scholarly journals Recognition to Come: Towards a Deconstructive Encounter with Iranian Identity in a Globalized World

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Hossein Mesbahian

Considering the “relativization of identity”, “the positive recognition of the other”, “the mutual evaluation of cultures”, and the “creation of a normative world culture” as “four main kinds of cosmopolitan relationships” and, therefore, using the term cosmopolitanism in a “post-Western” register of meaning, I will make a case that Iranian identity in a post-Islamist condition needs a kind of struggle for recognition if it wants to locate itself at the interface of the local and the global. Taking the correlation between the discourse of post-Islamism and a deconstructive theory of identity into consideration, this paper addresses a central question in identity studies: can a downgraded identity rooted in a decent civilization—one in which both “moral” and “material” values for the globalized word have demoted—be reinvented? I argue that being accorded recognition, however, is different from self-congratulation within the boundaries of a local identity. In the former case, a nation’s identity is recognized for something it offers to the multifacetedness and multidimensionality of the contemporary world. In the latter, that identity retreats to the civilizational memory of ancestors now no longer relevant to the world issues. For a nation to reinvent its cultural identity from a universal vantage point, it is necessary to articulate its experiences in particular cultural forms which can be understood by others. It is only then that one’s self becomes known to the other, as well as to oneself. This paper will deconstruct the concept of identity and then discuss the challenges and prospects of reinventing identity in the particular context of post-Islamist Iran. Challenges refer to the crises of an identity that could prevent its revitalization such as a persistent failure to acknowledge the historical crisis of an identity in terms of both “material” and “cultural” measures. Prospects refer to the availability of internal mechanisms that could enable reinvention of an identity, e.g., the availability of internal mechanisms that would allow the reinvention of cultural identity.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-102
Author(s):  
Linh Hoang

Racism occurs in place. It is any place where human beings dwell such as a certain location, a house, or even a church. Racism is a lived experience that exposes the tragedy of hate and fear of the other. It pushes people into uncomfortable places. Asian Americans have built enclaves across the United States in order to maintain their cultural identity and help in resettlement. These ethnic enclaves have become, however, a way to silence and sideline Asians from the racial debates that has traditionally pitted blacks and whites for centuries. Asians have "assimilated" well into the dominant white culture but have not been completely accepted instead they continue to experience discrimination and prejudices. Even in the Church, Asian American Catholics struggle for recognition of their contribution and participation. The process of reconciliation that Robert J. Schreiter has elaborated provides an opportunity for Asian American Catholics to engage in the racial conversation while improving the Church's place in healing racism.   


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-78
Author(s):  
Bhawana Regmi

Human beings have been very protective about their identities. Cultural identity is one of the mechanisms that keep them connected to each other and their roots in the globalized world. This becomes more evident in times of threat and uncertainty about their belonging. Therefore, the issues of identity come to the fore in migration and diaspora discourses. In this article, I draw from Stuart Hall’s idea of identity and argue that irrespective of the socio-cultural disorientation and ethnic prejudices, in which the central character undergoes in the novel and craves for and succeeds in creating an identity. Not only the protagonist but also other characters come together to proclaim their identity which on the other hand establishes Atlantic Street as a novel by Rajab1 that represents ethnic prejudices. However, the prejudices the characters suffer, in turn, help to bring together the characters who suffer and constitute an ethnic bond between them. The inscription of the lack of recognition as human beings, and the pursuit of identity in and through literature respectively, reiterate the fact that both literature and identity are cultural products that are entwined.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110059
Author(s):  
Geoff Boucher

Frankfurt School critical theory is perhaps the most significant theory of society to have developed directly from a research programme focused on the critique of political authoritarianism, as it manifested during the interwar decades of the 20th century. The Frankfurt School’s analysis of the persistent roots – and therefore the perennial nature – of what it describes as the ‘authoritarian personality’ remains influential in the analysis of authoritarian populism in the contemporary world, as evidenced by several recent studies. Yet the tendency in these studies is to reference the final formulation of the category, as expressed in Theodor Adorno and co-thinkers’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950), as if this were a theoretical readymade that can be unproblematically inserted into a measured assessment of the threat to democracy posed by current authoritarian trends. It is high time that the theoretical commitments and political stakes in the category of the authoritarian personality are re-evaluated, in light of the evolution of the Frankfurt School. In this paper, I review the classical theories of the authoritarian personality, arguing that two quite different versions of the theory – one characterological, the other psychodynamic – can be extracted from Frankfurt School research.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.


1984 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bruyn

AbstractFrom 1911 to 1961 Félix Chrétien, secretary to François de Dinteville II, Bishop of Auxerre in Burgundy, and from 1542 onwards a canon in that town, was thought to be the author of three remarkable paintings. Two of these were mentioned by an 18th-century local historian as passing for his work: a tripych dated 1535 on the central panel with scenes from the legend of St. Eugenia, which is now in the parish church at Varzy (Figs. 1-3, cf. Note 10), and a panel dated 1550 with the Martyrdom of St. Stephen in the ambulatory of Auxerre Cathedral. To these was added a third work, a panel dated 1537 with Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, which is now in New York (Figs. 4-5, cf. Notes I and 3). All three works contain a portrait of François de Dinteville, who is accompanied in the Varzy triptych and the New York panel (where he figures as Aaron) by other portrait figures. In the last-named picture these include his brothers) one of whom , Jean de Dinteville, is well-known as the man who commissioned Holbein's Ambassadors in 1533. Both the Holbein and Moses and Aaron remained in the family's possession until 1787. In order to account for the striking affinity between the style of this artist and that of Netherlandish Renaissance painters, Jan van Scorel in particular, Anthony Blunt posited a common debt to Italy, assuming that the painter accompanied François de Dinteville on a mission to Rome in 1531-3 (Note 4). Charles Sterling) on the other hand, thought of Netherlandish influence on him (Note 5). In 1961 Jacques Thuillier not only stressed the Northern features in the artist's style, especially in his portraits and landscape, but also deciphered Dutch words in the text on a tablet depicted in the Varzy triptych (Fig. I) . He concluded that the artist was a Northerner himself and could not possibly have been identical with Félix Chrétien (Note 7). Thuillier's conclusion is borne out by the occurrence of two coats of arms on the church depicted in the Varzy triptych (Fig. 2), one of which is that of a Guild of St. Luke, the other that of the town of Haarlem. The artist obviously wanted it to be known that he was a master in the Haarlem guild. Unfortunately, the Haarlem guild archives provide no definite clue as to his identity. He may conceivably have been Bartholomeus Pons, a painter from Haarlem, who appears to have visited Rome and departed again before 22 June 15 18, when the Cardinal of S. Maria in Aracoeli addressed a letter of indulgence to him (without calling him a master) care of a master at 'Tornis'-possibly Tournus in Burgundy (Note 11). The name of Bartholomeus Pons is further to be found in a list of masters in the Haarlem guild (which starts in 1502, but gives no further dates, Note 12), while one Bartholomeus received a commission for painting two altarpiece wings and a predella for Egmond Abbey in 1523 - 4 (Note 13). An identification of the so-called Félix Chrétien with Batholomeus Pons must remain hypothetical, though there are a number of correspondences between the reconstructed career of the one and the fragmentary biography of the other. The painter's work seems to betray an early training in a somewhat old-fashioned Haarlem workshop, presumably around 1510. He appears to have known Raphael's work in its classical phase of about 1515 - 6 and to have been influenced mainly by the style of the cartoons for the Sistine tapestries (although later he obviously also knew the Master of the Die's engravings of the story of Psyche of about 1532, cf .Note 8). His stylistic development would seem to parallel that of Jan van Scorel, who was mainly influenced by the slightly later Raphael of the Loggie. This may explain the absence of any direct borrowings from Scorel' work. It would also mean that a more or less Renaissance style of painting was already being practised in Haarlem before Scorel's arrival there in 1527. Thuillier added to the artist's oeuvre a panel dated 1537 in Frankfurt- with the intriguing scene of wine barrels being lowered into a cellar - which seems almost too sophisticated to be attributed to the same hand as the works in Varzy and New York, although it does appear to come from the same workshop (Fig. 6, Note 21). A portrait of a man, now in the Louvre, was identified in 197 1 as a fragment of a work by the so-called Félix Chrétien himself (Fig. 8, Note 22). The Martyrdom of St. Stephen of 1550 was rejected by Thuillier because of its barren composition and coarse execution. Yet it seems to have too much in common with the other works to be totally separated, from them and may be taken as evidence that the workshop was still active at Auxerre in 1550.


1988 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 198-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Strassler

Thucydides' full description of the harbor at Pylos is part of his discussion of the Spartan strategy for the campaign (iv 8).. . . and the Lacedaimonians . . . expected the Attic fleet from Zacynthos to come to the rescue and intended, if they had not captured Pylos by that time, to block up the entrances to the harbor, so that the Athenians could not sail in and use it as an anchorage. (The island called Sphacteria extends alongside the harbor, and lies close to it: hence the anchorage is safe and the entrances narrow–the entrance by Pylos and the Athenian fortifications giving a passage for two ships through the channel, and the entrance by the mainland on the other side a passage for eight or nine . . . ) These entrances then, they intended to block up tightly with ships lying parallel to each other, prows to the enemy: and since they were frightened that the Athenians might use Sphacteria as a military base, they ferried hoplites across to it, and stationed others along the mainland. By this plan, they thought, the Athenians would find both the island to be enemy-occupied and the mainland, which gave them no chance of landing (for the coast of Pylos itself, outside the entrance and towards the open sea, is harborless, and would give them no base of operations to help their troops): and equally they themselves would probably be able to capture the place by siege, without a sea-battle or any unnecessary danger–there was no food in it, and it had not been properly prepared for a siege. This, then, was their agreed plan . . .Although one would think this a clear and detailed geographic description, historians have not yet found a location at Pylos for the harbor which satisfactorily matches it.


PMLA ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1183-1190
Author(s):  
George W. Whiting

To the student of writing and literature few inquiries are more interesting and valuable than that into an author's practices in revising his own work. To observe the various stages in the evolution of the final version, to note carefully an artist at his work of pruning the dead wood, adding fresh material, smoothing away harsh phrases, selecting just words, and letting light into obscure places—to do this is to come somewhat nearer to an understanding of what in spite of all analysis will remain essentially a mystery. Especially fascinating and instructive is the study of Conrad's revision, for here one sees a supreme artist at work. In his vigorous hewing and rebuilding there is conclusive proof of the artist's untiring industry and consummate skill. Conrad's revision of Nostromo is of particular interest, for this novel occupies a critical place in the evolution of Conrad's prose. Mr. Richard Curie has justly characterized the change that came over Conrad's prose—a change perceptible in the “Amy Foster” of Typhoon and fully marked in from Under Western Eyes onward. This evolution has smoothed away the cadence, has concentrated the manner, has toned down the style of Conrad's former exuberance. At first glance the later and the earlier Conrad appear two totally different men. The unruly splendor of the one has given way to the subtle and elastic suavity of the other … His earlier prose is sometimes uncertain, sometimes exaggerated, but his later prose has the uniform temper of absolute mastery.


Author(s):  
Anna Frīdenberga ◽  

In the article, the verb gādāt, an entry for the Historical Dictionary of Latvian (16th–17th centuries), and other formatives with this word are discussed. In the early Latvian texts, a wide and forked word-formation nest forms around the verb gādāt, including, for example, derived words gādāties, negādāt, gādāšana, apgādāt, apgādāties, apgādāšana, atsagādāties, iesagādāties, atgādāt, atgādāties, atgādāšana, atgādināt, iegādāties, sagādāt, sagāds, gāds, gādība, etc. There are several meanings of the word gādāt in early texts, which differ from the ones used nowadays, so the authors of the Dictionary have distinguished three of them: 1) to aim, seek, strive (for something); 2) to take care, to look after; 3) to be concerned, to worry (about). The word gādāt also had a more ancient meaning, ‘to think’, from which these three meanings have developed. Though in early religious texts the meaning ‘to think’ is not common, it appears in some prefixal verbs, for example, apgādāt ‘to consider’, iesagādāties ‘to come to one’s mind’, atgādāt ‘to recall, to remember’, sagādāt ‘to consider, to think’, iegādāt ‘to remember, to recall’. The meanings of the basic word also widely fork in the meanings of the words derived from it. One group of meanings is connected with the ancient meaning of the word gādāt ‘to think’. It is dominant, for example, in such word-formation chain as atgādāt, atgādināt, atgādāšana, etc., while the other group is connected to the meaning ‘to care, to look after’. The last is more common nowadays, so the words gādāt, apgādāt, sagādāt, gādība, etc. are known with this meaning also in modern Latvian. In the texts of the 16th–17th centuries, reflexive verbs are often used; an interesting feature characteristic to these verbs – the reflexive verb is often used in the same meaning as the direct verb. For example, gādāt and gādāties, iegādāt and iegādāties, atgādāt and atgādāties.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
AbdulSwamad Gyagenda

Imam Al-Ghazali used a combination of the wisdom, exposure and experience he had acquired while running the Nizamiyyah colleges to contribute to the core of the theory knowledge, education and Islamic sciences. His ideas suggest that God is the primary source of knowledge and sense alone cannot deliver one to the ultimate truth. He categorised knowledge according to the needs of the society. Knowledge according to him should shape an individual and help him/her to interact with the creator and with the other existents. Knowledge should affect body and soul, mind and heart and ultimately deliver one to happiness here and in the hereafter. His views on the core values of Islam affecting both individuals and society can be employed in determining and redefining the philosophy of knowledge in our contemporary world. The brief on the philosophy of knowledge reflected in here as well as the method of teaching and instruction especially in the Islamic institutions is drawn from Al-Ghazali’s rich reservoir of experience. This literature can be used to develop teaching and learning models and polices in developing Islamic academic institutions especially in Uganda.


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