scholarly journals Towards freedom and social awareness: Hopeful narratives and performatives in American theatre and literature

Ars Aeterna ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Ivan Lacko

Abstract The paper addresses the complexity of social issues in contemporary American society through the prism of its reflection in theatre and literature. The characteristic features of American narratives and performatives are freedom and an almost utopian belief in diversity and social understanding. At the same time, the discussed works present a comprehensive look at social issues using a great variety of forms and genres, and appealing to the aesthetic sensitivity of different groups of recipients. In the face of future problems in the political arena, American art offers an interesting transatlantic perspective on the complexity of 21st-century issues which are relevant all over the world.

2021 ◽  
pp. 030913252110500
Author(s):  
Kerry Gillespie

This paper offers a new disciplinary research agenda for a geography of the human face. Locating a research lacuna within the subfield of embodied geographies, the paper highlights existing interdisciplinary scholarship on the face, suggesting avenues through which geographers can both complement and advance such discussions. The overall proposal is to (re)consider the spatialities of the face via three routes: the political and biometric, the aesthetic and facial modification. The paper concludes by suggesting a disciplinary opportunity for a future facialised geography, providing valuable insight into this dynamic bodily site upon and through which the world is encountered and experienced.


Author(s):  
Kang Sok CHO

This paper deals with three different perspectives appeared in foreign visitors’ records on Korea in 1900s. Jack London was a writer who wrote novels highly critical of American society based on progressivism. However, when his progressive perspective was adopted to report the political situation of Korea in 1904, he revealed a typical perspective of orientalism. He regarded Korea and ways of living in Korea as disgusting and ‘uncivilized.’Compared with Jack London’s perspective, French poet Georges Ducrocq’s book was rather favorable. He visited Korea in 1901 and he showed affectionate attitude toward Korea and its people. However, his travel report, Pauvre et Douce Coree, can be defined as representing aesthetic orientalism. He tried to make all the ‘Korean things’ seem beautiful and nice, but it is true that this kind of view can also conceal something concrete and specific. This perspective at once beautifies Korea and also conceals the reality about Korea.E. Burton Holmes was a traveler and he often used his ‘motion-picture’ machine to record things he witnessed while travelling around worldwide countries. So, his report (travelogue) and motion picture film on Korea written and made in 1901 was based on close observation and rather objective point of view. Nonetheless, he couldn’t avoid the perspective of the colonizer’s model of the world, in other words, geographical diffusionism of western culture.


Author(s):  
Howard J. Booth

Both Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer and E. M. Forster’s Maurice explore success achieved in the face of society’s hostility to homosexuality. This chapter addresses both novels in terms of allegory and utopian possibility. Whilst Galgut’s adoption of biofiction in Arctic Summer aims to utilize the political and creative possibilities found in early modernist writing, the text’s tight control of narrative form and use of allegory leads to problems – that apparent newness is in fact highly scripted and controlled. Spurred by this consideration of Arctic Summer, a new approach is taken to Maurice that emphasises its openness as a text. The reader is encouraged to engage with issues of interpretation, with Maurice’s own development showing him becoming adept at reading complex, pressured situations. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is seen as an important intertext both for Maurice and the South African Anglophone tradition to which Galgut belongs. Using Walter Benjamin on natural history and allegory the chapter contends that Maurice, whilst maintaining its stress on how long-term same-sex relationships and cross-class love secure meaning in the world, also depicts a world that is always subject to change, loss and ruination.


Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-547
Author(s):  
Roger Southall

AbstractThis article focuses on the impact of the policies of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government on Zimbabwe's black middle class. It does so by exploring three propositions emerging from the academic literature. The first is that during the early years of independence, the middle class transformed into a party-aligned bourgeoisie. The second is that, to the extent that the middle class has not left the country as a result of the economic plunge from the 1990s, it played a formative role in opposition to ZANU-PF and the political elite. The third is that, in the face of ZANU-PF's authoritarianism and economic hardship, the middle class has largely withdrawn from the political arena.


2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Bajmócy ◽  
Judit Gébert

According to the common sense, experts, backed up by scientific methods, describe the “possible states of the world” in a value-neutral way. Then, in the political arena, delegates build on these proposals, but also consider values and interests. The present paper attempts to revise such an understanding of local economic development (LED) and argues that many of the deficiencies deriving from such a view can be remedied by deliberative participation, which is not merely a theoretical necessity, but also a practical possibility.With regard to the issue of public participation and deliberation, the paper identifies two main approaches in the LED literature: the “political” and the “apolitical”, of which the latter is mainly characterised by economic theorising. We take a closer look at the “apolitical” approach and demonstrate that in fact it is very much political. Therefore, we call for the transgression of the borderline between politics and expertise in LED, and suggest a joint democratisation of these interrelated terrains. We argue that deliberative participation is able to contribute to the quality of both the expert proposals and the working of the politics.


Author(s):  
Ali M. Jasim ◽  
H. H. Qasim ◽  
Ethar Habeeb Jasem ◽  
Raed Hasan Saihood

The importance of preserving the environment from waste and its pollution lies in many matters such as preserving people health, enhancing the aesthetic character of cites, attracting tourists, and protecting society from environmental disasters. The environmental wastes are the main dilemmas in our daily life and in the world at large. With the existence of modern technology, development and the field of the internet, many solutions have been undertaken to get rid these dilemmas. In this paper, a smart waste system based on internet of things (IoT) technique has been proposed using ESP-32 Wi-Fi microcontroller. This system can be adopted to avoid the accumulation of waste in the streets that distort the face of civilization, also to reduce the burden of workers and limit the workforce. The system is based on a multiple sensors in the garbage baskets, as they measure the waste level by using ultrasonic sensor, the moisture percent and temperature degree using DHT-22 sensor. The sensors data are processed by ESP32 microcontroller and displayed to both LCD screen using I2C protocol and mobile application using IoT cloud. System baskets automatically open their covers when the person approaches with a distance less or equal to 30 cm to throw garbage. Any approval waste basket is automatically discharged through an underground dump system using conveyor belt if the basket is full by 80% garbage and/or the basket moisture reaches to 40%.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-234
Author(s):  
Agus Setyo Hartono

The understanding of uniting the nation's cultural diversity requires a strategy in handling it so that it does not become a breaker of Indonesian unity, in the political integration of diversity in party groups and their partisanship with government power, it becomes less and less pro to certain communities in society that are represented in dealing with various problems. Cultural diversity that characterizes the Indonesian nation is a nation's wealth or asset that must be preserved and it is hoped that it will lead to potential excellence in the world. Conflicts that are oriented towards division, disintegration of the nation, and want to liberate from the unitary republic of Indonesia require concrete efforts to be overcome for the sake of realizing national unity in the Universal War Strategy. Therefore, the researcher wants to examine how the implementation of a sense of unity and political integration as an element that plays a very important role in the universal war strategy, because the understanding of universal war in the face of non-military threats is needed from government agencies outside of defense, especially in the political dimension, so civic, universality and populist is a feature of the settlement with a universal war strategy.


Author(s):  
Maren Klein

At a time when multiculturalism as an approach to managing diversity in society has been declared a failed policy in many western countries, Australia still seems committed to the approach as evidenced in public discourse and government declarations. The concept of interculturalism— promoted as a more appropriate approach to dealing with diversity in other parts of the world such as Europe and Canada—seemingly has no place in the Australian context. However, changes in the understanding of the concept, its application and degrees of commitment to it can also be observed in Australia. Not only has the meaning and execution of multiculturalism changed considerably over the years, there has also been vigorous debate and backlash, embodied in the political arena, by the (re) emergence of parties, and more recently, a variety of groupings with a nationalistic and/or nativist focus. More generally, a hardened attitude in public discourses concerning migration, social cohesion and national identity has developed over the last two decades. In the context of these developments, this article will trace the evolution of the Australian concept of multiculturalism and its concrete application focussing on the changes of the last two decades. A comparison of Australia’s purportedly unique type of multiculturalism and concept(s) of interculturalism to explore whether Australia’s nation-building project is indeed distinct from other countries’ diversity experience, or whether there is a place for interculturalism in Australia in an era of increasing mobility will conclude the article.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 911-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Sanders

Marriage today does not only involve private interests; it is also an important legal and political issue. The question of what marriage means today and whether it should be open to same-sex unions is under debate all over the world. In many countries, for example in Germany and the United States, such questions are not only debated in the political arena, but also in relation to constitutional law. This Article will trace the development of how marriage has been understood in relation to German constitutional law and critically discuss the law's approach to same-sex marriage.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Emad A. Abu-Shanab

E-government is a new phenomenon that improves public services provision to citizens, improves public sector performance, and enriches the political arena. Such ambitious objectives are not fully investigated in the literature, where most research focused on the service provision area. Improving public sector's performance is a vital dimension of e-government benefits and addresses the demands for cutting budgets and the financial situations facing many governments across the world. This study explored the e-government literature to summarize the reported contributions of e-government in relation to improving government performance. The second objective is to conduct an empirical test for our propositions based on public employees' perceptions regarding the set of benefits and contributions alleged by research. A sample of 107 public employees filled a survey summarizing the contributions of e-government based on 6 major dimensions. Conclusions and future work are stated at the end.


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