scholarly journals Druze Reincarnation in Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Lorenz Nigst
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Newborn Child ◽  
The Subject

In the Druze outlook, each human soul completes successive life-circuits as different human beings. If one of these human beings dies, the soul immediately migrates to the body of a newborn child. Normally, it is unknown who the soul was previously. However, in exceptional cases, mostly young children remember and “speak” about a previous life that usually came to an unexpected and tragic end. This also represents the backdrop of Anīs Yaḥyà’s novel Jasad kāna lī, which is set in a Druze context and revolves around a murder case and a little girl that remembers her death and names her murderer. The subject of transmigration is omnipresent in the novel. As this article seeks to show, this turns the novel into a highly relevant source for anthropological research into the Druze understanding of transmigration. The novel not only corroborates respective findings, but also complements them and thus contributes to a fuller understanding of the social and discursive presence of transmigration and “speaking” in Druze contexts. At the same time, anthropological research seems essential for a more profound understanding of this particular thematic dimension of the novel.

Diaghilev and British Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

Pain and Privacy in Villette

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

This chapter shifts away from politics to the novel, yet remains focused on pain's ability to configure the relation of the subject to the social. Specifically, this chapter argues that Charlotte Brontë's novel uses the phenomenology of pain as a way to imagine the compatibility of privacy—offered as the locus of the individual's value—with community. It argues that these carefully staged refusals of readers' sympathy constitute an attempt to offer recognition and acknowledgement in place of an implicitly normalizing fellow-feeling. We may not be able to enter into one another's feelings, Brontë insists, but we can nevertheless recognize that we all possess them.

scholarly journals The Relationship Between Education and Social Value in The Novel “The Magician’s Apprentice” By: Trudi Canavan

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Rohdearni Wati Sipayung
Keyword(s):  
Social Value ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This novel  has many basic values of human, and the writer wants to share about the social value of this Novel. Although this novel tells of a witch, as we know that the stories of about witches, it may be difficult to find which part is the social value. But the writer wants to find the part that is a social value, because in every story there must be a positive value that can be taken by the reader. The social value of Cooperation, cooperation within a group can make the job easier. The social value of care. Human beings we should care about each other, helping each other and pay attention. The social value of bravery, in life we must have the courage because, as we know there are still many people who are afraid to face the people.

scholarly journals The Discursive Problematization of Death, Dehumanization and Sociocultural identity: An Analysis of 'The Walking Dead'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Victoria Skye
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Major Site ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way ◽  
Walking Dead

<p>The zombie is a significant cultural figure which is represented and produced as being symptomatic of and relevant to contemporary concerns about death and dehumanization. This thesis will focus on the ways that death and dehumanization are changing and being negotiated within popular cultural representations and discourses regarding zombies, particularly in Frank Darabont’s television series The Walking Dead. The thesis will consider the way in which the figure of the zombie is representative of issues and discourses that are indicative of a problematization of the category of the human, and the notion of the transcendental. This will involve an examination of the changing narratives of the body, with particular regard to consumerism and the insistence of the body as a major site of the truth and value of the self, in contrast to the horrifying bodily form of the zombie. The thesis will also examine the way that dehumanization is problematized in The Walking Dead, where the human/non-human distinction is shown to be increasingly precarious and difficult to sustain. Further, the thesis will examine how the zombie is represented as manifesting the collapse of identity, as agents become alienated from the social discourses, narratives and values which constitute and categorize the subject.</p>

scholarly journals BODY IDENTITY IN BOHUMIL HRABAL’S NOVEL “I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bokshan Halyna
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Scientific Paper ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mirror Reflection ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
History Of The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The purpose of the paper is to examine the specificity of the modeling of the character-narrator’s body identity in B. Hrabal’s novel “I Served the King of England”. Firstly it stresses on the body-centered nature of the narration in this literary work, in which the evolution of personality is represented as “a history of the body”. The study focuses on the techniques of restructurizing “the body scheme” and the manifestation of psychophysiological transgression caused by the existing “archetypal canons”. It traces the correlation of the semantics of the body identity with the aesthetic categories of the beautiful and the ugly and with gender differentiation. The paper also considers gastronomy as one of the aspects of bodiliness in B. Hrabal’s novel. It details the poetics of grotesque which manifests itself in the descriptions of the body emphasizing its objectiveness. The study looks at the Rabelaisian traditions followed by the writer in the depiction of the scenes connected with eating both everyday food and exotic dishes. The research underlines that the body in B. Hrabal’s novel is displayed as a genetic data medium, visualized through physical characteristics, that highlights the social arrangement of the body identity problems. It pays attention to the social function of a human face in archaic societies originally interpreted in the novel. The research determines the peculiarities of the space marking of the body in the literary work and its correlation with the binary opposition “top–bottom”. It looks at the formation of the body identity by means of a mirror reflection and the image of the double. The conclusions of the research emphasize the specificity of the modeling of the body identity in the novel of the Czech writer. The results of this scientific paper can be used in further research on B. Hrabal literary prose and in comparative studie

scholarly journals The Idea of the Posthuman: A Comparative Analysis of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. Kriman
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Vitruvian Man ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to itself or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”

Egocentric Performance Capture: A Review

2020 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Shivam Grover ◽  
◽  
◽  
◽  
Kshitij Sidana ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Wearable Cameras ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Performance Capture ◽  
Traditional Performance

Performance capture of human beings have been used to animate 3D characters for movies and games for several decades now. Traditional performance capture methods require a dedicated costly setup which usually consists of more than one sensor placed at a distance from the subject, hence requiring a large amount of budget and space to accomodate. This lowers its feasibility and portability by a huge amount. Egocentric (first-person/wearable) cameras, however, are attached to the body and hence are mobile. With a rise of acceptance of wearable technology by the general public, wearable cameras have gotten cheaper too. We can make use of their excessive portability in the performance capture domain. However working with egocentric images is a mammoth task as the views are severely distorted due to the first-person perspective and the body parts farther from the camera are highly prone to being occluded. In this paper, we review the existing state-of-the-art methods about performance capture using egocentric based views.

The Feeling of Being a Body: Resurrection and Habitus in Vaughan’s Medical Writings

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-147
Author(s):  
Daniel Juan Gil
Keyword(s):  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Devotional Writings

Chapter 4 articulates more explicitly than the previous chapter the way resurrection beliefs in Vaughan’s poetry function as “critical theory” about selfhood, identity, and the social world. The chapter examines Vaughan’s devotional and religious “self-help” literature and Vaughan’s translation and expansion of a hermetic medical treatise. Vaughan’s immanent corporeal resurrectionist commitment to finding the “seeds” of resurrection leads him to posit an essential core of bodily life—the radical balsam—that seeks eternal life but that is sickened when it is penetrated and rewired by the social and historical world. The goal of Vaughan’s devotional writings and medicine alike is to rewire the self so that it reduces its investment in the historical and social world by having its life directed by the essential core, a move that is analogous to his poetic search for the seeds and signs of resurrection within himself his poetry (the subject of chapter 3). This vision anticipates Heidegger’s phenomenology and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. Vaughan also describes a form of sexuality that anticipates Leo Bersani in imagining the body as socialized and yet as potentially unhinged from that social connectedness.

Spirited Psychology and Civic Temperament in the Statesman

2021 ◽  
pp. 231-252
Author(s):  
Josh Wilburn
Keyword(s):  
Political Psychology ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Primary Problem

Chapter 9 argues that the Statesman characterizes the task of the politician as one that prominently requires attention to distinctively spirited aspects of the human soul. According to the dialogue’s final section, the primary problem of politics is that of producing harmony between, or “weaving” together, two main types of citizens that naturally tend toward conflict with one another: the “courageous” and the “moderate.” This chapter argues that the Statesman’s treatment of civic unity is largely a discussion of spirited political psychology: the “courageous” citizens incline toward behavior associated with the aggressive side of thumos, while the “moderate” tend toward behavior associated with its gentle side. Moreover, this treatment is set up earlier in the dialogue through the Myth of Cronus, which is designed to expose the inadequacy of conceptions of politics that ignore the social desires and emotions of human beings that are most relevant to politics.

Ren and Causal Efficacy: Confucians and Whitehead on the Social Role of Symbolism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyo-Dong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Role ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The Subject

Confucians in East Asia have always dreamed of holding human communities together and constructing well-functioning polities in and through the binding and harmonizing power of rituals. Underlying their trust in the power of rituals is the notion that rituals constitute symbolic articulation and enchancement of our affective responses to the conditions of embodied relationality and historicity in which we always already find ourselves. This Confucian theory of rituals resonates with Whitehead’s theory of symbolism, insofar as the latter advances a primordially relational ontology of the subject by highlighting the hitherto neglected epistemological notion of perception in the mode of causal efficacy. As such, the Confucian theory of rituals offers a fresh cross-cultural perspective to understand Whitehead’s implied critique of the modern liberal social theories that are based on a view of human beings as atomized individuals who rationally consent to enter society.

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