Ironic Animals: Bestiaries,Moral Harmonies,and the ‘Ridiculous’ Source of Natural Rights

The Bible recounts that in Eden, Adam gives names to all the animals. But those names are not only representations of the animals’ nature, rather they shape and constitute it. The naming by Adam contains in itself the divide between the human and non-human. Then, there is the Fall: Adam falls and forgets Being. Though he may still remember the names he gave to the animals in Eden, he is no longer sure about their meaning. Adam will have to try to remember his own intentions. Through this effort he can also become aware of how he thinks, who he is, and what was the natural order he knew before the Fall. Medieval bestiaries tell us this story. Bestiaries are works of word play populated by animal figures. They depend on back-and-forth anthropomorphization, or circular metaphor. Animal figures are portrayed as both a mirror of human nature and a window on it. Bestiaries served as means for the moral education of human beings and, at the same time, a way to criticize the current state of humanity, including political and ethical habits. Within the moral irony of medieval bestiaries we can find the origin of the invented nature that modernity will try, subsequently, to insert into natural rights discourse through the teleological oxymoron of their naturalized and naturalizing counter-factuality (natural rights will be simultaneously “being” and “ought,” nature and values/ends). I will propose a historical-semiotic journey through the ironic representations of the human-beasts from the ancient world to contemporaneity. The proposal resulting from this cultural excursion is that the words included in the many national and international Rights declarations operate much like the names Adam gave to the animals and still more as they were re-read in medieval bestiaries, both textual and musical. So, can the words of Rights still serve as musical scores, open to an infinite play of re-signification? If we were able to overcome the modern culture/nature and human being/animal dualisms, we could cast, today as in the past, a zoological gaze on human rights by means of contemporary bestiaries and, in this way, perhaps find the gist of rights’ names and our ever regained and ever lost again humanity.     

论汉语诗歌的内在音乐境界

诗歌语言是一种音乐化语言，但诗歌不能等同于韵语。诗歌的音乐形式既是其外部声音特征，也是其内在规定，节奏、韵律仅是其本质的外在显现。音乐和诗歌都是时间艺术，其共同逻辑起点是人对于世界的时间化感知。时间是内省形式，因而不可言说，但可通过时间对象——意象得以揭示。只有当诗歌语言被用于呈现生命时间本身，诗歌才达到旋律的境界，声韵一变而为神韵。动态意象成就了诗歌的内在节奏，它使得体验者当下的时间音乐化了。律化时间片断的延续构成了生命过程本身，由此抵达诗歌的内在旋律。动态意象所形成的内在节奏与声音节奏统一，内在旋律也与声调之曲折相呼应。如此，诗、音乐、思共在。     

Zoologian Jurisprudence

This essay examines the iconography and role of animals in medieval and early modern bestiaries. In being without original sin “God’s creatures” were deemed proximate to divine perfection and to salvation. Animals, whether symbolic or actual, both instructed man’s moral behaviour and ushered man towards salvation. Bestiaries, it will be argued, are keys to understanding how modern law would eventually co-ordinate itself in relation to the concept of a future salvic moment.     

Staring Animals,Animal Staring: Semiotic Enquiry on Animal Enunciation

Can we speak about animal enunciation? More, can we learn something about the formal structure of the enunciation looking at the animal way to staring us and addressing to us with their glances? This contribution tries to describe some real cases of glances exchange between animals and humans (a cat and a dear and me) in order to extract some reflections about the way in which we construct the role of the enunciator in the interspecific relationship. Are animals subjects in their relation with humans? And what “subject” means exactly? A semiotic definition of subject is both narrative and enunciative, and the question is: can we interpretate animal glances as good expressions of subjectivity?     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Peters Edition v. Batt</Emphasis>: The Intertextuality of Silence

The article deals, on the one hand, with a legal conflict between a musical performer/arranger, Mike Batt, and the estate of a composer of avant-garde music, John Cage, over copyright. It is also concerned with the field of intertextuality – how meaning is created in a text or in a work of art, whether it is visual, musical or verbal, through allusions and quotations to previous texts or works of art. The controversy, which did not reach the courts because of a pre-trial settlement, was over an author’s rights to silence, or, as in this case, a silent piece of music. The central issue discussed is the way in which silence may be considered – if at all, to be protectable.     

论音乐作品的著作权保护

音乐作品是整个著作权作品体系中十分重要的组成部分,保护音乐作品著作权反映了我国著作权法律制度的发展水平。随着网络技术的飞速发展,音乐作品在国际范围内的交流日益加深,我国的法律制度也应该与国际接轨,因而在音乐作品的保护上建立和完善著作权限制制度和著作权集体管理制度是必然的趋势。本文首先分析了音乐作品的表演权、广播权以及网络传播权三项重要的音乐作品财产权,进而对音乐作品著作权受到侵害的情形进行分析,并提出对策建议,即完善著作权权利限制制度、著作权集体管理制度以及互联网管理制度。     

带词音乐作品的著作权保护——以《五环之歌》侵害音乐作品改编权纠纷系列案为例

《五环之歌》侵犯音乐作品改编权系列案件判决书中,关于《牡丹之歌》带词音乐作品的性质,原告、被告和法院观点各不相同,争议非常大。其中,三个审理法院均认为《牡丹之歌》带词音乐作品属于合作作品,但又判决原告仅对歌词部分享有改编权,突出地体现了现行《著作权法》第13条规定的可分割合作作品和《著作权法实施条例》第4条规定的音乐作品,在保护带词音乐作品上造成的重大矛盾。建议我国《著作权法》删去第13条第2款关于可分割合作作品的规定。带词音乐作品中的歌词和曲谱属于各自独立的作品。     

Nonhuman Species’ Reactions to Inequity and their Implications for Fairness

It is well known that humans respond negatively to inequity, but until recently little has been known about such responses in animals. Previous observational research in animals has shown hints that animals do respond to inequity. Chimpanzees respond with temper tantrums if they do not get what they desire, social canids refuse to play with individuals who violate social rules, and ravens show third party intervention against norm violations. Recent experimental work with nonhuman primates has given us a more detailed understanding. Capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees both respond negatively to distributional inequity. Moreover, chimpanzees show significant variation in response depending upon the social group they inhabit, with those from a short-term group or a relatively asocial living situation showing a much greater response to inequity than those from a long-term stable group. This mirrors human variation in responses to inequity, which are based upon the quality of the relationship. In this paper, I attempt to define “fairness” in a way that is useful for nonhuman studies and clarify what aspects are being examined in animal societies. I then place the animal work in the context of the studies on humans, especially as related to research in social psychology and economics. I conclude that studying the inequity response in animals is useful for a number of reasons, including the opportunity to gain insight into how this response functions in less complex organisms and social systems and clarification of our understanding of the evolution of this behavior.     

论学前儿童音乐审美经验的建构

学前儿童具有先天的音乐能力。这是人类音乐性的体现,是人类的一种生存本能和由音乐经验积淀而形成的集体无意识。以此为前提,学前儿童能够通过与音乐作品的互动来建构审美经验。从感知到音乐文本的存在开始,学前儿童以一种主动的态度去理解、阐释音乐,并将所获得的音乐体验内化、再建构,从而形成对某一作品的我自己的审美经验。其后,学前儿童将此经验迁移以形成良好的音乐审美判断和鉴赏能力。在这一过程中,听觉与动觉的相互转换占主导地位。学前儿童音乐审美经验的建构是存在于幼儿、作曲家、社会之间的一种多重交互行为,其结果是建立一种共享体验。     

Balancing in Light of the Purposes of Copyright: Whether Video Music Lessons Constitute Copyright Infringement

Faced with diminished sources of revenue, school systems in recent years have cut funding for music education. Looking for alternative ways to learn about music, budding musicians have turned to the Internet. On YouTube and other Web sites, visitors can view thousands of instructional videos on how to play popular songs, complex genres, and a seemingly unlimited variety of musical techniques. Despite altruistic motivations, creators of video music lessons routinely use copyrighted content during lessons. This article argues that the defense of fair use should protect the creators of video music lessons from liability in a copyright infringement lawsuit. Specifically, the author argues that it is the purpose of copyright law to promote knowledge and that video music lessons further this objective.     

Learning to be cruel?: exploring the onset and frequency of animal cruelty

Few studies have examined how animal cruelty is learned within a specific social context among incarcerated individuals. Using data from 261 inmates, this study specifically addressed how demographic characteristics and childhood experiences with animal abuse may have affected the recurrence and onset of childhood and adolescent cruelty as a learned behavior. Multiple regression analyses revealed that inmates who experienced animal cruelty at a younger age were more likely to demonstrate recurrent animal cruelty themselves. In addition, respondents who observed a friend abuse animals were more likely to hurt or kill animals more frequently. Finally, inmates who were younger when they first witnessed animal cruelty also hurt or killed animals at a younger age.     

‘Me and My Drank:’ Exploring the Relationship Between Musical Preferences and Purple Drank Experimentation

“Purple drank” is a label typically applied to mixtures of codeine cough syrup with soda, although it has also been applied to mixtures of over-the-counter cough syrups and alcohol. This novel drug formulation was first popularized in the Houston, Texas rap music scene in the 1990’s, and since then references to purple drank have become common in rap and hip-hop songs, but remained virtually absent in other musical genres. Prior research has found that musical preferences can have an influence on choice and frequency of drug use. The goal of the present study is to examine the relationship between musical preferences and experimentation with purple drank. Self-reported information about musical preferences, substance use, and demographic characteristics were collected from 2,349 students at a large university in the southeastern United States. An analysis of lifetime purple drank and other drug use by musical preferences reveals that those who prefer rap/hip-hop music and rock/alternative have the highest risk for reporting purple drank use. Further, this relationship far exceeds the associations between musical preferences and other drugs. Results from logistic regression analyses indicate males, other drug users, and those that prefer rap/hip-hop music have a significantly higher likelihood of using purple drank.     

Bestialitatis and the New Ethics on “Human” Animals

This article discusses how the legal systems in several Western countries, with a special focus on Italy, address our present day animal rights movement and how these legal systems can faithfully reflect the movement’s values as well as promote them in a manner that will ultimately change the rights themselves and their cultural context: this is an extremely interesting issue for the semiotic study of the “humanization of animals”. Therefore, I will summarize several semiotic arguments using the model of the four ontologies by Philippe Descola and the concept of prospectivism by Eduardo Viveiros De Castro. I expect several important changes will come about thanks to the ties between philosophical animal rights discourse and legal discourse and I also believe that the two most interesting issues will be animal labor and reproduction. I will concentrate on the debate over zoophilia laws in Denmark, Germany and Italy in order to propose a way to understand the threshold which separates humans and animals in our naturalistic ontology. Nowadays, “becoming animals” and “becoming humans” seem to be two central and open-ended semiotic processes: legal rights and animal rights philosophy help bring several issues into focus such as animal subjectivity and informed consent.     

非文本化音乐分析方法与音乐能力发展的关系

将音乐分析方法与音乐教育心理学结合,可以发现非文本化(音响)分析方法与音乐欣赏的音响整体感知能力、音乐的记忆能力、音乐的理解能力和音乐的创作能力发展的关系。     

The social and emotional context of childhood and adolescent animal cruelty: is there a link to adult interpersonal crimes?

The link between early animal abuse and later violence toward humans may depend on how acts of animal cruelty are experienced by those whose behavior demonstrates this graduation. Unfortunately, the research investigating the social and emotional context for the youthful commission of animal cruelty as it escalates to adult interpersonal violence is relatively nonexistent. Using 112 cases from a larger sample of 261 inmates surveyed at both medium and maximum security prisons in a southern state, the present study examined the effects of age of onset and frequency of animal cruelty, the covertness of animal cruelty, the commission of animal cruelty within a group or in isolation, and empathy for the abused animals. Inmates who had covered up their childhood and adolescent animal cruelty were more likely to have been convicted of repeated acts of interpersonal violence, demonstrating that the role of empathy and individuals present during acts of animal cruelty were less important than concealing those acts.     

The Knowing of Monstrosities: Necropower,Spectacular Punishment and Denial

This study examines how newspaper accounts of criminality conceal and illuminate particular types of monstrosity in the postbellum United States. The paper offers an analysis of Gothicism—which typically frames the criminality of marginalized groups—as a technique of racial domination in narrative sites that construct knowledge on criminality and punishment. Analysis reveals a paradoxical lens of Gothicism in which oppressive groups can conceal monstrosity within a colonial context. The analysis of gothic accounts of criminality challenges the ways in which denial shapes modern monstrosity.     

Reflecting on 25 Years of Teaching Animal Law: Is it Time for an International Crime of Animal Ecocide?

2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the introduction of Animal Law to the law degree at Liverpool John Moores University. This article examines changes in the legal protection of animals during this time and the impact this will have on research and scholarship in the law relating to animals. We examine whether the overall international treatment of animals has improved and how far the approach to the Animal Law curriculum should be influenced by the growth in concerns around climate change. In this context, we examine the development of the law of ecocide and the extent to which it addresses concerns around animal welfare across the globe. We suggest that those involved in the development of Animal Law, ethics and policy might usefully engage in a new vision of ecocide, which incorporates a clearer notion of ‘animal ecocide’. This new approach would enhance the international and national focus on animals in their own right, would recognise increasing knowledge of animal sentience and would move our responsibilities to them beyond anthropocentric approaches to environmental protection. We argue that the inclusion of a more specific reference to animal ecocide would contribute to the development of Animal Law and would lead to an enhanced relationship between Animal Law and attempts to protect the environment.

     

Omnivorous Cultural Policy: The Case of Concerts Norway

This article uses the case of Concerts Norway to analyze how the agency of esthetics is changing and expanding within a cultural policy institution. Concerts Norway has provided concerts to all age groups and all parts of the country for nearly fifty?years. The ambition of the institution has been to ensure that all Norwegian citizens have had access to quality music. The article describes how these cultural policy ambitions entail a general esthetic agency, and how different kinds of musical genres have been given agency through the work of the institution, thereby representing a seemingly omnipotent and increasingly omnivorous cultural policy.     

多元政治与西方法律传统

传统作为一种生活方式而存在。西方法律传统的形成是中世纪西欧特有的政治结构的产物,或者说是多元政治势力长期并存、不断竞争、不断妥协过程的副产品。这个传统在现代西方的延续,也有赖于“多元政治”的结构支撑。