Massimo Leone - Böcker

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

This original and interdisciplinary volume explores the contemporary semiotic dimensions of the face from both scientific and sociocultural perspectives, putting forward several traditions, aspects, and signs of the human utopia of creating a hybrid face.The book semiotically delves into the multifaceted realm of the digital face, exploring its biological and social functions, the concept of masks, the impact of COVID-19, AI systems, digital portraiture, symbolic faces in films, viral communication, alien depictions, personhood in video games, online intimacy, and digital memorials. The human face is increasingly living a life that is not only that of the biological body but also that of its digital avatar, spread through a myriad of new channels and transformable through filters, post-productions, digital cosmetics, all the way to the creation of deepfakes. The digital face expresses new and largely unknown meanings, which this book explores and analyzes through an interdisciplinary but systematic approach.The volume will interest researchers, scholars, and advanced students who are interested in digital humanities, communication studies, semiotics, visual studies, visual anthropology, cultural studies, and, broadly speaking, innovative approaches about the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This original and interdisciplinary volume explores the contemporary semiotic dimensions of the face from both scientific and sociocultural perspectives, putting forward several traditions, aspects, and signs of the human utopia of creating a hybrid face.The book semiotically delves into the multifaceted realm of the digital face, exploring its biological and social functions, the concept of masks, the impact of COVID-19, AI systems, digital portraiture, symbolic faces in films, viral communication, alien depictions, personhood in video games, online intimacy, and digital memorials. The human face is increasingly living a life that is not only that of the biological body but also that of its digital avatar, spread through a myriad of new channels and transformable through filters, post-productions, digital cosmetics, all the way to the creation of deepfakes. The digital face expresses new and largely unknown meanings, which this book explores and analyzes through an interdisciplinary but systematic approach.The volume will interest researchers, scholars, and advanced students who are interested in digital humanities, communication studies, semiotics, visual studies, visual anthropology, cultural studies, and, broadly speaking, innovative approaches about the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Focusing on masks and faces as figures and objects that carry ethical and political meanings, this volume examines the scientific, cultural, visual, and philosophical histories and traditions in which they are imbricated and which allow them to gather force and to become central to how human relationships are made.Offering interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on masks and faces, the book studies the prominent role they play in shaping ideals and norms of political personhood; their deployment as evidence in the creation of racist hierarchies; and their role in demarcating the human and non-human. Through historical and theoretical analyses of different case studies from around the world, the book offers a global perspective that will enable readers to reflect on the interweaving of aesthetics, ethics and politics in the making of faces and masks into figures around which the visual world is organized and valorized. Moving from past to future, from essays that examine methods for facial classification and the production of facial casts in the service of racial science, to essays that reflect on the future of the human face in light of deepfake technologies, or in relation to the posthuman turn, the collection historicizes modern Western conceptions of masks and faces, and the conceptual, ethical, and political hierarchies in which they are embedded.This book will be an invaluable work for researchers, librarians, advanced students, and curious learned readers who are interested in philosophy, history of science, visual studies, and cultural studies. More broadly, it will appeal to those engaged with innovative approaches to the study of the relationship between aesthetics, ethics, and politics, as these are explored through the figures of masks and faces, as well as through reflections on the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies.

Focusing on the anthropological consequences of the disappearing of materiality and sensory embodiment, On Insignificance highlights some of the most perturbing patterns of insignificance that have seeped into our everyday lives. Seeking to explain the semiotic causes of feelings of meaninglessness, Leone posits that caring for the singularities of the world is the most viable way to resist the alienating effects of the digital bureaucratization of meaning. The book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, semiotics, aesthetics, communication studies, and social theory.

Focusing on the anthropological consequences of the disappearing of materiality and sensory embodiment, On Insignificance highlights some of the most perturbing patterns of insignificance that have seeped into our everyday lives. Seeking to explain the semiotic causes of feelings of meaninglessness, Leone posits that caring for the singularities of the world is the most viable way to resist the alienating effects of the digital bureaucratization of meaning. The book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, semiotics, aesthetics, communication studies, and social theory.

This book provides essential insights into the current state of knowledge regarding the main aspects of cluster headache and trigeminal autonomic cephalgias.

This book provides essential insights into the current state of knowledge regarding the main aspects of cluster headache and trigeminal autonomic cephalgias.

This book offers a critical exploration of how digital technologies are reshaping religious belief, ethical frameworks, and social cohesion. As faith and ideology increasingly migrate to online platforms, the book examines how algorithm-driven content, echo chambers, and decentralized authority structures influence discourse and deepen societal divides. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives in religious studies, sociology, philosophy, and digital humanities, this volume interrogates how sacred rituals, spaces, and moral narratives are being transformed in the digital age. Amid rising concerns over misinformation and polarization, this timely work challenges the assumption that technology must inevitably fragment communities. Instead, it explores how digital spaces might also foster new forms of dialogue, connection, and meaning. From online religious practices to surveillance ethics and the digital reshaping of spiritual authority, Digitally Divided maps the risks and possibilities at the intersection of belief and technology. Essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners across multiple disciplines, it is a vital contribution to understanding how we live, believe, and connect in an increasingly digitized world.

Saints and Signs analyzes a corpus of hagiographies, paintings, and other materials related to four of the most prominent saints of early modern Catholicism: Ignatius of Loyola, Philip Neri, Francis Xavier, and Therese of Avila.Verbal and visual documents – produced between the end of the Council of Trent (1563) and the beginning of the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623) – are placed in their historical context and analyzed through semiotics – the discipline that studies signification and communication – in order to answer the following questions: How did these four saints become signs of the renewal of Catholic spirituality after the Reformation? How did their verbal and visual representations promote new Catholic models of religious conversion? How did this huge effort of spiritual propaganda change the modern idea of communication?The book is divided into four sections, focusing on the four saints and on the particular topics related to their hagiologic identity: early modern theological debates on grace (Ignatius of Loyola); cultural contaminations between Catholic internal and external missions (Philip Neri); the Christian identity in relation to non-Christian territories (Francis Xavier); the status of women in early modern Catholicism (Therese of Avila).

Religion, like any other domain of culture, is mediated through symbolic forms and communicative behaviors, which allow the coordination of group conduct in ritual and the representation of the divine or of tradition as an intersubjective reality. While many traditions hold out the promise of immediate access to the divine, or to some transcendent dimension of experience, such promises depend for their realization as well on the possibility of mediation, which is necessarily conducted through channels of communication and exchange, such as prayers or sacrifices. An understanding of such modes of semiosis is therefore necessary even and especially when mediation is denied by a tradition in the name of the 'ineffability" of the deity or of mystical experience. This volume models and promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-cultural perspective on these issues by asking prominent semioticians, historians of religion and of art, linguists, sociologists of religion, and philosophers of law to reflect from a semiotic perspective on the topic of mediation and immediacy in religious traditions.

This unique volume focuses on religion and spirituality, along with rituals, practices and symbols, discussed and analysed from a semiotic perspective. It covers both cognitive and social dimensions of religious practices and beliefs, various aspects of spirituality, multiple forms of representation, as well as spheres of religious beliefs and practices. The volume is an outcome of the Signum-Idea-Verbum-Opus project initiated by Umberto Eco’s keynote address during his visit at the University of Łódź in 2015. More theoretical insights and further explorations into contemporary semiosphere can be found in Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Signs, Signification and Communication and Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Texts, Genres and Representations, published by Peter Lang.