scholarly journals Metaphoric Recurrences of Dreamlike Imagery in M. Khvylovy’s “My Self (Romantica)” and N. Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Polianska

Delusional states such as madness and hallucination are traditionally viewed as mental disorders characterized by a chaotic activity or as an experience in which something is perceived as true but is not real. In a literary discourse, madness and hallucination can be viewed as analogous to metaphoric perception of reality. Primarily, due to the fact that the way protagonists think and see things shifts from accepted societal norms to unaccountable patterns of behavior.In this article I approach madness and hallucination as dreamlike states of mind and follow George Lakoff’s belief that everyday abstract concepts like time, change, causation, and purpose appear to be metaphorical (1). From this point, I explore the narrative of madness and hallucination through the metaphoric recurrences of dreamlike imagery in Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” and Mykola Khvylovy’s “My Self (Romantica).”I suggest that both stories present situations of crisis, in which the characters appear on the edge of mental breakdown and thus experience the dreamlike states. Symbolically, the recurrent images that appear in the stories are connected to the idea of nationhood and social pressures within imperial Russia (1835) in “Diary of a Madman” and to the Communist Party ideology during its early rule in Ukraine (approximately 1920s-1930s) in “Myself (Romantica).” Therefore, by depicting the progression of their protagonists’ mental disorders, the writers reveal the truth about social and political struggles of their times

Author(s):  
Anthony Ashbolt ◽  
Glenn Mitchell

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and into the 1960s decade of rebellion, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) developed significant relationships with cultural and artistic movements. The youth wing of the CPA, The Eureka Youth League (EYL), played a particularly important role in the attempt to forge an alliance between musicians and communism. First through jazz, and then through two folk music revivals, the EYL sought to use music to recruit members and to foster its ideological and political struggles. In the end, the EYL's and CPA's relationship with both jazz and folk was tenuous. Yet along the way, the music itself flourished. This, then, is a story of tensions between and paradoxes surrounding the Party and musicians sympathetic to it. Yet it is also a story about how the cultural life of Australia was greatly enriched by the EYL's attempt to use music as a political tool.


HIMALAYA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
Catherine Hartmann

“Why do you ask questions of roots and branches instead of the necessary questions of chö (Tib. chos)?” asks a character in Tibetan author Dondrup Gyel’s (don rgrub rgyal) controversial 1980 short story, “Tulku” (sprul sku). The Tibetan term chö can be translated in many ways, including to mean ‘the Buddhist teachings,’ ‘religion’ more generally, or even ‘the nature of reality.’ In “Tulku,” however, what chö means is not at all clear, and the various characters claim authority to determine what is legitimate chö. In the story, a Tibetan village is visited by a mysterious stranger claiming to be a tulku—a reincarnated religious leader— but who is actually a fraud. Most scholars have interpreted “Tulku” as a critique of traditional Tibetan religious devotion, and as a call by Gyel for Tibetans to modernize. This paper, however, proposes a new reading of “Tulku.” It suggests that Gyel pairs overt criticism of the corrupt tulku with a subtler critique of the Chinese government’s policy towards Tibetan Buddhism. It argues for such a reading by tracking how the word chö is used in “Tulku.” It shows that Gyel places the word not in the mouths of the Tibetan villagers, but rather in the mouths of the fraudulent tulku and the representatives of the Communist Party. Both thus use chö in order to appeal to the Tibetan villagers, claim power for themselves, and exclude the opposing party. “Tulku” thereby creates parallels between the ways in which the Tulku and the Party use chö to appeal to and manipulate the Tibetan villagers. On this reading, “Tulku” highlights the way chö can be weaponized by both traditional religious authorities and Communist party ideology, and suggests that in this modern period, any claimant to chö must be treated with caution and skepticism.


Elenchos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Ugaglia

Abstract Aristotle’s way of conceiving the relationship between mathematics and other branches of scientific knowledge is completely different from the way a contemporary scientist conceives it. This is one of the causes of the fact that we look at the mathematical passages we find in Aristotle’s works with the wrong expectation. We expect to find more or less stringent proofs, while for the most part Aristotle employs mere analogies. Indeed, this is the primary function of mathematics when employed in a philosophical context: not a demonstrative tool, but a purely analogical model. In the case of the geometrical examples discussed in this paper, the diagrams are not conceived as part of a formalized proof, but as a work in progress. Aristotle is not interested in the final diagram but in the construction viewed in its process of development; namely in the figure a geometer draws, and gradually modifies, when he tries to solve a problem. The way in which the geometer makes use of the elements of his diagram, and the relation between these elements and his inner state of knowledge is the real feature which interests Aristotle. His goal is to use analogy in order to give the reader an idea of the states of mind involved in a more general process of knowing.


Author(s):  
Kristoffer N T Månsson ◽  
Ulrike Lueken ◽  
Andreas Frick

Abstract Although cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an established and efficient treatment for a variety of common mental disorders, a considerable number of patients do not respond to treatment or relapse after successful CBT. Recent findings and approaches from neuroscience could pave the way for clinical developments to enhance the outcome of CBT. Herein, we will present how neuroscience can offer novel perspectives to better understand (a) the biological underpinnings of CBT, (b) how we can enrich CBT with neuroscience-informed techniques (augmentation of CBT), and (c) why some patients may respond better to CBT than others (predictors of therapy outcomes), thus paving the way for more personalized and effective treatments. We will introduce some key topics and describe a selection of findings from CBT-related research using tools from neuroscience, with the hope that this will provide clinicians and clinical researchers with a brief and comprehensible overview of the field.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 65-87
Author(s):  
Li Xing

This article proposes a framework for understanding the way the Chinese Revolution emerged, developed and achieved power (1921-49), then further consolidated in the period of socialist 'uninterrupted revolution' (1949-77) and was finally abandoned by the post-Mao regime (1977 to the present). This analysis is based on a perspective of discourse theories framed in historically new forms of political, social and ideological relations. In other words, it attempts to conceptualize the transformation of China and the Chinese Communist Party by analysing the role of ideological discourses (arguments and interpretations) and the cognitive elements (beliefs, goals, desires, expertise, knowledge) as the driving-force behind societal transformations. The discourse theory applied here – logocentrism and econocentrism – also serves both as a political arena of struggle to confer legitimacy on a specific socio-political project and as a distinctive cog ni tive and evaluative framework for understanding societal transformations. The conceptualization of the paper is informed by the work of David Apter and Tony Saich on discourse theory.


2020 ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Neil Macmaster

The Algerian Communist Party (PCA) played a particularly important role in the anti-colonial movement in the Chelif region, a prominence that explains why it was chosen as the primary base for the ‘Red Maquis’ guerrilla force in 1956. Chapter 7 looks at the way in which the PCA, dominated by the French Communist Party, initially opposed nationalism and followed the orthodox Marxist doctrine that the peasantry could not constitute a revolutionary class, a vanguard role that could only be assumed by an industrial or urban proletariat. In the Chelif region the veteran communist and trade union leader Mohamed Marouf reflected this position and focused propaganda work on the farm labourers of the plain while neglecting the mountain peasants that were seen as a form of seasonal, blackleg labour. However, from 1932 onwards a minority movement began to emerge in the PCA that was favourable to a peasant-based strategy, and in 1944 this led to the creation of the Syndicat des petits cultivateurs (SPC). The peasant-based movement that developed in the Aurès, Tlemçen, and Chelif mountains during the late 1940s and prepared the ground for a later guerrilla movement.


Author(s):  
Benno Weiner

This chapter explores the period from summer 1955 to summer 1956, a year that saw the sudden introduction of class analysis and protocollectivization into Amdo's grasslands. Spurred by the nationwide “High Tide of Socialist Transformation,” which sought to collectivize agriculture at a sudden and startling pace, in fall of 1955, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organized “intensive investigations” into Amdo's pastoral society, efforts meant to pave the way for the staged introduction of pastoral cooperatives. By early 1956, Qinghai's leadership had made cooperativization (hezuohua) the year's core task in pastoral areas. Under these circumstances, the underpinnings of the United Front came under pressure as socialism itself was declared the means to achieve nationality unity and economic development. With revolutionary impatience threatening to overwhelm United Front pragmatism, the rhetoric used to describe Tibetan elites began to shift as well. Rather than covictims of nationality exploitation, headmen and monastic leaders were increasingly transformed into representatives of the pastoral exploiting class.


Modern Italy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Forgacs

Most books by or about Antonio Gramsci reproduce on their covers the same studio photograph dating from the early 1920s. It is a head and shoulders portrait showing Gramsci with longish hair, dark coat buttoned at the neck, unsmiling and looking into the camera through wire-rimmed glasses. This was also the image of him most commonly displayed in Communist Party branches all over Italy from the late 1940s to 1991. Yet if we compare it with other extant photographs of Gramsci, as well as with those of other revolutionary leaders adopted as iconic in the communist movement, we can see it differs from the former and resembles the latter in several ways. The most striking difference is the erasure of any sign of Gramsci’s bodily impairment: the curvature of the spine and short stature resulting from the spinal tuberculosis he had as a child. The article examines the history of this photograph and the way it became adopted as the approved image of Gramsci and considers what was at stake in removing from official memory a condition of disability that was central to his own personal and political identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1752) ◽  
pp. 20170141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Brookshire ◽  
Daniel Casasanto

Different regions of the human cerebral cortex are specialized for different emotions, but the principles underlying this specialization have remained unknown. According to thesword and shield hypothesis, hemispheric specialization for affective motivation, a basic dimension of human emotion, varies across individuals according to the way they use their hands to perform approach- and avoidance-related actions. In a test of this hypothesis, here we measured approach motivation before and after five sessions of transcranial direct current stimulation to increase excitation in the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in healthy adults whose handedness ranged from strongly left-handed to strongly right-handed. The strength and direction of participants' handedness predicted whether electrical stimulation to frontal cortex caused an increase or decrease in their experience of approach-related emotions. The organization of approach motivation in the human cerebral cortex varies across individuals as predicted by the organization of the individuals’ motor systems. These results show that the large-scale cortical organization of abstract concepts corresponds with the way people use their hands to interact with the world. Affective motivation may re-use neural circuits that evolved for performing approach- and avoidance-related motor actions.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (16) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Manolis Choumerianos ◽  
Spyros Sakellaropoulos

Drawing on primary material from the Soviet archives, this article considers the attitude of the Communist Party of Cyprus (CPC) to the failed revolt of 1931 against British colonialism. The CPC's contradictions and shortcomings are exposed through outlining the course of the revolt, along with a presentation of the Comintern's position on these events. The argument put forward is that there were a number of more general problems facing the Comintern at this time that paved the way for the CPC's pursuit of this specific contradictory line. Among these general problems were the failure to achieve a further revolutionary breakthrough in Europe, the rise of fascism and the characteristics of the anti-colonial struggles of that time.


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