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Elaine Scarry

Bio: Elaine Scarry is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Torture & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 19 publications receiving 4749 citations.
Topics: Torture, Democracy, Economic Justice, Beauty, Recall

Papers
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Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: Elaine Scarry analyses the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self.
Abstract: Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this profoundly original work explores the nature of physical suffering. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Henry Kissinger. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyse the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty.

3,484 citations

Book
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: Scarry as mentioned in this paper argues that beauty does indeed have a positive effect on life and argues that rather than serving the privileged it presses all of us towards a greater concern for justice, taking inspiration from writers, painters and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Matisse, Proust, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch.
Abstract: In the past two decades various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In "On Beauty and Being Just" Elaine Scarry challenges such theories, taking inspiration from writers, painters and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Matisse, Proust, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. She not only offers a passionate defence of beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed have a positive effect on life. Rather than serving the privileged it presses all of us towards a greater concern for justice.

511 citations

Book
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a series of ways to teach made-up birds to fly, including the following: 1. Making Pictures 1. On Vivacity 3 2. On Solidity 10 3. The Place of Instruction 31 4. Imagining Flowers 40 Part Two: Moving Pictures 75 5. First Way: Radiant Ignition 77 6. Second Way: Rarity 89 7. Third Way: Addition and Subtraction 100 8. Fourth Way: Streching, Folding, and Tilting 111 9. Fifth Way: Floral Supposition 158 Part Three Way
Abstract: PART ONE: Making Pictures 1. On Vivacity 3 2. On Solidity 10 3. The Place of Instruction 31 4. Imagining Flowers 40 PART TWO: Moving Pictures 75 5. First Way: Radiant Ignition 77 6. Second Way: Rarity 89 7. Third Way: Addition and Subtraction 100 8. Fourth Way: Streching, Folding, and Tilting 111 9. Fifth Way: Floral Supposition 158 PART THREE: Repicturing 10. Circling Back 195 11. Skating 206 12. Quickening with Flowers 221 Conclusion: Teaching Made-up Birds to Fly 239 Notes 249 Acknowledgments 275 Index 281

206 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: Memory and the Brain: New Lessons from Old Syndromes V.S. Schacter and Elaine Scarry as mentioned in this paper The role of memory in the Delusions Associated with Schizophrenia Chris Frith and Raymond J. Dolan Part 1: Cognitive, Neurological, and Pathological Perspectives 2. Cognitive and Brain Mechanisms of False Memories and Beliefs Marcia K. Johnson and Carol L. Raye 3. Mining the Past to Construct the Future: Memory and Belief as Forms of Knowledge Chris Westbury and Daniel C. Dennett Part 2: Conscious and Non
Abstract: Introduction Daniel L. Schacter and Elaine Scarry 1. Mining the Past to Construct the Future: Memory and Belief as Forms of Knowledge Chris Westbury and Daniel C. Dennett PART 1: Cognitive, Neurological, and Pathological Perspectives 2. Cognitive and Brain Mechanisms of False Memories and Beliefs Marcia K. Johnson and Carol L. Raye 3. Memory and the Brain: New Lessons from Old Syndromes V.S. Ramachandran 4. The Role of Memory in the Delusions Associated with Schizophrenia Chris Frith and Raymond J. Dolan PART 2: Conscious and Nonconscious Aspects of Memory and Belief: From Social Judgments to Brain Mechanisms 5. Implicit Stereotypes and Memory: The Bounded Rationality of Social Beliefs Mahzarin R. Banaji and R. Bhaskar 6. Belief and Knowledge as Distinct Forms of Memory Howard Eichenbaum and J. Alexander Bodkin 7. Where in the Brain is the Awareness of One's Past? Endel Tulving and Martin Lepage PART 3: Memory and Belief in Autobiographical Recall and Autobiography 8. Constructing and Appraising Past Selves Michael Ross and Anne E. Wilson 9. Memory and Belief in Development Katherine Nelson 10. Autobiography, Identity, and the Fictions of Memory Paul John Eakin 11. Autobiography as Moral Battleground Sissela Bok Thinking about Belief: Concluding Remarks Antonio R. Damasio Contributors Index

138 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of 122 research reports (184 independent samples, 14,900 subjects) found average r =.274 for prediction of behavioral, judgment, and physiological measures by Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This review of 122 research reports (184 independent samples, 14,900 subjects) found average r = .274 for prediction of behavioral, judgment, and physiological measures by Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures. Parallel explicit (i.e., self-report) measures, available in 156 of these samples (13,068 subjects), also predicted effectively (average r = .361), but with much greater variability of effect size. Predictive validity of self-report was impaired for socially sensitive topics, for which impression management may distort self-report responses. For 32 samples with criterion measures involving Black-White interracial behavior, predictive validity of IAT measures significantly exceeded that of self-report measures. Both IAT and self-report measures displayed incremental validity, with each measure predicting criterion variance beyond that predicted by the other. The more highly IAT and self-report measures were intercorrelated, the greater was the predictive validity of each.

2,690 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argued that people often act against their self-interest in full knowledge that they are doing so; they experience a feeling of being “out of control,” and attributed this phenomenon to the operation of "visceral factors" such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, moods and emotions, physical pain, and craving for a drug one is addicted to.

2,492 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause of violence, finding that violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism.
Abstract: Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotismwthat is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the selfconcept. Only a minority of human violence can be understood as rational, instrumental behavior aimed at securing or protecting material rewards. The pragmatic futility of most violence has been widely recognized: Wars harm both sides, most crimes yield little financial gain, terrorism and assassination almost never bring about the desired political changes, most rapes fail to bring sexual pleasure, torture rarely elicits accurate or useful information, and most murderers soon regret their actions as pointless and selfdefeating (Ford, 1985; Gottfiedson & Hirschi, 1990; Groth, 1979; Keegan, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1993; .Scm'ry, 1985). What drives people to commit violent and oppressive actions that so often are tangential or even contrary to the rational pursuit of material self-interest? This article reviews literature relevant to the hypothesis that one main source of such violence is threatened egotism, particularly when it consists of favorable self-appraisals that may be inflated or ill-founded and that are confronted with an external evaluation that disputes them. The focus on egotism (i.e., favorable self-appraisals) as one cause of violent aggression runs contrary to an entrenched body of wisdom that has long pointed to low self-esteem as the root of violence and other antisocial behavior. We shall examine the arguments for the low self-esteem view and treat it as a rival hypothesis to our emphasis on high self-esteem. Clearly, there

2,215 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is suggested that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.

1,646 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the ritual substratum of consumption and describe properties and manifestations of the sacred inherent in consumer behavior, and the processes by which consumers sacralize and desacralize dimensions of their experience.
Abstract: Two processes at work in contemporary society are the secularization of religion and the sacralization of the secular. Consumer behavior shapes and reflects these processes. For many, consumption has become a vehicle for experiencing the sacred. This article explores the ritual substratum of consumption and describes properties and manifestations of the sacred inherent in consumer behavior. Similarly, the processes by which consumers sacralize and desacralize dimensions of their experience are described. The naturalistic inquiry approach driving the insights in this article is advanced as a corrective to a premature narrowing of focus in consumer research.

1,510 citations