scholarly journals Keening the Dead: Ancient History or a Ritual for Today?

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Mc Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Society Today

In his 1909 work ‘Rites De Passage’, Arnold van Gennep acknowledges that a ritual often contains ‘rites within rites’. So, it was with the ancient ritual of the Irish wake, at the center of which was another ritual, that of the keen, the Irish funeral lament. The past tense is used tentatively here, as in this article the author explores the resilience of the ritual and how, rather than becoming extinct, the keen seems to spend periods of time underground before erupting again in a new form, attuning itself to a more contemporaneous social situation. Drawing on ethnographic and bibliographic research undertaken between 2010 and 2018, the author traces some of the history of the keen within the ritual of the Irish wake and funeral and gives instances of how it is being reconfigured in the 21st century. This continuation of the ritual, albeit in a new format, seems to speak to a deep emotional and spiritual need that may not be satisfied by more conventional religion in Ireland. Finally, the author considers the keen’s relevance and place in Irish society today.

Archaic Contamination: Hegel and the History of Dead Matter

PMLA ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-590
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fay
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
James Boswell ◽  
The Past ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
Prometheus Unbound ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
New Time

I tell every body it [the Life] will be an Egyptian Pyramid in which there will be a compleat mummy of Johnson that Literary Monarch.—James Boswell (qtd. in Wendorf 105)Michel de Certeau thinks about reading as an archaic practice: “Readers are travelers; they move across lands belonging to someone else … despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves” (174). Embedded in Certeau's romanticization of reading is a history of how Egypt has been read: as wealth to be plundered, as endlessly available texts, as the ruin of time. Pose against this lostness Friedrich Nietzsche's contention that all philosophy is just Egyptianism, the nostalgia for and reification of a past tense without a dynamic sense of history, so many “conceptual mummies” (35). Nietzsche reminds us to consider not lost origins but the possibility of endings, not the loss of history but its death—not death in the sense of apocalypse as Percy Bysshe Shelley's “now” and the release of new time in Prometheus Unbound but death as the archaic, the ruin, the mute, as Egypt's lost “now” and the end stop of archaic time. I will pursue the problems of the archaic, poetic ground, and translative readings Romantically through Hegel's Egyptianized account of aesthetic practices, for Nietzsche's post-Romantic Egyptianism mummifies thought. Although Hegel's Egyptianizing also concerns the dead matter of the past, his account renders that matter as dynamic. His revivification of the archaic Romantically accounts for its contaminative potential as a mysterious text whose translation can unearth a curse, and/or a promise, for the new.

MODERN PERFORMANCE ON THE KAZAKH KOBYZ

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-180
Author(s):  
T. Zh. Yeginbayeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Development ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Natural Tendency ◽  
New Development ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times

Global processes in the musical culture of Kazakhstan are the result of the numerous events that have taken place in the country over the past 20 years. The independence of the state has become a key factor that has had a decisive impact on the economic, socio-political and cultural development of the country. We have entered a new life, which has a rich cultural heritage and was carefully preserved by our ancestors. One of the proofs is the history of Kazakh kobyz art from ancient times to the present day. Modern kobyz art is closely connected with ancient history and has a rich natural tendency for new development, based on centuries of experience. Therefore, kobyz music of the XXth–XXIst centuries absorbed the traditions of European genres and styles, and is widely used in mass music, in various directions of ethnorock, art-rock, folk and others. Two lines of development of music for kobyz and music on kobyz existed in ancient times and nowadays. From here comes the divergence of creative direction among modern composers and in ensemble performance.

War and Religion: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolyon Mitchell ◽  
Joshua Rey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Religious People ◽  
Ethical Frameworks ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

War and Religion: A Very Short Introduction traces the history of religion and war. Is religion a force for war or a force for peace? From the crusades to Sri Lanka's civil war, religion has been involved in some of the most terrible wars in history. Yet from the Mahabharata to just war theory, religion has also provided ethical frameworks to moderate war, while some of the bravest pacifists have been deeply religious people. Ranging from ancient history to modern day conflicts, this VSI offers a nuanced view on these issues that have had such weight in the past, and which continue to shape the present and future.

scholarly journals Patterns of Memory in Askold Melnyczuk’s Novels as an Example of Ukrainian-American Émigré Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Marta Koval
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
European History ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Definition Of

Although Ukrainian emigration to North America is not a new phenomenon, the dilemmas of memory and amnesia remain crucial in Ukrainian-American émigré fiction. The paper focuses on selected novels by Askold Melnyczuk (What is Told and Ambassador of the Dead) and analyzes how traumatic memories and family stories of the past shape the American lives of Ukrainian emigrants. The discussion of the selected Ukrainian-American émigré novels focuses on the dilemmas of remembering and forgetting in the construction of both Ukrainian and American narratives of the past. The voluntary amnesia of the Ame- rican-born Ukrainians in Melnyczuk’s novels confronts their parents’ dependence on the past and their inability to abandon it emotionally. Memories of ‘the old country’ make them, similarly to Ada Kruk, ambassadors of the dead. The expression becomes a metaphoric definition of those wrapped by their repressed, fragmentary and sometimes inaccessible memories. Crucial events of European history of the 20th century are inscribed and personalized in the older generation’s stories which their children are reluctant to hear. For them, their parents’ memories became a burden and a shame. Using the concept of transgenerational memory, the paper explores the challenges of postmemory, and eventually its failure. 

The Peptidyl Transferase Center: a Window to the Past

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhan R. Tirumalai ◽  
Mario Rivas ◽  
Quyen Tran ◽  
George E. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Code ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Origins Of Life ◽  
Current View ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Peptidyl Transferase ◽  
Peptidyl Transferase Center ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

In his 2001 article, “Translation: in retrospect and prospect,” the late Carl Woese made a prescient observation that “our current view of translation be reformulated to become an all-embracing perspective about which 21st century Biology can develop” (RNA 7:1055–1067, 2001, https://doi:10.1017/s1355838201010615 ). The quest to decipher the origins of life and the road to the genetic code are both inextricably linked with the history of the ribosome. After over 60 years of research, significant progress in our understanding of how ribosomes work has been made.

Decolonizing youth development: re-imagining youthwork for indigenous youth futures

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-386
Author(s):  
Katie Johnston-Goodstar
Keyword(s):  
Youth Development ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Youth Organizations ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Indigenous Youth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tribal Societies ◽  
History Of

Drawing on scientific theories of racial supremacy and efforts by Western nations to develop uncivilized races, preeminent psychologist G. Stanley Hall proposed that the bio-psychological development of children recapitulated the ancient history of mankind. Utilizing Hall’s theory, US youth organizations designed programs for young people to engage corresponding sociological stages. Using archival sources, I document how Hall’s theory, and the “playing Indian” programs established from it, secured settler colonialism by marginalizing Indigenous cultures, governance, laws and ideologies and positioning tribal societies as primitive and childlike relics of the past destined to be replaced by modern man and nation. I then introduce the specter of recapitulation and how these ideas continue to harm Indigenous communities, and exponentially harm Indigenous youth. Finally, using Ermine’s concept of ethical space, I conclude by exploring the space between knowledge systems about youth and presenting possibilities for decolonizing youth development and reimagining youthwork supportive of Indigenous youth futures.

scholarly journals Transition, Flow, and Divergent Times

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-584
Author(s):  
Avinoam Shalem
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global History ◽  
Transition Flow ◽  
Recording Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of

The Western academy's growing interest in the contemporary arts in the Arab world illustrates the desire to map “Islam”—problematic as this term is—within the global history of cultures and to integrate it into “Western” models of the writing and documenting of the past. As positive and corrective as these academic approaches may seem, the notion of recording time—that is, writing history—is still firmly bound at the beginning of the 21st century to the idea of continuity, and the pattern of “Western”-centric thinking imposes that notion upon contemporary artists and art historians. Yet the political changes and spontaneous eruptions that the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing, especially since the beginning of 2011, defy and resist conventional interpretations of historical processes and therefore demand a rethinking of the configuration of the past.

scholarly journals The meaning of Moscow: “Non-lethal” weapons and international law in the early 21st century

2005 ◽  
Vol 87 (859) ◽  
pp. 525-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Fidler
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Terrorist Attack ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Early 21St Century

AbstractAt the intersection of new weapon technologies and international humanitarian law, so-called “non-lethal” weapons have become an area of particular interest. This article analyses the relationship between “non-lethal” weapons and international law in the early 21st century by focusing on the most seminal incident to date in the short history of the “non-lethal” weapons debate, the use of an incapacitating chemical to end a terrorist attack on a Moscow theatre in October 2002. This tragic incident has shown that rapid technological change will continue to stress international law on the development and use of weaponry but in ways more politically charged, legally complicated and ethically challenging than the application of international humanitarian law in the past.

Dead Sea Levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Joy Kagan ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Frank Herald Neumann ◽  
Mordechai Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The history of lake-level changes at the Dead Sea during the Holocene was determined mainly by radiocarbon dating of terrestrial organic debris. This article reviews the various studies that have been devoted over the past 2 decades to defining the Dead Sea levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages (≃5.5 to 2.5 ka cal BP) and adds new data and interpretation. In particular, we focus on research efforts devoted to refining the chronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Ze'elim Gully, a key site of paleoclimate investigation in the European Research Council project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel. The Bronze and Iron Ages are characterized by significant changes in human culture, reflected in archaeological records in which sharp settlement oscillations over relatively short periods of time are evident. During the Early Bronze, Intermediate Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Late Bronze Ages, the Dead Sea saw significant level fluctuations, reaching in the Middle Bronze an elevation of ≃370 m below mean sea level (bmsl), and declining in the Late Bronze to below 414 m bmsl. At the end of the Late Bronze Age and upon the transition to the Iron Age, the lake recovered slightly and rose to ≃408 m bmsl. This recovery reflected the resumption of freshwater activity in the Judean Hills, which was likely accompanied by more favorable hydrological-environmental conditions that seem to have facilitated the wave of Iron Age settlement in the region.

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