声称,存在一个共同体自我,它超越共同体的历史和文化,凭借提供统一性原则穿越时间、保持其同一性。韩国是一个处于非常动态的文化互化进程中的典型国家。为了在全球化时代获得成功,这样一个国家应该将这个概念应用于其当前的文化境况。     

MEMORY, AMNESIA, AND DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

Abstract— Virtually all patients with dissociative identity (or multiple personality) disorder manifest interpersonality amnesia, whereby events experienced by a particular personality slate or identity are retrievable by that same identity but not by a different one Though considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID), interpersonality amnesia has to date attracted little empirical attention. Further, the few studies on the topic typically include just 1 DID patient and a single index of retention. In contrast the current experiment involved 9 DID patients and several measures of either explicit or implicit memory Replicating and extending the single-case study of Nissen, Ross, Willingham, MacKenzie, and Schacter (1988), the present results revealed that implicit testing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for demonstrating transfer of information from one identity to another Specifically, whereas priming in word-stem completion occurred only if the same personality state performed at both study and at test, priming in picture-fragment completion was as robust between different identities as it was within the same identity Discussion focuses on prospects for future research aimed at understanding the nature and scope of interpersonality amnesia.     

BRUTE FACTS,THE NECESSITY OF IDENTITY,AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

In ‘Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles,’ Della Rocca argues that any counterexample to the PII would involve ‘a brute fact of non‐identity [. . .] not grounded in any qualitative difference.’ I respond that Adams's so‐called Continuity Argument against the PII does not postulate qualitatively inexplicable brute facts of identity or non‐identity if understood in the context of Kripkean modality. One upshot is that if the PII is understood to quantify over modal as well as non‐modal properties, the qualitative explicability of numerical distinctness requires not the PII but a principle of the identity of necessary indiscernibles.     

法国政教分离中的文化传递与民族认同

我在高等研究实践学院任政教分离史和政教分离社会学教授期间,曾受邀去访问几位日本同行,实际上他们是这样对我说的：“对于政教分离这一概念,我们知之不多,究其原因,在于我们主要与讲英语的大学的研究人员来往,对于他们而言这一概念颇是生疏。烦请前来一叙,就其所指向我们做一番讲解。”自然,我非常积极地回应了这一邀请,并且没有多久我就认识到,谈论“日本的政教分离”确实是可能的。     

THE UTILITY OF ASSESSING MUSICAL PREFERENCE BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION OF NONCONTINGENT MUSIC TO REDUCE VOCAL STEREOTYPY

We conducted a modified paired‐choice preference assessment and used a multielement design to examine the effects of noncontingent access to high‐ and low‐preference music on vocal stereotypy exhibited by children with autism. For 3 of the 4 participants, high‐preference music (a) produced lower levels of vocal stereotypy than low‐preference music and (b) reduced vocal stereotypy when compared to a no‐interaction condition. Results underscore the potential importance of assessing musical preference prior to using noncontingent music to reduce vocal stereotypy.     

WARRIORS OF GOJA: PAINS AND PLEASURES OF THE SIKH (MALE) BODY

Taking a widely received, winning entry in a televised Indian talent show entitled the Warriors of Goja as its point of departure, my paper is organized around discussions of the body, pain, and pleasure. I aim to raise questions around the subject/objectification of the Sikh male body and examine points of continuity from the colonial era typification of Sikh men as a martial race to contemporary renderings of Sikh men as hyper-macho. I examine the centrality of pain to a kind of Sikh hetero-masculinity that is being constituted on the entertainment stage and circulated transnationally. Alongside, I investigate how machismo and masochistic martyrdom come to evoke Sikh masculinity through mass cultural images. I put forth a reading of the mutilated Sikh male body as an image commodity that accretes value in its circulation. I also explore, whether, and to what extent, the viral Warriors of Goja can be situated within a broader transnational visual economy of maimed Sikh male bodies, namely of martyr figures.     

DISCERNING THE VOICE OF ZYGON: IDENTITY AND ISSUES

The challenge to the journal Zygon as suggested here is to respond to three different reference groups: public intellectuals, academia, and religious communities. An extended discussion follows of what I term the situation of irony in which religion‐and‐science finds itself. I argue that this situation of irony actually constitutes the domain in which our greatest contributions can be offered.     

THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES AND THE CO-LOCATION PROBLEM

Abstract:  The Identity of Indiscernibles is the principle that there cannot be two individual things in nature that are qualitatively identical. The principle is not exactly popular. Michael Della Rocca tries to resurrect it by arguing that we must accept this principle, for otherwise we cannot explain the impossibility of completely overlapping indiscernible objects of the same kind that share all their parts and exist in the same place at the same time. I try to show that his argument goes wrong: we need not embrace the identity of indiscernibles to deal with the co-location problem.     

TESTIMONY,MEMORY AND THE LIMITS OF THE A PRIORI

Philosophical Studies -     

THE PHYLOGENY AND ONTOGENY OF SERIAL MEMORY:

Abstract— The study of cognitive processes in animals provides a unique opportunity to investigate the phytogeny and ontogeny of cognition, Much of our understanding of human cognition tie-rives from the intensive study of adult human subjects. Serin! learning provides an instructive example. Since Ebhing-haus, experiments on serial learning have been performed almost exclusively on subjects who have had much experience learning lists by virtue oj their formal and informal education. Recent research on serial learning in pigeons and monkeys provides a new perspective on this fundamental skill, which does not require language and which appears to he phylogenetlcally quite old. This research has also revealed qualitative differences in how pigeons and monkeys represent lists they learn to produce and provided opportunities to observe the development of list-learning strategies starting with a subject's first list.