School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Hope: an e-modulating motion of deterritorialization

Colman, Felicity J. ( 2004)

What keeps people going after an experience or encounter with an event that damages their sense of human vitality? The sense that is essential for a human organism to function properly: the will to live. The innate drive and joy of encounters and gleaning of skills which children own: the will to play. What causes the loss of one's possession of the will to joy; the curiosity inherent in the pursuit of the unfamiliar or the barely glimpsed; the production of fresh emotional responsiveness with which to claim an experiential event? What reduces the movement and modulations of emotion - e-modulating-motion - to an immobile point? An event that can cause the neural mapping of the traumatized body to return a message to the brain that says 'indifference' or 'despair', causing the body to undo its resident emotion of learned wonder. After a 'bomb sandwich', as Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf referred to the United States' practice of alternately dropping bombs and food over Afghanistan, what forms of hope or revelation could possibly be conveyed to the body of the receiver? The will to eat in the affective zone of probable pain, disability and death.